WEBVTT - Ep. 421: Wolverines 0:00:08.920 --> 0:00:13.320 This is a me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:17.480 bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening to us, 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:23.360 you can't predict anything presented by First Light, creating proven 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:27.880 versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear. 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:35.760 For every hunt, First Light, Go farther, stay longer. All right, everybody, 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:39.320 we're gonna dig deep on um. We're gonna dig deep 0:00:39.320 --> 0:00:41.360 on wolverines today. We've got a lot of stuff to cover, 0:00:41.400 --> 0:00:44.199 but we're gonna get way into wolverines with Rebecca Waters. 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:48.120 Is that right, Yes, Director of the Wolverine Foundation. I'm 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:52.360 gonna start things off by fact checking Yanni. Do you 0:00:52.440 --> 0:01:01.680 believe Rebecca? Do you believe that Yanni believes that a 0:01:01.720 --> 0:01:09.880 wolverine hang out with his dad? Oh, and then one day, 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:12.600 how's it going? One day he kicks his dad's ass. 0:01:12.720 --> 0:01:17.560 They're getting a big getting a big fight, and they're 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:23.000 basically like, fight, duke it out. He was saying that, 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:24.960 how it's a lot like people like you're raised by 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:29.119 your dad, eventually getting a giant fight, duke it out, 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:32.720 and then you separate ways, never to talk again. Do 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:35.360 I believe that he believes that? No? No No, no, no no, No, 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:39.040 do you know do you believe that's true about wolverines? 0:01:39.240 --> 0:01:42.400 Do I believe that it's true? Um? I think so 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:46.840 that they will actually separate at a certain point, Yeah, 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:51.320 from their dad, from their from their parents. Yes. Do 0:01:51.320 --> 0:01:53.800 you know if it's precipitated by a large fight. Oh, 0:01:53.880 --> 0:01:57.760 I don't think it's like a father son thing. Oh 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:00.640 you know, Um, I don't. I don't know that that 0:02:00.640 --> 0:02:04.480 that we have recorded instances of father son fights like that, 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:06.640 So I'm not sure, you know, I don't know whether 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:09.000 I'm believing it or not believing it makes it true. 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:11.040 It's just I can tell you that we've never actually 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:15.119 observed that happening. But we have observed young male wolverines 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:19.120 coming into the territory of an older male wolverine and 0:02:19.160 --> 0:02:21.239 getting into a big fight with them and kicking them out. 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:24.040 So maybe kicking the old man out, kicking the old 0:02:24.080 --> 0:02:26.040 man out, but maybe not your dad, you know, like, 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:30.919 maybe it's just some random old man who you don't like. Wow, 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:37.720 that's like everybody knows the part about Oedipus about what 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:40.800 he happens with his mom, but they don't know what 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:47.760 happens with his dad. Do you know, I can't remember, okay, 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:54.280 Oedipus doesn't Oedipus the edible complex. Oedipus doesn't know that 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.160 he's He doesn't. He doesn't know that he like he's 0:02:57.200 --> 0:02:59.160 not raised by his parents, but he thinks he's raised 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:02.160 by his parents. He does know he's adopted. And he 0:03:02.240 --> 0:03:05.040 goes to like a witch doctor, and the witch doctor says, 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:08.160 I'll tell you your future. What are you? What are 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:11.320 you smirking about? And he goes to a witch doctor? 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:13.680 What do you think? I love? He went to se 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:18.400 yes because I love the modernized er. He goes to 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:22.800 a same same witch doctor. The seer says, here's here's 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:26.120 your fortune, here's your what's the word. I'm looking for 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:31.200 your future? Here's your future. You're gonna kill your dad 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:35.720 and marry your mom. So he says, bet not. I'm 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:38.440 just gonna run away, far away. But he doesn't know 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:43.960 he's adopted. Where does he wind up in another town? 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:48.960 What's he do? Kills his dad, marries his mom. I 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:50.880 don't know why that wolverine story made me think of that. 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:56.040 So we're gonna get into all We're gonna get into 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.440 um way into wolverines. I've been looking forward to this 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:01.839 for a long time. We'll sitting crimin ile sitting talk 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:06.120 about what would be the best animal to have. Someone 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:11.920 that knows a lot about said animal coming right, and 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:14.840 we'll we'll we'll reject animals. What do we reject? Recently? 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:18.480 Wasn't sexy enough for us? Well, we hit Mountain lions 0:04:18.480 --> 0:04:22.479 a bunch. I was like, do you want panther jaguar? 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:27.520 And you were like a little less, Um, what was 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:31.039 the one that he's too? Well? I was into. You 0:04:31.080 --> 0:04:33.640 were like that's just not sexy enough. Um, Yeah, you 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:35.599 wanted to do one like on Marmots or something like that. 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:38.520 I was like, no, I don't think it was Marmots. 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:43.479 We should just go through the mart No. Maybe, no, 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:45.920 I think it was Martin. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:47.840 I think it was No. I think you were like 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:52.280 in shaping now shopping him. We got we're thinking about beavers. 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:57.160 Beaver a beaver biologist. No, she's a historian. While I 0:04:57.200 --> 0:05:00.440 was in in Nashville at the Turkey convention that there's 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:03.960 some people pointing their fingers directly at the fisher cat 0:05:04.000 --> 0:05:07.080 in Maine as to why the turkey populations are declining there. 0:05:07.839 --> 0:05:11.800 I'll buy it there's a lot Chamber. Mike Chamber said, no, 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:16.920 he doesn't think so. Um Man, I'll report right now. 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:19.159 I was telling you guys, I'm covered in poison ivy, 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:21.239 which I was telling Brodi I didn't get real serious 0:05:21.240 --> 0:05:23.760 about climate change now because to get poison ivy in 0:05:23.800 --> 0:05:26.960 Michigan in February is unheard of. Yeah, I wish we 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:30.560 could drow up a visual for people. It's bad. And 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:35.080 here's the thing. Let me tell you. Yeah, well, zones, 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:39.560 So it's clearing up on my face. That's getting better here. 0:05:43.480 --> 0:05:45.960 Oh that looks like the should I have my hands 0:05:46.000 --> 0:05:48.839 the other week? Yeah, but it's not. So here's the deal. 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:56.040 We're hunting squirrels and zuck guy zuck. He for some 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:58.520 reason he had what he was like admiring the haft 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:02.640 of a big fox squirrel okay, which he called which 0:06:02.680 --> 0:06:04.200 it annoys the hell out of me. He calls him 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:06.680 red squirrels, which confuses everybody because that's another word for 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:11.120 a pine squirrels. No one knows anybody's talking about that. 0:06:11.560 --> 0:06:14.359 They don't have pies. I know they're like, you guys 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:16.480 call them something else. But down here, these big old 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:19.120 red squirrels, I'm like yeah, but they're not. They're fox 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:22.679 squirrels anyways, So he lays one. He had one laid 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:26.240 like on his arm, you know, and he gets he 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:28.880 I I have I'm like a twenty four hour delay 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:31.400 on poison ivy. But he gets it fast and he's like, man, 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:33.120 that's poison ivvy on my arm. I'm like, that can't 0:06:33.160 --> 0:06:35.120 be poison ivy. He's like, man, I've had poison ivy 0:06:35.279 --> 0:06:37.760 enough times. No, because they got on him and he 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:40.760 transferred from the squirrel because here's what he was telling me, 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:43.560 he's seen it that he sees this happen, you know, 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:46.880 the vines. So they're nesting, they're getting ready to nest 0:06:47.000 --> 0:06:51.320 right now. No, he says, they gather that. Oh, they 0:06:51.440 --> 0:06:53.839 gather that and line their nests with it this time 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:58.440 of year. So those suckers must be Oh yeah, I'm 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:04.240 sure they're immune. So clean and squirrels, man, well did 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:06.960 you see it coming? Nothing like this has ever happened. Finally, 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:11.680 today it was the first day I haven't developed new spots. Yeah. 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:15.320 My wife thinks I'm like a lapper. I'm like, dude, 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:19.160 it doesn't work like that, you know. My question is, um, like, 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:23.160 did you shove one inside your shirt like how because 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:25.080 you get the oil on you and you just whatever 0:07:25.120 --> 0:07:27.800 you do go to scratch. Like here, my forehead was 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:29.680 the first thing that got bad, just because rubbing it 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:33.800 on there. Yea. And that eurissiol can be um basically 0:07:33.800 --> 0:07:38.440 like vaporized, I think, is there. I've gotten it in 0:07:38.480 --> 0:07:41.600 my lungs and burnout. Yeah yeah, but it really sick 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:43.800 if you get it like on your wrists and ankles 0:07:44.000 --> 0:07:47.120 and then you sweat, just that heat can actually carry 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.240 that uh that oil like up through your pant legs, 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:52.160 because how and how else do you literally get on 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:54.360 the inside of your thighs That's where I got it 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:57.080 anywhere where your skin, anywhere on your body where you 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:02.920 got real shitty skin, like thin, hasty, shitty skin, like 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:06.640 between your fingers. It's just my whole body. Yeah, yeah, 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:10.520 I feel he'd be like right under like underneath your feet. No, 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:15.600 never there in between your fingers, inside the arch, not 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:18.160 the it's not the kind of shitty things. Yeah. I 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.240 had running with poison oak one time, and it was 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:24.160 all inner thighs and like my stomach. It was just thin, 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:26.800 shitty areas on your hide. And that's not the first 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:30.840 time you've gotten it via another animal. No, I got it. 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:32.760 The worst I've ever gotten was from a wild pig 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:35.840 that landed me in the hospital, and I wound up 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:38.760 in a Jewish hospital. And the last thing the doctor 0:08:38.800 --> 0:08:40.360 said to me when she's walking out the door, I'm 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:43.280 not kidding you. I'm not joking. She's walking out the 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:50.239 door and she turns and says, stay away from pigs. Yeah. 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:51.880 I when I told the story, she's kind of like, 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:58.000 what the fucking thing's gonna happen? But now you're a 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:02.200 climate No, this is what you know, like Nimby, like 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.040 not in my backyard. Yeah, this is what This is 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:09.280 my wake up call? Man, um So, Yanni, real quick 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:12.400 hit that owl hoot. Yanni was just at an owl 0:09:12.480 --> 0:09:16.200 hoot and explain this now. I was at the National 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:21.199 Turkey Federation's annual convention down in Nashville, Tennessee, and unfortunately, 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:25.360 the only competent calling competition that I got to go 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:29.920 and watch was the owl Hoot and the Gobble because 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:32.240 it was later in the evening. We were recording turkey 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:35.960 stories from nine to four every day. We got forty 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:39.840 one serious was Phil? Phil did he go to the 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:43.360 Tiki Barn? Downer. Oh yeah, I say you had the 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:45.680 picture of us at the tiki bar. I didn't get that, 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:48.760 which is very It's not the normal tiki bar. This 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:52.680 place is like robot themed, and instead of having Jimmy 0:09:52.720 --> 0:09:56.559 Buffett playing, it's got Furgie playing. And the next table 0:09:56.640 --> 0:09:59.440 down to has had some twenty year old gals standing 0:09:59.559 --> 0:10:07.480 up apping Furgie at full capacity. I was quite entertained 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:09.240 that we ran into a lady with a pet possum 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:12.160 or something. That's right, it must have been a different place. 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:18.280 I don't know how we got crowd there. Yeah, we 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:19.640 got I don't know how we got on the subject 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:24.960 with her, but she had had a pet possum. AnyWho, Um, 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:27.760 we got forty one. It was cool. I was telling 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:31.400 you a story from Mike Chamberlain. It was pretty interesting. Yeah, 0:10:31.400 --> 0:10:32.760 I want you to touch on that. I want you 0:10:32.760 --> 0:10:36.359 to touch on that turkey call in your hand. So yeah, 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:39.079 the the air and friction contests were going on during 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:40.839 the day, so I didn't get to go and check 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:42.760 those out, but one evening we went and checked out 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.480 Ala hooting and then gobbling. I was surprised to find 0:10:46.480 --> 0:10:49.040 out out of the thirty six competitors for ali hooting, 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:52.560 only one uses natural voice. Everybody else is running a hooter, Like, 0:10:52.600 --> 0:10:55.320 I can't believe that you're allowed to use I can't 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:57.720 believe that you'd be allowed to use a hooter. That's 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:01.200 That's Yanni's train of thought too. They were, um, and 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:03.760 I was surprised that they didn't have both, but they said, 0:11:03.800 --> 0:11:06.320 it literally just comes down to participation. They said, we 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:12.199 could open up a voice calling out hooting, you know section, yeah, 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:14.760 and just nobody would be in there. He just and 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:17.439 it's only recent the last ten years, ten to fifteen, 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:21.040 I think these were developed, and they just sound so 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:24.000 much more realistic that the voice guys can't compete with 0:11:24.040 --> 0:11:26.240 the with the hooter. But yeah, I felt the same 0:11:26.240 --> 0:11:28.320 way even with the with the gobbling. I thought that, 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:30.719 you know, because when we were recording stories, we had 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:35.280 some great storytellers that could gobble, you know, within their story, 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:40.079 and it just brings so much the story. Yeah, yeah, definitely, 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:42.720 maybe a little better. HER's still a little high pitched, 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:48.200 you know, but uh anyways, um, yeah, I was surprised 0:11:48.200 --> 0:11:52.199 to not hear voice callers. Um, so there's a Phelps 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:54.800 game calls now has a thing called out the Harrison 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:58.319 hooter and I didn't even know when I'm watching James 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:01.520 Harrison on stage that I didn't put two and two together, 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:03.160 that the hooters that were at my house that I 0:12:03.240 --> 0:12:05.640 was trying to blow on and it didn't even sound 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:09.000 like a train whistle. And my wife's like, please put 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:13.040 those away. Stop, you're not making owl sounds. I'm watching him, 0:12:13.080 --> 0:12:14.760 and then later I run into him at the show. 0:12:15.080 --> 0:12:17.600 I'm like, oh, Phelps t shirt, Oh okay, and I 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:20.080 put two and two together, and then he ran through 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:23.640 and gave me the one oh one who who had 0:12:23.679 --> 0:12:26.920 the bear grease hat on? That was another competitor. I 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:31.520 didn't run into him, but he was using a mouth call, yes, 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:33.559 like a hooter like this, and he very likely was 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:35.920 using this one because out of thirty six competitors, ten 0:12:36.000 --> 0:12:39.880 or twelve we're actually running the Harrison Hood, not the crylic. 0:12:40.400 --> 0:12:42.800 You know, some of them um tape it all up 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:46.480 in black electrical tape so that the other competitors can't 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:51.480 see what call they're usually. I like it. He said 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:53.839 that even some of them will add like another four 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.600 or five inches. It doesn't do any not for any 0:12:56.679 --> 0:13:00.199 other room, and just to throw people off to what call. 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:03.240 There one of the East Coast goose tutors. But yeah, 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:05.680 i'll be probably by the time this airs, I'll have 0:13:05.720 --> 0:13:08.679 posted a video. James Harrison given me the one on 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.320 one on how to use it, and yeah, there's a 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:13.720 couple of great tips. The best tip though, he said, 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:16.800 when you hold it, you make like an okay symbol 0:13:16.880 --> 0:13:18.880 with the one hand that you're gonna hold the call with, 0:13:19.400 --> 0:13:20.920 and then your other hand comes around. You want to 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:23.480 cut the bottom of the call, as if holding a 0:13:23.559 --> 0:13:27.040 baby chicken. A chick. I'm with you, right, so it's 0:13:27.080 --> 0:13:29.880 head sticking out of your hands. You're controlling it, but 0:13:30.000 --> 0:13:32.160 you're not squishing it, right, so a little bit of 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:35.319 air can get out. After that, you make the same notes. 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:38.240 Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you? All? Um? 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:40.520 Rip it. I got a lot to tell you about 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:42.880 this because we're I've got on order coming. You might 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:47.680 already have it. The piliated woodpecker call that can that 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:51.040 can also sound like the screech or the scream of 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:54.960 a bard owl. Yeah, yeah, that gets them god one 0:13:55.240 --> 0:13:57.679 you think so? Yeah, I mean it's the stuff that 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:00.959 you like. It's super loud and super high. Their goblin 0:14:01.000 --> 0:14:02.600 because I don't think their goblin because they think it 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:05.839 sounded exactly like an owl. No, no, no no, but it's 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.959 a sound that just carries. That's what Chamberlain out of 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:14.040 study his point when I brought up your point that 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:16.680 you always make, which is what you just said, his point, 0:14:16.679 --> 0:14:19.280 He's like, yes, but if you sound like a real owl, 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:24.080 you might get other owls going on other ridges that 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:28.160 are then reaching turkeys that your sound, whatever you decided 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:31.120 to use, is not reaching. And thus you're sort of 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:34.960 being able to broadcast farther and possibly hear other turkeys. 