Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukelem and I'm a seventh generation
Speaker 1: or Kansan. I'm a husband, a father, a hunter, a
Speaker 1: mule skinner, a writer. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a person
Speaker 1: of faith. We're starting a new podcast here a meat eater,
Speaker 1: and I hope you'll follow along. I'm interested in that
Speaker 1: intersection of where tradition and contemporary life meet. On this podcast,
Speaker 1: we're gonna look back into history and find relevance for today.
Speaker 1: I like looking for insight and unlikely places, searching for
Speaker 1: relevance and things that have been forgotten. And I love
Speaker 1: telling the story of Americans who lived their life close
Speaker 1: to the land. This podcast is going to be an
Speaker 1: efficient listen with an engaging glance into history and an
Speaker 1: interesting guest where we'll explore unique people, unique topics, and
Speaker 1: unique stories. I hope that you'll follow along on the
Speaker 1: air Grease Podcast. There it is. That's the name of
Speaker 1: our new podcast, the Bear Grease Podcast. Why the name
Speaker 1: bear Grease? If you know much about me, you know
Speaker 1: that I love some bear grease, which is the rendered
Speaker 1: fat of a bear, literally the cooked lard of a
Speaker 1: bear that's turned into oil at one time. Bear grease
Speaker 1: or bear oil was a highly valued commodity and it
Speaker 1: was used for cooking and all other sorts of practical stuff.
Speaker 1: It was even used as currency. It had a ton
Speaker 1: of value, and today most people wouldn't know anything about it.
Speaker 1: Technology and modern times have buried some pretty cool stuff
Speaker 1: that we're rediscovering and we're redefining now even what's relevant
Speaker 1: by looking back, some of the things that time has
Speaker 1: forgotten are ripe for a cultural resurrection. Bear Grease is
Speaker 1: a metaphor or and as you follow along, I think
Speaker 1: you'll begin to understand what I mean. How certain are
Speaker 1: you that you saw two mountain lions? No doubt? Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen a lion? Mountain lion in Arkansas? I
Speaker 1: think there's panther. I think there's black mountain lions. Myself.
Speaker 1: On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast will be
Speaker 1: exploring the myth of the Southern mountain lion and how
Speaker 1: the lore or maybe the hard science, we don't know
Speaker 1: which one has forever and inextricably connected itself to Southern culture.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk to some mountain lion believers, a biologists,
Speaker 1: and even a psychologist to get some answers about lions
Speaker 1: and about human nature. Well, I mean, I don't have
Speaker 1: any proof of it. I just always have heard that.
Speaker 1: You've heard it, you've heard of cognitive I mean I
Speaker 1: just believed the propaganda. My name is Clay Nukelem and
Speaker 1: this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things
Speaker 1: forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and
Speaker 1: where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their
Speaker 1: lives close to the land. There are two kinds of
Speaker 1: people in the South, those that have seen mountain lions
Speaker 1: in those that haven't. Both of these groups carry their
Speaker 1: own unique stigmas, perhaps both equally as wrought with irony
Speaker 1: as the other. They seem to huddle tightly and cult
Speaker 1: like clans of believers and unbelievers. But to understand the
Speaker 1: tension between those who have seen mountain lions and those
Speaker 1: who haven't, and yes, there is tension, you'll have to
Speaker 1: understand a bit of history. The mountain lion Puma con
Speaker 1: color is a large tan colored feline weighing up to
Speaker 1: two dred pounds or more. It, along with the jaguar,
Speaker 1: which are extremely rare and primarily live south of the
Speaker 1: US border in Mexico, are the only large cats in
Speaker 1: North America since the extinction of the giant cats of
Speaker 1: the Pleistocene, which basically was an epoch of time that
Speaker 1: ended about ten thousand years ago. These Pleistocene cats included
Speaker 1: saber tooth cats, American lions, American jaguars, the American cheetah.
