Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
Speaker 1: can't predict anything. Okay, Welcome to the Meat Eater. I
Speaker 1: changed the name. It's now the Meat Eater Digital Radio Program.
Speaker 1: I like that better. There's a bunch of people here.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna introduce him like how if if I was
Speaker 1: dealing poker by going clockwise? Yo, honestly tell us by
Speaker 1: Janni is his new name? Garrett Smith, who has a
Speaker 1: distended belly right now, and he's and he's got a
Speaker 1: chew packed and somehow they're related like that chew is
Speaker 1: gonna alleviate his distended belly. I think he was trying
Speaker 1: to tell us in some kind of subtle way. Um,
Speaker 1: Chris Gil like a fish, like a fish. Who's a
Speaker 1: turkey man? Now you just heard your first turkey gowl?
Speaker 1: I did? Is that true? I think it is? Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't remember hearing one before that, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: other than digitally. Yeah. And then Dr Carl Malcolm Carl
Speaker 1: tell us about the Wisconsin supersow Man, the Wisconsin Supersou,
Speaker 1: the wiscon This is the most this is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Tell us about the Wisconsin supersou all right, so a
Speaker 1: little backstory, lay it all out, lay it all out,
Speaker 1: all right, I mean within reason. Okay, So so my
Speaker 1: mom and my father. Yeah, so I'll began right around um.
Speaker 1: All right, So I went to graduate school at the
Speaker 1: University of Wisconsin Madison, which, by the way, was the
Speaker 1: first wildlife management program anywhere in the world, founded by
Speaker 1: Aldo Leopold after he left the Forest Service. That was
Speaker 1: one of the draws for me and kind of a
Speaker 1: Leopold junkie growing up. Um, but going to Madison, I
Speaker 1: was in kind of the southern farm belt region of Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: and as you travel north in the state of Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: you increasingly get into more and more forested landscapes, to
Speaker 1: the point where you get up into the northern part
Speaker 1: of the state, and the northern third is predominantly forested.
Speaker 1: So about halfway up you're in this interesting mix where
Speaker 1: you've got about a fifty fifty ratio of row crops
Speaker 1: like corn and soybeans and forest. And our good friend
Speaker 1: Doug Durn and south of that line, yep, he's south
Speaker 1: of that line. He's just like solid egg. No, well,
Speaker 1: defining like the defining feature or how would you put it?
Speaker 1: You know, So the Driftless area, the southwest part of
Speaker 1: the state where dug Durn is located is is interesting
Speaker 1: because it does have a major agricultural component, but there's
Speaker 1: certainly a lot of forest land, and part of that
Speaker 1: is because there's so much slope, which is unusual for
Speaker 1: the rest of the state until Yeah, so there's there's
Speaker 1: some untillable land, which is where you typically have forests
Speaker 1: there in the Driftless area. And this relates to the
Speaker 1: story because what's been happening for the last few decades
Speaker 1: is that black bears throughout the Midwest are increasingly expanding
Speaker 1: their range southward. So I don't know if Doug has
Speaker 1: any stories about bears showing up in his property in
Speaker 1: the Driftless area yet, not yet, because I feel like
Speaker 1: if he did, I would have heard about it. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: because he'll tell you about everything down to a greener showing,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I imagine he would, and
Speaker 1: I predict that he will have that story before too
Speaker 1: long because certainly bears, why why are bears mark him south?
Speaker 1: Like my theory on it, and this is completely untested
Speaker 1: and probably you probably i'd recommend you do not publish
Speaker 1: the paper on this is it. It It just took him
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty years to get used to people. That's
Speaker 1: the case. So what I think it has to do
Speaker 1: with is persecution. So black bears are extremely adaptable with
Speaker 1: their diet, and everybody knows is there. Like the classic omnivore,
Speaker 1: they'll eat anything. They can subsist on vegetation purely. They
Speaker 1: can do very well chowing down on meat and typically speaking,
Speaker 1: they're eating some combination of the two. So they can
Speaker 1: exist just about anywhere where there's where there's food for him.
Speaker 1: You know, my neighbor, uh, you'll at my last cabin.
Speaker 1: He's telling about a guy that had a bear come
Speaker 1: into his workshop and drink three gallons gear oil. That's unreal.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you killed it. If it didn't, it
Speaker 1: probably tore some gastro intestinal situation. Was debating whether or
Speaker 1: not to go there. But I took the high road
Speaker 1: and let you take it there. So thanks for being Yeah,
Speaker 1: phenomenal omnivorse. So the point is they're they're really adaptable.
Speaker 1: They can live just about anywhere as long as they're
Speaker 1: not being shot to the point where it's not sustainable.
Speaker 1: You know, if, like anything else, if you shoot enough
Speaker 1: of them, or you know, trap enough of them, if
Speaker 1: you eliminate enough from the from the population, they're not
Speaker 1: going to exist in a particular part of the state anymore. So.