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:39.560 Pretty soon the whole county's got and then everybody else 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:43.480 is gonna get all the turkeys waking up the woods. Um, 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:45.560 all right, here it goes. So there's your little chick 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:55.360 Harrison hooter. This is a Phelps Harrison hooter. Yeah. I 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:57.600 like that little role in the end, But now do 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:05.480 it with no call. I have a hard time rolling 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:09.680 for whatever reason. Again, it does sound better at the call. 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:22.360 The do a far off out buhicle for everybody is 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.280 the out way off. I want to do this often. 0:15:25.440 --> 0:15:26.920 I wanted to be one. So far you're not even 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:32.480 gonna go over there. That's too cool. I'd go after that, 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:37.320 they'll just turn the volume down. Um, okay, go ahead. 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:40.720 That well, I could keep blowing on that thing, but 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:46.640 real quick, the uh chamber, doctor chamber, the unkillable turkey. 0:15:46.680 --> 0:15:48.960 Can you hit that real quick for us? I will, 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:51.160 and I'll go to say too that it was cool. 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:53.440 Out of forty one stories, it was great to start 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:56.880 recognizing the different themes that flowed through these stories, and 0:15:57.240 --> 0:15:59.840 not just because it's a theme of stories that people 0:15:59.840 --> 0:16:02.480 like to tell, but what people think is important or 0:16:02.960 --> 0:16:06.000 important to them to come and tell you about. It's 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:08.480 a lot of first timers, a lot of first time 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.400 turkey stories, a lot of mentorship stories, a lot of 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:14.680 family type stories. You know, I was out with my 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:17.920 kids or my kid whatever, I took my dad first first, 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:23.160 and the one that got away or the unkillable turkey, 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:27.400 or one fella called this bird the boss, which we've 0:16:27.440 --> 0:16:30.360 heard before. But anyways, Yeah, Mike had a story and 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:33.720 I'll summarize it quickly, but basically, this turkey he thinks 0:16:33.760 --> 0:16:37.440 cannot be killed because he's developed a tactic whereas he 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:41.000 comes closer, as he realizes that he's being fooled with, 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:45.120 he'll actually fly up into trees out of shotgun range. 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:47.520 And then hot from tree to tree, or sit on 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:50.480 one limb, walking back and forth and looking for the 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:53.200 hand that is supposed to be there. And then once 0:16:53.240 --> 0:16:55.200 he says, once he clears it out and there's no 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:59.080 hen just pitches and flies off the other direction. I 0:16:59.120 --> 0:17:03.720 don't know, and you're a shout of turkey. Alabat tree. Yes, 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:08.159 fall in Nebraska. I don't even know if it was legal, 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:17.159 but I did blood lust. I haven't missed one, so 0:17:17.280 --> 0:17:21.160 I tried. Um, there's a couple of hard things I'm 0:17:21.200 --> 0:17:23.680 gonna talk about. No, we talking about that. Oh, here's 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:29.800 an interesting deal. We have covered none stop since since 0:17:29.840 --> 0:17:33.680 the beginning, the why the famous now Wyoming corner crossing case, 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:37.000 and as we pointed out, a whole bunch. I don't 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:39.000 want to recap. I don't want to recap the whole thing. 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:42.720 Don't recap. Everybody knows what's going on, right, Okay, here's 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:45.480 the deal. How many millions did the landowners say his 0:17:45.840 --> 0:17:48.560 property value went down because these guys corner crossed down? 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:51.440 Three or seven million? Yeah, I think it was six 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:55.000 or seven. He's saying, because you corner crossed on my land, 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:59.479 you cost me. Let's look it up. Let me look 0:17:59.480 --> 0:18:04.639 it up six or seven million bucks m because he 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:08.919 felt that he felt that he had the exclusive access 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:10.679 and now he doesn't. And then everybody was like, well, 0:18:10.720 --> 0:18:13.240 I don't understand how could that, Like, why would someone 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:20.720 corner crossing um cost you millions of dollars right and damages? 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.640 It just didn't make sense. Well, there's an interesting development 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:31.320 in this case, now, Judge scav Doll ska v d 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:35.080 A H. L. Scave Doll, I don't know cloes it off. 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:40.119 Can I interject for a second. Yeah, I'm seeing ranges 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:46.760 from three point one million to seven point seven five million. Another. Uh, 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:49.520 seems like a real estate agent was saying on behalf 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:52.119 of Elk Mountain Ranch that it would be devalued about 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:56.359 nine point three nine million, so a lot, I think. 0:18:56.800 --> 0:18:59.840 In our article on the mediator dot com says the 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:02.880 um the ram Schoner was claiming as much as seven 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:05.280 point seven five millions. Yeah, if you're unfamiliar with this 0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:11.280 whole read that and that's my synopsis. Well, here's the deal. 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:13.960 You know who this guy really should the landowner, who 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:17.280 his complaint is. He should be contacting the real estate 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:21.840 broker like it's not the he should be calling the 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:26.200 listing agent saying because we saw the listing when he 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:32.560 bought it, saying, you're real estate listing UM says that 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:36.600 it's exclusive access to all this public land. So or 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:42.960 his attorney, who's supposed to vet and due diligence, that's 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:46.840 who's that's who cost him money. That's who led him 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:49.720 down the path of thinking that all this public land 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:54.399 was his and his alone. That's true. Like he's suing 0:19:54.400 --> 0:19:59.840 the wrong person either way. The judge, the whelming judge 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:07.879 ruled okay, Judge scabbed all. Sorry judge from dicking your 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:11.200 name up. Judge scave Doll ruled the evidence of diminution 0:20:11.240 --> 0:20:15.399 of value of private property if corner crossing is legal, 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:20.960 is irrelevant, meaning the court will focus solely on the 0:20:21.000 --> 0:20:25.520 issue of whether corner crossing is legal, not whether legalized 0:20:25.560 --> 0:20:28.720 corner crossing will affect the value of private property. I 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:31.080 mean that makes total sense. It's two different things. You know, 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:33.359 he's like, he's getting way ahead of himself to be 0:20:33.440 --> 0:20:36.560 like and I'm out seven million dollars. Yeah, but because 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:40.280 he like, because the criminal case just said we didn't 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:42.280 break a law, So you're saying I owe you money 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:47.520 and I need to break a law. Usually when I 0:20:47.520 --> 0:20:49.359 summed this up, I usually use the story about the 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:54.680 juice when he um got acquitted for killing his wife 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:59.159 and that waiter, but then in civil trial got found guilty. 0:20:59.560 --> 0:21:01.320 But I'm not cad becas we're not gonna sum it up. 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:08.000 Um we had a law. So this this letter begins. 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:11.720 We get a letter from a listener, ohmigos. We're having 0:21:11.760 --> 0:21:15.119 tough We're a conversation about why refried like what makes 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:17.879 refried beans refried beans? But it wasn't. Also, it was 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:21.000 like stemming off the fact that we had people write 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:25.760 in about like when you put the prefix in front 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:34.560 of like dry curing something and people are like, no, 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:39.320 you're just putting rub on it. He he does like 0:21:39.320 --> 0:21:41.600 all those food terms. And then we got talking about 0:21:41.640 --> 0:21:44.560 with refried beans, Like my understanding is they're not refried, 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:47.120 they're fried. They're fried. Yeah, this guy has a lot 0:21:47.119 --> 0:21:49.240 to say about it. My name is Adrian Martin and 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:52.200 I'm a second generation Mexican American. Both my parents were 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:55.479 born in Mexico and immigrated over to what is now 0:21:55.520 --> 0:22:02.160 the People's Republic of Washington. Abakan first generation Halma. Both 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:07.160 his parents are born in Mexico first generation. Sorry, buddy, 0:22:08.320 --> 0:22:11.120 that makes his material. That makes his information more relevant. 0:22:11.119 --> 0:22:14.040 It does not what less relevant. He says, I'm gonna 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:17.760 have a bean eater myself. I believe that with my background, 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:21.200 I can provide some insight to the recent refried bean dilemma. 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:26.480 Here's my take on it. Refried beans come about from 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:32.480 first boiling beans until soft. He prefers pinto beans. He says, 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:36.120 as a parenthetical aside, back to the quote, you take 0:22:36.160 --> 0:22:39.560 those beans and fry them for the first time in 0:22:39.760 --> 0:22:42.000 some kind of oil and smashing them until you get 0:22:42.040 --> 0:22:47.399 desired consistency. Another parenthetical aside, I prefer using olive oil 0:22:47.480 --> 0:22:49.880 that has had a halopeno cooking in it for five 0:22:49.920 --> 0:22:53.359 to ten minutes prior to adding to the beans doesn't large. 0:22:53.520 --> 0:22:56.000 But then he breaks from his parenthetical aside to say 0:22:56.119 --> 0:22:58.440 leave the halopeno in there with the beans, which I 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:06.320 feel it should be part of the parent going on. 0:23:06.800 --> 0:23:10.639 You can eat these quote fried beans at this point, 0:23:10.680 --> 0:23:12.760 and most of the Mexicans I know referred to the 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:17.880 beans at this point as refried beans. However, you could 0:23:17.920 --> 0:23:20.280 also let those beans sit in the fridge overnight and 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:24.280 proceed to fry the fried beans with a little bit 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:27.280 of oil and eat them that way as well. Technically speaking, 0:23:27.640 --> 0:23:32.199 only then would they become refried beans. You could repeat 0:23:32.240 --> 0:23:35.199 the refrying process a couple more times, but usually I 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:40.600 eat them all by the second fried. You could create 0:23:40.640 --> 0:23:45.040 an evolutionary chart of beans becoming refried beans. The stages 0:23:45.080 --> 0:23:49.240 would go something like hard beans to boiled beans, to 0:23:49.440 --> 0:23:56.560 fried beans, to refried beans to refried refried beans. Truth 0:23:56.640 --> 0:23:58.800 be told, I've had beans refried up to three times 0:23:58.800 --> 0:24:01.800 a four and air pretty good, but I prefer a 0:24:01.840 --> 0:24:09.439 true refried bean. Audios That clears that up. Do we 0:24:09.480 --> 0:24:12.040 need a new T shirt? The evolution of the ban? 0:24:13.680 --> 0:24:18.440 It would be good? Okay. A little clarification on scorpions. 0:24:18.440 --> 0:24:20.720 Someone says, I was listening to episode four when three 0:24:20.760 --> 0:24:22.800 in a question came up about whether or not smaller 0:24:22.840 --> 0:24:25.640 scorpions are really more dangerous. Steve didn't seem to believe it, 0:24:25.800 --> 0:24:29.199 but in general it is true. Here's where I screwed up. 0:24:29.200 --> 0:24:30.560 I got there's a couple of these. I screwed up 0:24:30.760 --> 0:24:34.919 this and another thing. What I meant was this, I 0:24:35.000 --> 0:24:39.080 was mixing up two things. They're talking what is it? 0:24:39.160 --> 0:24:41.880 When is it? What is it? When they're talking about 0:24:41.920 --> 0:24:52.160 across different species intra uka within a species. Okay. When 0:24:52.200 --> 0:24:55.320 I said that about bigger littler, I was talking about 0:24:55.400 --> 0:24:58.520 this idea that let's say you take the same rattlesnake. Okay, 0:24:58.680 --> 0:25:02.399 you take a prairie rattler or green mojave or whatever, 0:25:02.440 --> 0:25:05.280 any kind of rattlesnake, and there's a myth, there's a 0:25:05.440 --> 0:25:12.119 there's a local legend that that within the species. Okay, 0:25:12.160 --> 0:25:15.760 So a prairie rattler, that a smaller prairie rattler is 0:25:15.800 --> 0:25:18.320 more venomous than a big prairie rattler. And they say 0:25:18.359 --> 0:25:22.520 because it somehow can't control the venom output. And herpetologists 0:25:22.560 --> 0:25:27.240 have repeatedly written in to say that's not true. Toxicity 0:25:27.280 --> 0:25:30.679 would have to do with when did it last strike something? Okay, Okay, 0:25:31.920 --> 0:25:34.879 So when this came up, like a big scorpion versus 0:25:34.920 --> 0:25:37.159 a little scorpion, I pointed that out, and I was 0:25:37.280 --> 0:25:40.560 erroneously meaning like within a species. So say you're taking 0:25:40.560 --> 0:25:43.320 the northern scorpion. I was saying, I don't know that 0:25:43.400 --> 0:25:47.800 I believe that a small northern scorpion is more venomous 0:25:48.480 --> 0:25:53.160 than a fully mature, larger specimen of a northern scorpion. 0:25:53.640 --> 0:25:57.560 But this person wrote in to say, well, in general, 0:25:58.080 --> 0:26:04.240 first off, there are twelve hundred scorpion species. In general, 0:26:06.160 --> 0:26:13.720 you got some big honkers. The Emperor scorpion okay, relatively hard. 0:26:13.760 --> 0:26:17.560 That's a giant scorpion, relatively harmless. While the much smaller 0:26:17.720 --> 0:26:22.800 death stalker scorpion that's a hell of a name. Yeah, yeah, 0:26:23.800 --> 0:26:27.200 I would call him the death deal. Yeah, he stalks. 0:26:26.800 --> 0:26:36.359 He's so bad. He stalks death the death stalkers. He says, 0:26:36.359 --> 0:26:38.840 I've owned two Emperor scorpions. You can handle them without 0:26:38.840 --> 0:26:41.159 a glove, but I'd never try that with a fat 0:26:41.200 --> 0:26:53.760 tail or a death stalker. Um. So generally, big old honkers, um, 0:26:53.960 --> 0:26:58.119 big old honkers are less venomous than some smaller varieties 0:26:59.200 --> 0:27:01.040 scorpions sting more than a million people a year and 0:27:01.119 --> 0:27:04.880 kill three thousand, not phelps. Do we know what kind 0:27:04.920 --> 0:27:07.240 of scorpion he got stung by because you guys like 0:27:07.359 --> 0:27:11.480 kept it as a pet. How's that scorpion doing? Okay? 0:27:14.840 --> 0:27:16.800 The guy goes on to say, in Indiana Jones and 0:27:16.840 --> 0:27:18.920 the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I gave up on 0:27:19.080 --> 0:27:25.320 Indiana just long before. When was that? I only was 0:27:25.359 --> 0:27:27.920 the fourth one that it's yeah, it's bad. I think 0:27:27.920 --> 0:27:31.119 they had lost a lot of audience by then, he says. 0:27:31.240 --> 0:27:35.720 Indy says, when it comes to scorpion, the bigger the better. 0:27:37.400 --> 0:27:42.080 Indy has a scientific evidence to back him up. Uh, 0:27:43.720 --> 0:27:49.400 anything else interesting? Here? Last highlight about the evolutionary trade off. 0:27:49.560 --> 0:27:52.320 It's pretty interesting. Oh, but I think we got into 0:27:52.359 --> 0:27:54.480 this when we had the guy. Remember that research we 0:27:54.560 --> 0:28:01.800 had on about animal weapons Doug Emlyn. Oh, good memory. Gosh, yeah, 0:28:01.960 --> 0:28:06.000 is it dogma? The findings point to an evolutionary trade off. 0:28:06.880 --> 0:28:14.440 They're talking about a researcher name Fry, some guy or 0:28:14.480 --> 0:28:19.480 a woman. I don't know Fry. When scorpions first appeared, 0:28:19.520 --> 0:28:23.000 scorpions relied on big crab like clause to attack prey, 0:28:23.200 --> 0:28:27.480 he speculates, But once they evolved a deadly sting, they 0:28:27.480 --> 0:28:30.119 didn't need to grow big clause. Yeah, we're we're a 0:28:30.160 --> 0:28:32.280 little inn over at waiters now on that one. We 0:28:32.440 --> 0:28:36.680 have to get the thing. Here's my big correction. I 0:28:36.880 --> 0:28:38.840 have a bunch of times of misuses. To someone point 0:28:38.880 --> 0:28:41.680 this out, I need to offer up a correction on 0:28:41.720 --> 0:28:44.200 the use of the on the on the usage of 0:28:44.240 --> 0:28:50.480 the founder effect. Steve Is multiple times on the podcast 0:28:50.560 --> 0:28:53.600 referred to this effect as new animals doing well in 0:28:53.640 --> 0:28:58.120 a new environment. I was mixing something up. I can't 0:28:58.120 --> 0:28:59.720 think of what I was actually talk let me finish 0:28:59.720 --> 0:29:03.720 the crack. While it's possible that this could be happening 0:29:03.760 --> 0:29:06.000 concurrently with the Founder effect, isn't the same thing. The 0:29:06.040 --> 0:29:10.400 Founder effect is basically basically a statistical misrepresentation of a 0:29:10.480 --> 0:29:14.959 population by taking only a few members of that species 0:29:15.000 --> 0:29:20.400 to found a new population. For example, let's say there's 0:29:20.440 --> 0:29:23.240 a population of black bears and the continental US that 0:29:23.480 --> 0:29:26.560 is ninety five percent black with five percent blind. He goes, 0:29:26.560 --> 0:29:28.800 I don't know the real numbers, but just making this up. Okay, 0:29:28.920 --> 0:29:33.000 So let's just say, right then, three bears swim to 0:29:33.000 --> 0:29:35.680 a new island and start a new population of black bears, 0:29:37.520 --> 0:29:40.160 and two of them happen to be blond. So like 0:29:40.200 --> 0:29:44.800 a freak statistical freak occurrence. Right now, you've got this 0:29:44.840 --> 0:29:51.480 whole population that starts off of an atypical representation, and 0:29:51.520 --> 0:29:56.760 then the founder effect the new population winds up being. 0:29:56.760 --> 0:29:59.240 In this instance, he points out, possibly the new population 0:29:59.280 --> 0:30:04.000 becomes largely blonde due to the attributes of the founders. 0:30:05.440 --> 0:30:07.840 I was using it for something that Vlarious Geiss used 0:30:07.840 --> 0:30:11.320 to talk about which is like like I should look 0:30:11.400 --> 0:30:15.800 up what it is when when animals are colonizing new habitat, 0:30:15.840 --> 0:30:18.800 like when the when the glaciers were receding and animals 0:30:18.800 --> 0:30:23.959 are colonizing new habitat, you have um you know, or 0:30:23.960 --> 0:30:25.960 like when you introduce a predator to like, let say 0:30:25.960 --> 0:30:28.160 you introduce a predator an island has never had predators, 0:30:28.200 --> 0:30:30.760 and the praise not used to it, right, they kick 0:30:30.800 --> 0:30:34.160 ass is bringing it like when wolves came into Yellowstone 0:30:34.160 --> 0:30:37.480 in the late nineties. They kicks or it's founding, do 0:30:37.520 --> 0:30:39.640 you know. I don't know the technical word for it, 0:30:39.680 --> 0:30:41.480 but there is a you know, a kind of like 0:30:41.480 --> 0:30:44.520 a colonization or recalonization effect. Wherefore a while, if you 0:30:44.560 --> 0:30:48.040 introduce a new species to a place, they will like 0:30:48.200 --> 0:30:51.960 their population will go like this and then eventually plateau 0:30:52.120 --> 0:30:55.240 very quickly and then plateau like this place is great. Yeah, 0:30:55.560 --> 0:31:00.280 the animals don't run. There's a lot of them, uh, 0:31:00.600 --> 0:31:04.360 he says, for example, the Afrikaner population of just that's 0:31:04.400 --> 0:31:06.720 just an aside that I just did a little bit 0:31:06.720 --> 0:31:09.000 of googling, So that wasn't him that this is like 0:31:09.040 --> 0:31:15.480 from UC Berkeley's Department of evolution rim talking. The African 0:31:15.640 --> 0:31:19.200 or population of Dutch settlers in South Africa is descended 0:31:19.280 --> 0:31:25.000 mainly from a few colonists. Today, the Afrikaner population has 0:31:25.040 --> 0:31:28.960 an unusually high frequency of the gene that causes Huntington's 0:31:29.000 --> 0:31:34.480 disease because those original Dutch colonists just happened to carry 0:31:34.520 --> 0:31:39.280 that gene with unusually high frequency. This effect is easy 0:31:39.320 --> 0:31:42.280 to recognize in genetic diseases, but of course the frequencies 0:31:42.280 --> 0:31:45.480 of all sorts of genes are affected by founder events. 0:31:46.360 --> 0:31:49.480 That's interesting. This is why our wolves here are so 0:31:49.640 --> 0:31:52.440 big and bad because when they trapped a remember they 0:31:52.480 --> 0:31:55.680 trapped fifty and chose the biggest, meanest ones to bring 0:31:55.800 --> 0:31:57.840 the Yellowstone. We even heard from a guy they'd go 0:31:57.880 --> 0:31:59.400 in and he was telling us they'd poke them with 0:31:59.440 --> 0:32:04.880 a stick, pick the mean victim, meanest mask, not mean enough, 0:32:05.000 --> 0:32:10.160 Let that one go. Don't send him that one. It's 0:32:10.240 --> 0:32:13.200 not mean enough. When he smiled at me when we 0:32:13.240 --> 0:32:25.040 poke them with a stick, he wasn't mean enough. Okay. 0:32:26.280 --> 0:32:29.920 The Wolverine Foundation, yes, tell me what the Wolverine Foundation 0:32:30.000 --> 0:32:34.320 is for starters. So back in nineteen ninety six, all 0:32:34.360 --> 0:32:37.120 of the wolverine biologists in the entire world, which was 0:32:37.160 --> 0:32:40.840 like probably five people you know, got together and they 0:32:41.240 --> 0:32:43.560 were really looking for a way to raise the profile 0:32:43.680 --> 0:32:48.360 of this veryly poorly understood, poorly studied species, and you know, 0:32:48.400 --> 0:32:50.600 in order to raise money and in order to raise awareness, 0:32:50.640 --> 0:32:55.080 they started the Wolverine Foundation. And they've run it as 0:32:55.200 --> 0:33:00.160 an organization that does education and outreach and also gets 0:33:01.120 --> 0:33:03.280 pretty small grants in the in the world of like 0:33:03.440 --> 0:33:07.120 you know, grant making up to like maybe twenty thousand 0:33:07.120 --> 0:33:10.880 dollars at the most to help facilitate wolverine research projects. 0:33:11.400 --> 0:33:15.960 UM I took over in twenty fifteen, and um it's 0:33:16.000 --> 0:33:18.479 still a very small organization and continue to run it. 0:33:18.560 --> 0:33:22.200 Run it primarily as a small grant making organization and 0:33:22.240 --> 0:33:26.080 then again like outreach and education, So coming onto podcasts, 0:33:26.120 --> 0:33:29.800 traveling to universities to give lectures and uh, you know, 0:33:29.880 --> 0:33:33.040 just generally raising awareness about this amazing species. You come 0:33:33.080 --> 0:33:35.920 on a lot of podcasts. I've been on two, and 0:33:35.960 --> 0:33:38.840 I've never had one that officially has like a recording 0:33:38.880 --> 0:33:41.840 studio before. So this is a new and fascinating experience. 