Speaker 1: This place used to be crawling with giant purring predators. However,
Speaker 1: today we've pretty much got one large cat in the
Speaker 1: United States and Canada. The old mountain lion or puma
Speaker 1: or panther, or the painter or the catamount all the
Speaker 1: same animal, but they have different names and different regions.
Speaker 1: You might recognize one of these, But the mountain lion's
Speaker 1: native range extends from the Canadian Yukon all the way
Speaker 1: down to the Andes Mountains of South America, and from
Speaker 1: the east and west its range goes from the Atlantic
Speaker 1: Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This is fascinating that they
Speaker 1: are the most widespread terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere.
Speaker 1: To bring it home simply to North America. Prior to
Speaker 1: European settlement, they had the widest geographic spread of any
Speaker 1: large mammal, more than white tailed deer, more than elk,
Speaker 1: or than Buffalo more than anything, and here in lies
Speaker 1: are issue in They used to be here. But by
Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century, mountain lions were extirpated
Speaker 1: from almost one hundred percent of their eastern range in
Speaker 1: the entire Eastern Deciduous Forest. The word extra pated means
Speaker 1: that they didn't go extinct, but they were removed from
Speaker 1: a specific region. The Eastern Deciduous Forest basically extends from
Speaker 1: east Texas all the way to Maine, and from Wisconsin
Speaker 1: all the way down to Florida. Basically, it's the eastern
Speaker 1: one third of the United States. It's worth noting that
Speaker 1: mountain lions in southern Florida held on and were never
Speaker 1: entirely gone, perhaps making them the only mountain lions east
Speaker 1: of the Mississippi for a very long time. Or were
Speaker 1: they have they been in much of the Eastern Deciduous
Speaker 1: Forest all this time, just right under our noses. A
Speaker 1: lot of people think so, but for sure throughout the
Speaker 1: twentieth century, mountain lion populations only survived, according to science anyway,
Speaker 1: in the rugged out in this regions of the western
Speaker 1: US and Canada. Though lions haven't been in the South
Speaker 1: for the last hundred years, or at least that's what
Speaker 1: the government biologists tell us. Lots of people still see them.
Speaker 1: In fact, I know some of these hillbillies that aren't
Speaker 1: afraid to stand up against the statistics and against the
Speaker 1: science and boldly proclaimed their eyewitness convictions. Some might even
Speaker 1: call it conservation slander. The myth of the Southern mountain
Speaker 1: lion is so strongly imbedded into our culture they might
Speaker 1: as well actually be here. Or maybe they are here,
Speaker 1: maybe they've been here all along. The only way that
Speaker 1: I know how to get to the bottom of this
Speaker 1: is to hear some of these stories for myself, and
Speaker 1: some of these stories are pretty close to home. Just
Speaker 1: for the record, I've never seen a mountain lion in
Speaker 1: the South, but my dear sweet dad, Gary Newcom has,
Speaker 1: And here's his story. When was it? Tell me when
Speaker 1: it was? Oh, I would say twenty years ago, years
Speaker 1: ago to say late nineties, Well, yeah, probably probably. And
Speaker 1: I was in one of my favorite hunting areas, driving
Speaker 1: on a Warehouser road. But then I looked to my left,
Speaker 1: and when I turned my truck in the middle of
Speaker 1: the road to make that turn, I looked up there
Speaker 1: and there was what I thought was a bobcat. I thought,
Speaker 1: that's a big old bobcat, is it? Yeah? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like it's later in the afternoon, but still real clear light.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't like dusty or anything. And I
Speaker 1: thought a bobcat. And then I saw the tail and
Speaker 1: I go, I look, yeah, it's some outline and you
Speaker 1: know it was hundred yards you know, it was pretty
Speaker 1: good ways off. You saw a distinctive just think deep,
Speaker 1: no question about it. So what color was I want