Speaker 1: The bears, like many other species UM that are managed
Speaker 1: by state agencies as hunted species, have been on an
Speaker 1: upward trajectory since their low point when they weren't being
Speaker 1: managed as such. So essentially, bears, like many other species,
Speaker 1: were persecuted by unregulated hunting for a long time and
Speaker 1: driven out. I mean, we're just like no rules about
Speaker 1: take and it doesn't matter what time of year, saw
Speaker 1: with cubs whatever. You could at a time shoot a
Speaker 1: bear and there was no just like everything else, right,
Speaker 1: I mean at a time, that's what it was for
Speaker 1: all these species. But under managed under a management scenario
Speaker 1: where we're tracking populations, were making sure that the number
Speaker 1: of bears taken is sustainable. Um, they are showing that
Speaker 1: they're capable of existing well outside of what people think
Speaker 1: of as bear country, including places like southwest Wisconsin, which
Speaker 1: historically certainly had bears and now increasingly has bears showing
Speaker 1: up places like Richland County as an example. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: So I'm throwing it out there for you. Always feel
Speaker 1: like calling Dug up right now if he if he
Speaker 1: doesn't have a bear story about his property, he will
Speaker 1: he'll have well he will soon, I think, and he'll
Speaker 1: certainly have bear stories from other people's properties. So part
Speaker 1: of the equation here with the expanding bear population is
Speaker 1: the super Sal and bears like her. And the super
Speaker 1: Sal was an individual bear that was part of my
Speaker 1: research project and as a graduate student at the University Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: Who but tell, tell, tell what you were doing? Okay,
Speaker 1: So I was looking at that spatial expansion. So what
Speaker 1: I was doing, I was I was specifically focused on
Speaker 1: dispersing subadults. So black bears are really interesting and that
Speaker 1: you know they're they're in the den. So they they
Speaker 1: emerge into the world um with their mother in the
Speaker 1: den and basically just latch on and nurse for the
Speaker 1: first couple of months of their lives, and then the
Speaker 1: family emerges from the den in the spring. I gotta
Speaker 1: ask you the other question, bring it. What's the difference
Speaker 1: between precocial. They're not precocial, they are altricial. Altricial. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they're born in a state where essentially um they're
Speaker 1: relatively underdeveloped, they're tiny, their limbs are barely formed when
Speaker 1: they're born, and they basically just navigate from the birth
Speaker 1: canal to a nipple latch on. And bears in general,
Speaker 1: including black bears, crank out some of the most calorie
Speaker 1: dense milk anywhere in the animal kingdom. It's like liquid
Speaker 1: butter coming from those nipples. So they grow really fast,
Speaker 1: and they do after the wrong nipples. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's amazing. So as an example, you know, I have
Speaker 1: my hand on a lot of bears um during the
Speaker 1: field work. And when you go to work up a
Speaker 1: den that had a sow with cubs, the styles would
Speaker 1: be lactating. And there were a number of times where
Speaker 1: explaining working up a den. But use a checklist for you.
Speaker 1: I want you to I want to do a quickie
Speaker 1: pre precocial altricial. Do quickie on that. And then don't
Speaker 1: just say work up a den, because no one's gonna
Speaker 1: know what the hell that means. Okay, all right, precuecial altricial.
Speaker 1: So species that are born precocial have the ability to
Speaker 1: do things like evade predation. So, for example, like pronghorn fawns,
Speaker 1: when they're born it's a matter of days before they're
Speaker 1: up on their feet and able to cruise if a
Speaker 1: predator shows up. Alright, altricial species are born in a
Speaker 1: state where they still have a lot of development to go.
Speaker 1: So we're humans are altricial. Yeah, man, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: infant is not going to evade pre ation. It's got
Speaker 1: to be protected, just like a bear cup all right. Now,
Speaker 1: working up a den essentially, what I'm referring to is
Speaker 1: going into a place where bears are hibernating. They've been
Speaker 1: located either because they've got a radio collar or someone
Speaker 1: from the public has encountered a den and contacted through
Speaker 1: some avenue researchers like myself, and we go into the
Speaker 1: den with typically a poll syringe or a jab stick,
Speaker 1: which is basically envisioned like a broom handle with a
Speaker 1: big syringe and a needle on the end. And the
Speaker 1: goal is to be able to give the bear an
Speaker 1: injection in some major muscle without putting yourself in harm's way.
Speaker 1: So you're either trying to get an injection somewhere like
Speaker 1: in the buttock or in the shoulder. Those are the
Speaker 1: two best spots to try to get a stick, and
Speaker 1: the den's. You know, when people think of a bear den,
Speaker 1: most folks are thinking like a hole in the ground
Speaker 1: with the bears piled up in it, a cave. But
Speaker 1: and and sometimes that is the case. But I would say, man,
Speaker 1: probably around half the time they're above ground, maybe in
Speaker 1: like a a slash pile where they've kind of carved
Speaker 1: out a little nest, or sometimes just laying on the
Speaker 1: ground in the wide open. You were saying, you found
Speaker 1: him dend up just under like some bows, over under
Speaker 1: overhanging evergreen boughs. I found him, you know, I found
Speaker 1: him dend up in places where they really have almost
Speaker 1: no cover. They're just like laying there in the snow,
Speaker 1: getting snowed on, and the cubs will be curled up
Speaker 1: against their bellies. Um, and it doesn't look like they
Speaker 1: put any effort at all into seeking like shelter of
Speaker 1: any form, so highly variable, what these dens look like.
Speaker 1: I was gonna just ask if you have like has
Speaker 1: that always been like that, like when you read older papers,
Speaker 1: did they have research that shows that as well? Or
Speaker 1: do you feel do you have a hypothesis on maybe
Speaker 1: why that's is it happening more now than it used to?
Speaker 1: Like the expanding bears aren't finding good spots, you know, man,
Speaker 1: or maybe they don't need to because the winner is
Speaker 1: still In some places. They don't even hibernate, right, I
Speaker 1: mean they in hibernation is a whole different subject. You know,
Speaker 1: they're not technically true hibernators. They go into like a
Speaker 1: seasonal sort of downturn in their metabolism, but they're not
Speaker 1: a true hibernating species. Um So, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: something that has changed. I think it's part of their
Speaker 1: life history. Um So, No, I don't. I do not
Speaker 1: think that the denning without a hole in the ground
Speaker 1: is something that is new for black bears, like it's
Speaker 1: part of their life history. It has been part of
Speaker 1: their life history. They basically do what they need to
Speaker 1: do to survive. Some bears one year will make it,
Speaker 1: then the next year not. There doesn't seem to be
Speaker 1: any rhyme or reason. One interesting pattern that was true
Speaker 1: throughout my research and was conveyed to me by other
Speaker 1: folks who have done a lot of bear handling, is
Speaker 1: that an individual bear will not use the same den
Speaker 1: location twice ever, and in some cases, and I thought
Speaker 1: it was twice in a row but they'll alternate. I've
Speaker 1: I've never seen a bear go back to the same place,
Speaker 1: and the people with whom I have done my research
Speaker 1: have never seen a den get reused. What it makes sense.