0:33:41.920 --> 0:33:47.600 Let's get jealous. UM are you affiliated with a university? 0:33:47.600 --> 0:33:52.160 Though no, neither as an individual nor as a Wolverine Foundation, 0:33:52.240 --> 0:33:54.400 we are we are an independent of five one C 0:33:54.520 --> 0:33:57.360 three nonprofit, but you work within you probably work with 0:33:57.600 --> 0:34:02.880 university people. Yes, So it works is if you the 0:34:02.960 --> 0:34:05.920 interested public happens to have a wolverine project, and that 0:34:05.960 --> 0:34:08.920 can be a graduate project, some kind of academic project, 0:34:08.920 --> 0:34:13.080 an agency project, or a project that's run through a nonprofit, 0:34:13.840 --> 0:34:16.759 you can write a grant application to us and then 0:34:16.800 --> 0:34:21.479 we will review it and potentially grant funds. So yeah, 0:34:21.520 --> 0:34:23.440 a lot of the people who we grant funds too, 0:34:23.719 --> 0:34:27.680 are actually affiliated with universities or with agencies like the 0:34:27.680 --> 0:34:32.280 Forest Service or you know, nonprofit organizations. But we ourselves 0:34:32.320 --> 0:34:34.440 once we give the money. We can still serve in 0:34:34.480 --> 0:34:38.200 an advisory capacity if the people running the project want that, 0:34:38.320 --> 0:34:41.200 but we don't. We're not like actually involved in the 0:34:41.239 --> 0:34:44.680 field work once we make the grants. Yeah, yeah, explain. 0:34:45.680 --> 0:34:48.479 I know that Mongolia played a big role in your 0:34:48.840 --> 0:34:52.080 resume and your sort of genesis as a Wolverine person. Yeah, 0:34:52.160 --> 0:34:54.080 so that's my personal story and it's a little bit 0:34:54.120 --> 0:34:56.600 aside from the Wolverine Foundation, But I was a Peace 0:34:56.640 --> 0:35:00.120 Corp volunteer in Mongolia from two thousand to two thous 0:35:00.120 --> 0:35:05.200 In two and Peace Corps. Peace Corp is a great program. 0:35:05.280 --> 0:35:06.960 It's what you make of it. But in like the 0:35:07.000 --> 0:35:11.040 infinite wisdom of like bureaucracy. I had an undergraduate degree 0:35:11.160 --> 0:35:15.040 in anthropology and I had been like sort of involved 0:35:15.040 --> 0:35:18.040 with the environmental organization on campus, and they were like, great, 0:35:18.200 --> 0:35:21.120 we're going to make you into an ecology teacher. I'd 0:35:21.160 --> 0:35:23.799 never take an ecology class in my life. So they 0:35:23.800 --> 0:35:28.320 sent me out to this town in central Mongolia. The 0:35:28.719 --> 0:35:31.960 Peace Corps wanted you to be an ecology teacher. Yes, yes, 0:35:33.280 --> 0:35:36.240 I mean I thought you guys mostly like delivered vaccinations 0:35:36.320 --> 0:35:40.200 and water stuff and no, no, I think that in 0:35:40.320 --> 0:35:43.120 probably at the closer to the founding of the Peace Corps, 0:35:43.160 --> 0:35:47.080 it was more of that like humanitarian aid type of organization. 0:35:47.200 --> 0:35:51.320 But by the time I went, they, you know, Mongolia 0:35:51.400 --> 0:35:54.319 was coming out of seventy years of socialism and they 0:35:54.320 --> 0:35:56.560 were trying to bring their educational system up to speed, 0:35:56.600 --> 0:35:58.319 and they had all of these national parks that they 0:35:58.360 --> 0:36:02.120 had just founded. A lot of environmental organizations had gone there, 0:36:02.200 --> 0:36:05.120 and they were trying to work with the Mongolian government 0:36:05.160 --> 0:36:07.560 to set aside a land to be protected in a 0:36:07.640 --> 0:36:13.440 sort of in the system of landscape protection and conservation 0:36:13.520 --> 0:36:15.320 that we're more familiar with as opposed to sort of 0:36:15.360 --> 0:36:17.879 the Soviet model that they had been working under. And 0:36:18.200 --> 0:36:23.760 so they wanted to reorganize their ecology and biology education 0:36:23.880 --> 0:36:27.720 program within the schools, and so they decided Peace Corps 0:36:27.880 --> 0:36:31.200 matched me up with a town that had requested a 0:36:31.239 --> 0:36:33.640 school in a town that had requested somebody to help 0:36:33.680 --> 0:36:36.399 work on both English teaching and also on refining their 0:36:36.840 --> 0:36:40.840 biology curriculum and retraining their biology teachers to incorporate ecology 0:36:40.920 --> 0:36:44.799 into the curriculum. So I went over there. I was 0:36:44.840 --> 0:36:49.840 there for two years, and in my spare time in 0:36:49.880 --> 0:36:53.439 the summers when school wasn't in session, I started kind 0:36:53.440 --> 0:36:58.359 of volunteering with snow uppord research programs. So I would 0:36:58.360 --> 0:37:01.880 go out and help do snowuppord surveys for the animals 0:37:01.920 --> 0:37:04.360 themselves and also for prey species ibex in our Golly, 0:37:04.520 --> 0:37:06.680 did you ever lay eyes on a snow leppard? I did, 0:37:06.719 --> 0:37:09.480 but not um, not, not while I was a Peace 0:37:09.520 --> 0:37:11.920 Corps volunteer. It was, yeah, it was in twenty seventeen. 0:37:11.960 --> 0:37:15.080 I was on a UM assisting with a snow leopard 0:37:15.160 --> 0:37:19.680 collaring operation in the Altaie and we uh trapped two 0:37:19.680 --> 0:37:22.160 snow leopards and collared them. So it trapped them out 0:37:22.960 --> 0:37:25.919 with legs snares. Um really and you got to see them? 0:37:26.000 --> 0:37:29.040 Oh yeah, I got to like how, how like what 0:37:29.040 --> 0:37:30.680 what do they what do they use for a set? 0:37:31.160 --> 0:37:34.560 It's a it's like a it's a wire snare ye 0:37:34.880 --> 0:37:39.600 and then um you uh, I think you it's on 0:37:39.680 --> 0:37:42.160 a spring lock, right, it's I don't. I didn't actually 0:37:42.239 --> 0:37:45.239 set the snares, so I can't. I'm trying to remember how. 0:37:45.320 --> 0:37:47.640 And it wasn't my project either, so I wasn't reminding 0:37:47.680 --> 0:37:49.640 you as in charge of doing it. I was actually 0:37:49.680 --> 0:37:52.080 there to try to set up cameras for camera trapping 0:37:52.080 --> 0:37:55.520 wolverines and then went along with these these two snow 0:37:55.600 --> 0:37:58.799 Leppard captures. Um. So it's a leg snare. You bury 0:37:58.840 --> 0:38:02.080 it in the um in the kind of talis and 0:38:02.120 --> 0:38:05.359 then you spray. For whatever reason, snow Leppards are like 0:38:05.440 --> 0:38:09.440 really attracted to high quality perfume. Oh yeah, remember we're 0:38:09.480 --> 0:38:11.919 talking about this before they found some. I can't remember. 0:38:12.000 --> 0:38:15.160 There's some. There's some clone or perfume that's like kill 0:38:15.200 --> 0:38:19.400 around cats. The Chanel number five. Yeah, we had a 0:38:19.400 --> 0:38:21.959 news article about that. We covered one obsession for men 0:38:22.000 --> 0:38:26.600 Calvin Klein. So like when I'm when I figured that out, 0:38:26.840 --> 0:38:29.839 I think they did it was snow leppers in the zoo. Um. 0:38:30.120 --> 0:38:32.920 But like, yeah, when I'm when I'm doing camera trapping 0:38:32.920 --> 0:38:34.719 for snow leppards, which I have done, you know, you're 0:38:34.719 --> 0:38:37.000 in the back country of Mongolia, you haven't showered for 0:38:37.000 --> 0:38:39.319 like two weeks, and you reek of like very very 0:38:39.400 --> 0:38:43.600 high quality perfume crawling around like putting up your your 0:38:43.719 --> 0:38:46.640 camera traps and then like spraying rocks with like eighty 0:38:46.680 --> 0:38:49.320 dollars worth of you know. So that's what like, Okay, 0:38:49.840 --> 0:38:53.759 so when you're setting a camera trap for uh, for 0:38:53.880 --> 0:38:57.280 a snow Leppard, you're not hanging like a road kill carcass. 0:38:57.360 --> 0:39:00.440 You can just use just perfume. Yeah, get into their 0:39:00.560 --> 0:39:02.640 camp and bring it into the camera. Yeah yeah, and 0:39:02.680 --> 0:39:06.920 then um, I don't know how like effective this was, 0:39:06.960 --> 0:39:10.120 but you know snow leopards also scrape, so if you 0:39:10.120 --> 0:39:12.680 you know they do that little paw yeah to I 0:39:12.880 --> 0:39:15.239 do with their hind legs. My other role on that 0:39:15.280 --> 0:39:18.360 snow Leppard coloring expedition was to be the scraping snow leopard, 0:39:18.440 --> 0:39:19.840 so they would they would make me do all the 0:39:19.960 --> 0:39:23.560 scrapes um by the snares to get to get the 0:39:23.600 --> 0:39:25.000 snow leppard to like come in and be like, oh, 0:39:25.120 --> 0:39:27.400 is there another snow leopard here that's marking territory and 0:39:27.400 --> 0:39:30.080 then um put their paw in Nasso's little um. Like 0:39:30.160 --> 0:39:33.399 mountain lions do it like that little remember I usually 0:39:33.440 --> 0:39:34.759 they do with their front foot. But I think it 0:39:34.840 --> 0:39:36.960 is I think some Floyd Green, I think sent Us 0:39:37.000 --> 0:39:40.200 trailcam stuff where the cat does it with his back foot. 0:39:40.480 --> 0:39:42.799 It's not like after dogs go to the bathroom and 0:39:42.840 --> 0:39:45.800 they kind of like wipe off their feet. It's different 0:39:45.840 --> 0:39:48.560 than that. It seems to be some kind of it's 0:39:48.600 --> 0:39:51.319 like a territorial kind of marker. You can tell what 0:39:51.360 --> 0:39:53.280 wait he was. I don't know if this is true, 0:39:54.480 --> 0:39:55.960 and I don't know if you do. You guys still 0:39:56.000 --> 0:39:58.080 like in the in the in the Mountain lion world, 0:39:58.120 --> 0:40:01.080 do you still believing tell Us line to travel? Yeah, 0:40:00.760 --> 0:40:03.520 that it does it, it leaves, It does it as leaves, 0:40:03.520 --> 0:40:05.520 so it kicks his dirt bag it's back. Yeah, there's 0:40:05.560 --> 0:40:08.880 like a little wall of debris behind it, and he 0:40:08.960 --> 0:40:12.160 was going the other stuff. Yeah, so they do that. 0:40:12.360 --> 0:40:15.040 The other day when I was it was the last spring. 0:40:15.160 --> 0:40:17.840 I was with my buddy Jeff Flood, and he pointed 0:40:17.920 --> 0:40:19.400 one out and I was like, oh, yeah, I know 0:40:19.440 --> 0:40:21.640 all about that, and I said, yeah, it's going that way, 0:40:22.000 --> 0:40:23.560 or he asked, I said yeah, it's going that way, 0:40:23.560 --> 0:40:25.799 and we literally went ten yards and there's another one 0:40:26.080 --> 0:40:29.719 going the other drag and I'm like, well, no, we 0:40:29.800 --> 0:40:35.799 don't know. Changed his mind. Yeah, so, um gosh, what 0:40:35.840 --> 0:40:37.399 was it? So they had they had him to foot 0:40:37.400 --> 0:40:39.960 snare and then they tranquilized and you got the hold one. 0:40:40.000 --> 0:40:43.000 We yeah, we tranquilize them. And then not only did 0:40:43.040 --> 0:40:44.279 I get to hold it, but I had to like 0:40:44.640 --> 0:40:47.080 shove my hand down its throat to attach like the 0:40:47.120 --> 0:40:49.680 oxygen monitor to its tongue. So you know, there's that 0:40:49.760 --> 0:40:51.799 like that that moment where you're like, oh my gosh, 0:40:51.840 --> 0:40:53.560 I have my hands on a snow Leppard. This is 0:40:53.560 --> 0:40:56.759 like the mystical moment of achievement for a wildlife biologist. 0:40:56.800 --> 0:40:59.239 And then the person in chargees like grab its tongue 0:40:59.239 --> 0:41:01.879 and you're like, what, like actually put my hand down 0:41:01.960 --> 0:41:05.000 its throat and like yeah, and so you're like avoiding 0:41:05.000 --> 0:41:06.920 the teeth and trying to like pull the tongue out, 0:41:06.960 --> 0:41:09.080 and it's actually a lot harder to get the little 0:41:09.360 --> 0:41:13.480 monitor attached to unconscious cat's tongue than you would suspect. 0:41:13.520 --> 0:41:15.040 And that's just why you're working it up. You got 0:41:15.040 --> 0:41:16.640 to do that. Yeah, yeah, you just want to make 0:41:16.680 --> 0:41:21.160 sure that you're not going to harm the animal. Oh um, 0:41:21.880 --> 0:41:23.319 oh you had to ask me about an I mean 0:41:23.320 --> 0:41:25.480 it was like inaccessible hundred pounds or it was about 0:41:25.480 --> 0:41:27.759 one hundred pounds. Um. The other thing is that we yeah, 0:41:27.840 --> 0:41:30.520 we had to use my duffel bag because they had 0:41:30.560 --> 0:41:33.239 forgotten the um, you know, the little thing that they 0:41:33.280 --> 0:41:35.560 usually used to weigh it. So my my duffel bag 0:41:35.680 --> 0:41:38.399 has been retired as like a shrine to the snow 0:41:38.440 --> 0:41:41.080 leppard because it's still covered with snow leopard fur. So 0:41:41.120 --> 0:41:43.160 I just have this duffel bag at home that conscious 0:41:43.160 --> 0:41:45.200 snow leopard fur in it. And um, yeah, so I 0:41:45.200 --> 0:41:47.279 think it was somewhere around one hundred pounds. And it 0:41:47.320 --> 0:41:50.000 was a male, a young male that we caught. At first, 0:41:50.040 --> 0:41:51.760 he might have weighed a little bit less, and then 0:41:51.840 --> 0:41:55.000 the next animal that we caught was his mother, and 0:41:55.120 --> 0:41:57.400 she weighed a little bit more. So she was traveling 0:41:57.400 --> 0:42:00.880 with two um cubs and that we caught one we 0:42:00.920 --> 0:42:04.239 didn't catch the other. So yeah, I was talking these guys. 0:42:04.320 --> 0:42:06.400 I think I've told this story before. I'm gonna telegrams. 0:42:06.440 --> 0:42:09.840 I like it. I saw it in these guys that 0:42:10.280 --> 0:42:14.120 they were uh, some green Brays that served in Afghanistan 0:42:15.120 --> 0:42:17.919 and they were doing a thing in a mountain pass 0:42:18.000 --> 0:42:21.880 one time and they caught a guy. They caught some 0:42:21.960 --> 0:42:24.719 guys coming up through this pass and shot one of 0:42:24.719 --> 0:42:30.120 them and he dropped the big recoiless rifle and then 0:42:30.440 --> 0:42:34.319 his buddies carried him back down off the pass. But 0:42:34.400 --> 0:42:37.279 that recoilless rifle was set up there, and his kid 0:42:37.320 --> 0:42:39.400 was telling me how he sat there all night watching 0:42:39.760 --> 0:42:41.520 thinking that someone was going to come back for that 0:42:41.680 --> 0:42:44.239 RECOILSS rifle and he saw a snow leopard come through 0:42:44.280 --> 0:42:48.400 that pass and smell the blood where he shot that guy. Wow. Wow, Yeah, 0:42:48.440 --> 0:42:50.520 that is u sa he saw. He saw it through 0:42:50.520 --> 0:42:54.719 his night vision again, just like incredible man seeing a 0:42:54.800 --> 0:42:57.120 snow lepard in the wild. Actually, I mean I actually 0:42:57.160 --> 0:42:59.279 haven't seen a snow leopard in the wild because we 0:42:59.320 --> 0:43:01.279 trapped him, so it doesn't it doesn't count to the 0:43:01.280 --> 0:43:03.719 same degree that it would if it were just like casually, 0:43:03.880 --> 0:43:06.239 you know, crossing a mountain pass while you happen to 0:43:06.280 --> 0:43:09.759 be looking at a gun intently, um, waiting for some 0:43:09.960 --> 0:43:14.719 human to come back. That's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, very 0:43:14.760 --> 0:43:17.840 emotional things. Yeah, I mean it's the war situation is 0:43:17.920 --> 0:43:20.719 quite horrible. But um, seeing the snow leopard, that's that's 0:43:20.719 --> 0:43:24.000 pretty cool. Where did Peter Mathison write the snow Leopard about? 0:43:24.400 --> 0:43:28.399 That was in Nepal? Okay, I think out where you were? No, no, um, 0:43:28.719 --> 0:43:31.839 and yeah that's a different I don't know as much 0:43:31.840 --> 0:43:34.920 about what the conservation status of or what field research 0:43:35.000 --> 0:43:37.439 is like in those environments because it is, I think 0:43:37.480 --> 0:43:41.000 fairly different. Um. But yeah that was Nepal and do 0:43:41.400 --> 0:43:44.600 and when I know, we're still getting into your time Mongoli, 0:43:44.680 --> 0:43:48.799 but wolverines overlap with snow leopards and Mongolia. Yeah, so 0:43:48.840 --> 0:43:52.560 to pick up the Mongolia wolverine connection piece again, Um, 0:43:52.800 --> 0:43:55.960 I was doing work with these snow leopard uh, you 0:43:55.960 --> 0:43:58.440 know programs, and I really wanted to do snow leopards stuff, 0:43:58.440 --> 0:44:00.880 but I didn't. First of all, I grew up in 0:44:00.920 --> 0:44:03.440 New England. My parents are both historians, so until I 0:44:03.440 --> 0:44:06.279 went to Mongolia, I did not realize that there was 0:44:06.320 --> 0:44:09.439 such a thing as like making a living running around 0:44:09.480 --> 0:44:12.719 in the mountains looking at wildlife. I think if I 0:44:12.760 --> 0:44:14.360 had known that when I was younger, I would have 0:44:14.400 --> 0:44:17.720 like keyed into that and followed that trajectory a lot earlier. 0:44:18.600 --> 0:44:21.000 But it was really revelatory to me that like you 0:44:21.040 --> 0:44:22.840 could actually make a living doing that, and that was 0:44:22.880 --> 0:44:24.960 a thing. And so I really was like, hmm, I 0:44:25.040 --> 0:44:26.759 think I want to do this, and I think I 0:44:26.800 --> 0:44:29.439 want to study snow leopards. But I didn't have any 0:44:29.480 --> 0:44:32.280 idea how to go about getting into the field and 0:44:32.560 --> 0:44:40.719 snow leopards, you know, scientists, researchers of like charismatic megafauna 0:44:40.800 --> 0:44:44.480 are sort of notoriously territorial. There's that saying, of course, 0:44:44.520 --> 0:44:46.799 that you start to resemble the animal you're studying, And 0:44:46.840 --> 0:44:51.320 so it just seemed like a very limited field. And 0:44:52.160 --> 0:44:56.600 I was thinking about like other species that might be 0:44:56.760 --> 0:44:59.440 in the same kind of environment, because the cold northern 0:44:59.440 --> 0:45:01.200 mountains was huge part of it. Like, there's no way 0:45:01.239 --> 0:45:03.400 I wanted to study things in some hot like jungle 0:45:03.480 --> 0:45:06.480 environment or anything like that. Yeah. Too much poison, too 0:45:07.080 --> 0:45:09.759 much poison, ivy leeches in the trees. Um. I have 0:45:09.840 --> 0:45:12.960 actually worked in those environments too, It's not my thing. Um, 0:45:13.000 --> 0:45:15.680 and so wolverines. I didn't really know anything about wolverines 0:45:15.680 --> 0:45:17.680 when I was in Mongolia, but when I was leaving, 0:45:17.880 --> 0:45:20.920 somebody gave me a wolverine pelt as a parting gift, 0:45:22.080 --> 0:45:24.759 and I was like, what is this. It's just like 0:45:24.800 --> 0:45:27.000 this weird brown pelt, Like I don't I don't even 0:45:27.080 --> 0:45:29.480 know what this is, um, And so I looked it up, 0:45:29.480 --> 0:45:31.560 and because it's a sight e species, I was like, 0:45:31.880 --> 0:45:33.840 you know, I can't really take this out of the country. 0:45:33.840 --> 0:45:36.239 And I ended up leaving the wolverine pelt there, and 0:45:36.280 --> 0:45:39.920 then I was in graduate school. I ended up going 0:45:39.920 --> 0:45:43.880 to grad school for wildlife ecology, and I was doing 0:45:43.960 --> 0:45:47.360 my master's research on wolves and the wolf ree introduction, 0:45:47.600 --> 0:45:51.120 and I was working with during this you know all 0:45:51.120 --> 0:45:54.839 about picking the big nasty ones, and I do. And 0:45:54.880 --> 0:45:57.400 I would actually rather not get into too many of 0:45:57.440 --> 0:46:00.319 the too many of my thoughts about that, but um, yes, 0:46:00.320 --> 0:46:02.440 and indeed I heard many of those stories. I was 0:46:02.480 --> 0:46:05.120 interviewing ranchers in the Upper Green and I was interviewing 0:46:05.400 --> 0:46:10.200 Shahoni and Arapaho tribal members about their thoughts about the 0:46:10.200 --> 0:46:13.600 wolf reintroduction ten years after it had happened, and the 0:46:13.719 --> 0:46:19.400 organization that was hosting my summer research. The director of 0:46:19.400 --> 0:46:24.400 that organization was also the field coordinator for the Absorber 0:46:24.440 --> 0:46:28.359 Beartooth Wolverine Project, and he invited me to go out 0:46:28.400 --> 0:46:31.480 on a wolverine expedition because the guy who was supposed 0:46:31.480 --> 0:46:35.760 to go with him couldn't go. And over the course 0:46:35.760 --> 0:46:38.040 of talking to him about wolverine stuff, he said, Oh, 0:46:38.040 --> 0:46:41.279 there's this unstudied population in Mongolia that nobody knows anything about, 0:46:41.320 --> 0:46:43.960 but we'd really like to learn more about them. And 0:46:44.000 --> 0:46:46.120 he made some kind of comment about like, but who 0:46:46.160 --> 0:46:48.520 knows anything about Mongolia or like who knows anybody who 0:46:48.560 --> 0:46:51.760 knows anything about Mongolia? And I was like, oh, well, actually, 0:46:51.800 --> 0:46:54.160 I'm fluent in Mongolian and I have worked on wildlife 0:46:54.160 --> 0:46:56.759 issues there in the past, and so it's kind of 0:46:56.880 --> 0:47:01.640 your fluent Mongolian. Yes, yeah, actually today and today is 0:47:01.640 --> 0:47:04.520 actually the first year of the Mongolian New Year, so 0:47:04.600 --> 0:47:09.120 I should also say, which is like best wishes um 0:47:09.160 --> 0:47:11.560 for the year of the water rabbit um. So it's 0:47:11.600 --> 0:47:14.719 very auspicious day. Say when oh, Kevin Murphy, he's been 0:47:14.719 --> 0:47:20.080 fired up about that water rabbits rabbits? Can you say that? Say? Um, 0:47:20.120 --> 0:47:26.320 say something like uh, Yanni is probably not correct. In Mongolian, 0:47:26.440 --> 0:47:28.920 Yanni's probably not correct if we don't have anything to 0:47:28.920 --> 0:47:31.600 back us up on how the mom, the father and 0:47:31.640 --> 0:47:35.320 son fight it out. Some just want to hear some 0:47:35.360 --> 0:47:39.920 Mongolian du Oh my gosh. I hate questions like this 0:47:39.960 --> 0:47:44.640 because it's always so like on the spot. Uh in 0:47:46.080 --> 0:47:58.279 ni sat qui hiwe you yah? Uh? Oh my god? 0:47:58.280 --> 0:48:01.919 What is the word for two animals fighting? Uh out? Yeah, 0:48:02.239 --> 0:48:06.280 this is actually not not a word uh that I 0:48:06.320 --> 0:48:09.640 actually know off the top of my head. Um, but yeah, 0:48:09.640 --> 0:48:16.959 so uh yeah, that's beautiful. I didn't actually, I didn't 0:48:16.960 --> 0:48:19.400 actually get to the verbs. So anybody who speaks Mongolian 0:48:19.400 --> 0:48:21.680 out there is going to recognize that that is not 0:48:21.760 --> 0:48:26.879 actually complete sentence. But I apologize about that. Um. That's 0:48:26.880 --> 0:48:28.440 pretty good, though. How the hell do you learned that 0:48:29.200 --> 0:48:31.879 the Peace Corps training in that? So? Peace Corp does 0:48:31.920 --> 0:48:33.960 this thing, or they did when I was a volunteer, 0:48:34.000 --> 0:48:36.560 where they send you to like three months of it's 0:48:36.600 --> 0:48:39.960 basically like the worst adult summer camp you've ever been to, 0:48:40.080 --> 0:48:42.360 where you're like there with fifty other volunteers in a 0:48:42.400 --> 0:48:46.840 small Mongolian town. Um, and you they give you like 0:48:46.880 --> 0:48:49.439 three months of language training and cultural training. You're living 0:48:49.480 --> 0:48:52.920 with a Mongolian family. That part was great. Um, and 0:48:53.680 --> 0:48:57.280 uh yeah that's how I mean. I learned the basics 0:48:57.560 --> 0:49:00.000 through their language training, and then I was put into 0:49:00.120 --> 0:49:02.640 a town where nobody else spoke English, so I either 0:49:02.880 --> 0:49:05.120 had to figure out how to speak Mongolian or I 0:49:05.160 --> 0:49:08.560 was not going to talk to anybody for two years. Yeah, yeah, seriously, 0:49:08.840 --> 0:49:11.480 And I still can't spell anything. It's really funny because, 0:49:11.520 --> 0:49:14.920 like you know, when you learn a language primarily through 0:49:14.960 --> 0:49:17.359 talking to people, like I, people try to I try 0:49:17.360 --> 0:49:18.759 to write things to people, and I have to go 0:49:18.800 --> 0:49:20.520 back to the dictionary all the time because I'm like, 0:49:20.560 --> 0:49:21.919 how do you spell that word? How do you spell 0:49:22.000 --> 0:49:25.040 that word? Um? So it's a very different kind of experience, 0:49:25.080 --> 0:49:27.600 I think than if you're in a classroom learning a language. 