Speaker 1: to say blue? Yeah it was. It was just a
Speaker 1: tan colored animals. Yeah, I mean like, okay, so you're
Speaker 1: my dad, and I inherently trust your judgment. You've been
Speaker 1: around seventy two years. How certain are you if you
Speaker 1: if there was a way to tell, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: if there was really a way to know whether it
Speaker 1: was a mountain lie or not in your life depended
Speaker 1: on how certain are you that it was a mountain,
Speaker 1: it would be Oh yeah, I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: what has a tail that this as long as the body,
Speaker 1: it seemed to me, like, what did it do? Was
Speaker 1: just standing the road and ran on It took his time,
Speaker 1: came across the road. By the time I saw it
Speaker 1: as pretty close to the ditch, and and if if
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, it looked at me. So it didn't
Speaker 1: just darted. No, no, no, it was moving slow, so
Speaker 1: you gotta look at it. Yeah, and so, but I
Speaker 1: didn't catch it from over here to here. I caught
Speaker 1: it towards the you know, just maybe two or three
Speaker 1: steps from the ditch, and then it just eased off
Speaker 1: in the ditch and then went into the cut over
Speaker 1: you know, ten year old cut. And uh, when I
Speaker 1: saw the tale, you know, I sit here, I's just
Speaker 1: thinking mountain lion, you know, I mean, it's just I mean,
Speaker 1: what what has it said? Yeah, Brent Reeves would be
Speaker 1: considered a hill billy if he didn't live in the
Speaker 1: Arkansas Delta or the swamp country. Regardless of semantics. He's
Speaker 1: a close friend of mine, veteran outdoorsman, and he's been
Speaker 1: in law enforcement for the last thirty years. I've only
Speaker 1: known him to stretch the truth on occasion. And he
Speaker 1: claims to not just have seen one mountain lion, but too.
Speaker 1: I'll let you judge his story. So, Brent, tell me
Speaker 1: about not one mountain lion, but two mountain lions that
Speaker 1: you've seen in Arkansas. I will gladly relate the following.
Speaker 1: The first one was probably in nineteen I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: it was an eight eight. Me and three other guys
Speaker 1: were working for a private UH timber management company, and
Speaker 1: we were in Ashley County, Arkansas, which is in right
Speaker 1: next to two counties away from from Mississippi and southeast Arkansas.
Speaker 1: We were driving down the timber company road going to
Speaker 1: manage September is probably nine o'clock in the morning, good daylight,
Speaker 1: and a panther, mountain lion, cougar, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, jumped out in front of our truck at
Speaker 1: about thirty yards and loped down the road in front
Speaker 1: of us for twenty thirty seconds, and we're right behind it,
Speaker 1: and it ran off into a section September that we
Speaker 1: drove down another quarter of a mile and went in
Speaker 1: ourselves to cruise the timber see how much timber was
Speaker 1: in there. That was the at first one I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: And we got back that afternoon. There was no cell
Speaker 1: phones or anything back during that time. So when we
Speaker 1: got back to the office that afternoon, I called a
Speaker 1: friend and we then reported to the Game and Fish
Speaker 1: and we got a call back I think the next
Speaker 1: day that they had had reports to that in the
Speaker 1: area and actually attributed it to one that had escaped captivity.
Speaker 1: So it was it was known in that area to
Speaker 1: be rambling around. And so that wasn't the only mountain
Speaker 1: lion you've seen, You've seen another one. How did that?
Speaker 1: My friend David Boudra and I we're going coon hunt
Speaker 1: one evening. This would have been even a real name.
Speaker 1: It is. It is getting fisher and Fisher it is.
Speaker 1: It is a real name, and he can attest to it.
Speaker 1: But but David and I were going coon hunting one
Speaker 1: evening in Cleveland County where I grew up, and it's
Speaker 1: dusky dark, you don't have to drive with your lights on.