Speaker 1: There's a guy I know in northern Wisconsin. Um, his
Speaker 1: last name is Heart maybe Bill Hart. He owns a
Speaker 1: T shirt shop. Where's Northland College something like that. There
Speaker 1: is Northland College, I can't remember the town. They have
Speaker 1: to think called the Secret f Olson Nature Writing Award. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I won that award and was hosted by this
Speaker 1: man Bill Hart. He took me down and showed me
Speaker 1: undercut Bank on his property where every other year there's
Speaker 1: a black bear with cubs in there, and there's a
Speaker 1: little hole he can even look in there. So maybe
Speaker 1: it's different bears. It's just a SP's different bears. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's the same bear disproving this pattern that I've served.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he listen. I hate guys like I hate
Speaker 1: people to do what I just did, because you're trying
Speaker 1: to talk about like generally right, So generally it's bad
Speaker 1: to smoke tons of cigarettes and then someone's like agreeable,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's like, yeah, interesting side this fello
Speaker 1: by the last name of Heart. I will go on
Speaker 1: to say this, I guarantee you in the history of
Speaker 1: American black bears, a bear has reused a den. That's
Speaker 1: that's all I'm trying to say. Man, generally speaking, black
Speaker 1: bears do not reuse den sights. And this the super
Speaker 1: Saudi asked about is a really interesting example of this
Speaker 1: because she denned in the same like hundred yard by
Speaker 1: hundred yard area, but shows different locations within this small
Speaker 1: footprint during the years that I found. You're worried about
Speaker 1: disease transmission of some sort. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's who knows. Man, Trying to get into the
Speaker 1: mind of a bear is what we're doing here, and
Speaker 1: I think it's But I don't like. Yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: when you're talking about like why things do things, why
Speaker 1: animals do things, A lot of people say, like, for instance,
Speaker 1: the r day, my friend Heart, he's got a bear
Speaker 1: that comes back to the same he's convinced it's the
Speaker 1: same bear. Yeah, And I don't think I said, like,
Speaker 1: never has a bear done this. I'm not taking your task.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just asking a point. I like it.
Speaker 1: I like it. Um And then knowing thing people do
Speaker 1: and I do it all the time, is you'll say,
Speaker 1: let me give an example. I was yesterday admiring some
Speaker 1: turkeys that we shot on our turkey hunt. It's a
Speaker 1: Miriam's turkey, and a Miriam's turkey has a lot of
Speaker 1: white on the end of their feathers. I was saying,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that has to do with heat reducing
Speaker 1: how many how much radiant surface because it's a it's
Speaker 1: an animal from the southwest, very intense sun. An Eastern
Speaker 1: turkey has a lot of black on it. Maybe these
Speaker 1: turkeys have a lot more white on them as an
Speaker 1: adaptive advantage about radiant heat, Like maybe that's a problem
Speaker 1: getting too hot. So I think that when you look
Speaker 1: at stuff you be you'd say, like you, I can't
Speaker 1: say that that's why those turkeys evolved that what you
Speaker 1: could not pillage, But what would you call it? I'd
Speaker 1: call it that. Okay, I can't say that's why those
Speaker 1: turkeys evolved that pellage, but I could say that could
Speaker 1: be something to do with it, or that it could
Speaker 1: have that effect in reducing radiant heat. So, but I
Speaker 1: find talking to scientists like yourself, I'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: do they do it. Do the bears not want to
Speaker 1: go back, maybe because of mits or some kind of
Speaker 1: thing like that. I know you don't know all the way,
Speaker 1: but is that a reasonable Yes, it's a reasonable idea.
Speaker 1: It's a reasonable idea. It will be another reasonable idea
Speaker 1: maybe to be unpredictable. You know, if they've got a
Speaker 1: den that has been there on the ground for X
Speaker 1: number of months and a certain number of animals have
Speaker 1: encountered that den and become aware of its existence, then
Speaker 1: there might be some adaptive advantage to moving locations, you know,
Speaker 1: especially if you have those extremely altricial cubs to look after. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, basically the onus is entirely on a mother
Speaker 1: bear to make sure those cubs get to the point
Speaker 1: where they can climb a tree. And they've got a
Speaker 1: long road to ho from the time they're born before
Speaker 1: they're to that point, because they're born in the middle
Speaker 1: of the winter, right, Yeah, that's right, like February March
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, late January, yep. And then
Speaker 1: like I said, you know, when when they're born, they're
Speaker 1: they're tiny, and by the time they're coming out of
Speaker 1: the den, they've gone from being you know, like something
Speaker 1: you hold in the palm in your hand to be
Speaker 1: in something that's four or five, six, maybe seven pounds,
Speaker 1: And so the mother has she's got to bring all
Speaker 1: that all those calories, all that energy into the den
Speaker 1: with her both to maintain that pregnancy, deliver the cubs,
Speaker 1: and then provide enough nutrition through her milk to get
Speaker 1: him to the point where when they emerge from the den,
Speaker 1: she can wolf at them and they're ready to climb,
Speaker 1: because once they leave the den, you know, she's she's
Speaker 1: not in a position to just protect them the way
Speaker 1: she can while they're they're all bawled up in a pilot, dogs,
Speaker 1: other bears, all manner of things. Yeah, definitely. So that's
Speaker 1: you covered on everything so far. No, man, I'm sharp,
Speaker 1: I am sharp. I'm good. It is fascinating stuff. And
Speaker 1: by the way, one of the highlights of this week
Speaker 1: turkey hunting. Yea, you guys almost got killed by bear. No,
Speaker 1: we didn't almost. We had to bear encounters this week though. Um.