0:49:27.640 --> 0:49:32.000 But yeah, yeah, but it's like highly functional though, right 0:49:32.120 --> 0:49:35.759 it is. It's very functional. And um yeah, I've been 0:49:35.800 --> 0:49:41.959 told my accent is really good, so I'll buy on it, Okay, great? Um. Yeah. 0:49:42.120 --> 0:49:46.360 So I had this conversation with this guy who was 0:49:46.360 --> 0:49:51.040 absolved involved in the Absorba Beartooth Wolverine project and then 0:49:52.000 --> 0:49:57.400 ended up um starting my own project in Mongolia, and uh, 0:49:57.440 --> 0:49:59.839 you know that was not a callering project. That would 0:49:59.840 --> 0:50:02.600 be and way too difficult to run just because of 0:50:02.600 --> 0:50:04.319 the way you call our wolverines that you have to 0:50:04.400 --> 0:50:07.200 kind of have a vet on hand, and you know, 0:50:07.239 --> 0:50:10.080 it's a lot of like backcountry access issues and that's 0:50:10.120 --> 0:50:13.080 hard enough here where we have like snowmobiles and helicopters 0:50:13.080 --> 0:50:15.840 and fixed wing aircraft, it's still really really hard to 0:50:16.560 --> 0:50:19.760 man the traps and monitor the traps and get people 0:50:19.840 --> 0:50:22.360 in once you have a wolverine in the trap, to 0:50:22.400 --> 0:50:24.680 get people in there on time, to make sure that 0:50:24.719 --> 0:50:27.439 the animal isn't hurt. And so instead of sort of 0:50:27.719 --> 0:50:32.640 trying to do something like that, I was thinking about 0:50:32.680 --> 0:50:37.919 how much more all of my Mongolian colleagues know about 0:50:38.000 --> 0:50:40.960 wildlife than I do. You know. They're just they're people 0:50:41.480 --> 0:50:44.359 who a third of the population is still like on 0:50:44.400 --> 0:50:47.959 the landscape as herders every day. And when I showed 0:50:48.000 --> 0:50:50.960 up as an environmental volunteer with my ecology book that 0:50:51.120 --> 0:50:53.799 I was going to teach the Mongolians, you know, about 0:50:53.880 --> 0:50:56.920 how to do ecology or whatever, I had a one 0:50:56.920 --> 0:50:59.440 of my fellow teachers put me in my place really fast. 0:50:59.480 --> 0:51:02.880 She was like, know what Chingis Khan passed the world's 0:51:02.880 --> 0:51:06.480 first environmental laws over a thousand years ago. Like, what 0:51:06.520 --> 0:51:09.440 the heck have you guys done that's comparable to that. 0:51:09.520 --> 0:51:11.680 We know how to manage our wildlife and we know 0:51:11.719 --> 0:51:15.759 how to manage our environment. And I was like, oh yeah, 0:51:15.840 --> 0:51:17.719 and if you're twenty two years old and you're like 0:51:17.760 --> 0:51:20.400 a cocky American going into a foreign country, let me 0:51:20.480 --> 0:51:23.360 tell you people about environmentalism. I am so grateful to 0:51:23.440 --> 0:51:26.399 her for doing that because I see so many people 0:51:26.440 --> 0:51:29.319 who work internationally with this kind of attitude of like 0:51:29.640 --> 0:51:32.719 it's almost like a missionary like superiority complex kind of 0:51:32.719 --> 0:51:36.120 thing where you're like, guys, you got to humble yourselves 0:51:36.160 --> 0:51:38.239 a little bit and see this as an exchange, not 0:51:38.400 --> 0:51:40.680 as just you showing up in this place to tell 0:51:40.719 --> 0:51:43.000 people how to live their lives and how to do 0:51:43.040 --> 0:51:46.279 their thing. Um, you know, can I like talking about 0:51:46.280 --> 0:51:48.200 the Peace Corps what you're talking about right now? Have 0:51:48.200 --> 0:51:51.920 you read the Ugly American? I have not. Yeah, everybody 0:51:51.960 --> 0:51:57.480 thinks like the ugly American was the good guy. Like 0:51:57.520 --> 0:51:59.520 people say like, oh, you know when when Americans go 0:51:59.560 --> 0:52:01.120 overseas and they're out of touch, people like, oh, this 0:52:01.400 --> 0:52:04.719 classic ugly American, but like the ugly American and the 0:52:04.800 --> 0:52:10.600 ugly American in this fictitious country of Sarcan is ugly 0:52:11.480 --> 0:52:20.520 and humble and shuts up, and he's very effective. Okay, yeah, 0:52:20.560 --> 0:52:23.279 I mean I think I haven't read the book, but 0:52:23.360 --> 0:52:25.800 I think that that is. Like, the most effective people 0:52:25.840 --> 0:52:29.759 I have seen working internationally are the people who are 0:52:31.200 --> 0:52:33.239 who listen. Yeah, they show up in a place and 0:52:33.280 --> 0:52:35.080 they sit there for six months. They learn the language 0:52:35.080 --> 0:52:36.759 to the best of their ability, and they listen to 0:52:36.760 --> 0:52:39.319 what people are telling them, and then they have a 0:52:39.360 --> 0:52:43.040 basis for doing better work because they have the relationships 0:52:43.040 --> 0:52:45.080 that they need and they have the understanding that they need. 0:52:45.160 --> 0:52:47.799 And you know, they're not going in with a preconceived 0:52:47.840 --> 0:52:52.280 notion of what's best. They're like actually co creating something 0:52:52.600 --> 0:52:54.759 that's much stronger. So anyway, sorry, that's a little bit 0:52:54.800 --> 0:53:00.400 of a soap box spield, but um yeah, So I 0:53:00.440 --> 0:53:02.560 was fortunate to have this woman put me in my place, 0:53:02.680 --> 0:53:05.560 and I think what I was trying to do was create, 0:53:05.880 --> 0:53:10.279 um a wildlife monitoring project and a conservation project that 0:53:10.320 --> 0:53:14.160 was really built from Mongolian values and perspectives and that 0:53:14.239 --> 0:53:17.879 prioritize Mongolian knowledge and understanding of the species. And so 0:53:17.960 --> 0:53:20.400 I just traveled around Mongolia and asked a lot of 0:53:20.480 --> 0:53:24.239 questions and interviewed people about what they knew about wolverines, 0:53:24.360 --> 0:53:27.719 and UM we went. I went to places that we're 0:53:27.760 --> 0:53:29.680 wolverine habitat, and I went to places that were not 0:53:30.000 --> 0:53:33.560 modeled wolverine habitat as kind of a control to understand 0:53:33.600 --> 0:53:36.160 like what people in wolverine habitat were saying versus what 0:53:36.160 --> 0:53:39.719 people outside of wolverine habitat we're saying about this species UM. 0:53:40.320 --> 0:53:42.840 And the background, there's like a side note background to 0:53:42.880 --> 0:53:47.759 this is that there are pretty tight models of wolverine 0:53:47.800 --> 0:53:52.040 distribution worldwide UM that have to do with environmental factors. 0:53:52.040 --> 0:53:53.920 I think we're going to talk about this a little 0:53:53.920 --> 0:53:56.760 bit more hit it because it's like like like there's 0:53:56.800 --> 0:54:00.359 a when when I was reading in the and Cren's notes, Huh, 0:54:00.800 --> 0:54:04.600 there's like some really a somewhat simple parameter. Yeah, So 0:54:04.640 --> 0:54:07.000 there's a there's a paper that was published in twenty 0:54:07.239 --> 0:54:10.919 ten about the bioclimatic envelope of the wolverine, and bio 0:54:11.360 --> 0:54:15.200 climatic envelopes are UM. You know, species distribution models that 0:54:15.239 --> 0:54:21.960 are defined by UM basically climatic and biological factors, and 0:54:22.000 --> 0:54:26.279 so for wolverines, it seems like you can model their 0:54:26.320 --> 0:54:32.920 distribution worldwide UM based on places that have maximum August 0:54:32.920 --> 0:54:38.319 temperatures of less than seventy degrees fahrenheit. And that's not averages, no, 0:54:39.760 --> 0:54:44.600 that's that's the maximum August temperature, right, So, UM, does 0:54:44.640 --> 0:54:49.440 that correspond generally with a certain latitude or is there 0:54:49.480 --> 0:54:53.560 some it's latitude and elevation and so yeah, because like 0:54:53.560 --> 0:54:56.520 because like the alpine zone, like super High Country in 0:54:56.560 --> 0:54:59.400 Colorado would have wolverines exactly right, Yeah, which had to 0:54:59.440 --> 0:55:02.120 be like little teeny islands of shit. Right, you guys 0:55:02.160 --> 0:55:04.440 are hitting all of them. This is great. I love 0:55:04.480 --> 0:55:06.000 talking to you guys because you're hitting all of these 0:55:06.040 --> 0:55:09.719 important ideas about like where wolverines are and why they 0:55:09.760 --> 0:55:13.000 are there, and you understand how that distribution is working. 0:55:13.280 --> 0:55:16.880 So at maximum augus temperatures of seventy degrees fahrenheit was 0:55:17.000 --> 0:55:19.680 one of the parameters, and the other was late spring snowpack, 0:55:19.760 --> 0:55:22.680 so snow that remains on the ground through in that 0:55:22.760 --> 0:55:27.200 twenty ten model through May fifteenth. So if and then 0:55:27.239 --> 0:55:30.720 and then there is a latitude breakoff, so UM north 0:55:30.719 --> 0:55:35.359 of sixty degrees north latitude, that relationship breaks down. Um. 0:55:35.560 --> 0:55:39.759 But south of sixty degrees north, it's it's very, very 0:55:39.880 --> 0:55:43.839 very strict, except in Mongolia where you have a lot 0:55:43.920 --> 0:55:46.279 of reports or you had a lot of reports of wolverines. 0:55:46.360 --> 0:55:50.160 Well outside of this this uh um, at least outside 0:55:50.200 --> 0:55:52.120 of the snow model, they still tend to be inside 0:55:52.120 --> 0:55:56.440 the temperature model. UM. So the point of like traveling 0:55:56.480 --> 0:55:59.480 all over Mongolia and talking to people inside the snow model, 0:55:59.560 --> 0:56:02.080 inside the temperature model, and then outside of both of 0:56:02.080 --> 0:56:04.240 those models, because there are places in the Gobi Desert 0:56:04.280 --> 0:56:06.880 where it's really outside of the both of those models, 0:56:07.239 --> 0:56:11.840 was to understand from using local ecological knowledge and bringing 0:56:11.840 --> 0:56:14.840 that into the center of the work to understand like 0:56:14.840 --> 0:56:17.080 where wolverines were, how they were behaving, how much people 0:56:17.160 --> 0:56:19.680 knew about them, what they were saying about them, what 0:56:19.760 --> 0:56:21.960 they were eating, and using that as a as a 0:56:22.000 --> 0:56:28.640 main source of information what is generally I got two 0:56:28.640 --> 0:56:31.440 Mongolia questions. I'm just gonna hit you both right now. 0:56:31.960 --> 0:56:35.360 There's gotta be some wild ass country in Mongolia. Yes, 0:56:35.440 --> 0:56:38.840 So put it to me, like if you walk that distance, 0:56:38.920 --> 0:56:41.640 if you walk that direction for blank distance, you're not 0:56:41.680 --> 0:56:45.640 going to run into a road. Oh hit me with 0:56:45.719 --> 0:56:48.280 some of that. And also, um, what is their general 0:56:48.640 --> 0:56:51.400 like in MONGOLDI what do they regard the wolverine as? 0:56:51.600 --> 0:56:55.960 Do they regard it as a furbearing animal? Do they 0:56:56.000 --> 0:56:59.880 regard it as like a don't touch like? What's like generally? 0:57:00.080 --> 0:57:02.439 What is what is the view of it? Um? So 0:57:02.480 --> 0:57:06.160 the question about roads, when I went to Mongolia in 0:57:06.200 --> 0:57:09.399 two thousand, I think there were there were only nine 0:57:09.440 --> 0:57:11.880 hundred kilometers of roads in the country or something like 0:57:11.920 --> 0:57:13.799 that when I first went there, So you could go 0:57:14.040 --> 0:57:17.920 forever without running into a road. Um, It's there is 0:57:17.960 --> 0:57:21.560 a lot of very very wild country there and like 0:57:21.720 --> 0:57:24.680 hundreds of miles and not running anything. Yeah, I mean you. 0:57:25.360 --> 0:57:27.800 So there's a there's a little bit of a paradox 0:57:27.840 --> 0:57:30.400 though the land. I've heard it described as the land 0:57:30.480 --> 0:57:33.919 is like very lightly inhabited on the surface in terms 0:57:33.920 --> 0:57:36.560 of like the density of people, in the density of infrastructure, 0:57:36.920 --> 0:57:39.880 But the relationship that people have with that land over 0:57:39.920 --> 0:57:44.120 every square kilometer is so deep. Um. And so I 0:57:44.200 --> 0:57:47.200 don't I don't I get really hesitant to describe it 0:57:47.240 --> 0:57:52.320 as wilderness because people do have these these relationships with 0:57:52.320 --> 0:57:54.960 with all of it. You know, there's always somebody who 0:57:55.080 --> 0:57:58.960 has some kind of relationship with with whatever piece of 0:57:59.040 --> 0:58:01.640 land you are on. But in terms of the things 0:58:01.640 --> 0:58:05.520 that we consider markers of human habitation, like infrastructure, it's 0:58:05.640 --> 0:58:08.760 very sparsely spread. But but herd ors whoever, like people 0:58:08.760 --> 0:58:12.120 are people. If you stay in some spot, people are 0:58:12.160 --> 0:58:14.760 at some point in the year for some purpose utilizing 0:58:14.760 --> 0:58:17.600 the area, Yes, and they wouldn't regard it as uninhabited, 0:58:17.680 --> 0:58:19.960 or they would definitely not regard it as uninhabited. And 0:58:19.960 --> 0:58:23.160 the other thing that's important to mention about Mongolia when 0:58:23.160 --> 0:58:25.280 I first went there was there was no private property 0:58:25.280 --> 0:58:27.680 in the country. So you know, there was no private 0:58:27.760 --> 0:58:31.960 landownership in the country when I arrived. So you know 0:58:32.000 --> 0:58:36.200 that that idea of inhabiting a place or you know, 0:58:37.080 --> 0:58:39.360 having a sense of like ownership or connection to the 0:58:39.360 --> 0:58:41.479 place wasn't vested in the same things that we would 0:58:41.480 --> 0:58:45.160 consider markers of that So nobody had the right to 0:58:45.200 --> 0:58:47.040 like say, oh, this is my property, you can't cut 0:58:47.040 --> 0:58:49.960 across it to go hunting. You know, that's like that 0:58:50.000 --> 0:58:51.720 would be a very would have been a very foreign 0:58:51.800 --> 0:58:55.160 concept at that time. In two thousand and one, they 0:58:55.240 --> 0:58:59.000 did start into introducing a limited system of private ownership 0:58:59.120 --> 0:59:03.000 for people who had been occupying their houses in towns, 0:59:03.160 --> 0:59:05.120 they were able to receive title to it. But my 0:59:05.160 --> 0:59:07.280 friends came to me at that time and they were like, Oh, 0:59:07.360 --> 0:59:09.760 the Cadastral Service is doing this whole thing where we're 0:59:09.760 --> 0:59:12.760 supposed to have title to our land and we don't 0:59:12.840 --> 0:59:15.280 understand what that means. Can you explain to us? And 0:59:15.320 --> 0:59:18.120 that was another one of those moments where I was like, Oh, 0:59:18.160 --> 0:59:23.920 this place is just a really different and interesting place. 0:59:25.120 --> 0:59:27.120 And so, yeah, there's been a lot of change in 0:59:27.160 --> 0:59:29.760 those twenty years, and now there is a fairly significant 0:59:29.760 --> 0:59:32.960 amount of private land, but all pasture constitutionally, in the 0:59:33.000 --> 0:59:37.360 Mongolian constitution, the bulk of Mongolia's landscape must remain public. 0:59:37.560 --> 0:59:41.720 That's in their constitution. There have been also a lot 0:59:41.720 --> 0:59:44.720 of roads built since I was first there, so now 0:59:44.760 --> 0:59:47.240 you can probably go much shorter distance before you run 0:59:47.280 --> 0:59:51.160 into a road. As for how Mongolians relate to wolverines, 0:59:53.120 --> 0:59:57.120 they the majority of people I've spoken to do not 0:59:57.240 --> 1:00:02.040 consider it a significant animal um because they're so rare 1:00:02.480 --> 1:00:05.000 on the landscape, people don't run into them that much. 1:00:05.080 --> 1:00:08.200 They still know way more than an average American would like. 1:00:08.200 --> 1:00:09.680 If you go up to somebody on the street in 1:00:09.720 --> 1:00:12.600 the US because I've done this, and you say, tell 1:00:12.640 --> 1:00:16.120 me what you know about wolverines, they're like will like 1:00:16.280 --> 1:00:19.360 the X Men, you know, or something like that, you know, 1:00:19.440 --> 1:00:21.640 where they just don't really even understand that it's an 1:00:21.640 --> 1:00:26.760 actual animal. In Mongolia, you can ask people about wolverines 1:00:26.800 --> 1:00:29.600 and they will generally know the basic outlines of what 1:00:29.640 --> 1:00:31.480 it is, and you know that it's that it's a 1:00:31.520 --> 1:00:34.520 species that wanders around a lot, and that you that 1:00:34.600 --> 1:00:39.120 it eats meat and it scavenges. But they don't. They don't. 1:00:39.360 --> 1:00:43.440 They're not present strongly enough to be like very culturally significant. 1:00:43.480 --> 1:00:47.880 Wolves are hugely culturally significant in Mongolia. Um, And I 1:00:47.920 --> 1:00:50.440 was thinking when I first started talking to people about wolverines, Oh, 1:00:50.440 --> 1:00:52.120 maybe there's going to be some of this kind of 1:00:52.160 --> 1:00:56.520 like wolf similar to the wolf stuff, where you know 1:00:56.520 --> 1:00:58.920 there's some kind of spiritual connotation or something like that. 1:00:59.600 --> 1:01:01.840 They're really wasn't on the same order, but they are 1:01:01.840 --> 1:01:04.600 associated with er La Khan, who's the king of the underworld, 1:01:04.640 --> 1:01:07.840 So there's that sort of spooky like, Um, you know, 1:01:08.000 --> 1:01:10.640 wolverines are a little dubious. They kind of seem to 1:01:10.640 --> 1:01:13.840 be somewhat associated with some chaotic powers kind of thing. Yeah, 1:01:13.840 --> 1:01:16.320 and they have like a lot of Northern and North America, 1:01:16.360 --> 1:01:19.120 a lot of northern indigenous groups have a sort of 1:01:19.160 --> 1:01:22.440 like it's like a devil yes type creature because of 1:01:22.440 --> 1:01:26.240 their ability to like ruin your ship. Yeah, it's um, yes, 1:01:26.320 --> 1:01:30.440 there they're getting your food cash, they'll rob your trap lines, 1:01:30.560 --> 1:01:34.880 they'll like, you know, they're they're not always welcome. They 1:01:34.880 --> 1:01:39.920 are unapologetically about their own uh you know, um well being. 1:01:39.960 --> 1:01:41.600 I think it's a good way to put it. And 1:01:41.640 --> 1:01:43.840 there are there are also many of those stories. Like 1:01:44.600 --> 1:01:46.600 one of the populations I work with in Mongolia are 1:01:46.640 --> 1:01:49.280 reindeer herders, and they so they're up in the tiger 1:01:49.400 --> 1:01:52.120 in the mountains with their reindeer and they are still 1:01:52.520 --> 1:01:57.040 largely hunting people. They use their reindeer for transportation. They 1:01:57.040 --> 1:01:59.040 milk their reindeer, but they don't usually eat them. So 1:01:59.440 --> 1:02:03.680 most of their protein comes from hunting. And they go 1:02:03.720 --> 1:02:07.919 out on these winter expeditions, um, where they will hunt 1:02:07.960 --> 1:02:10.360 and then they build these like little log shelters and 1:02:10.360 --> 1:02:12.840 they put the meat in there and then they'll leave 1:02:12.880 --> 1:02:17.120 it elevated around the ground. Um, they're on the they're 1:02:17.120 --> 1:02:19.000 built the ones I've seen are built. They're just like 1:02:19.040 --> 1:02:22.040 little log boxes. They're not like they're not that elevated. 1:02:22.240 --> 1:02:25.680 Um and the but they but they they have a 1:02:25.720 --> 1:02:28.720 platform inside. They do have a platform inside. Yeah, um, 1:02:28.800 --> 1:02:31.240 And then they'll go and they'll continue their hunting rounds 1:02:31.240 --> 1:02:34.360 and they'll like come back and retrieve the meat because 1:02:34.360 --> 1:02:36.920 it stays frozen. And one of those guys was telling 1:02:36.920 --> 1:02:40.280 me a story about how he came. He came back 1:02:40.320 --> 1:02:42.680 to a place where he had cashed a moose and 1:02:42.760 --> 1:02:45.280 there was a hole that had been chewed through and 1:02:45.360 --> 1:02:48.400 that the wolverine, he said, must have been in there 1:02:48.520 --> 1:02:53.840 for like weeks, just eating the entire moose and that um, 1:02:53.920 --> 1:02:55.680 and the wolverine could have been going and coming back. 1:02:55.720 --> 1:02:57.560 But he said, oh, you know, actually, wolverines I think 1:02:57.560 --> 1:03:00.600 are a very tidy animal because you know, there was 1:03:00.600 --> 1:03:03.640 a place where it was doing its business inside them, 1:03:04.080 --> 1:03:06.040 inside the box, and then there was a place where 1:03:06.040 --> 1:03:08.200 it was clearly sleeping and these were all like and 1:03:08.240 --> 1:03:09.880 then there was a place where it was eating, and 1:03:09.920 --> 1:03:13.480 so it was keeping its household in order. Layout yeah 1:03:13.520 --> 1:03:16.560 so um, but yeah, they do have this reputation of course, 1:03:16.600 --> 1:03:19.680 like one of the colloquial terms in English is devil bear. Um. 1:03:19.920 --> 1:03:24.320 They they have a reputation for being tricksters. They are 1:03:24.720 --> 1:03:28.200 kind of known as like buffoons sometimes but also with 1:03:28.240 --> 1:03:33.000 that dark edge of like you know, potential potential chaos 1:03:33.120 --> 1:03:37.200 and problematic association if you if you do the wrong 1:03:37.240 --> 1:03:39.600 thing or if you cross them. If you look at 1:03:39.600 --> 1:03:46.400 a Mongolian wolverine, um, are there distinctive like in terms 1:03:46.400 --> 1:03:49.880 of size, coloration, the bars. Would you ever be like, Oh, 1:03:49.920 --> 1:03:53.000 that's a Eurasian wolverine and that's a North American wolverine. No? 1:03:53.240 --> 1:03:58.760 I think visually they appear quite similar genetically, Um, you know, 1:03:58.800 --> 1:04:00.720 at least in terms of the half types, which is 1:04:00.720 --> 1:04:03.160 what we look at for evolution. Um. You know, there 1:04:03.160 --> 1:04:06.440 are there are different haplotypes in North America and in Eurasia, 1:04:06.480 --> 1:04:10.680 but they are also overlapping haplotypes. U. So it's basically 1:04:10.720 --> 1:04:13.800 the same animal as far as we can tell behaviorally 1:04:13.920 --> 1:04:18.240 and in terms of like what they look like. Yeah, yeah, 1:04:18.360 --> 1:04:21.080 how many have you seen without how you see in 1:04:21.120 --> 1:04:25.480 the wild without like not trying to lure him in one? Yeah? 1:04:25.640 --> 1:04:28.840 Yeah to what you've seen too, right, Anny, Yeah, I'd 1:04:28.880 --> 1:04:32.360 love to hear about Yeah, oh you did drag that 1:04:32.400 --> 1:04:34.320 moose leg? Well? We were all in the same hunt 1:04:34.560 --> 1:04:38.040 with my dad. But you but then you saw one 1:04:38.200 --> 1:04:41.640 robin caribou carcass, Yeah, and you saw on robin moose car. Yes. 1:04:41.880 --> 1:04:47.240 And on that trip I saw in a way off, 1:04:47.320 --> 1:04:50.480 on a way off distant mountain, I saw another wolverine. 1:04:51.520 --> 1:04:53.640 It was miles from where we saw the one that 1:04:53.760 --> 1:04:58.120 was stashing the cariboo parts. More than likely probably the 1:04:58.200 --> 1:05:01.520 same one, but could have in my third one. Wow, 1:05:01.880 --> 1:05:03.840 where did you see the one you saw Mongolia? No, 1:05:04.040 --> 1:05:07.920 actually it was in It was in Wyoming. So that 1:05:08.160 --> 1:05:10.640 very I was mentioning the guy who I worked with, 1:05:10.680 --> 1:05:14.920 who was the field director for the Absorka Beartooth Wolverine project, 1:05:15.520 --> 1:05:19.520 and so it was that expedition. In fact, here they 1:05:19.520 --> 1:05:22.120 had had callers out on a bunch of their wolverines, 1:05:22.240 --> 1:05:23.760 and he wanted to go in and look at a 1:05:23.800 --> 1:05:27.560 cluster of locations from that collar to see if we 1:05:27.560 --> 1:05:29.760 could figure out what the wolverine had been doing in 1:05:29.800 --> 1:05:32.560 that location. And it was up on the you know, 1:05:32.800 --> 1:05:35.440 the Absorka Beartooth Plateau. We went on and off of 1:05:35.480 --> 1:05:38.960 Toga Te Pass and it was like a hike. It 1:05:39.000 --> 1:05:42.560 was like forty two miles in two days. I was 1:05:42.720 --> 1:05:44.600 not in shape to do something like that, but he 1:05:44.720 --> 1:05:47.600 really needed somebody to go with him because the four 1:05:47.720 --> 1:05:50.200 Service protocols said that he couldn't do it by himself. 1:05:50.640 --> 1:05:52.320 So he's like, it'll be fine, it'll be fine, it's 1:05:52.360 --> 1:05:54.800 totally fine. Once we get up there, it'll be entirely flat. 1:05:56.200 --> 1:05:58.800 And I was like, okay, you know, I'm up for whatever. 1:05:58.840 --> 1:06:03.400 I'll go. And so we went, and he kept saying like, 1:06:03.480 --> 1:06:05.360 it's gonna be a little bit hard, it's going to 1:06:05.400 --> 1:06:06.960 be a long hike, but it'll be fine. It'll be 1:06:06.960 --> 1:06:08.320 flat when we get up there. But we're not going 1:06:08.360 --> 1:06:10.240 to see the wolverine, because you never see the wolverine, 1:06:10.280 --> 1:06:12.840 so don't get your hopes up. And so he had 1:06:12.880 --> 1:06:15.480 his dog with him. And the first night that we 1:06:15.480 --> 1:06:20.680 were out, it was dusk and we were I was 1:06:20.680 --> 1:06:23.800 washing the dishes after we had eaten, and all of 1:06:23.880 --> 1:06:27.480 a sudden I heard him just screaming his dog's name 1:06:27.560 --> 1:06:31.880 and he's like, come back, no, come back. And I 1:06:31.960 --> 1:06:34.040 was like, WHOA, what is going on? And he's like, 1:06:34.480 --> 1:06:38.120 it's the wolverine. It's the wolverine. And so I looked 1:06:38.160 --> 1:06:40.200 down over the little ridge and the dog and the 1:06:40.240 --> 1:06:45.280 wolverine were like running at each other. Yeah, and I dropped. 1:06:45.320 --> 1:06:48.600 I remember dropping my dishes and just like sprinting for 1:06:48.720 --> 1:06:52.840 my binoculars. And then luckily his dog was obedient and 1:06:52.920 --> 1:06:54.760 came back, because I don't think that would have ended 1:06:54.800 --> 1:06:59.000 well for her if she hadn't done. And so she 1:06:59.120 --> 1:07:02.280 came back and we out there with our binoculars as 1:07:02.320 --> 1:07:04.080 the sun went down and it got dark, and that 1:07:04.120 --> 1:07:08.040 wolverine circled our camp for probably like seventeen minutes, and 1:07:08.080 --> 1:07:10.480 it really Yeah, it came up and it kept like 1:07:11.320 --> 1:07:14.400 it kept like looking at us from one rock and 1:07:14.440 --> 1:07:16.160 then it would like hop off of that rock and 1:07:16.160 --> 1:07:17.720 it would go to another rock and get up on 1:07:17.760 --> 1:07:20.160 the rock and look at us again. And you know, 1:07:20.240 --> 1:07:22.840 we were staring at it, and it was staring at us, 1:07:22.960 --> 1:07:27.919 and it was just this moment of mutual curiosity. And 1:07:28.360 --> 1:07:30.080 that was when I was hooked. I was like, Okay, 1:07:30.120 --> 1:07:32.480 this is really cool, and now I definitely want to 1:07:32.480 --> 1:07:35.400 do this project in Mongolia and go learn more about 1:07:35.400 --> 1:07:38.680 this this species. So yeah, that's the only wolverine I've 1:07:38.680 --> 1:07:42.040 ever seen in the wild. I've handled two in traps, 1:07:42.040 --> 1:07:44.760 and I've seen a lot on camera traps, but that 1:07:44.920 --> 1:07:48.040 remains my only wild wolverine sighting. Were you doing the 1:07:48.040 --> 1:07:50.720 camera traps in Mongolia? Yes? Yes, And how are you 1:07:50.720 --> 1:07:52.880 getting to what were you doing to lure men? Nothing? 1:07:53.480 --> 1:07:56.640 You know they So this is one of the really 1:07:56.640 --> 1:08:02.320 interesting things about the Mongolian wolverine work. Um. With wolverines 1:08:02.320 --> 1:08:06.439 in the US, it seems like if you set even 1:08:06.480 --> 1:08:09.480 camera traps, um, you need to put a lure out 1:08:09.520 --> 1:08:13.320 to get them to come to that location. And usually 1:08:13.360 --> 1:08:16.080 what you do as you hang a bundle of bones 1:08:16.160 --> 1:08:18.519 from a wire up in the trees and you put 1:08:18.520 --> 1:08:22.960 scent on it so it broadcasts the scent. Yeah, exactly 1:08:23.080 --> 1:08:25.920 and um, and eventually you'll get a wolverine coming in 1:08:26.000 --> 1:08:27.800 and they will return. Once they know that there's a 1:08:27.800 --> 1:08:29.920 source of food someplace, they will return again and again 1:08:29.960 --> 1:08:32.160 and again to that place even after the food source 1:08:32.200 --> 1:08:36.400 has gone like, they they'll check it out. Um. In Mongolia, 1:08:36.520 --> 1:08:39.280 we had we set up a grid of fifty cameras 1:08:39.360 --> 1:08:42.160 in these national parks where I was working in northern Mongolia. 