Speaker 1: And we were driving next to this big clear cut
Speaker 1: fresh clear cut, and there was two or three big
Speaker 1: trees that weren't mergetable for logs or anything. So the
Speaker 1: timber company left him out there. And this tree was
Speaker 1: probably it was a big white oak tree. It was
Speaker 1: probably hundred and fifty two hundred yards away from the
Speaker 1: timber access road and we're driving down through there. It's
Speaker 1: in the fall of the year, so the leaves are
Speaker 1: coming off pretty good and I look out there and
Speaker 1: I can see a silhouette of what I thought was
Speaker 1: a turkey, and I told David, I said, David looked
Speaker 1: at the big old turkey saitting on the limb out there,
Speaker 1: and he said, yeah, I see it. Well, I had
Speaker 1: my coon hunting light on. I just turned my light
Speaker 1: on see if I could see if it was a
Speaker 1: gobbler or a hen. And when I turned it on,
Speaker 1: the eyes were glowing back at me, which turkey's eyes
Speaker 1: don't normally do that. And we slowed down and David said, man,
Speaker 1: that's not a that's not a turkey. And we slowed
Speaker 1: down to look at it, and it turned started walking
Speaker 1: down that limb, and you could plainly see that big
Speaker 1: long tail out from out behind it. That thing walked
Speaker 1: down towards the trunk of the tree, got to where
Speaker 1: the limb leaves the trunk of the tree, put his
Speaker 1: feet down, their paws and just dropped down into that
Speaker 1: clear cut. And then we turned around and went back
Speaker 1: the other direction and turned their dogs loose. Let me
Speaker 1: ask you this, on both of these sightings, now thirty
Speaker 1: years later, if your life depended on it, and there
Speaker 1: was a way to know the absolute truth and they
Speaker 1: said they're gonna burn your house down if you're wrong.
Speaker 1: How certain are you that you saw two mountain lions?
Speaker 1: No doubt? And the thing about it is, both times
Speaker 1: I had a witness with me. Of course, one of
Speaker 1: them was a coon. I'm gonna I'm gonna need their
Speaker 1: phone numbers. One of them is, I say was one
Speaker 1: of them is a coupon hunter, and they you know
Speaker 1: he's not vaccinated against lyon. But I'm telling you no,
Speaker 1: no doubt about it. I'll let you be the edge
Speaker 1: of whether you believe these two stories or not. But
Speaker 1: I've got somebody that has the credentials to validate them
Speaker 1: or take away all their credibility. I'm not sure which
Speaker 1: one it will be. Myron Means is a statewide large
Speaker 1: carnivore program coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
Speaker 1: If there's an expert on mountain lions around these parts,
Speaker 1: it's my Iron Means. I think you can give us
Speaker 1: some insight into the facts of whether the mythical mountain
Speaker 1: lions of the South are real or if they're just
Speaker 1: a farcical relic of folklore passed on from a time
Speaker 1: when they were actually here. Myra and When I first
Speaker 1: met you ten eleven years ago, you were the Arkansas
Speaker 1: Bear Coordinator black Bear Bio. Just that's right, and now
Speaker 1: you're not. Your your title has changed. What's your new
Speaker 1: title with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. My new
Speaker 1: title is Statewide Large Carnivore Program Coordinator for Arkansas Game
Speaker 1: and Fish Commission. That's a mouthful. Something happened because at
Speaker 1: one time there was just one large carnivore acknowledged by
Speaker 1: the Game and Fish and your title change, which indicates
Speaker 1: what happened. Well long about ten years ago, right after
Speaker 1: I took the bear program coordinator position, we started seeing
Speaker 1: mountlines in the state. And it's not that they weren't
Speaker 1: seen prior to that, it's just that, you know, we
Speaker 1: didn't have there were very very few ways to uh
Speaker 1: document a siting. I mean, you know, if you think
Speaker 1: back historically, people didn't have game cameras back much in
Speaker 1: the eighties, you know, and that's come that's kind of
Speaker 1: come along in the past fifteen years or so. But anyway,
Speaker 1: what basically what happened was mountainlins started showing up in
Speaker 1: the state from time to time, and UH, Game and
Speaker 1: Fish recognized that, you know, you need to have someone
Speaker 1: that's kind of coordinating the sightings, coordinating the verifications, uh,
Speaker 1: and just kind of packaging mountainlin stuff. So it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily that now there are lions here and there weren't before,
Speaker 1: but we're we just know about them. Is that what
Speaker 1: I'm hearing you say? That's right, that's right. You know,
Speaker 1: for a lot came primarily because of game cameras or
Speaker 1: you know, if someone has one like on a phone
Speaker 1: video or something like that. But it's primarily been the
Speaker 1: game cameras. Uh. That's really what has helped us, you know,
Speaker 1: document the occurrence and mountlines in the States. So here's
Speaker 1: here's the question. Where did they come from? Because bears
Speaker 1: mountain lions, this would be historic mountain lion range here
Speaker 1: in Arkansas and in all of the eastern United States.