Speaker 1: The first one was going out trying to locate some
Speaker 1: birds in the evening and I heard what sounded like
Speaker 1: a cub kind of bowling down the hill from us,
Speaker 1: and then a bunch of claw marks on a tree
Speaker 1: and then what had to have been the sow popping
Speaker 1: her teeth, and given how late it was in the day,
Speaker 1: I decided not to take the shotgun with me. I
Speaker 1: was just kind of strolling up the hill, and when
Speaker 1: I heard that sow pop in her teeth, I was like,
Speaker 1: let's let's take this other direction. And then, uh, what
Speaker 1: was even a cooler sighting was um as yesterday morning
Speaker 1: man saw that the biggest bear I've seen since coming
Speaker 1: to New Mexico. And it was also the blondest bear,
Speaker 1: this great big boar, and UH had him while I
Speaker 1: was putting a decoy in the ground and heard a
Speaker 1: twig pop and looked over and he was no more
Speaker 1: than seventy yards away looking at me through the trees,
Speaker 1: and he was just beautiful. And then we we set
Speaker 1: up a couple more times, and he came back in
Speaker 1: to check us out, and he was woofing at us
Speaker 1: from up the hill, so we all got a good
Speaker 1: look at him. Is just a beautiful animal man there,
Speaker 1: And you're getting a lot of bear vocalizations, which is usual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. You know, I was telling you I one
Speaker 1: time was hand calling to a tom to a gobbler
Speaker 1: and heard an exhale over my shoulder, like how someone
Speaker 1: would do, like they're a little bit tired from walking
Speaker 1: up a hill. And it was a bear, I mean
Speaker 1: arms distance that that would be an exaggeration, extremely clear
Speaker 1: enough where I could like, I could hear it breathe.
Speaker 1: He's coming to kill that hand When I turned around, Man,
Speaker 1: it's scared the ship out of him. Scared. He freaked out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did not like that man. Yeah, and that big
Speaker 1: one yesterday when he first saw me, he went part
Speaker 1: way up a tree and decided that wasn't his best
Speaker 1: course of defense. Came back down the tree, making so
Speaker 1: much noise, breaking big branches, claws scraping on the side
Speaker 1: of the tree, and then tore off up the mountain.
Speaker 1: And it surprised me that he came back in to
Speaker 1: check us out when we were calling again. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if the turkey he went and got pumped up.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's like, come on, dude, your whole life he's
Speaker 1: been running, Go down there. You've got that guy. But
Speaker 1: at least two and a half bills. It was an
Speaker 1: awesome animal. Man Okay, Wisconsin, Supersouth, Okay, Wisconsin. Super south.
Speaker 1: So aside from the fact that she came back to
Speaker 1: the same general need, I needed more background. Okay, how
Speaker 1: many bear dance have you dug up? I would have
Speaker 1: to look at my notebook to give you an answer.
Speaker 1: I would say, oh, gosh, in the neighborhood of lady
Speaker 1: to fifty dans something like that that I've been or everybody.
Speaker 1: So I should give you a little more context on
Speaker 1: the research projects. We're interested in. This expansion of black
Speaker 1: bears south in their range, so individuals moving farther and
Speaker 1: farther south. And as you know from all the other
Speaker 1: species that show up in crazy places like mountain lions
Speaker 1: showing up in New York State. You know these critters
Speaker 1: that go hundreds of miles. Typically it's these young males
Speaker 1: disperse sing that go great distances. So I was really
Speaker 1: interested in looking at the dispersal behavior of black bears.
Speaker 1: So what I needed for that research project was to
Speaker 1: get GPS collars on yearling bears and a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the biology of the species. Got you, I
Speaker 1: got you. So born in the den, they get up
Speaker 1: to let's say five pounds, come out of the den
Speaker 1: with mom in the spring, keep growing still really dependent
Speaker 1: on mom for their defense. Spend that whole spring, summer, fall,
Speaker 1: buy mom's side, side like insight of mom or in
Speaker 1: sound range of mom. And if something's going wrong, all
Speaker 1: that mother bear has to do is give a wolf,
Speaker 1: and the cubs know they've got to get up the
Speaker 1: nearest tree. So what a lot of people don't know
Speaker 1: is that when that second winner comes around, now you've
Speaker 1: got Mama bear and a bunch of you know, we
Speaker 1: call them year things, but they're less than a year old.
Speaker 1: They're just about to complete their first year. They all
Speaker 1: den up together again, so you'll have a beared end
Speaker 1: that might have let's say a sow that weighs two
Speaker 1: thirty pounds, and then she's got x number of one
Speaker 1: year old cubs, some of which might weigh as much
Speaker 1: as a hundred pounds themselves, all piled up together. So
Speaker 1: it could be a huge like biomass of bear in
Speaker 1: a heap, and they're sorting it all out. And and
Speaker 1: especially if they're underground, you know, so I mentioned I
Speaker 1: described this this polsyringe that you used to sedate the bears.
Speaker 1: And if they're underground, you know, you've got like a
Speaker 1: head lamp and you're looking in there and it's a
Speaker 1: dark hole and a dark animal and they're the way
Speaker 1: that they're piled up, it's like super spooning. It's like
Speaker 1: a tangled mass of limbs and heads and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out where one bear ends and another bear begins.
Speaker 1: And you don't even know how many bears there are
Speaker 1: down in the hole. Like when our kids crawling with
Speaker 1: me and my wife, man, yeah, just wake up. It's hard.
Speaker 1: You can't get out. So you're like, is that is
Speaker 1: that Steve's thigh or you know, you have no idea,
Speaker 1: so it can. It was, and it is a nerve
Speaker 1: racking thing at first to intentionally go up to a
Speaker 1: den and try to sedate these animals. And you got
Speaker 1: to sedate the cubs too. You have to sedate the
Speaker 1: cubs when they're in that second winter when well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they're you know, hundred pounds, Yeah, and they don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on. They want to get away, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to. You don't want to fracture that
Speaker 1: family in a prematurely either, So you want to get
Speaker 1: everybody sedated and then you because you don't want one
Speaker 1: to run off. Yeah, and yeah, and that can happen.