1:08:42.280 --> 1:08:45.080 And I do know that my ranger colleagues were like 1:08:46.280 --> 1:08:49.160 they were peeing much in the same way that I 1:08:49.280 --> 1:08:52.840 use the um, you know, perfume to learn the snow efforts. 1:08:52.880 --> 1:08:55.880 They would like pee on a spot um near the 1:08:56.080 --> 1:08:59.800 where the camera was aimed. Um. But that was the 1:09:00.040 --> 1:09:03.280 only lure that that we used, and in some cases 1:09:03.320 --> 1:09:05.120 they weren't even doing that, And so you would just 1:09:05.120 --> 1:09:07.639 get these these wolverines that were like traveling. You're setting 1:09:07.640 --> 1:09:10.320 it up on trails or not even on trails. Well, 1:09:10.720 --> 1:09:14.479 trails is like a I mean there are like travel 1:09:14.560 --> 1:09:17.639 routes that are used by both wildlife and by human 1:09:17.680 --> 1:09:21.080 herders in those national parks. Yeah, and I think you 1:09:21.120 --> 1:09:24.000 know a lot of it really depended on the rangers 1:09:24.080 --> 1:09:26.240 knowledge of where they had seen tracks in the past, 1:09:26.360 --> 1:09:28.840 and so they would set these these cameras up so 1:09:28.880 --> 1:09:31.519 they'd know a likely cross and spot or whatever from 1:09:31.560 --> 1:09:33.479 pass that they're using. Yeah, because they've been out on 1:09:33.520 --> 1:09:35.479 this landscape their whole life. Every single one of those 1:09:35.600 --> 1:09:39.200 rangers had been Some of them were former hunters U 1:09:39.720 --> 1:09:42.360 And of course hunting is now illegal in those national parks, 1:09:42.360 --> 1:09:45.960 which is a whole other discussion, but you know, some 1:09:46.040 --> 1:09:48.080 of them had been brought into the national parks by 1:09:48.200 --> 1:09:51.599 giving them a salary to not kill the wildlife anymore, 1:09:51.640 --> 1:09:56.280 but rather to to protect it U. So yeah, again 1:09:56.439 --> 1:09:58.920 it just for me, it foregrounds the importance of having 1:09:59.160 --> 1:10:03.640 a population working on wildlife research and conservation that is 1:10:03.680 --> 1:10:06.680 really tied to that that wildlife population and knows the 1:10:06.760 --> 1:10:18.599 landscape really really well. What else are you picking off 1:10:18.600 --> 1:10:23.160 on those cameras? Snow leppards one snow leopard. Yeah, and 1:10:23.320 --> 1:10:25.320 we know that she's a female. It's the first snow 1:10:25.360 --> 1:10:29.160 lepperd that was found in that park in fifty years 1:10:29.200 --> 1:10:32.479 I think. And I had also done the Long Range 1:10:32.520 --> 1:10:35.080 ski expedition in twenty thirteen in those parks and we 1:10:35.120 --> 1:10:37.840 had seen snow leppard tracks, so we knew that there 1:10:37.880 --> 1:10:39.719 was one up there. But we did get her on camera. 1:10:41.040 --> 1:10:47.000 We get a lot of links bore elk moose. Yeah. 1:10:47.040 --> 1:10:51.280 Tigers and Mongolia not anymore, Nope. But you know if 1:10:51.320 --> 1:10:55.160 the Russians, I mean, say what you want about the Russians, 1:10:55.200 --> 1:10:57.400 they do have some cool tiger conservation stuff going on, 1:10:57.439 --> 1:11:00.360 and maybe if they keep it up, there might be 1:11:00.360 --> 1:11:03.559 sun back in eastern Mongolia at some point. Huh. Yeah, 1:11:03.600 --> 1:11:07.439 the Russians are good about tigers. Yeah, I mean a 1:11:07.479 --> 1:11:10.720 man you can hold there should be like like, let's 1:11:10.720 --> 1:11:12.759 just talk about tigers and Russias. They got some tiger 1:11:12.800 --> 1:11:15.800 conservation they do. Yeah, tigers, and it doesn't mean they 1:11:15.800 --> 1:11:21.439 should have invaded Ukraine. No, I know, I completely agree 1:11:21.479 --> 1:11:24.400 with you. But there's there's like we used to we 1:11:24.479 --> 1:11:27.400 used to kind of have this like affectionate, like scornful 1:11:27.600 --> 1:11:31.760 thing about Vladimir Putin and tigers, because he had these 1:11:31.760 --> 1:11:36.280 photos of himself like shirtless, like arting darting tigers and 1:11:36.360 --> 1:11:38.880 riding horses around on tiger content. There's a shirtless photo 1:11:38.920 --> 1:11:42.200 of him with a huge yellow perch, which I don't 1:11:42.280 --> 1:11:44.800 know the head. It's a different species. They're not they're 1:11:44.880 --> 1:11:48.479 European perch. I call the boys did some research on 1:11:48.520 --> 1:11:50.960 this because they've seen those pictures of those like four 1:11:51.000 --> 1:11:53.519 pounders in Europe. There. I wouldn't if I called that perch, 1:11:53.560 --> 1:12:00.759 I wouldn't have had any clothes on make apistern. Now 1:12:01.880 --> 1:12:09.000 he bought a big perch. Yeah, So part of Vladimir 1:12:09.080 --> 1:12:10.920 Putin's like I don't know he was trying to do 1:12:11.000 --> 1:12:13.599 like twelve months of Vladimir Putin shirtless calendar with all 1:12:13.640 --> 1:12:16.200 the wildest species or whatever, but he yeah, he had 1:12:16.240 --> 1:12:21.000 a shirtless tiger photo at some point and um, yeah, 1:12:21.040 --> 1:12:25.200 so that's that's Putin and the tiger thing. That's what's 1:12:25.240 --> 1:12:28.880 not not banged. They're ammer tigers. Yeah, ammer tigers. So 1:12:28.920 --> 1:12:33.519 the emmer river. What's another one, like Siberian tigers? No? 1:12:33.520 --> 1:12:35.880 No, no no, Like, what's the you know, the um dear 1:12:35.960 --> 1:12:40.000 sue Uzala. What's that tiger species that would have been 1:12:40.040 --> 1:12:44.920 also the ammer tiger. Oh? Yeah, Siberian tigers. Siberian tigers 1:12:45.200 --> 1:12:48.320 the same thing or not? Yeah? I mean well, you 1:12:48.320 --> 1:12:50.080 know there are lumpers and splitters and they are all 1:12:50.080 --> 1:12:53.120 of these taxonomic debates all the time. But Siberian tigers. 1:12:53.520 --> 1:12:56.439 The only extant population of Siberian tigers are ammer tigers 1:12:56.439 --> 1:12:59.040 at this point, so those are the same thing. Heads up, 1:12:59.120 --> 1:13:03.040 people at home. Uh, who's the famous Japanese director that 1:13:03.120 --> 1:13:07.080 made all the samurai movies. He made a movie dar 1:13:07.160 --> 1:13:10.599 suit Uzala the Hunter, nothing to do with samurai stuff, 1:13:10.640 --> 1:13:16.679 and it's like Russians. It's like the Russian army working 1:13:16.720 --> 1:13:19.320 in Siberian they hire a hunter as a guide and 1:13:19.320 --> 1:13:24.040 he's like, has this crazy relationship with Siberian tigers. There's 1:13:24.040 --> 1:13:27.599 that book too that was popular whatever ten years ago 1:13:27.760 --> 1:13:30.680 about the guy who's trying to kill a tiger who 1:13:30.720 --> 1:13:34.120 was killing last talk about having him on the show Man. 1:13:34.720 --> 1:13:36.519 It's a good book, but he does a lot of 1:13:36.560 --> 1:13:41.160 like I was like text messages buddies. He does a 1:13:41.160 --> 1:13:44.240 lot of like don't say anything, bag, we were text buddies. No, 1:13:44.360 --> 1:13:47.240 there's a lot of like speculation about how the tiger 1:13:47.320 --> 1:13:50.440 thinks and things like that in the you know, it's interesting. 1:13:51.200 --> 1:13:55.559 Um that same author though, wrote The Golden Spruce. That's right. 1:13:56.200 --> 1:14:01.719 You want a book that will curl your hair anyhow 1:14:02.120 --> 1:14:08.640 cool bug links, Yes, moose Elk Boer place sounds like 1:14:08.640 --> 1:14:14.519 the Promised Land. I love it. Yeah, it's my second home. 1:14:14.840 --> 1:14:17.400 So you just hail Mary out of trail camera on 1:14:17.479 --> 1:14:19.559 a trail. Some guys like I saw track you once. 1:14:19.680 --> 1:14:21.520 I mean you got to have like a lot of cameras, 1:14:21.600 --> 1:14:24.240 a lot of days, and a lot of ship besides wolverines. 1:14:24.560 --> 1:14:27.439 It's yeah, I mean it's there's so much wildlife in 1:14:27.479 --> 1:14:30.479 these in these protected areas, and I think it's a 1:14:31.640 --> 1:14:34.320 People say that Mongolia is kind of this like last 1:14:34.520 --> 1:14:39.559 refuge for Eurasian wildlife because of this very deep um 1:14:40.640 --> 1:14:45.320 rappor and sense of relationship that that Mongolians have with wildlife, 1:14:45.360 --> 1:14:48.599 like it is cosmologically important to them. In a general sense, 1:14:48.640 --> 1:14:52.320 like maybe not wolverines specifically, but but wildlife and relationships 1:14:52.320 --> 1:14:54.960 with wildlife are important, and they didn't have a lot 1:14:54.960 --> 1:14:57.160 of infrastructure, so you know, it was it was a 1:14:57.160 --> 1:15:01.000 place where there was still full connective on the landscape. 1:15:02.040 --> 1:15:06.040 And although respecting wildlife and having this rapport with wildlife 1:15:06.040 --> 1:15:09.120 does not mean that you don't hunt them, or you 1:15:09.200 --> 1:15:11.559 might be less inclined to think they should kill every 1:15:11.680 --> 1:15:14.240 last one of those things precisely. Yeah, Like when I 1:15:14.680 --> 1:15:16.720 talked to a lot of my hurt her friends about 1:15:16.760 --> 1:15:20.360 how we wiped we European settlers wiped wolves out of 1:15:20.400 --> 1:15:22.920 the lower forty eight and you know, this is a 1:15:23.000 --> 1:15:26.000 hurting culture. They are constantly dealing with wolves coming in 1:15:26.080 --> 1:15:29.800 and attacking their livestock, and they were so I mean 1:15:30.080 --> 1:15:32.840 categorically everybody has just been like, what is wrong with 1:15:32.880 --> 1:15:35.599 you people? That is completely stupid? Why did you do that? 1:15:36.000 --> 1:15:40.519 M Yeah, So they deal they they deal with it. 1:15:40.720 --> 1:15:43.639 Like wolves are adversarial in some respects, So that doesn't 1:15:43.640 --> 1:15:47.439 mean that you'd want them, yes, to cease existing. Yeah, 1:15:47.479 --> 1:15:52.800 because wolves carry this this power called humor, and they're 1:15:52.880 --> 1:15:55.760 they're like humor comes from the from the sky and 1:15:55.880 --> 1:15:58.439 it conduits through wolves. And so there's a saying in 1:15:58.520 --> 1:16:00.800 Mongolia that it's lucky to see a wolf's luckier to 1:16:00.880 --> 1:16:02.960 kill a wolf. So if you see the wolf, you 1:16:03.000 --> 1:16:05.320 get you get hum or. If you kill the wolf, 1:16:05.360 --> 1:16:07.320 you get even more humor. But if all the wolves 1:16:07.360 --> 1:16:12.240 are gone, it's gone, right, And so I write this now, Yeah, 1:16:12.280 --> 1:16:16.120 And so basically it's really important for men too, because uh, 1:16:16.400 --> 1:16:18.599 you know, women can get humor in a number of ways, 1:16:18.640 --> 1:16:20.760 but for men it's like a lot more precarious. So 1:16:20.840 --> 1:16:23.559 basically what they're saying is like when they when they're 1:16:23.560 --> 1:16:27.800 astonished that we wiped out wolves, they're astonished precisely because 1:16:27.840 --> 1:16:31.080 you're like, well, you know, how are men men? There 1:16:31.080 --> 1:16:36.160 are no men if there are no wolves. So well 1:16:36.240 --> 1:16:38.880 from wolves as well, but um, mostly from seeing them, 1:16:38.880 --> 1:16:43.000 not killing them. Women can, I've been told, get renew 1:16:43.040 --> 1:16:44.880 their humor, Like if your humor is down, your life 1:16:44.920 --> 1:16:47.479 starts to go badly. So, um, you know women can 1:16:47.520 --> 1:16:55.200 do it by just like doing embroidery. Um, yeah of course, yeah, 1:16:55.200 --> 1:16:58.760 you know, like just taking care of their kids, like 1:16:58.840 --> 1:17:01.160 lighting the fire. Women have a specific relationship with the 1:17:01.200 --> 1:17:04.040 hearth and fire to which helps keep them more more 1:17:04.080 --> 1:17:07.960 in order in that regard cosmologically, um, that that men 1:17:08.040 --> 1:17:12.360 don't necessarily have. So anyway, I like, I'm not I'm 1:17:12.400 --> 1:17:14.400 just describing things that have been told to me. I 1:17:14.439 --> 1:17:18.720 don't want to be like saying that I'm necessarily advocating 1:17:18.760 --> 1:17:24.760 for women doing more embroidery or well, yes, this is 1:17:24.800 --> 1:17:27.160 what I have been told. I want to move. Um, 1:17:27.200 --> 1:17:28.560 I can talk about my mongol Ya all day. I 1:17:28.600 --> 1:17:32.200 want to talk about America a little bit. Okay, why 1:17:32.880 --> 1:17:39.240 um their day? Who's I talking to? Not you? I 1:17:39.360 --> 1:17:41.160 was talking about how you were coming on the show, 1:17:42.760 --> 1:17:45.280 and I was in Michigan and that's where I was 1:17:45.360 --> 1:17:47.760 brought up, okay, and I was like, why do they 1:17:47.800 --> 1:17:51.320 call Michigan, Like why is it the Wolverine State? So 1:17:51.360 --> 1:17:57.519 I looked up current and historical range maps, and a 1:17:57.640 --> 1:17:59.920 number of them showed historical range and I don't know 1:18:00.000 --> 1:18:01.320 how far back they're going, Like I don't want to 1:18:01.320 --> 1:18:04.240 look at historical range maps from like twenty thousand years ago, 1:18:04.840 --> 1:18:06.840 like ice sheets and shit. But I was trying to like, 1:18:06.840 --> 1:18:11.280 like at the time of European contact, let's say, right, Um, 1:18:11.320 --> 1:18:12.679 So if I was looking at that, it was saying 1:18:12.720 --> 1:18:17.040 like like all of Michigan, which I don't buy. I 1:18:17.080 --> 1:18:22.240 don't know all of Michigan, northern Wisconsin, northern Minnesota. Like, 1:18:22.280 --> 1:18:27.760 what's the best understanding of in in UH in the 1:18:28.000 --> 1:18:31.400 in historic times, Okay, wherever you can use as a 1:18:31.439 --> 1:18:35.080 jump off point, like European contact, historic times, whatever, where 1:18:35.080 --> 1:18:38.840 were they it's a it's this is it is a 1:18:38.880 --> 1:18:43.479 matter of some discussion and debate, but we think that 1:18:43.680 --> 1:18:49.240 you know, wolverine habitat requirements still within the historic past 1:18:49.400 --> 1:18:51.960 from European contact and before you know, they still had 1:18:51.960 --> 1:18:56.080 the biological requirements of needing a cold, snowy niche to occupy. 1:18:56.720 --> 1:19:01.040 So um, what is generally accept now is that they 1:19:01.080 --> 1:19:03.920 were through the rocky mountains of the US down to 1:19:04.200 --> 1:19:08.280 New Mexico. They were in the Sierra Nevada in California. 1:19:08.439 --> 1:19:12.360 They may have been in the very northern part of 1:19:12.479 --> 1:19:14.400 New England, and they may have been in some of 1:19:14.400 --> 1:19:18.520 those northern parts of UM, you know, Michigan and Minnesota 1:19:18.520 --> 1:19:22.720 in the Midwest. I think Lewis and Clark record a 1:19:22.800 --> 1:19:26.759 wolverine sighting in like Nebraska in their journals or something 1:19:26.760 --> 1:19:28.560 like that, but I'm not totally convinced that that was 1:19:28.600 --> 1:19:32.040 actually a wolverine, you know, dirt Miss Dad saw one 1:19:32.439 --> 1:19:36.519 in Miles City. There was one in downtown Lewistown last winter, Yes, 1:19:36.640 --> 1:19:41.240 like in the cemetery or something. It was a badger. 1:19:41.240 --> 1:19:43.240 And he's like, listen, this one thing. My old man knows. 1:19:43.280 --> 1:19:47.559 It's a badger, not a badger. So we can talk 1:19:47.600 --> 1:19:51.040 about why that those are. I don't ever dismiss completely 1:19:51.040 --> 1:19:54.160 out of hand people who report out of range wolverine 1:19:54.200 --> 1:19:56.920 sightings to me, because you're saying, did some some guys 1:19:56.960 --> 1:20:00.879 treed one, like scared one into a tree in Michigan? Yeah, so, um, 1:20:00.920 --> 1:20:04.120 the Michigan thing is interesting. I think what is what 1:20:04.479 --> 1:20:07.400 people speculate about why Michigan is known as the wolverine State. 1:20:07.439 --> 1:20:10.040 And I hope I'm not disillusioning you as somebody who 1:20:10.080 --> 1:20:14.559 was raised there, but that the fur trade was the 1:20:14.640 --> 1:20:21.320 first encounter that a lot of Europeans had with wolverine pelts, 1:20:21.360 --> 1:20:22.800 Like that was the first time they ever ran into 1:20:22.800 --> 1:20:24.719 wolverines because most of these people were coming from England 1:20:24.720 --> 1:20:27.640 and France and there were no longer any wolverines spaces, 1:20:28.080 --> 1:20:31.000 and so they were like, oh, here's this weird animal 1:20:31.080 --> 1:20:33.760 that's coming through these fur trading posts. In Michigan. So 1:20:33.880 --> 1:20:36.320 Michigan was the point of first encounter, but it might 1:20:36.320 --> 1:20:40.759 not have been the place of Canada down into Detroit exactly. 1:20:40.840 --> 1:20:43.360 And you're like, oh, I wanted to Detroit to the Fort, 1:20:43.560 --> 1:20:46.080 and yeah, some guys that came from four hundred miles 1:20:46.120 --> 1:20:49.719 north had a bunch of wolverine pelts exactly. Wolverine state, Yeah, exactly, 1:20:50.000 --> 1:20:53.519 and so that's probably a conduit to the north. Yes, um, 1:20:54.040 --> 1:20:56.839 those Yeah, the trade routes that were converging in Michigan 1:20:56.840 --> 1:20:59.400 were kind of the source of that. And then it's 1:20:59.400 --> 1:21:01.760 a great theory. I'm gonna starting to tell people that 1:21:01.760 --> 1:21:03.400 that's what it is. Yeah, you should. I mean, as 1:21:03.400 --> 1:21:05.880 far as we understand that is, that is the case. 1:21:06.800 --> 1:21:09.640 There was a wolverine that was treed in Michigan, and 1:21:09.920 --> 1:21:14.120 I think it was two thousand, like two thousand and eight, 1:21:15.240 --> 1:21:19.200 and some guys were out coyote hunting and they had 1:21:19.240 --> 1:21:22.280 dogs with them and they they ran this this animal 1:21:22.760 --> 1:21:26.479 into a tree and fortunately they realized that it was 1:21:26.520 --> 1:21:28.280 I mean, obviously they knew it was not a coyote 1:21:28.320 --> 1:21:30.880 because it was up a tree. But fortunately they didn't 1:21:30.960 --> 1:21:33.120 shoot it. Speaking of shooting things out of trees, they 1:21:33.160 --> 1:21:35.080 did not do that. They called the game in fish department. 1:21:35.080 --> 1:21:38.080 They were like, I think this is a wolverine, And 1:21:38.320 --> 1:21:40.720 sure enough it was. And there was a math and 1:21:40.760 --> 1:21:44.360 science teacher from the local area who set up some 1:21:44.400 --> 1:21:49.000 camera traps and decided to track this this wolverine. He 1:21:49.120 --> 1:21:52.839 was baiting his traps with chicken and um, so obviously 1:21:52.880 --> 1:21:55.920 that was a big incentive for this this wolverine. UM. 1:21:56.280 --> 1:21:58.160 And she would show up on the camera with a 1:21:58.200 --> 1:22:02.000 whole bunch of raccoons. Apparently she had some raccoon buddies 1:22:02.000 --> 1:22:03.360 she was just like hanging out with or they were 1:22:03.400 --> 1:22:06.360 all drawn to the chicken. I don't know. Yeah, um, 1:22:06.760 --> 1:22:08.840 but they seemed to be very tolerant of each other, 1:22:08.960 --> 1:22:13.960 and they he continued to monitor her. The teacher continued 1:22:14.000 --> 1:22:17.920 to monitor her until in twenty and ten or early 1:22:17.920 --> 1:22:21.880 twenty eleven she died of congestive heart failure. So they 1:22:21.880 --> 1:22:23.880 were able to find her body and neck cropsy it, 1:22:23.960 --> 1:22:26.280 and that's how they knew that she was a female. 1:22:26.320 --> 1:22:29.240 And you know, they know how she died. They ran 1:22:29.320 --> 1:22:33.880 her genetics and she did group with if you exclude 1:22:33.920 --> 1:22:36.599 Alaskan wolverines. This is my understanding of this. I haven't 1:22:36.600 --> 1:22:39.479 actually seen this report. But my understanding is that if 1:22:39.680 --> 1:22:43.000 if you exclude Alaskan wolverines from that genetic analysis, she 1:22:43.040 --> 1:22:46.800 groups with Ontario wolverines, So there is a possibility that 1:22:46.880 --> 1:22:50.920 she came into Michigan naturally. Um. The theory is that 1:22:50.960 --> 1:22:54.040 she might have been on like a garbage disposal ship 1:22:54.320 --> 1:22:57.040 that came down from from Ontario and just jumped off 1:22:57.040 --> 1:23:01.680 in Michigan. If you include a Alaskan wolverines in that 1:23:01.800 --> 1:23:05.280 genetic analysis, she I think she groups with Alaskan wolverines, 1:23:05.479 --> 1:23:07.320 and that would suggest that she might actually have been 1:23:07.360 --> 1:23:10.759 an escape captive animal because that's where that's the genetic 1:23:10.800 --> 1:23:14.479 grouping for most I know, but they always go that route. 1:23:14.880 --> 1:23:17.080 That's how they dismissed people that would see mountain lions 1:23:17.120 --> 1:23:21.080 in crazy places. For decades, Yeah, skate pets like help 1:23:21.120 --> 1:23:22.920 a lot of escape, you know what I mean, And 1:23:23.040 --> 1:23:24.760 after a while it kind of fell apart. But it's 1:23:24.800 --> 1:23:28.280 like it's like the first thing that but look at 1:23:28.600 --> 1:23:31.280 crazy places they go, Yeah, I mean, it's not that 1:23:31.439 --> 1:23:34.640 it's not that unreasonable, it's not that unreasonable. You know 1:23:34.680 --> 1:23:37.120 why people dismiss those sightings. I mean, those game and 1:23:37.160 --> 1:23:39.720 fish agencies, they're like Oh my god. The last thing 1:23:39.760 --> 1:23:41.880 they want to do is have to manage a population 1:23:41.880 --> 1:23:44.559 of mountain lions or manage a population of wolverines. Like, 1:23:44.560 --> 1:23:46.200 people are going to freak out. So it's better if 1:23:46.200 --> 1:23:51.600 we can just have some other explanation for another biologist. 1:23:51.680 --> 1:23:53.760 And then you got to have like a plan you 1:23:53.840 --> 1:23:56.080 have like people who are like freaking out about their 1:23:56.120 --> 1:23:58.120 kids getting eaten at the bus stop or what. You know. 1:23:58.200 --> 1:23:59.920 You just just a whole host of things. You just 1:24:00.040 --> 1:24:02.440 then to get one. It's like, well, here's a female 1:24:02.560 --> 1:24:06.640 that was never d claude, it has babies, it's reproduced 1:24:06.760 --> 1:24:10.479 multiple times. Yeah, well it's got like porcupine quills embedded 1:24:10.560 --> 1:24:14.360 in it from like years ago. There wasn't tell me. 1:24:14.360 --> 1:24:17.200 It's another pet mountain lion from like north or South 1:24:17.240 --> 1:24:20.760 Dakota that was killed on a highway in Connecticut, you know, 1:24:20.840 --> 1:24:23.840 and that clearly was a natural dispersal. So wolverines are 1:24:23.840 --> 1:24:27.040 capable of those kinds of movements. UM. We have a 1:24:27.080 --> 1:24:30.160 record of a wolverine who was collared off of Toga 1:24:30.200 --> 1:24:32.479 Tea Pass in the winter of two thousand and eight. 1:24:33.160 --> 1:24:37.400 UM he was collared by the Wildlife Conservation Society. His UM, 1:24:37.439 --> 1:24:41.040 his identifier was M fifty six and he my sister 1:24:41.080 --> 1:24:42.880 and I tracked him off of Toga Tea Pass in 1:24:43.000 --> 1:24:45.479 January of two thousand and nine. We heard him, We 1:24:45.520 --> 1:24:49.080 didn't see him and heard him. Yeah, we had he 1:24:49.120 --> 1:24:50.920 had a caller, so we went out with the telemetry 1:24:50.920 --> 1:24:54.400 equipment and we could we could hear that. Yeah, not 1:24:54.479 --> 1:24:59.439 just him. Um, it was no, these are they are 1:24:59.600 --> 1:25:03.920 gp S callers before at that point, like satellite upload 1:25:03.960 --> 1:25:06.080 collars were still really really expensive, so most of the 1:25:06.120 --> 1:25:10.800 callers they were putting out had internal GIS trackers UM 1:25:11.120 --> 1:25:15.560 and then they would also have the UM shoot telemetry 1:25:15.640 --> 1:25:20.400 just yeah, the little antenna UM and just and you 1:25:20.439 --> 1:25:23.120 have to be within range of it, like the animal 1:25:23.160 --> 1:25:25.080 has to be kind of like within us almost like 1:25:25.080 --> 1:25:27.920 a site line for you to actually hear that, Like 1:25:27.960 --> 1:25:29.880 you have to be in proximity to the animal, as 1:25:29.920 --> 1:25:33.519 opposed to GPSGIS which will upload now they'll upload to 1:25:33.520 --> 1:25:36.000 a satellite and like download to your phone. So when 1:25:36.000 --> 1:25:37.479 you heard it, when you payned, it was it just 1:25:37.520 --> 1:25:39.200 like thick shit. You couldn't tell what was going on 1:25:39.320 --> 1:25:41.240 or when we were up in some stuff that Yeah, 1:25:41.280 --> 1:25:43.080 it was a lot of um, there was a lot 1:25:43.120 --> 1:25:45.519 of forest and there was a lot of topography, so 1:25:45.600 --> 1:25:47.439 I think it might have been he might have been 1:25:47.479 --> 1:25:49.760 like a couple of ridges over or something like that. 1:25:50.280 --> 1:25:53.000 Um so we heard him. That was January of two 1:25:53.000 --> 1:25:57.200 thousand and nine, and then they were flying um flights 1:25:57.240 --> 1:26:00.240 like once so every couple weeks or something to it 1:26:00.320 --> 1:26:03.479 or where he was. And this happens a lot, especially 1:26:03.520 --> 1:26:05.800 with young male wolverines, like you'll put a collar on 1:26:05.880 --> 1:26:08.960 him and you'll fly and then you'll never hear from 1:26:09.000 --> 1:26:10.760 them again. They'll just disappear one day and you have 1:26:10.800 --> 1:26:14.120 no idea where they went. In this case, the guy 1:26:14.160 --> 1:26:17.639 who had the plane flew down the wind River Range 1:26:17.640 --> 1:26:20.880 and picked up this M fifty six at the southern 1:26:20.960 --> 1:26:23.160 end of the of the wind River Range, and the 1:26:23.160 --> 1:26:25.439 wolverine community was kind of all a buzz because like, 1:26:25.479 --> 1:26:27.840 at that point we didn't have any definite evidence that 1:26:27.880 --> 1:26:29.680 there were wolverines in the wind River Range, so we 1:26:29.720 --> 1:26:32.640 were like, great, he's like colonizing a new range. And 1:26:32.680 --> 1:26:35.800 then they flew again a few weeks later and he 1:26:35.920 --> 1:26:37.840 wasn't there anymore, and they were like, oh my god, 1:26:37.840 --> 1:26:41.360 did his collar malfunction? Like where did he go? What happened? 