Speaker 1: So where did our lines come from? Well, that's ah,
Speaker 1: that's a million dollar question. Who knows. The only evidence
Speaker 1: that we have currently was from a mountain line that
Speaker 1: was shot by a deer hunter back into two thousand
Speaker 1: and sixteen. Now that was harvested or shot in Bradley
Speaker 1: County by a deer hunter. That mountain lion was also
Speaker 1: previously documented on a cash in Marion County about two
Speaker 1: months prior to that, So that would have been in Uh,
Speaker 1: that was in two thousand and fourteen. I'm sorry. Uh.
Speaker 1: So the DNA evidence that we collected from that cat
Speaker 1: in both instances, UH told us that number one, it's
Speaker 1: the same cat. UH told us that number two, that
Speaker 1: cat had origins from the South Dakota population. Now that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily mean that cat was born in South Dakota.
Speaker 1: It just means that it's d n A origins came
Speaker 1: from that South Dakota population. Now, if you think of
Speaker 1: it in terms of where would it most likely come from, Well,
Speaker 1: there's established mountain populations in the Dakotas, South Dakota, which
Speaker 1: would be north and west of us, slightly primarily north,
Speaker 1: but still in the Mississippi River drainage for the most part. Well,
Speaker 1: it'd be kind of it'd be probably closer tied to
Speaker 1: the Missouri River drainage. Uh. There's an established population in
Speaker 1: northwest Nebraska. There's an established population out in the Panhandle
Speaker 1: of Oklahoma. There's an established population of lines in the
Speaker 1: Panhandle of Texas and in southern Texas. So I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: and of course you have the Florida panthers in Florida.
Speaker 1: So those are really the the closest quote established, how
Speaker 1: many that would be from here? You know, the closest
Speaker 1: population would probably be the Panhandle of Oklahoma, you know,
Speaker 1: out in the Black Hills area. But is it likely
Speaker 1: that those caps would move all the way across Oklahoma?