Speaker 1: You can have individuals that you know, try to make
Speaker 1: a getaway. So that's what I'm talking about when I
Speaker 1: say working up a den, going into sedate um and
Speaker 1: then you're getting measurements, you're taking um blood samples. You know,
Speaker 1: there are other research projects people were looking at a
Speaker 1: variety of other topics with respect of these bears, and
Speaker 1: one of the projects they're interested in in milk. In
Speaker 1: in the bare milk, And I mentioned to you the
Speaker 1: fat content of bare milk, and we segued several different
Speaker 1: times since then, but I wanted to mention on several
Speaker 1: occasions I've had bare milk on my hands when I'm
Speaker 1: doing this in the winter, and obviously it's gone from
Speaker 1: bare body temperature out to wintertime temperature, and it's almost
Speaker 1: instantaneous that it turns into a solid and you can
Speaker 1: smear it between your fingers and it feels it feels
Speaker 1: like butter. I mean it, it's so it's got so
Speaker 1: much fat in it that the second you take it
Speaker 1: away from that that body heat from the mother, it
Speaker 1: turns into a solid. And obviously for the cubs, that's
Speaker 1: just going straight from bare body temperature to bare body
Speaker 1: temperature inside the cup's mouth while it's ingested, but if
Speaker 1: it gets out in that winter air, it is like
Speaker 1: a solid material, so pretty fascinating stuff. So those cubs
Speaker 1: are not a ton of weight. And the number of
Speaker 1: offspring that a single sow has in a given year
Speaker 1: is linked directly to her body condition. So a bear
Speaker 1: that goes into the den in good condition will have
Speaker 1: more cubs than a bear that goes into a den
Speaker 1: in poor condition. And one of the ways that this
Speaker 1: is controlled is that black bears have what's called delayed implantation,
Speaker 1: so they get pregnant and these little fertilized eggs just
Speaker 1: kind of float around in the womb for a little
Speaker 1: while and then when the time is right. The body
Speaker 1: is communicating to the brain what kind of condition it's in.
Speaker 1: And there are a variety of chemical uh interactions that
Speaker 1: scientists believe drive this relationship. One of one of the
Speaker 1: keys is likely to be uh lepton, which is in
Speaker 1: circulation in a in an amount proportional to body fat.
Speaker 1: So a really fat bear, it body is telling its brain,
Speaker 1: I'm in really good shape. It's brains telling its body
Speaker 1: we should be having more cubs than in a poor year,
Speaker 1: and more of those fertilized embryos will implant into the
Speaker 1: uterus wall and turn into cubs. You can you imagine
Speaker 1: humans had delayed implantation, the implications at half I'm imagining it.
Speaker 1: We still be My wife is still have three floating
Speaker 1: in there. They're like no, not quite yet, Like no
Speaker 1: one are there, but not quite Yeah, So it's pretty
Speaker 1: It's it's amazing stuff, man, animal kingdom. What's the maximum?
Speaker 1: When you say that, how many does she have in reserve? Like?
Speaker 1: How many could she have? That's it's a great question,
Speaker 1: and I don't know the answer to it, but I
Speaker 1: can tell you that in the literature there are very
Speaker 1: very few instances where six cubs have been documented. Being
Speaker 1: born to a single mother in a given year seems
Speaker 1: to be about the mass six is like, you know,
Speaker 1: like the less than once in a blue moon number.
Speaker 1: What's the national average? Two to three is really common?
Speaker 1: Two to three is really common? And imagine you know,
Speaker 1: you asked about a national average. Obviously, depending on where
Speaker 1: you are on the map, you're gonna have different food resources,
Speaker 1: and then even in a given location year to year,
Speaker 1: it's highly variable. Think about you know, in a lot
Speaker 1: of these systems acorn mast crop is a key driver.
Speaker 1: So if you're in a place that's let's say, got
Speaker 1: a lot of white oak and it's a massed year,
Speaker 1: you should expect those Souths to have more fat and
Speaker 1: more cubs. And when it's a massed poor year and
Speaker 1: they're forced to some relatively inferior calorie, poor food source,
Speaker 1: lower body condition for your cubs makes sense. Hold there
Speaker 1: for a minute. Okay, Yehney, any questions. You're cool and
Speaker 1: everything up to this point. I'm cool. I can tell
Speaker 1: you that where there won't be a lot of cubs
Speaker 1: come out of dentist here, and that's in Kentucky, Tennessee's straight. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I am curious about the the hundred yard square, like
Speaker 1: if that had a reason to it with the Superstown.
Speaker 1: It's a it's like how many she dined? How many
Speaker 1: times within a little chunker ground? Three times I visited
Speaker 1: that sow in this little area. What were the three dens?
Speaker 1: So two times? It was this interesting place. It was
Speaker 1: on private property. The landowner gave his permission to do
Speaker 1: the work. If I remember right, it was it was
Speaker 1: the Pettis Farm was the name of this place. And
Speaker 1: there were some stump piles there the farmer had cleared out,
Speaker 1: you know, some egg fields and piled up a bunch
Speaker 1: of stumps. So on two of those occasions, the sow
Speaker 1: was in a stump pile, but it was not the
Speaker 1: same stump pile, two separate stump piles. And then on
Speaker 1: a third occasion occasion, she was above the ground and
Speaker 1: close to those stump piles, just laying out, just laying
Speaker 1: out with a pile of pile of yearlings. So how
Speaker 1: in the world does that work? I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you, like, like, how do they not?
Speaker 1: So it's just laying there, like a dog could walk
Speaker 1: up and start eating the young. If a dog walked
Speaker 1: up and tried to start eating the young, it would
Speaker 1: not go favorably for the day, even though she's in
Speaker 1: a semi stupor state. Yes, and that's another sort of
Speaker 1: misconception when you approach a den. And I should probably
Speaker 1: have prefaced the conversation about so called working up den's
Speaker 1: with a disclaimer like, no one if you find a
Speaker 1: bear den should be messing with it. Just leave him alone.