1:26:42.240 --> 1:26:44.320 So we gave him up as like another wolverine that 1:26:44.320 --> 1:26:47.920 we were never gonna know anything about. A few weeks later, 1:26:48.200 --> 1:26:52.000 there was a rancher in central Wyoming who went out 1:26:52.040 --> 1:26:55.920 to look at a cow carcass and there was a 1:26:55.960 --> 1:26:58.960 wolverine on the cow carcass. This is way outside of 1:26:58.960 --> 1:27:03.400 what is modeled verine habitat. And again luckily, this guy 1:27:03.600 --> 1:27:07.120 was like, oh that's weird and called Wyoming Game and Fish. 1:27:07.200 --> 1:27:09.800 They called the pilot, They went down and flew sure enough, 1:27:09.800 --> 1:27:12.040 it was M fifty six, And at that point, the 1:27:12.080 --> 1:27:15.240 whole environment or whole wolverine research Commune's like, oh my god, 1:27:15.560 --> 1:27:19.599 this animal is going to go to Colorado. And there 1:27:19.640 --> 1:27:23.560 had been no definite recorded resident wolverines in Colorado for 1:27:23.560 --> 1:27:26.280 about one hundred years. So for a few months all 1:27:26.280 --> 1:27:28.439 of us were just like, where's M fifty six? Where 1:27:28.520 --> 1:27:30.360 is he now? Where is he now? How is he 1:27:30.400 --> 1:27:32.519 going to get across the interstate? Shoot he might get hit? 1:27:32.920 --> 1:27:34.960 And it was I think it was Memorial Day. He 1:27:35.000 --> 1:27:37.960 went across the interstate and sure enough went into Colorado, 1:27:38.760 --> 1:27:43.120 and his transmitter remained online until two twelve. People would 1:27:43.120 --> 1:27:45.439 see him periodically in Colorado, so we knew where he 1:27:45.520 --> 1:27:50.360 was he went all over Colorado through Rocky Mountain National Park. 1:27:50.560 --> 1:27:54.200 He did, yeah, and people would photograph him there. You know, 1:27:54.320 --> 1:27:57.200 he just was enjoying his time as a mountaineer. In 1:27:57.240 --> 1:28:00.599 twenty twelve, his transmitter died and we were like, well, 1:28:00.760 --> 1:28:03.880 who knows where he is, uh, but maybe people will 1:28:03.920 --> 1:28:07.720 continue to see him. In twenty sixteen, somebody picked up 1:28:07.720 --> 1:28:09.960 a photo or saw wolverine and took a photo of 1:28:10.000 --> 1:28:14.120 a wolverine running across a field in um Northern Montana 1:28:15.000 --> 1:28:18.160 and in Northern Montana. I do not know for sure 1:28:18.240 --> 1:28:19.840 that is M fifty six, but I do know that 1:28:19.880 --> 1:28:22.479 a straight line trajectory from from that sighting. A couple 1:28:22.439 --> 1:28:24.160 of weeks later, I think it was in April of 1:28:24.160 --> 1:28:28.519 twenty sixteen. UM, there was a ranch hand in North 1:28:28.600 --> 1:28:31.200 Dakota who came out into his pasture and saw an 1:28:31.240 --> 1:28:35.320 animal in with the cows and unfortunately shot it um 1:28:35.400 --> 1:28:37.640 and put it. He apparently didn't know what it was. 1:28:37.680 --> 1:28:40.840 He put it on Facebook. He's like, you know, I 1:28:40.880 --> 1:28:43.639 shot this critter in my in with my cows this morning. 1:28:43.640 --> 1:28:46.240 And people on Facebook were like, dude, that's a wolverine, 1:28:46.280 --> 1:28:48.200 like call game and fish, and so they came in 1:28:48.280 --> 1:28:52.960 they netcropsied the animal. And we also um implant transmitters 1:28:53.040 --> 1:28:56.559 when we call wolverines, because you know, they're built like 1:28:56.560 --> 1:28:59.360 football players. They can shrug those collars, shrug those collars 1:28:59.400 --> 1:29:03.479 off like relatively easily. And so when they opened up 1:29:03.560 --> 1:29:05.760 his abdomen, they found the transmitter in there, and that 1:29:05.800 --> 1:29:10.439 was m fifty six. Yeah. So from okay, yeah, just 1:29:10.479 --> 1:29:12.559 do a quick run through. Yeah, from where he was 1:29:12.600 --> 1:29:16.960 collared on Tokte Pass to Colorado is a straight line 1:29:16.960 --> 1:29:19.280 distance of like five hundred miles. He certainly was not 1:29:19.360 --> 1:29:21.640 traveling in a straight line during that time. From his 1:29:21.720 --> 1:29:25.200 last known sighting location in Colorado to the place where 1:29:25.240 --> 1:29:27.880 he was shot in North Dakota is seven hundred straight 1:29:27.920 --> 1:29:31.160 line now, and did he ever did that wolverine ever 1:29:31.240 --> 1:29:34.439 run into a wolverine? Who knows? I mean, there's two 1:29:34.560 --> 1:29:37.280 there's two ways that you can speculate about this. Of course, 1:29:37.320 --> 1:29:41.479 a male wolverine when he's dispersing, is probably primarily interested 1:29:41.520 --> 1:29:45.000 in finding a place with a female wolverine, preferably not 1:29:45.040 --> 1:29:47.479 his mother, to avoid that Oedipus thing that we were 1:29:47.479 --> 1:29:50.400 talking about at the outside of the program. So he 1:29:50.479 --> 1:29:52.559 wants to go as far as he can from his 1:29:52.840 --> 1:29:55.960 natal area to find another area that has female wolverines 1:29:56.000 --> 1:30:00.240 in it. The fact that he didn't stick anywhere either 1:30:00.320 --> 1:30:03.400 suggests that there were no female wolverines in those areas, 1:30:03.560 --> 1:30:05.960 or it suggests that there was another male wolverine in 1:30:06.000 --> 1:30:10.120 that area that you know, booted him out all the 1:30:10.240 --> 1:30:14.559 highways he crossed without getting ahead, And I hate, I 1:30:14.640 --> 1:30:16.720 hate to think that he ended the way that he 1:30:16.760 --> 1:30:19.439 did because he's truly like he's one of those wolverines 1:30:19.479 --> 1:30:22.679 whose story we actually know, which is really rare. Most 1:30:22.680 --> 1:30:24.479 of the time wolverines are out doing this stuff, and 1:30:24.479 --> 1:30:26.360 I'm sure they've done even more amazing stuff and we 1:30:26.400 --> 1:30:28.080 just don't know about it. But this happens to be 1:30:28.240 --> 1:30:31.719 a wolverine who's who's famous? You know. I get letters 1:30:31.760 --> 1:30:33.920 from school kids who are like, where's him fifty six? 1:30:33.960 --> 1:30:35.280 What happened to him? And then I have to write 1:30:35.280 --> 1:30:37.720 to a classroom of fourth graders like, oh, yeah, it's 1:30:37.720 --> 1:30:39.640 not like things that going to kill a cow anyway. 1:30:39.760 --> 1:30:42.920 I know, I'm definitely not. That's another thing from from 1:30:42.960 --> 1:30:44.920 the Mongolia work. Like I talked to a lot of 1:30:44.920 --> 1:30:48.439 people about livestock conflict with wolverines, and there they laugh 1:30:48.479 --> 1:30:50.640 about that. They're like, this is the only way a 1:30:50.840 --> 1:30:54.880 wolverine could kill of like healthy livestock animal, as if 1:30:54.920 --> 1:30:57.960 it wasn't actually healthy, you know, so, Um, it was 1:30:58.000 --> 1:31:01.240 definitely not a threat to wild he went that fart. 1:31:01.240 --> 1:31:03.840 That's the thing about all this. Oh sorry, well, no, no, 1:31:03.880 --> 1:31:05.400 go ahead. But I was just gonna say, we should 1:31:05.479 --> 1:31:09.559 talk about their viciousness, right because that's what everybody likes 1:31:09.560 --> 1:31:11.519 to talk about. And everybody has a story and I 1:31:11.560 --> 1:31:13.559 think it was even in our notes that there's a 1:31:13.640 --> 1:31:16.280 moose that was taken down by a wolverine, and everybody 1:31:16.320 --> 1:31:18.800 there's some story where a grizzly bear has a keel 1:31:18.840 --> 1:31:21.400 and the wolverine runs the grizzly bear off because they're 1:31:21.400 --> 1:31:24.600 so And then we should also talk about their territoriality, 1:31:24.880 --> 1:31:28.200 mating behavior, all the other great things in our notes 1:31:29.080 --> 1:31:33.640 on I just want to observe though, Um, there's not 1:31:33.720 --> 1:31:36.679 that many, Like, we don't have that many critters run 1:31:36.680 --> 1:31:38.840 around with collars on them. So you go and put 1:31:38.840 --> 1:31:40.720 a collar on something, and how many I mean, how 1:31:40.720 --> 1:31:42.680 many wolverines in America are run around the collar on 1:31:42.720 --> 1:31:46.040 them right now? Oh? Very very few. How you hav 1:31:47.520 --> 1:31:50.680 what about the one you don't know about exactly. I mean, statistically, 1:31:50.720 --> 1:31:52.639 what about the one that like isn't wearing a collar 1:31:52.680 --> 1:31:55.599 that how many are in the lower forty eight like 1:31:55.720 --> 1:31:59.400 right now? Oh gosh. Um, So this is a really 1:31:59.400 --> 1:32:02.360 tricky question to answer because there have not been the 1:32:02.439 --> 1:32:05.639 kind of long term, consistent studies over a wide enough 1:32:05.680 --> 1:32:09.559 area to really give us a good idea of how 1:32:09.600 --> 1:32:12.280 many there are. Do this for me? I know you 1:32:12.320 --> 1:32:14.559 guys whole every time you deal with the biologist, they 1:32:14.560 --> 1:32:19.759 do they played this game. Okay, pretensity is holding a gun, 1:32:19.640 --> 1:32:24.519 and tell tell Brody fill this sentence out. I would 1:32:24.520 --> 1:32:28.639 be surprised to hear there are more than blank, and 1:32:28.680 --> 1:32:32.880 I would be surprised to hear there are less than blank. Okay, 1:32:33.560 --> 1:32:36.120 I would be surprised to hear that there are more 1:32:36.240 --> 1:32:41.240 than three hundred and maybe twenty five in the lower 1:32:41.360 --> 1:32:45.840 forty eight close, good number. I'm going to give you 1:32:45.880 --> 1:32:48.519 a really precise number in a moment, so I will 1:32:48.560 --> 1:32:50.920 not do the biologist game all the way through this 1:32:50.920 --> 1:32:54.120 this little spiel. Um, I would be extremely surprised if 1:32:54.160 --> 1:32:59.639 there were more than like three hundred and fifty. Yeah, 1:32:59.640 --> 1:33:03.360 and I'm we typically have said three hundred animals that's 1:33:03.360 --> 1:33:05.479 the number that we use. I've upped it a little 1:33:05.520 --> 1:33:08.439 bit because we know that there's a reproducing population now 1:33:08.560 --> 1:33:12.280 in the Cascades which was not there at the time 1:33:12.280 --> 1:33:14.720 that we initially were estimating how many were in the 1:33:14.760 --> 1:33:18.800 lower forty eight. There's also there was one wolverine in 1:33:19.120 --> 1:33:22.360 the Sierra Nevada in California, which brings me back to 1:33:22.360 --> 1:33:24.200 it as something I should have talked about before when 1:33:24.240 --> 1:33:27.040 we were talking about the original range and you know 1:33:27.160 --> 1:33:30.320 range contraction. So why why was it that M fifty 1:33:30.360 --> 1:33:32.439 six was the first wolverine in Colorado in a century 1:33:32.439 --> 1:33:34.639 and the first wolverine in North Dakota in a century. 1:33:35.160 --> 1:33:39.759 That's because when there were predator control programs primarily against 1:33:39.760 --> 1:33:43.479 wolves in the ear the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, 1:33:44.200 --> 1:33:46.360 part of that was poison carcasses. Right, you can put 1:33:46.360 --> 1:33:47.920 out a lot of poison carcasses to try to get 1:33:48.000 --> 1:33:51.000 rid of the wolves. And wolverines are a naturally rare, 1:33:51.200 --> 1:33:54.400 sparsely distributed animal on the landscape, and they are really 1:33:54.439 --> 1:33:58.200 really good at sniffing out dead animals. And Alaska's wolf 1:33:58.200 --> 1:34:02.240 man when he's checking his wolf poison, yeah, yeah, real common. Yeah, 1:34:02.320 --> 1:34:05.960 So it's like five wolves and two wolverines. Yeah, so 1:34:06.080 --> 1:34:08.760 that just wiped wolverines out of the Lower forty eight 1:34:08.800 --> 1:34:11.000 all the way back up to the Canadian border. And 1:34:11.040 --> 1:34:13.240 what you've seen since the middle of the twentieth century 1:34:13.320 --> 1:34:16.760 is recolonization. So you have that effect that you were 1:34:16.800 --> 1:34:20.400 talking about where wolverines are coming back into unoccupied habitat 1:34:20.479 --> 1:34:23.960 and so there's a pretty sharp population increase because they 1:34:24.000 --> 1:34:29.520 are this is like a wonderland for wolverine actually filling in. Yeah, 1:34:29.560 --> 1:34:34.160 so that's that's the that's what happened there. Now there's 1:34:34.240 --> 1:34:38.400 also an effective population, which is the number of adults 1:34:38.439 --> 1:34:42.280 that are actually contributing genes to the population. And there 1:34:42.560 --> 1:34:44.880 this we can actually get a fairly precise number on 1:34:45.200 --> 1:34:47.920 because we can use genetics to do it. And so 1:34:48.000 --> 1:34:50.280 in two thousand and nine, there was a study that 1:34:50.400 --> 1:34:52.840 was done out of the Rocky Mountain Research Station which 1:34:52.880 --> 1:34:55.439 took all of the genetic samples from wolverines in the 1:34:55.479 --> 1:34:58.439 Lower forty eight or in the US Rockies actually and 1:34:58.680 --> 1:35:02.160 analyze the number of contributing reproductive adults and that number 1:35:02.320 --> 1:35:07.840 was somewhere between like thirty nine and fifty two. So 1:35:08.040 --> 1:35:12.280 the adults are females adults. So these are territorial adults 1:35:12.320 --> 1:35:16.280 who are actually contributing to the population through reproduction. So 1:35:16.320 --> 1:35:18.400 you can have three hundred animals on the landscape, but 1:35:18.400 --> 1:35:20.640 two hundred and fifty of them are extraneous. They're not 1:35:20.720 --> 1:35:24.320 actually occupying a territory. They're not successful enough to reproduce. 1:35:24.760 --> 1:35:31.160 Which makes managing the species in this situation where they 1:35:31.240 --> 1:35:34.160 are living in islands of habitat that are widely separated 1:35:34.200 --> 1:35:36.880 because most of where they are is on the mountaintops, right, 1:35:37.320 --> 1:35:40.000 it makes managing the population a lot more complicated than 1:35:40.040 --> 1:35:42.759 it does in a place like Alaska, where basically everything 1:35:42.800 --> 1:35:46.000 is wolverine habitat. Right, You're managing populations and you have 1:35:46.080 --> 1:35:49.720 to maintain dispersal corridors. You have to make sure that 1:35:49.800 --> 1:35:53.960 reproductive adults are occupying these mountain ranges at a pretty 1:35:54.000 --> 1:35:57.559 consistent rate to continue to produce offspring, to disperse to 1:35:57.600 --> 1:36:00.280 new areas and so on and so forth. So is 1:36:00.360 --> 1:36:03.600 the carrying capacity there in the lower forty eight for 1:36:03.640 --> 1:36:05.400 there to be a lot more of them or is 1:36:05.439 --> 1:36:08.800 it like there's only a limited number that could ever 1:36:08.920 --> 1:36:11.800 live down here now? Yeah, precisely, Krent and I were 1:36:11.840 --> 1:36:14.519 talking about this. But for people who live here in Bozeman. 1:36:14.680 --> 1:36:17.599 I like to point to the Bridgers and say that 1:36:17.600 --> 1:36:20.559 that mountain range could hold maybe one wolverine. They have 1:36:20.640 --> 1:36:24.760 really huge territories when they're territorial adults. Males can have 1:36:24.880 --> 1:36:27.200 territories that are up to five hundred square miles. Females 1:36:27.200 --> 1:36:29.920 can have territories that are up to three hundred square miles. 1:36:29.960 --> 1:36:32.280 So like, even a range the size of the Bridgers 1:36:32.400 --> 1:36:36.320 couldn't really serve as an effective population node within the 1:36:36.400 --> 1:36:40.439 larger meta population because you know, you have you have 1:36:40.520 --> 1:36:43.880 to buy happenstance. You have to have a female arrived there, 1:36:44.040 --> 1:36:46.479 decide to stay. You have to have a male arrived 1:36:46.520 --> 1:36:48.639 there decide to stay. She has to like the male 1:36:48.760 --> 1:36:52.240 enough to reproduce with him, and then you know they're reproducing, 1:36:52.360 --> 1:36:54.280 and then they'll send out kits who may or may 1:36:54.280 --> 1:36:57.320 not make it. You know, those kids have to disperse 1:36:57.360 --> 1:36:59.720 to some other mountain range, maybe the Crazies, maybe they 1:36:59.800 --> 1:37:02.080 go down into yellow Stone, maybe they go to the Abzorkers. 1:37:02.080 --> 1:37:05.200 Who knows. But all of this is like it's really 1:37:05.240 --> 1:37:10.320 really a delicate balance. And then inherently, because they only 1:37:10.320 --> 1:37:12.599 occupy these areas that have snow on the ground until 1:37:12.680 --> 1:37:15.400 May fifteenth. You have a very limited amount of habitat 1:37:16.040 --> 1:37:20.400 within this area for them to occupy. So there is 1:37:20.439 --> 1:37:22.439 a natural carrying capacity that they are going to reach, 1:37:22.479 --> 1:37:24.800 and it is based on habitat. And that also brings 1:37:24.840 --> 1:37:29.040 us to the kind of the crux of the conservation issue, 1:37:29.080 --> 1:37:31.640 which is that there are climate models that suggests that 1:37:31.720 --> 1:37:35.120 Late Springs snowpack is going to decline substantially within the 1:37:35.120 --> 1:37:38.040 coming century, and so you're really dealing with an expanding 1:37:38.080 --> 1:37:41.920 population and a contracting amount of habitat for them, which 1:37:41.960 --> 1:37:44.960 is a really that also makes a management very complicated 1:37:45.000 --> 1:37:49.200 because it's easy to point to the population between nineteen 1:37:49.320 --> 1:37:52.600 fifty and now and say like, oh, look, the population 1:37:52.680 --> 1:37:55.920 is on this great upward trajectory. So wolverines, it looks 1:37:55.960 --> 1:37:57.519 like they're doing great. But at the same time you 1:37:57.560 --> 1:38:02.400 have this oncoming, you know, locomotive just like bearing down 1:38:02.400 --> 1:38:05.040 on them of climate change that's going to contract the habitat. 1:38:05.520 --> 1:38:08.960 So people who say, oh, the population is increasing and 1:38:09.000 --> 1:38:11.160 wolverines are doing fine are sort of posed against people 1:38:11.160 --> 1:38:13.240 who are like, but climate change is coming, and yeah, 1:38:13.240 --> 1:38:15.360 we have a guy. We're going to get into that 1:38:15.479 --> 1:38:20.640 issue around polar bears where it's where it's you can 1:38:20.680 --> 1:38:24.120 get like you can get reprimanded by the scientific community 1:38:24.240 --> 1:38:26.360 for pointing to the fact that polar bear numbers are 1:38:26.400 --> 1:38:30.720 really strong right now. Yeah, because they like climate activists 1:38:30.760 --> 1:38:33.160 don't want people to know that polar bear numbers are 1:38:33.160 --> 1:38:35.160 really strong right now because they feel that then people 1:38:35.200 --> 1:38:38.400 will become apathetic about climate Yeah, they want to be like, 1:38:38.600 --> 1:38:41.400 sure they're strong, but trust me, it's going to get bad. Yeah, 1:38:41.520 --> 1:38:44.000 don't even tell anybody that they're doing well right now 1:38:44.120 --> 1:38:48.600 because it's counterproductive, as though people can't like be intelligent 1:38:48.760 --> 1:38:51.679 enough to to like sort this out in their head. Yeah, 1:38:51.720 --> 1:38:54.760 they want to conceal the information. I think it's I mean, 1:38:54.800 --> 1:38:58.360 it's a really that is when we talk about climate change. 1:38:58.400 --> 1:39:01.479 I think it's really interesting that people have decided that 1:39:02.280 --> 1:39:05.559 charismatic wildlife need to be the root through which human 1:39:05.600 --> 1:39:08.640 beings should care about climate change. Like you're covered in 1:39:08.640 --> 1:39:10.200 poison ivy and you've said that you were going to 1:39:10.240 --> 1:39:12.960 be a committed anti climate change activists now because you 1:39:13.000 --> 1:39:17.000 don't like to itch right, Like, maybe it's better, Maybe 1:39:17.040 --> 1:39:19.760 it's better to talk to people about you're going to 1:39:19.920 --> 1:39:25.360 be getting mosquito bites more poison ivy, you have more pandemics, 1:39:25.479 --> 1:39:27.960 you're going to have more wildfires, You're gonna have less water, 1:39:28.120 --> 1:39:31.280 like I don't. I don't know that. I think that 1:39:31.400 --> 1:39:33.800 it's great to talk about the impending effects of climate 1:39:33.880 --> 1:39:37.320 change on wildlife, but I don't think it's necessarily the 1:39:37.360 --> 1:39:40.200 best thing to do to try to organize our entire 1:39:41.640 --> 1:39:44.920 reason for caring about climate change around narratives about wildlife, 1:39:44.920 --> 1:39:46.920 like you should care because it's coming for your kids 1:39:46.920 --> 1:39:49.160 and grandkids, and it's going to make their lives worse 1:39:49.320 --> 1:39:52.479 and more unhappy in small ways like poison ivy, and 1:39:52.560 --> 1:39:55.479 in very large ways like conflict over water. And you 1:39:55.520 --> 1:39:58.640 don't want the wolverine app to carry all that bird not, 1:39:58.920 --> 1:40:01.240 bet don't. I just want people to think that wolverines 1:40:01.280 --> 1:40:03.800 are cool and they deserve to persist. Because they're cool, 1:40:03.960 --> 1:40:06.800 and they deserve to persist. They're an awesome animal, and 1:40:06.880 --> 1:40:09.719 they have a right to be here and to continue 1:40:09.800 --> 1:40:12.200 to live in the world. You know what, I think, 1:40:12.200 --> 1:40:17.600 you guys mess up in your world. Um, have you 1:40:17.600 --> 1:40:20.679 ever read Osborne Russell's Journal of a Trapper? I have not? Okay, 1:40:20.680 --> 1:40:24.280 A very meticulous note taker, okay, okay, and he combed 1:40:24.280 --> 1:40:27.879 out what would have been in eighteen twenties. They worked everything, 1:40:27.960 --> 1:40:30.760 like all the stuff, like all the stuff the app 1:40:30.800 --> 1:40:35.439 Sorca's Yellowstone, okay, and he took he takes meticulous notes 1:40:35.560 --> 1:40:38.679 about where they're at, what they saw. He it's interesting 1:40:38.760 --> 1:40:47.400 he calls wolverine's common. Oh, and he's he's you know, 1:40:48.400 --> 1:40:50.360 like like his journal is sort of one of the 1:40:50.400 --> 1:40:52.360 main you know, it's one of the main thing. It's 1:40:52.400 --> 1:40:55.080 one of the main historical tacts about that era because 1:40:55.080 --> 1:40:59.439 he was just a fastidious note taker about location, distance counting. 1:41:00.040 --> 1:41:02.360 You know, it's a little dry at times, but anyways, 1:41:02.800 --> 1:41:05.800 he describes wolverines as common. Now you know that there's 1:41:05.800 --> 1:41:08.639 a big debate here about how many grizzlies are here, right, 1:41:09.240 --> 1:41:11.240 And we even had the guy that we had a 1:41:11.240 --> 1:41:15.080 guy from the USGS, Frank can Member his name, he 1:41:15.160 --> 1:41:17.920 was in charge of like yeah, he ran the count 1:41:18.040 --> 1:41:22.719 yeah on grizzlies, okay, And he was saying the model 1:41:23.560 --> 1:41:27.320 he feels I'm paraphrasing here, so apologies, I'm not gonna 1:41:27.320 --> 1:41:32.960 mess this up too bad. The models outdated. Their understanding 1:41:33.000 --> 1:41:35.240 of how big of a territory or breeding age female 1:41:35.280 --> 1:41:43.240 needed was based on that in the absence of bears. Okay, 1:41:43.320 --> 1:41:48.120 in the absence of grizzlies, female grizzlies, we're using a 1:41:48.240 --> 1:41:51.040 much bigger area. So when you take all the suitable 1:41:51.080 --> 1:41:53.080 habitat and chunk it up into like, well, we know 1:41:53.120 --> 1:41:55.639 a female needs a chunk of ground this big whatever 1:41:55.640 --> 1:41:58.320 square mile, hundred square miles, whatever it is. Every breeding 1:41:58.320 --> 1:42:02.200 age female needs that. So how many of these hexagons 1:42:04.320 --> 1:42:07.479 fit in the landmass? Okay, So like, here's the area 1:42:07.600 --> 1:42:09.680 we know that each let's say each wolverine wants three 1:42:09.720 --> 1:42:12.000 hundred square miles, and so we take and you make 1:42:12.080 --> 1:42:13.680 like a shape, and you go like, how many of 1:42:13.680 --> 1:42:17.160 these shapes fit in this place? But it might be 1:42:17.320 --> 1:42:20.920 that you're basing an assumption that is bait, Like your 1:42:20.960 --> 1:42:24.760 assumption about what they need is based on low density 1:42:25.200 --> 1:42:28.120 and what they can use if they have it. Let 1:42:28.160 --> 1:42:30.960 me put it to you another way. I pulled you 1:42:31.000 --> 1:42:33.439 know how a wild raspberry girls around here in the 1:42:33.479 --> 1:42:37.000 high country. Yeah, okay, he's grown in the rocks right 1:42:37.000 --> 1:42:39.479 in a scree slide, and he's got like he's got 1:42:39.479 --> 1:42:42.240 like four inches of vine and a berry. Yeah. Okay. 1:42:42.880 --> 1:42:45.080 I took one of those my kids and buried at 1:42:45.120 --> 1:42:47.640 my yard. Yeah, and my raspberry patch, I started to 1:42:47.640 --> 1:42:49.559 fertilize it. I guess I'll make that s bitches now 1:42:50.520 --> 1:42:54.920 your entire Okay, So, meaning like, if there's no wolverines 1:42:54.960 --> 1:42:57.760 around because we poison them all off one hundred fifty 1:42:57.840 --> 1:43:00.479 years ago, and you look and be like, this female 1:43:00.600 --> 1:43:04.080 uses three hundred square miles, Well maybe in fifty years 1:43:05.800 --> 1:43:07.479 she's gonna be like it was sweet. I used to 1:43:07.520 --> 1:43:09.439 have the whole mountain range to myself, but I now 1:43:09.680 --> 1:43:12.439 am like a little more boxed in. And the model's 1:43:12.520 --> 1:43:14.920 wrong because this guy was even saying like he doesn't 1:43:14.920 --> 1:43:17.560 believe his own model, but he doesn't have the autonomy 1:43:17.600 --> 1:43:19.559 to update the model. So you'll say, like, oh, how 1:43:19.600 --> 1:43:22.839 many grizzies are in the Greater Yellostone ecosystem? Seven hundred 1:43:23.000 --> 1:43:27.160 probably more? Yeah, well how many more than that? But 1:43:27.160 --> 1:43:29.439 I won't tell you how many? Yeah, because I can't 1:43:29.479 --> 1:43:32.320 independently update the model even though we realize our model 1:43:32.400 --> 1:43:36.519 was wrong. Yeah. So meaning why did Osborne Russell think 1:43:36.560 --> 1:43:39.240 they were common? So I have two I have well, 1:43:39.280 --> 1:43:40.600 I have a couple things to say about that. I 1:43:40.960 --> 1:43:43.479 definitely think I'm so glad that you guys were talking 1:43:43.520 --> 1:43:46.680 at the beginning about that colonization effect because and this 1:43:46.720 --> 1:43:48.360 is where I'm going to tie it back to Mongolia. 