Speaker 1: Probably not, But because the travel corridors in the habitat
Speaker 1: just isn't there. Is it likely that a cat could
Speaker 1: move out of the Dakotas across northern Nebraska, uh into
Speaker 1: eastern Nebraska and hit the Missouri River drainage and follow
Speaker 1: the Missouri River down through the ozarks of Missouri and
Speaker 1: then into the ozarks of Arkansas and then go who
Speaker 1: knows where else. That's probably the most likely. So it's
Speaker 1: almost like highways, like habitat highways, like you could you
Speaker 1: could track good lion habitat all the way back to
Speaker 1: the Dakotas and Nebraska. Sure you could. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know there's gonna be some spancees of maybe hundred hundred
Speaker 1: fifty mile maybe even two hundred mile gaps, But you
Speaker 1: have to think and in travel terms, you know, that's
Speaker 1: something that a mountain lion could do. In a day
Speaker 1: or two. Byron, what about captive lions getting out? Because
Speaker 1: I remember growing up in western Arkansas, you'd hear the
Speaker 1: odd persons say they saw line and it was always
Speaker 1: thrown back up on cap. They said, somebody had a
Speaker 1: captive line and they let it lose. What do you
Speaker 1: think of that? Yeah, And a matter of fact, you know,
Speaker 1: that was really kind of the official, I guess position
Speaker 1: of the agency through the eighties and nineties, that more
Speaker 1: than likely if someone saw a mountain line, more than
Speaker 1: likely it was the result of an escaped cat or
Speaker 1: some a cat that someone couldn't care for anymore. They removing,
Speaker 1: maybe the owner died, maybe something, and so what are
Speaker 1: they gonna do? Just turn it out? So that was
Speaker 1: really kind of the official position of the agency for
Speaker 1: a couple of decades. Uh, that more n likely if
Speaker 1: you saw a cat, it was probably a release cat
Speaker 1: or an escaped cat. You know, that takes all the
Speaker 1: fun I've seen a mountain line. Well, it certainly presented
Speaker 1: a lot of gotcha opportunities, you know, for the agency. Uh,
Speaker 1: for a long time, back in the early two thousand's
Speaker 1: is probably when the agency started turning around saying more
Speaker 1: than likely rather than being an escaped cap because a
Speaker 1: lot of those captive breeders kind of fell out. You know,
Speaker 1: when I was a kidulations yeah, and it just wasn't
Speaker 1: the thing. I mean, I could remember, believe it or not.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I knew two people that
Speaker 1: I went to a grade school with that had pet
Speaker 1: mountain lines. I mean, you know so so, I mean
Speaker 1: back in the seventies, you know, it wasn't that odd
Speaker 1: of a deal for someone to have a mountain line
Speaker 1: as a pet. You know, we still have no proof.
Speaker 1: A lot of people try to play gotcha all the
Speaker 1: time with us and say, well, gaming Fish says that,
Speaker 1: you know, we don't have mountain lines. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: we've never said we don't have mountlines. What we've said
Speaker 1: for the past forty years or plus years is that
Speaker 1: we don't have any evidence of an established, reproducing population
Speaker 1: of mountainlines. And has that changed, still has not changed.
Speaker 1: We still don't have evidence of a reading population mountain
Speaker 1: lions here. We do not. Well, let me ask you this,
Speaker 1: do you feel like today in Arkansas there are mountain
Speaker 1: lions that are living here year round? I think there
Speaker 1: are mountain lions that live here year around. I think
Speaker 1: virtually all of the mountain lions that we have documented
Speaker 1: sightings of over the past, uh well since two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: I feel like they're all males, you know, either young
Speaker 1: males or older males. A lot of the picture evidence
Speaker 1: translates to them being older males. I'm not talking really
Speaker 1: old males, but mature males. And that would be very
Speaker 1: characteristic of an expanding population of large carnivores, whether it
Speaker 1: be bears or lions. You would start to see these
Speaker 1: fringe areas that would start to get satellite males. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people don't realize with mountain
Speaker 1: lions is that you know, you're you're talking about a
Speaker 1: young animal that gets pushed out of the population, a
Speaker 1: young male that basically gets kicked out on the streets.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not something that they're just gonna travel
Speaker 1: another fifty miles down the road and establish, you know,
Speaker 1: a territory of their own. I mean, you're talking about
Speaker 1: animals that have no qualms about traveling hundreds of miles
Speaker 1: in order to find a suitable territory that has food,
Speaker 1: cover and females. Well, in the absence of females, they're
Speaker 1: not going to establish a territory. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: that simple. So when you think of the behavior that
Speaker 1: takes place in these animals they move into, say if
Speaker 1: they did come from the Dakotas they move into the Missouri,
Speaker 1: they go down the Missouri drainage, they're starting to mature.
Speaker 1: They're no longer six months old, they're a year old.
Speaker 1: They're mature. Male. Uh So, there are a couple of
Speaker 1: things that are driving that young mountain lion to exist.
Speaker 1: One of them is food and the other one is reproduction.