Speaker 1: Let them do their things. Now, when you come up
Speaker 1: to a den, it's not like the bear is laying
Speaker 1: there in suspended animation, oblivious to your presence. The vast
Speaker 1: majority of the time when I would get to the
Speaker 1: point of trying to figure out how many bears are
Speaker 1: in the den, is it is, you know, the den
Speaker 1: above ground or below ground. By the time I found
Speaker 1: that the location and was looking at the bear, the
Speaker 1: bear was aware of my presence and looking back at
Speaker 1: me sometimes but aware. It's not like they're you know,
Speaker 1: completely sedated already and you just walk up and give
Speaker 1: a sleeping bear a shot. They know you're there. And
Speaker 1: the speed at which they can go from being in
Speaker 1: this metabolically um slow state to just being like with
Speaker 1: it and running away, you know, it is remarkable. I
Speaker 1: mean they can they can go from idol or sub
Speaker 1: idol speed to full RPMs in a matter of minutes.
Speaker 1: It's really an amazing thing that their bodies can do.
Speaker 1: That's like me in the morning before tricky hunt. He's
Speaker 1: noticed that as long he's got some of that great
Speaker 1: camp coffee. Before I can even think about getting up,
Speaker 1: he's got the jet boils round and everything's happening. You guys, run,
Speaker 1: You guys are in a tight ship. Chris, are you cool?
Speaker 1: And everything. Yeah, Actually I do have a question. Um,
Speaker 1: so averages two to three cubs per per litter per letter?
Speaker 1: How many cubs? Like, how many litters can a bear
Speaker 1: have in her lifetime? Is it just one? Or is it?
Speaker 1: That depends on one key variable, which is how long
Speaker 1: she lives? So they can't. They don't do it every year,
Speaker 1: though they do. That's exactly well typically, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so bear in mind again those cubs are born. Let's
Speaker 1: say year one, the cubs are born, mama's got that
Speaker 1: responsibility for a year two, right, she's denning with them again,
Speaker 1: so she can't give birth to a new letter and
Speaker 1: care for last year's litter. So that's why there's this
Speaker 1: cycle where it's a litter and then it's rearing last
Speaker 1: year's litter and then they're gone, and then it's a
Speaker 1: litter and it's rearing that litter and then they're gone.
Speaker 1: How old are they when he becomes sextually mature. It
Speaker 1: depends on diet, But you can have bears that are
Speaker 1: reproducing at two years of age. Yep, So they're not
Speaker 1: they're they're not doing is that many times? Well, he
Speaker 1: could have a black bear boar one time they aged
Speaker 1: at seventeen not accurate that they can get I mean
Speaker 1: they can live into their twenties. It depends, you know.
Speaker 1: The biggest thing is is uh, honestly, how how hard
Speaker 1: hunted the population is. That's like the leading cause mortality. Ye,
Speaker 1: but you could you could you know in a in
Speaker 1: a situation where a sow has avoided predation and made
Speaker 1: it to her twenties, she might have had eight litters
Speaker 1: nine litters, so they can crank out a bunch. Now
Speaker 1: this style that I'm talking about, the super I named
Speaker 1: her that because she perfect perfect. I'm a fan of alliteration,
Speaker 1: so it kind of has a ring to it. Um.
Speaker 1: She really stood out because I mentioned that A visit
Speaker 1: her three times. The first year I visited her, she
Speaker 1: had five cups, which was noteworthy in and of itself.
Speaker 1: She's the only bear during my research project with five cubs. Ever,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. I'd have to look at my
Speaker 1: notes again on that. But she wasn't She was not
Speaker 1: not like a monster, but she was in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: of two twenty somewhere in there, so not not like
Speaker 1: holy cows. Would have read reread my paper on this
Speaker 1: if I knew I was going to get all these questions,
Speaker 1: but it's a it's a cool topic, for sure. So
Speaker 1: let's say she was in the neighborhood of two pounds.
Speaker 1: All right, she has five cups. That's big, but not extraordinary.
Speaker 1: It's a good, a nice, big, sell healthy cell. So
Speaker 1: she's got these five cups the first first time I've
Speaker 1: seen that, really cool deal. And so I'm looking at
Speaker 1: it from the standpoint of, all right, here are five
Speaker 1: cubs now. But next year I can come back and
Speaker 1: I'll have five year links for my research project. Because
Speaker 1: then when their yearlings and they emerge from the den,
Speaker 1: that's when the family unit splinters, all right, breaks up,
Speaker 1: And oftentimes that coincides with the spring breeding season, so
Speaker 1: the males are starting to chase mom around. The yearlings
Speaker 1: don't want to be in the neighborhood anymore. Mom isn't
Speaker 1: caring for him anymore, and the females will typically go
Speaker 1: a relative short distance when they disperse. Sometimes their home
Speaker 1: ranges as adults will even overlap a little bit with
Speaker 1: the home range of their mothers, and those young males
Speaker 1: can go phenomenal distances like on the order of tens
Speaker 1: to hundreds of miles they'll cover and then set up
Speaker 1: shop in a new place. So I've got five bears
Speaker 1: that I'm hoping the following winter I'll be able to
Speaker 1: put GPS colors on from my research probac slim that's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. Yeah, she's good that they're all gonna live. Well,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say the odds are slim, because we actually
Speaker 1: had pretty high survivorship of bears that we found as
Speaker 1: cubs and then relocated as yearlings. Most of them survived,
Speaker 1: but you know, you got your hands full with five
Speaker 1: offspring to deal with. I come back to the den
Speaker 1: the next year hoping to find five yearlings. There are
Speaker 1: five yearlings. And not only are there five yearlings, but
Speaker 1: they're big, like they've thrived. They've done really, really well.