1:43:48.400 --> 1:43:51.160 I remember I was saying that in Mongolia you have 1:43:51.160 --> 1:43:54.880 wolverines outside of the habitat model, and that this was 1:43:54.920 --> 1:44:00.920 really puzzling to a lot of people when we talk 1:44:00.920 --> 1:44:05.559 about wolverine territories, that's the need that that's the amount 1:44:05.600 --> 1:44:08.719 of a space that a territorial adult needs. But within 1:44:09.000 --> 1:44:13.680 the territorial adults territory, her kits are also going to 1:44:13.680 --> 1:44:15.840 be living for up to a year and a half, 1:44:16.200 --> 1:44:19.599 So we haven't really talked about how the reproductive biology works. 1:44:19.640 --> 1:44:22.200 And um, you know, coming back to the whole thing 1:44:22.200 --> 1:44:24.400 about whether they're attacking their dads or just killing some 1:44:24.479 --> 1:44:29.000 old man that they meet. Um, wolverines have their kits 1:44:29.200 --> 1:44:31.920 and then they have this like interesting model of like 1:44:32.040 --> 1:44:36.160 long term parental care, which is pretty uncommon in in 1:44:36.439 --> 1:44:40.400 large mammals. So they they actually let their kids hang 1:44:40.439 --> 1:44:43.800 out in their territory for up to eighteen months after 1:44:44.439 --> 1:44:48.840 the kids are born, typically two. They can have up 1:44:48.880 --> 1:44:52.720 to four. So if you have a female wolverine who 1:44:52.760 --> 1:44:55.479 has four kids, if she's or if her territory is 1:44:55.520 --> 1:44:58.439 really rich and she has the body fat and the 1:44:58.479 --> 1:45:01.320 condition to have four kids. She will become pregnant with 1:45:01.360 --> 1:45:03.479 four kids, and then she will have those four kids, 1:45:03.520 --> 1:45:05.639 and then they will be running around in her territory 1:45:05.760 --> 1:45:09.439 and her partner's territory for you know, quite quite some time. 1:45:10.320 --> 1:45:13.240 So now there's six wolverines, but it's one females home, 1:45:13.640 --> 1:45:16.920 one female's territory, two breeding adults, and four of those 1:45:16.960 --> 1:45:21.040 extraneous animals. So I we see this in Mongolia too, 1:45:21.120 --> 1:45:23.200 where again, like you set up a camera and you 1:45:23.240 --> 1:45:25.519 just get wolverines on the camera, and that's kind of 1:45:25.600 --> 1:45:29.639 unheard of here in the US Rockies at this point. 1:45:30.640 --> 1:45:33.519 I think that part of the reason is because we 1:45:33.560 --> 1:45:37.360 are still in a recolonization phase where the landscape is 1:45:37.360 --> 1:45:40.720 not fully saturated with wolverines. And once you get a 1:45:41.320 --> 1:45:46.280 really interconnected metapopulation where all of the territories are occupied 1:45:46.439 --> 1:45:49.320 it with reproductive adults and they're all sending out kits, 1:45:49.760 --> 1:45:51.960 you do get a lot of wolverines that are running 1:45:51.960 --> 1:45:54.880 through habitat that is not wolverine habitat. Because those are young, 1:45:54.920 --> 1:45:57.559 they're dispersers. They're like the equivalent of us when we're 1:45:57.560 --> 1:45:59.160 in college. They're just kind of like gooping off and 1:45:59.160 --> 1:46:01.800 trying to figure things out out going here, and they're 1:46:02.040 --> 1:46:04.880 trying to find a place to be. And then this 1:46:04.920 --> 1:46:07.760 may also pertain to why you see wolverines in the 1:46:07.840 --> 1:46:12.080 historical record in places like Maine potentially, or in Michigan, 1:46:12.360 --> 1:46:14.320 if you did have live wolverines, they're part of the 1:46:14.320 --> 1:46:17.479 reason is because they were coming down from those much 1:46:17.520 --> 1:46:22.200 more robust, reproductive populations that are centered further to the north. 1:46:22.400 --> 1:46:24.479 So it's a classic sort of source sink. You know, 1:46:24.560 --> 1:46:27.360 there's there are areas of really good habitat, and there 1:46:27.360 --> 1:46:32.240 are areas of marginal habitat, and wolverines can reproduce outside 1:46:32.320 --> 1:46:37.960 of optimal habitat. So that may fifteenth spring snowpack habitat. 1:46:39.200 --> 1:46:43.880 Female wolverines give birth in the snow in mid February. 1:46:44.360 --> 1:46:47.240 So we say, for anybody who hates Valentine's Day and 1:46:47.360 --> 1:46:50.439 or for anybody who wants another reason to celebrate it 1:46:50.479 --> 1:46:54.200 even more, we say that Valentine's Day is wolverine birthday. 1:46:54.280 --> 1:47:00.400 That is the the internationally officially recognized wolverine birthday all day. Yeah, 1:47:00.439 --> 1:47:03.439 and are they altricial or precocial? Like do they have 1:47:03.520 --> 1:47:08.080 little hairless babies? They're like they're they're they're they're not hairless, 1:47:08.120 --> 1:47:10.599 but they're pretty I mean you they can just toss 1:47:10.640 --> 1:47:13.439 a newborn wolverine out into the world and have it survive. 1:47:14.120 --> 1:47:16.479 Are they as helpless as like a bear's Yeah, um, 1:47:17.040 --> 1:47:20.519 probably not as helpless as a bear. Um. But they 1:47:20.640 --> 1:47:23.160 are in the den, in that snowden with their mother 1:47:23.640 --> 1:47:26.519 until Mother's Day, so Valentine's Day to Mother's Day, and 1:47:26.560 --> 1:47:28.920 at that point, after those three months of staying in 1:47:28.920 --> 1:47:32.120 the snowden, they are pretty much capable of like going 1:47:32.160 --> 1:47:35.640 out and surviving um, although they still apparently have a 1:47:35.640 --> 1:47:37.360 lot to learn, which is why they continue to hang 1:47:37.360 --> 1:47:39.559 out with their parents, sometimes with their moms, sometimes with 1:47:39.560 --> 1:47:42.000 their dads, sometimes with their sibling, just like kind of 1:47:42.040 --> 1:47:45.320 exploring the landscape, figuring out how to use resources, you know, 1:47:45.360 --> 1:47:47.800 whatever it is that wolverines do UM in the course 1:47:47.800 --> 1:47:52.800 of becoming adult dispersers UM. And so the so to 1:47:52.880 --> 1:47:56.960 go back to the question about like our biologists underestimating 1:47:57.000 --> 1:47:59.320 the number of animals on a landscape, I think it 1:47:59.360 --> 1:48:02.160 does depend on the animal that you're talking about and 1:48:02.200 --> 1:48:04.880 the model that you're using. There is no doubt that 1:48:04.960 --> 1:48:09.440 models should be continually updated depending on population density. UM. 1:48:09.560 --> 1:48:11.559 But in the case of wolverines, I think that a 1:48:11.600 --> 1:48:14.160 lot of the kind of the perception that they are 1:48:14.680 --> 1:48:17.840 common comes from the fact that if he was if 1:48:17.880 --> 1:48:20.519 he was in an area where there were reproductive adults, 1:48:21.200 --> 1:48:23.080 he was probably seeing a lot of wolverines and a 1:48:23.120 --> 1:48:26.160 lot of wolverines sign just because they were there with 1:48:26.200 --> 1:48:28.680 their with their young. Um, and he's dealing with a 1:48:28.760 --> 1:48:31.440 lot of carcasses he's dealing with If he's dealing with carcasses, 1:48:31.439 --> 1:48:32.920 Oh yeah, of course you're going to be like, yeah, 1:48:33.800 --> 1:48:36.080 they like live off the land in the high country. Ye. 1:48:36.240 --> 1:48:40.639 So you're exactly right. You're you're creating, and you're probably 1:48:40.640 --> 1:48:43.160 that you're probably creating in the animals some idea of 1:48:43.160 --> 1:48:45.920 how to find shit. Oh yeah, I mean association. Right, 1:48:46.040 --> 1:48:48.920 You can certainly have wolverines who who I mean. They're 1:48:49.000 --> 1:48:52.240 very smart animals, I think, and they know what's up. 1:48:52.320 --> 1:48:55.280 Like when you were talking about the wolverines in the 1:48:55.320 --> 1:48:58.160 Cariboo hunting area, um coming in and like you know, 1:48:58.240 --> 1:49:02.040 taking pieces of cariboo and stashing the places. That is 1:49:02.120 --> 1:49:04.120 that those wolverines are smart. They figured out like, oh, 1:49:04.160 --> 1:49:05.880 there's a food source here, We're gonna come in and 1:49:05.920 --> 1:49:10.719 we're gonna you know, optimize our interaction with this food source. 1:49:20.720 --> 1:49:23.280 What's the biggest thing they'll kill without needing to find 1:49:23.280 --> 1:49:28.160 it already dead? Um. I think there is a report, 1:49:28.280 --> 1:49:30.519 and this is anecdotal. I have not seen the primary 1:49:30.560 --> 1:49:32.559 source on this, but it's a widespread report that I've 1:49:32.560 --> 1:49:35.160 heard from multiple wolverine biologists as I was first coming 1:49:35.200 --> 1:49:38.840 into the field that there was a thirty pound female 1:49:38.880 --> 1:49:43.360 wolverine in Alaska who killed a full grown moose. Man 1:49:43.560 --> 1:49:46.080 I heard, I've heard a report. It's in a book 1:49:46.120 --> 1:49:49.080 I read, and it was the book was a biologist 1:49:49.120 --> 1:49:52.040 in Fairbanks of one killing a doll sheet, or it 1:49:52.120 --> 1:49:54.400 was like someone watched it happened or something. I can't remember. 1:49:54.439 --> 1:49:56.240 I might be mixing it up. I have a friend 1:49:56.439 --> 1:49:59.679 who was a fellow Peace Corp volunteer in Mongolia who 1:50:00.040 --> 1:50:04.080 watched two who watched the wolverine charge to our gallium, 1:50:04.200 --> 1:50:06.439 which are you know, like two hundred pound big horned 1:50:06.520 --> 1:50:09.840 sheet basically and try to run them off a cliff. Um. 1:50:09.920 --> 1:50:12.840 So there's like there's no doubt that like they are 1:50:12.880 --> 1:50:15.840 capable of doing that either through and I think what 1:50:16.000 --> 1:50:18.720 usually happens with large prey, large ungulate prey is that 1:50:18.760 --> 1:50:22.440 they're stranded in the snow. Wolverines, of course walk plantigrade. 1:50:22.479 --> 1:50:24.720 They have these big snowshoe feet. They can float up 1:50:24.760 --> 1:50:28.679 on top of the snow a lot better than um, 1:50:28.720 --> 1:50:32.120 you know, ungulates and even uh digigrade animals like cats 1:50:32.200 --> 1:50:35.439 or dogs, which punch through. Um. And so they find 1:50:35.479 --> 1:50:37.479 these animals that are bogged down in the snow and 1:50:37.479 --> 1:50:43.080 they plantigrade versus digigrade. Like you're saying, it just doesn't 1:50:43.120 --> 1:50:45.240 the foot doesn't flex forward and push through or what 1:50:45.400 --> 1:50:49.720 is it? Sorry? Yeah, So humans and bears and wolverines, 1:50:49.760 --> 1:50:51.880 we all walk plantigrade. That means we walk with our 1:50:51.920 --> 1:50:56.160 heels down. Um digigrade animals have evolved to kind of 1:50:56.160 --> 1:50:58.040 walk up on their toes. So if you look at 1:50:58.040 --> 1:51:00.000 a cat or a dog, right, they have that little 1:51:00.160 --> 1:51:03.720 like their legs are kind of shape like this. They 1:51:03.840 --> 1:51:06.000 kind of have that L shape, and that little that 1:51:06.200 --> 1:51:09.519 the corner of the l is where the heel actually 1:51:09.920 --> 1:51:13.840 would be if they were walking plantigrade. So, um, when 1:51:13.840 --> 1:51:16.320 you walk heel down, you've got you know, obviously more 1:51:16.400 --> 1:51:19.320 surface area. And a wolverine is relatively small. I know, 1:51:19.439 --> 1:51:21.160 there's a lot of reports that there are like sixty 1:51:21.200 --> 1:51:23.760 pound wolverines out there, but in this ecosystem, a very 1:51:23.800 --> 1:51:27.040 large wolverine would be about thirty pounds. That's very large. 1:51:27.439 --> 1:51:31.320 That's that's pretty substantial. Yeah. Further north, of course they 1:51:31.360 --> 1:51:33.839 get a little bit bigger, up to like maybe forty pounds, 1:51:33.880 --> 1:51:35.760 but um, you know, they don't they don't get much 1:51:35.760 --> 1:51:37.960 bigger than that. They look bigger because they've got all 1:51:37.960 --> 1:51:42.560 that fur, but um, yeah, so they will attack animals 1:51:42.560 --> 1:51:45.120 that are bogged down in the snow. And there's a 1:51:45.200 --> 1:51:48.240 video if if listeners want to see this, you can 1:51:48.280 --> 1:51:54.679 google m like Norwegian wolverine attacking reindeer. It'll probably come up. Yeah. 1:51:54.720 --> 1:51:57.320 It's like in a snowstorm. The reindeer is kind of 1:51:57.360 --> 1:51:59.519 blinded and confused by the snow. There was a guy 1:51:59.520 --> 1:52:01.840 who hap to be like recording this whole thing, and 1:52:01.880 --> 1:52:04.280 the wolverine just keeps like jumping on the reindeer's back 1:52:04.840 --> 1:52:08.519 and attacking it and weakening it, and then eventually it dies. 1:52:08.600 --> 1:52:10.840 It's a it's a messy experience. When we're talking about 1:52:10.840 --> 1:52:14.599 wolverines being vicious. Um, I don't like to promote that 1:52:14.680 --> 1:52:17.200 image of them because I think, you know, people don't 1:52:17.240 --> 1:52:19.639 like to try to conserve vicious animals. But I also 1:52:19.680 --> 1:52:21.680 don't like to skirt around the fact that this is 1:52:22.120 --> 1:52:25.280 an animal that is carnivorous and it is killing other 1:52:25.320 --> 1:52:29.680 animals in ways that are pretty pretty gruesome. So, um, 1:52:29.960 --> 1:52:31.600 I think that a lot of a lot of it 1:52:31.640 --> 1:52:34.160 seems to be that they just wear these animals down 1:52:34.400 --> 1:52:37.160 by bleeding them out and attacking them and you know, 1:52:37.600 --> 1:52:39.720 um yeah, and then they have a food source that 1:52:39.760 --> 1:52:41.719 they can eat for like a month or so, especially 1:52:41.760 --> 1:52:44.679 if it stays cold. It's you know, that carcass stays preserved. 1:52:45.080 --> 1:52:47.320 They know where it is. If it's buried in the snow, 1:52:47.400 --> 1:52:50.400 so much the better because then other things can't get 1:52:50.439 --> 1:52:53.360 to it. Did you hear about that collaring project in 1:52:53.600 --> 1:52:57.960 southeast Alaska where they had they had a bunch of 1:52:57.960 --> 1:53:00.160 stuff collared in areas they're looking at their eyes, that 1:53:00.200 --> 1:53:02.720 building a road as the Haynes Highway or whatever. Hell, 1:53:03.560 --> 1:53:07.000 And they had a collared moose fall into a crevasse, 1:53:09.160 --> 1:53:11.519 a collared a part of a grizzly bear that was 1:53:11.560 --> 1:53:17.240 part of the collaring project climbed in there, Scott stuck died, 1:53:18.040 --> 1:53:20.080 and then a wolverine that was collared as part of 1:53:20.120 --> 1:53:23.040 the project got in there. And scavenged the carcasses. I 1:53:23.160 --> 1:53:26.960 did not hear that. Okay, that is yeah. That wolverine 1:53:27.080 --> 1:53:29.000 was like, oh my gosh, my year is made. And 1:53:29.360 --> 1:53:32.599 another one out of that same project, another one got 1:53:32.680 --> 1:53:34.880 caught two hundred and fifty miles more they collared it. 1:53:35.640 --> 1:53:38.040 That got caught by a trapper in British Columbia. That 1:53:38.280 --> 1:53:40.439 does not surprise me at all. Like that is the 1:53:40.520 --> 1:53:42.920 kind of thing when and that's why when people say, 1:53:42.960 --> 1:53:45.080 oh I saw a wolverine running through my field, and Ohio, 1:53:45.200 --> 1:53:47.960 I'm like, highly skeptical. But tell me more. You know, 1:53:48.120 --> 1:53:51.960 I I know something about Krim a long time ago. 1:53:52.200 --> 1:53:54.680 I said that she ought to get whoever ran that 1:53:54.920 --> 1:54:01.800 whole collaring project on the podcast. Still doesn't happen. Wait 1:54:01.840 --> 1:54:04.439 which coloring project where they were where they did that 1:54:04.560 --> 1:54:08.479 crazy collaring project around that road construction project in southeast 1:54:08.479 --> 1:54:12.400 Alaska and they had the collared moose, bear, and wolverine 1:54:12.600 --> 1:54:17.080 all come together. Oh I totally forgot about that. That's 1:54:18.080 --> 1:54:19.840 not the knock on today's guess, but that a hell 1:54:19.880 --> 1:54:24.559 of a guest who did that? Okay, whole work assignment 1:54:24.640 --> 1:54:29.880 for me dead no old age, because I just forgot 1:54:29.920 --> 1:54:34.000 about it. For four years. I feel like I was you, 1:54:34.080 --> 1:54:36.040 I was telling about that. I feel like this might 1:54:36.120 --> 1:54:38.960 be the first that I've heard of. Maybe I just 1:54:39.080 --> 1:54:41.560 thought it. Maybe I thought I need to tell Crane 1:54:41.600 --> 1:54:45.680 about this. What's the what's the most impressive thing about 1:54:45.960 --> 1:54:48.680 wolverines that people you think people should know about that 1:54:48.760 --> 1:54:52.240 they don't know about? Who wrote it's like that, like 1:54:52.400 --> 1:54:59.000 something you've seen it? Like what blooded killers? Um? I mean, 1:54:59.080 --> 1:55:01.680 I think I talked about the thing that is most 1:55:01.720 --> 1:55:04.320 impressive to me, just the endurance that they have, the 1:55:04.720 --> 1:55:09.120 way that they can travel, you know, pretty much endlessly, 1:55:09.920 --> 1:55:13.400 and you know they also this is there was a 1:55:13.440 --> 1:55:15.839 big study in Glacier National Park, and this is probably 1:55:15.960 --> 1:55:18.480 relatively well known because there was an author named Doug 1:55:18.560 --> 1:55:21.600 Chadwick who wrote called The Wolverine Way, where he talks 1:55:21.640 --> 1:55:24.960 about the wolverine that you know, started to like go 1:55:25.160 --> 1:55:28.760 around Mount Cleveland and then just decided, you know, the 1:55:28.840 --> 1:55:30.280 hell with it, it's going to be easier to go 1:55:30.400 --> 1:55:33.440 over the top and went up five thousand vertical feet 1:55:33.520 --> 1:55:35.680 or something like that in about forty five minutes and 1:55:35.840 --> 1:55:37.520 down the other side, and there was a carcass on 1:55:37.600 --> 1:55:38.880 the other side that it was trying to get to 1:55:39.120 --> 1:55:41.240 and it you could see in the caller data like 1:55:41.480 --> 1:55:44.080 it started to go around and then it was like, Nope, 1:55:44.240 --> 1:55:45.800 I'm just hungry and I want to get to my 1:55:45.880 --> 1:55:48.840 meal immediately, and up it went and over and to 1:55:49.000 --> 1:55:51.920 that carcass. And so that to me, the fact that 1:55:52.040 --> 1:55:56.160 they are such incredible mountaineers and sort of endurance athletes, 1:55:56.280 --> 1:55:58.200 I think is something that a lot of people don't 1:55:58.240 --> 1:56:01.040 know about them. And then on the softer side, I 1:56:01.080 --> 1:56:04.160 would say too that they are actually really good parents, 1:56:04.280 --> 1:56:07.480 which is not something that most people know, but like 1:56:08.280 --> 1:56:10.880 they invest a lot in their young, they take care 1:56:10.920 --> 1:56:13.120 of them, they have these ongoing relationships with them for 1:56:13.200 --> 1:56:16.240 quite a while after they are sort of technically independent. 1:56:17.480 --> 1:56:21.240 Both sexes take part in the parenting. Yeah, I think 1:56:21.280 --> 1:56:23.080 that was one of the most interesting things to come 1:56:23.120 --> 1:56:26.520 out of that Glacier research um. For a long time, 1:56:26.680 --> 1:56:28.960 there was a sort of this like myth around wolverines 1:56:29.000 --> 1:56:31.600 that the male wolverines would go and kill the kits, 1:56:31.920 --> 1:56:34.680 which doesn't make any sense evolutionarily, like if if those 1:56:34.720 --> 1:56:36.840 are your kits, like you, the last thing you want 1:56:36.880 --> 1:56:38.840 to do is actually kill that. Yeah, but that is 1:56:38.920 --> 1:56:41.040 a thing though, I mean, like on Kodiac, like a 1:56:41.080 --> 1:56:46.000 primary food source of of male brown bears as baby 1:56:46.080 --> 1:56:49.520 brown bears. That is, there's a chance. There is a chance, 1:56:49.600 --> 1:56:51.600 and I think a lot of people because wolverines look 1:56:51.640 --> 1:56:53.960 like bears. They've got five toes like bears. They you know, 1:56:54.400 --> 1:56:56.760 one of their bear, they're like, oh, it's just a 1:56:56.760 --> 1:56:58.800 little bear. They act the same way. But what they 1:56:58.840 --> 1:57:01.080 actually saw in the call the data was that these 1:57:01.160 --> 1:57:04.280 male wolverines were visiting the dens. We don't know what 1:57:04.360 --> 1:57:06.280 they were doing there, but we do know that they 1:57:06.320 --> 1:57:10.320 would regularly visit the dens um. Maybe they were bringing food, 1:57:10.440 --> 1:57:14.120 and that after the kids came out of the den um, 1:57:14.280 --> 1:57:17.480 they would travel periodically with their mom and periodically with 1:57:17.600 --> 1:57:20.360 their dad. Yeah, that's taking a trip with their dad. Yeah, 1:57:20.640 --> 1:57:22.640 it's just that's when they had that big fight. Yet, 1:57:24.320 --> 1:57:26.200 I mean, maybe they do get into these big disagrees. 1:57:26.240 --> 1:57:28.240 He was coming to the dens like you ready yet, 1:57:28.760 --> 1:57:30.920 ready for that fight yet? Oh you guys are just 1:57:31.080 --> 1:57:35.480 now disrupting my whole tranquil vision of wolverine family life. 1:57:36.320 --> 1:57:38.400 But that is wild, though. Man, he'll come and check. 1:57:38.720 --> 1:57:42.840 He'll come around and check. Yeah. Yeah, and my kids 1:57:42.840 --> 1:57:44.840 there are talking about some animal and they're like wonder 1:57:44.840 --> 1:57:47.720 where his daddy is. You know, I'm like that, dear. Yeah, 1:57:49.040 --> 1:57:54.000 we'll have no interaction knowledge of it just isn't. It'll 1:57:54.040 --> 1:57:56.120 stay glued to its mom. But it's like it's not 1:57:56.920 --> 1:57:58.920 well if it's a buck though, it might sparse dad 1:57:58.960 --> 1:58:02.000 one day, Yeah someday, Yeah my spar was dad. But yeah, 1:58:02.040 --> 1:58:04.640 I'm just like like he he doesn't know or care. 1:58:04.800 --> 1:58:07.600 Yeah that dear knows his mom like inside no, but 1:58:07.760 --> 1:58:10.880 has no idea of dad. Yeah. Um no, that's it's 1:58:10.920 --> 1:58:13.000 different for wolverines, and I would love to know more 1:58:13.160 --> 1:58:16.360 about why. Um, But they Yeah, they do have these 1:58:16.480 --> 1:58:19.920 these sort of family relationships that persist for quite a while. 1:58:19.960 --> 1:58:22.760 I don't know. I don't know if like if a 1:58:22.840 --> 1:58:26.160 young wolverine left and came back, whether his dad would 1:58:26.200 --> 1:58:29.520 still be as like tolerant of him. Um. But you know, 1:58:30.000 --> 1:58:32.000 as far as we know, they do interact with each 1:58:32.040 --> 1:58:35.280 other amiably. They also have you guys, not had any 1:58:35.360 --> 1:58:37.720 chance to go to a den and just set up 1:58:37.920 --> 1:58:40.120 like good cameras and just observe like what's going on 1:58:40.200 --> 1:58:41.320 at the den? Or is that just too hard to 1:58:41.360 --> 1:58:44.080 pull off? I have never done that. They do, Um, 1:58:44.640 --> 1:58:47.760 So they do call her kits um. I have never 1:58:47.920 --> 1:58:50.720 personally done this. You go in right at that cusp 1:58:50.920 --> 1:58:53.480 where you know it's they're almost ready to be out 1:58:53.520 --> 1:58:56.280 of the den, so like mid may dig him out, 1:58:56.320 --> 1:59:00.240 stick a color on him, and then they're they're out. Um. 1:59:00.480 --> 1:59:02.920 But there have been a few projects in Canada that 1:59:03.000 --> 1:59:05.400 have set up cameras next to the den, and what 1:59:05.520 --> 1:59:08.200 they've seen in I think every instance is they go in, 1:59:08.280 --> 1:59:09.840 they put this camera up on the den, and the 1:59:09.920 --> 1:59:14.600 female moves the kits within like forty So even though 1:59:15.320 --> 1:59:19.720 they are like relatively tolerant of certain levels and kinds 1:59:19.720 --> 1:59:22.800 of human activity, if you stick an object that they 1:59:22.840 --> 1:59:25.600 can smell and see, like right at the place where 1:59:25.720 --> 1:59:27.280 where she has her kits, she is not going to 1:59:27.360 --> 1:59:30.320 like that. So um, we tend to I've had a 1:59:30.360 --> 1:59:32.240 lot of film projects contact me and be like, hey, 1:59:32.360 --> 1:59:34.280 can you like give us a den location so we 1:59:34.280 --> 1:59:36.080 can put a camera on it. And I don't think 1:59:36.240 --> 1:59:37.960 I don't think it's ethical to do that, and I'm 1:59:37.960 --> 1:59:40.520 not going to assist with things like that. Yeah, do 1:59:40.640 --> 1:59:43.560 they like does the male let's say he's just out 1:59:43.640 --> 1:59:48.680 cruising about like old sixty five was it fifty six? Yeah, 1:59:49.240 --> 1:59:52.760 he does he have a den location. No, So this 1:59:52.960 --> 1:59:54.480 is another thing. I get a lot, I guess so 1:59:54.600 --> 1:59:57.520 many reports of wolverine sightings, and I dearly love interacting 1:59:57.560 --> 1:59:59.120 with the people who send them. But one of the 1:59:59.280 --> 2:00:01.400 red flags from me whenever anybody's like, oh I got 2:00:01.440 --> 2:00:03.160 a wolverine in a den in my backyard, I'm like, 2:00:03.240 --> 2:00:05.880 that is not a wolverine. Um like, like, that's this 2:00:05.960 --> 2:00:09.720 little spot where goals asleep at night. They definitely I 2:00:09.840 --> 2:00:12.720 have seen, you know, males and females alike will dig 2:00:12.760 --> 2:00:16.120 holes in the ground and cash meat in there. They 2:00:16.200 --> 2:00:21.360 will go under talas to rest, especially if it's hot out, 2:00:21.440 --> 2:00:22.840 like that's probably one of the ways that they throw 2:00:22.880 --> 2:00:25.120 them or regulate when it's hot. But they don't have 2:00:25.440 --> 2:00:27.520 a den that they are faithful to the only time 2:00:27.560 --> 2:00:30.120 that wolverines are in a den is when the female 2:00:30.320 --> 2:00:33.840 is in there with the kids. My body in the 2:00:33.920 --> 2:00:39.000 bare Tooths saw one digging through an avalanche debris field. Huh. 2:00:39.120 --> 2:00:41.440 And then my brother Danny watched to dig through an 2:00:41.480 --> 2:00:44.440 avalanche debris field in Alaska. Okay. Yeah, so this is 2:00:44.520 --> 2:00:48.000 really another interesting thing that they do. You see, like 2:00:48.440 --> 2:00:51.840 in the collar data, wolverines will cruise the bottoms of 2:00:51.880 --> 2:00:54.920 avalanche shoots and they are looking for carcasses should got 2:00:54.960 --> 2:00:58.080 swept up in cheap and goats that have gotten um 2:00:58.880 --> 2:01:02.040 swept off and you know what I mean, like what 2:01:02.200 --> 2:01:04.880 kind of crazy junk gets scraped up by an avalanche. Yeah, 2:01:04.920 --> 2:01:06.720 and then the other thing they do in talas fields 2:01:06.760 --> 2:01:09.120 and probably avalanche debris fields as well, if there are 2:01:09.160 --> 2:01:11.440 pikers in there, they'll go and they'll they'll hunt pikers 2:01:11.760 --> 2:01:15.880 like they're actually hunting, not living, not scavenge, but living pikes. 