Speaker 1: And until he finds both of those, he's not So
Speaker 1: he's looping down into Missouri and going back. Probably he
Speaker 1: might be going back. He much might just continue to
Speaker 1: keep going until he does find a female. And whether
Speaker 1: that means he has to cross four or five six
Speaker 1: states to do it, they'll do it. Wow. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties movie Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey, when he's
Speaker 1: confronted with the fact that his girlfriend is leaving him
Speaker 1: forever and she gives him an inkling of hope that
Speaker 1: perhaps she'll come back to him, he says, so you're
Speaker 1: telling I feel like what Myron just said, and talking
Speaker 1: about the dispersal of mountain lions and their ability to
Speaker 1: travel such long distances give some credibility to the lore
Speaker 1: of the Southern mountain lion because we have an established
Speaker 1: population of lions in southern Florida and then in the
Speaker 1: West and would not be unheard of for lions travel
Speaker 1: that distance. So maybe there is something to all these
Speaker 1: mountain lions sightings, regardless of the fact that many of
Speaker 1: these sightings could have and very well may have been
Speaker 1: captive lions released that people were seen. So do you
Speaker 1: do you foresee a time like with the so with that,
Speaker 1: with the habitat structure that we currently have between here
Speaker 1: and these populations, do you forecast a time It might
Speaker 1: be twenty years from now, fifty years from now, five
Speaker 1: years from now. I don't know, will we have an
Speaker 1: established breeding populations line, because what would typically happen, as
Speaker 1: I understand dispersal of these large carnivores, is like the
Speaker 1: males start making these satellite loops and then at some
Speaker 1: point females, you know, like at some point we're gonna
Speaker 1: get a picture of a female in Arkansas. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: Missouri came up about four believe it's about four years ago.
Speaker 1: And they collected some hair off of a confirmed sighting.
Speaker 1: They confirmed that it was a female. Uh. The experts
Speaker 1: that I have talked to about mountain lions, all of
Speaker 1: them have been pretty consistent in saying that if you
Speaker 1: do have a female in a geographic area, a male
Speaker 1: will finder. It's just a matter of time. When you
Speaker 1: do have a female show up, you will have a
Speaker 1: breeding population. What I want to kind of talk to
Speaker 1: you about now is like mountain lion folklore essentially in
Speaker 1: places where they're historically haven't been lions in the last
Speaker 1: hundred years. So in Arkansas we have those arcs and washtaws,
Speaker 1: which would have these big vast sections of public land
Speaker 1: that would be for all of our deer populations would
Speaker 1: be less dense populations of deer than on private land.
Speaker 1: There's less deer in the mountains than there are in
Speaker 1: these agricultural areas, and civilizers, well, it seems to me
Speaker 1: that there is a unorthodox shift in mountain lion folklore
Speaker 1: in these like backwoods places, and I'm like, well, there's
Speaker 1: not enough deer there, Like there there's there's not enough
Speaker 1: game for these animals to be living. Like I think
Speaker 1: people would have this idea that a mountain lion, if
Speaker 1: he was living here, he'd be living way out and
Speaker 1: you know x X Mountain, which is far back in there.
Speaker 1: But what we're seeing with these lion sightings that you
Speaker 1: guys are confirming is that they're not necessarily in the
Speaker 1: backwoods there in places with higher deer density. Is that true?