Speaker 1: What's big, like hundred pounds, So they've gone from five
Speaker 1: pounds to hundred pounds in a year. And the males
Speaker 1: were bigger than the females. The females, you know, seventy pounds.
Speaker 1: So there's seven hundred pounds worth of bears. A pile
Speaker 1: of bears, yes, seven hundred pound blob of black bears.
Speaker 1: A heap of black bears, six of them yes, six
Speaker 1: bears all piled up. That's incredible. So one of my
Speaker 1: grad school colleagues, guy named Dave McFarland, who's a working
Speaker 1: for the Wisconsin d NR now as a as an ecologist.
Speaker 1: He and I were tasked with getting those bears handled
Speaker 1: and collared, and those five became subjects of my research.
Speaker 1: And then another year goes by and I go back
Speaker 1: in to this same style. She's den in that same
Speaker 1: general area, and she has five newborn cubs again, so
Speaker 1: she has successive litters of quintuplets, and that's amazing in
Speaker 1: and of itself. Furthermore, we weighed her that first year,
Speaker 1: we waited the second year, we weighed her the third year,
Speaker 1: and over the course of birthing and weaning those ten cubs,
Speaker 1: she put on on the order of fifty pounds of weight,
Speaker 1: gaining weight, gaining weight while cranking out calories like nobody's business.
Speaker 1: So that's how she got the moniker of super cell. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So back to back litters of quinn tuplets, I mean,
Speaker 1: ten cubs over the span of three years. And then
Speaker 1: I started getting stories to one of the one of
Speaker 1: the coolest stories was from some Wisconsin Department of transportation
Speaker 1: guys who had seen the sow with those five yearlings,
Speaker 1: and they were going and scavenging deer carcasses that the
Speaker 1: d O T guys had picked up and taken to
Speaker 1: like a dump site. Secret. Well, that was part of
Speaker 1: her secret. The other part of it was she was
Speaker 1: living in this landscape where there's corn like corn and
Speaker 1: oak forest and she's just translating all those calories into
Speaker 1: bare biomass through her reproduction. But now did she do
Speaker 1: it again? Though? So what she did again was rear
Speaker 1: those five cubs to the point that they were yearlings
Speaker 1: and dispersed, and at that point I was done tracking
Speaker 1: that style. Did any of the ten that you watched
Speaker 1: her bring to yearling hood? Did any go south? Yes?
Speaker 1: What percent went south? So out of those out of
Speaker 1: those ten specific cubs, I do not know the answer
Speaker 1: to that, but I can tell you that there was
Speaker 1: a statistically significant skewing of the data where the bears
Speaker 1: were moving in a southerly and easterly direction from that
Speaker 1: sort of central forest part of the state, like moving
Speaker 1: initially or winding up, winding up, winding up, So they
Speaker 1: were they were checking for territory and finding unoccupied locations. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's certainly true. And I think one of the things
Speaker 1: driving it was not only were they finding unoccupied locations,
Speaker 1: but they were finding unoccupied locations with ad libitum, in
Speaker 1: other words, unlimited food supply and no competition. And another
Speaker 1: really cool thing that happened because these GPS collars, you know,
Speaker 1: they've just revolutionized wildlife research because rather than going out
Speaker 1: there with like an antenna and trying to locate the
Speaker 1: radio signal, you're just getting thousands and thousands of locations.
Speaker 1: And I had a handful of bears that made these
Speaker 1: really interesting forays into totally new areas where they'd never
Speaker 1: been before and distances of dozens, sometimes as much as
Speaker 1: forty or fifty miles, And then they'd returned to the
Speaker 1: area where they were born. And then they'd go back
Speaker 1: to that place that they had explored and set up
Speaker 1: shot there. Yeah, they come back to get their stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it was like get their stuff
Speaker 1: out of storage, you know, again trying to try to
Speaker 1: get I got to go to store. You know, it's
Speaker 1: try to find a spot if whatever he'son, come back
Speaker 1: where they came from, and then go back to their spot.
Speaker 1: Do you want to see some of these data points,
Speaker 1: well I will buy me not right now, but i'd
Speaker 1: love to. I looked at one time. We'll put some
Speaker 1: if you want to share. We put somebody's up for
Speaker 1: listeners to go check out. Because I also find this
Speaker 1: link where I looked at one time how a wolverine
Speaker 1: uses a mountain for a year, and it was just
Speaker 1: his marks of all the places he went on a mountain,
Speaker 1: which was looking at it. It seemed like very haphazard,
Speaker 1: but probably made some kind of sense to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's got to be a reason for it. Man.
Speaker 1: So one pioneering bear, the Wisconsin super South, moves into
Speaker 1: a new area semi new. Yeah, I mean she was
Speaker 1: at the southern extent of what you consider like the
Speaker 1: core bear range of the state, and in the course
Speaker 1: of four years produces ten offspring weighing a hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: Some of them move souphomore. So if you see a
Speaker 1: bear your listeners show up in your neighborhood, think of Carl.
Speaker 1: Yeah they're coming, Carl. You could go, you could do
Speaker 1: your thoughts last Okay, yeah you can. Here's deal. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have to come back on though. I'm down for that,
Speaker 1: we don't even talk about what I was gonna talking about.
Speaker 1: Let's we'll do it again, Johnny, I'll do my job here,
Speaker 1: do you. Um yeah, it's kind of general broad but
Speaker 1: I love the fact that we're doing like biology and
Speaker 1: science equals hunting, Like that's just awesome for me. And
Speaker 1: I hope we can can te you to do that
Speaker 1: and have more biologists on but on the digital radio program,
Speaker 1: on digital radio program. But yeah, man, I feel like
Speaker 1: all hunters should be thinking, you know, with this mind frame,
Speaker 1: you know, and and looking at it that way so advantageous.