2:01:15.920 --> 2:01:20.520 Yeah yeah, um. And then also marmots and Mongolia, they 2:01:20.600 --> 2:01:23.440 will dig hibernating marth a terrible thing for the marmot, 2:01:23.480 --> 2:01:25.920 but they'll dig hibernating marmots out of out of the 2:01:26.000 --> 2:01:28.080 ground and just like you know, it's a little fat 2:01:28.120 --> 2:01:31.520 bomb for them. Coincident's your favorite food. Oh so, yes, 2:01:31.720 --> 2:01:34.880 there's a background. There's more detail than that. But yeah, yeah, 2:01:35.080 --> 2:01:36.680 we could just leave it there. People want to wonder, 2:01:36.760 --> 2:01:40.760 but no, um, so marmot is a delicacy in Mongolia. 2:01:40.960 --> 2:01:44.080 And I like, if you find the wolverines not just 2:01:44.200 --> 2:01:47.480 for wolverines. Yeah no, this is an overlap between wolverine 2:01:47.520 --> 2:01:52.160 and human um culinary arts, I guess, but um, wolverines 2:01:52.920 --> 2:01:56.520 eat them, and humans also eat them. Uh. You shoot 2:01:56.560 --> 2:02:00.360 the marmot and you cut it open, got it? Um, 2:02:00.640 --> 2:02:03.240 stuff it full of wild onions and hot rocks and 2:02:03.720 --> 2:02:07.800 cook it up and it is so good. You told 2:02:07.800 --> 2:02:10.400 me when I was younger that like I would one 2:02:10.480 --> 2:02:12.600 day be really excited about eating a fat road and 2:02:12.680 --> 2:02:16.080 I would have just been like not believing about that. 2:02:16.160 --> 2:02:18.800 But yeah, it's it's really really good. Um. Of course, 2:02:18.880 --> 2:02:21.640 then like a little bit of spicy risk to that 2:02:21.880 --> 2:02:25.000 is that marmots are also the reservoir species for bubonic plague, 2:02:25.000 --> 2:02:28.560 which is still We had a story we covered some 2:02:28.680 --> 2:02:32.680 time ago of a couple I don't know how I'd 2:02:32.680 --> 2:02:34.840 even want up being reported, but a couple that died 2:02:35.040 --> 2:02:40.360 from Yeah was that in Mongolia? Yeah, that happens every year, 2:02:40.480 --> 2:02:42.040 and so there are It was weird. It's like one 2:02:42.040 --> 2:02:44.120 of those things that you're like, like it got picked 2:02:44.200 --> 2:02:48.280 up in international news, you know, and you're like, how 2:02:48.360 --> 2:02:50.120 did like how did this come to be picked up 2:02:50.120 --> 2:02:52.560 international news? And like, I bet it happens. It's just 2:02:52.640 --> 2:02:54.280 weird that it and then it got all over the place. 2:02:54.480 --> 2:02:56.800 I'm sure because the Black death has like such a 2:02:57.200 --> 2:03:00.560 like a resonance in like the Western imagination because of 2:03:00.640 --> 2:03:04.560 how catastrophic that was for European history that people are like, 2:03:04.600 --> 2:03:07.520 oh my god, the bubonic plague at that sold people 2:03:07.600 --> 2:03:09.720 on the story probably, I mean, I feel like it 2:03:10.120 --> 2:03:12.200 pops up like every year or every couple of years 2:03:12.240 --> 2:03:15.120 in the international press somebody's died of bubonic plague in Mongolia. 2:03:15.200 --> 2:03:17.800 But the Mongols, the Mongolians and the Mongol Empire as well, 2:03:17.880 --> 2:03:20.880 have been managing that disease for you know, hundreds and 2:03:21.000 --> 2:03:23.240 hundreds of years, and so they know how to, like 2:03:23.320 --> 2:03:25.240 if somebody comes down with it, they quarantine the whole 2:03:25.280 --> 2:03:30.040 town basically. And during marmot hunting season, at least when 2:03:30.040 --> 2:03:33.400 I was a Peace Corp volunteer, there were checkpoints outside 2:03:33.400 --> 2:03:37.280 of Ulmboder, and everybody wants to eat marmots, so like 2:03:37.480 --> 2:03:39.760 people would try to bring them into the city, but 2:03:40.040 --> 2:03:43.440 they would like stop and search the car and your 2:03:43.520 --> 2:03:45.600 luggage to make sure that nobody was bringing a marmot 2:03:45.640 --> 2:03:49.280 into the city. Because it's manageable. When the population density 2:03:49.360 --> 2:03:52.560 human population density is very low, you can quarantine the town. 2:03:52.640 --> 2:03:55.240 But if something like that ever got loose in Ullumboder, 2:03:55.400 --> 2:03:59.200 where half the population of the country lives, then you 2:03:59.240 --> 2:04:01.160 would really be in trouble. That's how this became a 2:04:01.200 --> 2:04:04.000 news story. Okay, you reminded me. Okay, it was a 2:04:04.040 --> 2:04:08.440 news story because the journalist was stuck in town. Okay, 2:04:08.480 --> 2:04:10.560 well that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, that's what it was. 2:04:10.760 --> 2:04:13.480 That's how that's how what became reported. Yeah, becase they 2:04:13.520 --> 2:04:17.040 got quarantined okay because of a of a bubonic plague 2:04:17.080 --> 2:04:21.240 death from eating marmot. Okay, so then it yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah, 2:04:21.560 --> 2:04:23.840 and there So this goes to hunting too, and like 2:04:23.920 --> 2:04:27.360 traditional knowledge in hunting, because I have been told I 2:04:27.400 --> 2:04:30.040 have not seen anybody hunt this way, but historically there 2:04:30.160 --> 2:04:31.880 was like a specific thing that you were supposed to 2:04:31.920 --> 2:04:34.640 do when you were hunting marmots um where you would 2:04:34.640 --> 2:04:36.840 set up like a little stand for your rifle and 2:04:36.880 --> 2:04:38.200 you would put the rifle on it, and then you 2:04:38.240 --> 2:04:41.120 would have a feather and you would like move the 2:04:41.240 --> 2:04:44.640 feather and if the marmot could like track the feather 2:04:44.800 --> 2:04:46.600 and was aware of the feather, then it was like 2:04:46.760 --> 2:04:49.240 healthy enough. You knew it didn't have the plague, so 2:04:49.280 --> 2:04:52.080 you could shoot it. Really, people don't bother to do 2:04:52.200 --> 2:04:56.800 that anymore, so well no one I know either, but um, 2:04:57.600 --> 2:05:00.280 so like, yeah, then there's a greater risk of of 2:05:00.440 --> 2:05:03.000 getting an animal that actually is carrying the plate So 2:05:03.120 --> 2:05:05.000 you're they're eating that. No one, they're playing with fire 2:05:05.080 --> 2:05:07.600 by messing with those things. Yeah, I mean usually what 2:05:07.720 --> 2:05:09.640 you do is after you hunt it, you also blow 2:05:09.760 --> 2:05:12.960 torch it to kill because it's it's the fleas that 2:05:13.160 --> 2:05:17.360 actually carry it. So you blow torch the pelt and 2:05:17.560 --> 2:05:20.040 then you and then you cook it. But if it's 2:05:20.040 --> 2:05:23.200 already infected, then if you eat anything that has like 2:05:23.320 --> 2:05:26.160 that limph tissue in it, then you you also still 2:05:26.240 --> 2:05:28.320 run the risk of getting it. Man, we're hunting cottontail 2:05:28.400 --> 2:05:30.440 rabbits yesterday my kids got soul full of those little 2:05:30.480 --> 2:05:33.640 fleas all over those rabbits. Oh really, God, yeah, it's 2:05:33.680 --> 2:05:41.600 fram or something. Their clothes are hanging outside right now. Well, 2:05:41.880 --> 2:05:47.080 at least the rabbits don't have bubonic plate um. They're like, 2:05:47.200 --> 2:05:50.000 I see them, we're clean rabbits, and I see they're 2:05:50.080 --> 2:05:56.000 all like itch in their ears a lot, And I'm like, 2:05:56.080 --> 2:05:57.960 go take a shower, take thirty clothes outside and take 2:05:57.960 --> 2:06:01.200 a shower. Can you get them a blowtorch? Oh? I 2:06:01.240 --> 2:06:03.440 guess you hunt rabbits for the pelts, though, don't you No, no, 2:06:03.760 --> 2:06:07.440 we just eat them. Okay. Well, um man, so how 2:06:07.480 --> 2:06:12.280 do people find you and follow your work? M I interrupt. Yeah, 2:06:12.560 --> 2:06:14.920 And before we do that, I think we have maybe 2:06:15.000 --> 2:06:18.160 like a public service announcement that you mentioned. Do you 2:06:18.240 --> 2:06:20.960 want it to talk about before like the public like 2:06:21.080 --> 2:06:25.600 kind of enlisting the public? Stop stoe, No, they're looking 2:06:25.600 --> 2:06:28.920 at your cow? No something else? Well? Yeah, please if 2:06:29.000 --> 2:06:31.040 you if you do see a wolverine looking at your cow, 2:06:31.120 --> 2:06:33.280 please don't shoot it. Please just call me. Um. You 2:06:33.360 --> 2:06:36.040 can find me at the Wolverine Foundation dot org and 2:06:36.440 --> 2:06:38.920 submit a report immediately if you see a wolverine looking 2:06:38.960 --> 2:06:40.840 at your cow. And I don't want anyone that sees 2:06:40.840 --> 2:06:43.040 a wolverine let you know. Yeah, I do. I think 2:06:43.160 --> 2:06:45.760 it's important to let us know because we do collect 2:06:45.800 --> 2:06:48.840 siting reports. And then also it's really important to let 2:06:48.920 --> 2:06:52.160 the local state Game and Fish department know because they're 2:06:52.200 --> 2:06:53.960 the ones who are going to be capable of being 2:06:54.040 --> 2:06:56.000 on the ground there to assess the report and to 2:06:56.120 --> 2:06:59.520 take any action that might be necessary to monitor the animal. Um. 2:07:00.040 --> 2:07:01.600 We do get a lot of I do get a 2:07:01.640 --> 2:07:04.560 lot of reports of wolverines that are not wolverines. I've 2:07:04.600 --> 2:07:07.600 gotten a few reports of werewolves. We do not study werewolves. 2:07:07.640 --> 2:07:09.959 Please do not report them to me. That's a different species. 2:07:10.040 --> 2:07:12.760 Somebody else deals with that. What is it normally? Um, 2:07:13.840 --> 2:07:17.600 the most the most common thing I think actually are 2:07:17.800 --> 2:07:21.560 porcupines and wood chucks. Yeah. People, nobody knows what a 2:07:21.600 --> 2:07:25.520 porcupine looks like. I mean, you guys, wolverine, you guys 2:07:25.600 --> 2:07:27.560 know what a porcupine looks like. But like the general 2:07:27.600 --> 2:07:30.560 American public does see you know how they have that 2:07:30.720 --> 2:07:33.280 they have a tail. Yep. Wolverine's got that big kind 2:07:33.280 --> 2:07:40.640 of tail. Yeah, yeah, they're roughly the same size. And 2:07:40.720 --> 2:07:45.840 wolverine's got that kind of weird almost like coloration, yes, 2:07:46.440 --> 2:07:51.240 circles the bodied tail ratio in the in the way 2:07:51.320 --> 2:07:54.000 the tail rides, yep, And they have that. You know. 2:07:54.560 --> 2:07:57.280 Porcupines also have that kind of humped profile, so like 2:07:57.360 --> 2:07:59.640 they look like they're sort of like round on the top. 2:07:59.720 --> 2:08:01.560 And a lot of people think of wolverines as looking 2:08:01.600 --> 2:08:03.880 that way. And if you see a wolve porcupine from 2:08:03.880 --> 2:08:05.800 a distance, you don't see the quills. It just looks 2:08:05.800 --> 2:08:07.760 like it's kind of fuzzy right now. And they have 2:08:07.840 --> 2:08:11.880 a guy a light colored halo yes to them that 2:08:12.040 --> 2:08:15.240 I think wolverine has too. Yeah, so yeah, thank you, 2:08:15.320 --> 2:08:17.560 and they walk, you know. Porcupines also have kind of 2:08:17.600 --> 2:08:20.360 flat feet too, although they're a lot smaller than wolverine feet, 2:08:20.400 --> 2:08:23.320 they do have that kind of like gait that could 2:08:23.360 --> 2:08:27.120 be sort of wolverine from from a distance. Wolverines like 2:08:27.240 --> 2:08:30.960 eating porcupines. No, you know, this is something I have 2:08:31.240 --> 2:08:36.640 never heard of. Fishers are special Fishers are like fishers 2:08:36.680 --> 2:08:39.360 are porcupine specialists? Yeah, they open it up on the 2:08:39.440 --> 2:08:44.120 belly and yeah, no, I we've never We've seen duck remains, 2:08:44.200 --> 2:08:48.520 bird remains, Um, we've seen, you know, all kinds of 2:08:48.640 --> 2:08:50.600 things that wolverines will eat, but I have never heard 2:08:50.640 --> 2:08:53.880 of a wolverine eating a porcupine. Um. So if you 2:08:54.040 --> 2:08:57.560 do see a wolverine or you see wolverine sign which 2:08:57.560 --> 2:09:02.680 are tracks, um, please take photographs if possible. If you're 2:09:02.680 --> 2:09:04.840 taking photo if you're taking photos of the tracks, make 2:09:04.880 --> 2:09:07.200 sure you put something in there for scale, because wolverine 2:09:07.240 --> 2:09:11.720 tracks and Martin tracks and even like least weasel tracks 2:09:11.800 --> 2:09:14.560 are the same darned tracks. If I don't have something 2:09:14.600 --> 2:09:16.560 in there for scale, I can't tell what it is 2:09:17.840 --> 2:09:21.040 and then send it to me. There's a submission forum 2:09:21.160 --> 2:09:26.240 on Wolverine Foundation dot org and let your local wildlife 2:09:26.240 --> 2:09:28.520 management agency know as well, and we will put it 2:09:28.600 --> 2:09:32.920 into a database. This is important too. I know that 2:09:33.000 --> 2:09:35.480 the listeners of your podcasts are in general, really really 2:09:35.520 --> 2:09:38.160 skilled outdoors people, and I have total faith and trust 2:09:38.240 --> 2:09:41.440 in people's wildlife knowledge. But because of the way science works, 2:09:41.520 --> 2:09:44.040 I always have to be a little bit skeptical and 2:09:44.200 --> 2:09:46.600 I have to ask more questions about the report. So 2:09:46.720 --> 2:09:49.040 if you send a report to me, do not think 2:09:49.080 --> 2:09:51.480 that it is a commentary on your own assessment of 2:09:51.520 --> 2:09:53.720 your wildlife skills. If I come back to you with questions, 2:09:54.200 --> 2:09:57.120 it is just because I have to do everything I 2:09:57.200 --> 2:09:59.240 can to verify and make sure that it is not 2:09:59.400 --> 2:10:05.000 something else had. Some people get very very angry with me. Yeah, 2:10:05.040 --> 2:10:07.920 there's some guy who was like riding a four wheeler 2:10:08.000 --> 2:10:10.560 around a dump in like Alabama or something and reported 2:10:10.560 --> 2:10:13.400 a wolverine and I was like, um, could you describe 2:10:13.440 --> 2:10:15.480 what the facial mask looked like? And he got so 2:10:15.680 --> 2:10:17.120 angry at me. He was like, you need to take 2:10:17.160 --> 2:10:20.760 some yoga classes and learn to chill out. So I 2:10:20.840 --> 2:10:23.080 took a class the other day. My wife, did it 2:10:23.200 --> 2:10:35.800 help you? Like, no, be awful. Um, so yeah, and 2:10:35.880 --> 2:10:39.600 then um, if everybody knows how to identify wolverine wolverine tracks, um, 2:10:39.880 --> 2:10:42.320 that's great. But for those who don't, they have five toes, 2:10:43.000 --> 2:10:45.960 they have a little crescent pad in the middle. It 2:10:46.000 --> 2:10:48.160 kind of looks like a it's like arcs, like a 2:10:48.440 --> 2:10:51.200 like a crescent moon. And then sometimes there's a heel 2:10:51.240 --> 2:10:53.520 pad that registers, and sometimes there is not a heel 2:10:53.560 --> 2:10:55.920 pad that registers. But if the heel pad is there, 2:10:56.160 --> 2:10:58.400 from the tip of the toes to that heel pad, 2:10:58.560 --> 2:11:01.040 it's probably like six or seven inches. It's a it's 2:11:01.040 --> 2:11:03.680 a big it's a big track, and they have a 2:11:03.800 --> 2:11:06.920 very distinctive three buy track. Give me the dimension again, 2:11:07.400 --> 2:11:10.120 it's the whole track heel pad shows. If the heel 2:11:10.120 --> 2:11:12.600 pad shows, it's like six to seven inches, it's like 2:11:12.640 --> 2:11:14.200 the size of I mean, it's like a wolf track, 2:11:14.240 --> 2:11:16.480 which and people don't I mean, people are surprised by that. 2:11:16.560 --> 2:11:20.320 But it's a pretty big track and it could be 2:11:20.400 --> 2:11:22.520 like almost as big as your hand. Yeah, I mean 2:11:22.600 --> 2:11:24.440 that's how I yeah, that's why I'm holding up my hand. 2:11:24.480 --> 2:11:26.760 It's about talking this guy. This guy looks for tracks 2:11:26.800 --> 2:11:28.920 all win or you'll find one Okay, well, if I 2:11:29.000 --> 2:11:32.040 will talk to you about wolverine tracks, rides a snowmobile, 2:11:33.320 --> 2:11:37.440 just doing that. Snowmobile, snowmobilers and backcountry skiers, I feel 2:11:37.440 --> 2:11:40.480 like are an undertapped resource for wolverine citizen science, and 2:11:40.560 --> 2:11:42.560 I would love to have more people who are out 2:11:42.680 --> 2:11:45.680 in snowy conditions just being on the lookout and being 2:11:45.760 --> 2:11:48.200 aware and taking those photos and sending them to us, 2:11:48.280 --> 2:11:53.000 because it's really important to track where there are actually 2:11:53.240 --> 2:11:56.840 verified locations for the species. So thanks to anybody who's 2:11:56.840 --> 2:11:59.200 willing to do that. Is that the public service announcement? 2:11:59.880 --> 2:12:03.520 Yea yea, thank you kin? All right, man, that was good. 2:12:04.800 --> 2:12:06.400 We could we could do like a whole other one, 2:12:07.600 --> 2:12:10.200 like keep talking about wolverines. I will have a talk 2:12:10.200 --> 2:12:13.320 about wolverines for hours. So thank you for the opportunity. 2:12:14.360 --> 2:12:17.200 Tell again how to go find you guys stuff. It's 2:12:17.280 --> 2:12:21.320 Wolverine Foundation dot org and we have a Facebook page 2:12:21.480 --> 2:12:24.040 and we have a Twitter account. I am pretty the 2:12:24.080 --> 2:12:26.720 Wolverine Foundation. I basically am the only person running it. 2:12:26.800 --> 2:12:29.800 And it's not a salaried position either, so I'm pretty 2:12:29.800 --> 2:12:32.240 bad about the social media or spotty about the social media. 2:12:32.320 --> 2:12:35.240 But you can find us there. And I do periodically 2:12:35.720 --> 2:12:39.280 post things. Do you guys accept donations. We do accept donations, yes, 2:12:39.400 --> 2:12:43.640 and those donations go to support the wolverine research projects 2:12:43.680 --> 2:12:46.800 in the field, so you can talk If you have 2:12:46.840 --> 2:12:49.000 a specific wolverine project that you want to support, you 2:12:49.080 --> 2:12:50.440 can talk to me about that and I can put 2:12:50.480 --> 2:12:53.320 that money aside in a fund for that specific wolverine project. 2:12:53.680 --> 2:12:56.240 General contributions go towards the general pot of money that 2:12:56.320 --> 2:12:59.919 we then periodically open up for proposals from wolverine researchers. 2:13:00.200 --> 2:13:02.960 You know we didn't talk about was the idea that 2:13:03.920 --> 2:13:10.680 the a Row that like the Northern peoples, would use 2:13:10.800 --> 2:13:14.720 the wolverine fur on the rough of a parka because 2:13:14.760 --> 2:13:18.360 it's a hollow and it doesn't carry frost. Yes, But 2:13:18.440 --> 2:13:21.680 then I heard that that's actually not very accurate or 2:13:21.760 --> 2:13:24.400 is that accurate. I don't know if it's because it's hollow, 2:13:24.480 --> 2:13:27.040 but it does shed. It does shed with sheds from Yeah, 2:13:27.120 --> 2:13:29.280 that's why that's why you trim your park so when 2:13:29.280 --> 2:13:31.640 you're ex hailing. Yes, it doesn't build up on the 2:13:31.680 --> 2:13:34.680 park or rough exactly. Yeah, or you can shake it 2:13:34.760 --> 2:13:36.640 off or whatever, right, and it doesn't just stick on 2:13:36.720 --> 2:13:38.160 there like if you had a kyote rough, it just 2:13:38.280 --> 2:13:41.880 gets caked in ice. Yeah, so, and I think wolf 2:13:41.920 --> 2:13:44.480 fur also does the same thing. I know, ungulate furs hollow, 2:13:45.040 --> 2:13:47.560 and so that's why it's so insulating that I don't 2:13:47.600 --> 2:13:50.040 know whether wolverine fur is actually hollow. I don't think 2:13:50.080 --> 2:13:52.560 it is um, but it does have that property of 2:13:52.600 --> 2:13:54.840 shedding frost. And there have been like stories of people 2:13:54.840 --> 2:13:59.240 who have found wolverine carcasses um where you know, it's 2:13:59.280 --> 2:14:01.520 in the spring and the snow all around the carcass 2:14:01.600 --> 2:14:03.960 has melted, and then you like pick up the wolverine 2:14:04.080 --> 2:14:06.440 and there's still like a patch of snow under there. 2:14:06.480 --> 2:14:09.200 Because the insulating properties of the fur are so good, 2:14:09.400 --> 2:14:12.440 they're thermoneutral I think down to like minus forty degrees. 2:14:12.560 --> 2:14:19.040 So yeah, wolverine is a preferred in some northern places 2:14:19.360 --> 2:14:22.880 for that reason. In Mongolia, I have been told you 2:14:22.920 --> 2:14:25.400 should never put wolverine fur on your head because it 2:14:25.520 --> 2:14:28.000 is associated it's an animal that's associated with the underworld. 2:14:28.400 --> 2:14:31.080 You just don't want to be doing that. But that said, also, 2:14:31.200 --> 2:14:33.800 there are people in Mongolia who wear wolverine fur hats. 2:14:33.880 --> 2:14:36.240 So yeah, well, the next time you're in Mongolia and 2:14:36.320 --> 2:14:39.160 someone gives you a wolverine, hide sew it into your 2:14:39.200 --> 2:14:41.800 hood and just go home like mine, in your own business, 2:14:41.960 --> 2:14:44.440 and don't just be don't be showing everybody what you got. 2:14:45.120 --> 2:14:48.200 He's quiet about it, Pretend I don't know about the sides. Yeah. No, 2:14:49.480 --> 2:14:52.640 you say you want everybody to send in their wolverine signings, 2:14:52.680 --> 2:14:57.040 I'm guessing not if you're an Alaskan. I mean, I'm 2:14:57.080 --> 2:15:00.120 always interested in hearing about people's wolverine stories, so like, 2:15:00.240 --> 2:15:03.080 you can totally send me your wolverine stories from Alaska. 2:15:03.240 --> 2:15:06.280 But as far as what I'm interested in monitoring scientifically, 2:15:06.440 --> 2:15:10.560 it's much more about the wolverines here in the lower 2:15:10.600 --> 2:15:13.160 forty eight. So if Brody's dicking around on there in Colorado, 2:15:13.200 --> 2:15:14.480 on he finds what you want to hear about it, 2:15:14.560 --> 2:15:16.720 I do because as far as we know, since m 2:15:16.760 --> 2:15:19.840 fifty six left, there is still no population in Colorado, 2:15:20.000 --> 2:15:22.680 and you were mentioning before the fact that there's habitat there. 2:15:22.760 --> 2:15:24.600 So one of the things they're talking about is potentially 2:15:24.680 --> 2:15:28.320 reintroducing wolverines to Colorado. So they like doing that stuff 2:15:28.360 --> 2:15:30.640 in Colorado. I'm all for it, man, I'm all for it. 2:15:30.720 --> 2:15:33.000 Why not, there's no negative, No, I'm not saying they 2:15:33.080 --> 2:15:36.920 did it with links, right. Yeah, I'd be like, I 2:15:36.960 --> 2:15:41.240 would love to hear the anti wolverine argument she's got. Yeah, 2:15:41.520 --> 2:15:43.160 there would be no no, no, hit it real quick. 2:15:43.200 --> 2:15:44.760 Did you have a good one? Well, I know, it's 2:15:44.760 --> 2:15:47.120 not that I'm opposed to it. It's just that wolverines 2:15:47.160 --> 2:15:49.880 are really good dispersers, right, And I think that the 2:15:49.960 --> 2:15:52.360 best way to handle this personally is just to ensure 2:15:52.400 --> 2:15:54.880 that the population further to the north is robust enough 2:15:54.960 --> 2:15:57.480 to keep sending out dispersers to get there naturally, because 2:15:57.560 --> 2:15:59.760 you Rob and Peter to pay Paul right precisely, Like 2:16:00.000 --> 2:16:02.760 if you start punching holes in the wolverine population further 2:16:02.880 --> 2:16:04.960 to the north, because it's so precarious, Like if you 2:16:05.040 --> 2:16:08.080 start taking reproductive adults out of Montana to put them 2:16:08.120 --> 2:16:12.200 in Colorado, you create a hole in this metapopulation that 2:16:12.360 --> 2:16:16.480 potentially has repercussions later on. So that makes good sense. Yeah, 2:16:16.480 --> 2:16:20.160 And I generally like the natural I generally like the 2:16:20.280 --> 2:16:24.760 natural disbursement thing socially too. Yeah, it's socially better, so 2:16:24.880 --> 2:16:26.880 much better, because then you don't have the you know, 2:16:26.960 --> 2:16:29.600 you don't have people getting together arguments about how these 2:16:29.680 --> 2:16:32.959 like nasty, big northern carnivores are so much more ferocious 2:16:33.000 --> 2:16:35.200 than the ones that should have been here or um, 2:16:35.360 --> 2:16:37.320 you know those kind of that kind of resistance doesn't 2:16:37.360 --> 2:16:40.520 come up. So yeah, Diane Boyd, Yes, you know, she 2:16:41.080 --> 2:16:44.240 very much said that she wished they never fans planted 2:16:44.360 --> 2:16:46.720 them here into Yellowstone, remember that. Yeah, she said, you 2:16:46.760 --> 2:16:48.120 would have went, you would have wound up in the 2:16:48.200 --> 2:16:53.560 same place with a lot less friction. All right. Wolverine Foundation, Yes, 2:16:53.640 --> 2:16:57.520 Wolverine Foundation dot org. All right, everybody, next time you 2:16:57.520 --> 2:17:02.760 see a badge or gimm call the old for I mean, 2:17:02.879 --> 2:17:06.880 empty pounds keeps my life interesting. Thanks for Bregan