Speaker 1: I recently I gave a talk at a at a
Speaker 1: thing and um, after I get this talk, well, as
Speaker 1: I was preparing for my talk, I noticed my wife
Speaker 1: for what she was doing. She was working on a project,
Speaker 1: and she had a lot of unusual magazines around our house,
Speaker 1: and I noticed that the big thing in magazine anyone
Speaker 1: who stands in the checkout line, I'll see this. Everything's
Speaker 1: like top you know, um, seven things to make for dinner,
Speaker 1: or like forty nine ways to blow your man's mind
Speaker 1: in bed, or like a hundred and one you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Like lists are big. And my wife
Speaker 1: was even telling me that an odd numbered list does
Speaker 1: better than an even numbered list. People when you say
Speaker 1: top ten, people think they're being bullshitted. If you say eleven,
Speaker 1: they're like, who, like why eleven? They want to read
Speaker 1: it more so. Anyhow, at my end of my thing,
Speaker 1: I had seven things that I think hunters should be doing,
Speaker 1: and one of those seven was why not spend more
Speaker 1: time learning about a college and biology, like from real places?
Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean? Like, especially if you
Speaker 1: can figure out how to read the abstracts of peer
Speaker 1: reviewed wildlife journals, that if nothing else, you'd be a
Speaker 1: better guy to talk to in the bar, because you'd
Speaker 1: be like, you know what, you'd be you'd be the
Speaker 1: kind of guy who gets to go like this. You'd
Speaker 1: be saying, you know what, that's not how it works,
Speaker 1: that's not exactly what happens. You're wrong. I read it
Speaker 1: in a pure reviewed journal. Um is that if you're
Speaker 1: concluding thought gret to Cotail that it was very enjoyable
Speaker 1: to hunt and hike with Carl because of that fact,
Speaker 1: like a little tidbits, you'd point out that you knew
Speaker 1: because of your studies that otherwise you know what had
Speaker 1: gone unnoticed by someone like me. So that dude to
Speaker 1: wealth and knowledge. He introduced me to the word music
Speaker 1: and then the opposite of music is zer. So Carl
Speaker 1: was describing a ridge top as being music, meaning it
Speaker 1: was relatively moist by Southwestern standards. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: one of these we didn't get talked about. Carl is uh,
Speaker 1: tell me what you I know what you do, but
Speaker 1: just give me, give me to everybody what you do.
Speaker 1: I work as the Southwestern Regional Wildlife Ecologist for the
Speaker 1: Forest Service, so pretty much anything related to wildlife monitoring
Speaker 1: and research type stuff in the Southwest Arizona, New Mexico
Speaker 1: on the Forest Services, twenty point six million acres of
Speaker 1: land is under the purview of my position. And by
Speaker 1: those twenty point six million acres of four Service land,
Speaker 1: I mean the land that belongs to all of your listeners,
Speaker 1: to all the listeners, to everybody around this table. And
Speaker 1: that's way the world's people. That's true, because if you're
Speaker 1: a German and you come over here, they're not like
Speaker 1: even a German can go out there. Chris Gotty concluding thoughts, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I learned that you shouldn't go working up a bear
Speaker 1: den without some sort of poking stick. He made a
Speaker 1: personal note. I was like making a was like, you know,
Speaker 1: excuse me minute, I gotta call my wife, tell her
Speaker 1: to remind me of something. I get home. Carl concluding thoughts,
Speaker 1: I agree wholeheartedly that you know, I think hunters. I
Speaker 1: think hunters do innately have a desire to know more
Speaker 1: about the places and the species that they hunt. So
Speaker 1: they have the desire to know more. I think so.
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a natural thing, a natural
Speaker 1: fascination and and um, that was what it was. It
Speaker 1: was experiences as a hunter and fisherman, just kid grown
Speaker 1: up outside that led me on this career track. And
Speaker 1: this career track feeds directly back into how I appreciate
Speaker 1: those activities even more now than I did then. It's
Speaker 1: like a it's a a feedback loop of sorts. The
Speaker 1: more I learned, the more I like to hunt. The
Speaker 1: more I hunt, the more I want to learn, you know,
Speaker 1: And if people feel that intrigue, if that's something that
Speaker 1: resonates with folks, you should you should explore that when
Speaker 1: you're out there. You should take the time to note
Speaker 1: a question that you have and pursue additional information. And
Speaker 1: you should be trying trying to find ways as individuals
Speaker 1: to be more than takers from these places. If there's
Speaker 1: a place from which you are taking a resource, you
Speaker 1: should feel like you have a stewardship responsibility. Yes. Um,
Speaker 1: my conclusion thought is I love it that I didn't
Speaker 1: know about this. I knew roughly this about you. Better
Speaker 1: know all the way about you did. Um, you got
Speaker 1: your start on your own hunting squirrels. You're darn right.
Speaker 1: Carl was telling me in Michigan, where Carls grew up
Speaker 1: and I did too. Deer season openers November fift The
Speaker 1: Carl's telling me about one time he went out on
Speaker 1: a squirrel stroll on November fift that got a hollered
Speaker 1: at by a deer hunter, which I kind of love.
Speaker 1: But you turned a love of squirrel hunting into doing
Speaker 1: like very important work and our understanding and preservation of wildlife.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the kind words. But a squirrel hunter, debt
Speaker 1: bared and digger, I would counter that squirrel hunting is
Speaker 1: in and of itself important work. Yes, that that point
Speaker 1: point well taken. There you have it, Wisconsin super sow
Speaker 1: Dr Carl Malcolm. Can people look up your work online.
Speaker 1: Is there? Do you think I go to J store
Speaker 1: and pay for it? Can they find stuff? There's some
Speaker 1: stuff on there for free, the best, find the abstract
Speaker 1: of the super sal Yeah, the best, the best. Some
Speaker 1: stuff online, you man. We'll put stuff online. We'll put
Speaker 1: some of those some of those little maps showing these
Speaker 1: bears roaming around. Let's do that all right. Next time,
Speaker 1: Carl's gonna talk about stuff that he's been doing recently,
Speaker 1: and that stuff you did a long time ago. Sounds good, buddy,