Speaker 1: I think that would be the natural place to set
Speaker 1: up a territory exactly along the lines of what you're
Speaker 1: speaking of. I'll give you an example. Custer, South Dakota,
Speaker 1: is a very very small mountain town. And if you
Speaker 1: look a lot of the mountain towns up in the
Speaker 1: Black Hills, you know, they're very small communities in the
Speaker 1: lower portions of these valleys with the road highways running
Speaker 1: through them. And when you drive through them, you can
Speaker 1: see the edge of town, you know, up on the
Speaker 1: side of the mountain over there you can sit to
Speaker 1: the left and right. And when we were driving through there,
Speaker 1: one of the houndsmen that I was spent some time with,
Speaker 1: he'd be like, oh, yeah, you know, a mount line
Speaker 1: took a labrador from that guy's house right over there,
Speaker 1: and we go down the road and well, that guy
Speaker 1: was had his truck parked up at this you know,
Speaker 1: this bar or whatever it was sitting on the edge
Speaker 1: of town that you could see up there. But it's
Speaker 1: on the edge of town. Well, they came down and
Speaker 1: drug a deer out of that guy's truck, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's telling me all these stories, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: mountain lions just don't have that secretiveness to them that
Speaker 1: I really thought they did. I mean, I thought they
Speaker 1: would stay, you know, a hundred miles away from a
Speaker 1: civilization or whatever, and and really they're not. It kind
Speaker 1: of cues back into what you were saying. They're gonna
Speaker 1: they're gonna go, and they're gonna set up shop where
Speaker 1: food is available, where it's the easiest, and where there's
Speaker 1: the most of It would be more natural for mountain
Speaker 1: line to set up an area that they're going to
Speaker 1: stay in a territory in the heart of the Ozark
Speaker 1: National Forest, or would it be more likely that he's
Speaker 1: set up in a territory on the fringes of national forest.
Speaker 1: Probably more likely to set up a territory on the
Speaker 1: fringes of national forest. But you're still talking about an
Speaker 1: animal leaven in prime mountain lion habitat. You're talking about
Speaker 1: an animal that has home ranges of you know, hundred
Speaker 1: plus square miles. So let's talk about where lines have
Speaker 1: been seen in Arkansas and how you guys determine that
Speaker 1: one is a sighting is valid. Probably a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty plus sightings that people contact us a year now
Speaker 1: of those sightings that we're able to have physical evidence of,
Speaker 1: whether it be a track, whether it be a game
Speaker 1: camera photo, whether it be a phone photo video, whatever else,
Speaker 1: something that we have physical evidence that we can go out.
Speaker 1: We take a field investigation form. We go out on
Speaker 1: any sighting that has physical evidence and we'll record it.
Speaker 1: If it's a game camera photo, we're gonna record where
Speaker 1: the picture was, you know, whether it was yes, verify
Speaker 1: that it was taken from this camera at this spot.
Speaker 1: You have background everything. You're doing an investigation to verify
Speaker 1: that A, you know, it was a mountain line, B
Speaker 1: it was taken at this location. Because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of Internet hoaxes going out there. You know this this
Speaker 1: mountain line was taken at a friend of mine's, friends, uncle's,
Speaker 1: you know, best cousins. Whatever camera last week comes out
Speaker 1: that's been floating around the internet for six years and
Speaker 1: it was. You know, I was gonna say that if
Speaker 1: the game in fish gets a hundred and fifty sightings
Speaker 1: per year, I know about fifty of those guys, and
Speaker 1: I can tell you they're full of it. But what
Speaker 1: bulls right down to it. For the last decade or so,
Speaker 1: the amount of sightings that we have been able to
Speaker 1: verify and hold onto your seat, the mountain sightings that
Speaker 1: we have been able to verify per year averages to
Speaker 1: about one wow, one to two sightings per year that
Speaker 1: we're able to verify and say yes, that's without a
Speaker 1: doubt amount line, What is your personal feeling on all
Speaker 1: these other sightings? And just because someone can't verify sighting
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that it's not legit. It just means that
Speaker 1: they just means that us as a as a conservation
Speaker 1: agency here or a scientific agency. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we can't. I can't go out there and say, well,
Speaker 1: we've got a hundred mountain lines in the state because
Speaker 1: we've had this many sightings. I mean, I can't gotta
Speaker 1: have evidence. I gotta have evidence of it. I gotta
Speaker 1: have proof of it. I mean, you know, we don't
Speaker 1: just go out there and on on a whim and
Speaker 1: and say we've got this mini bear, this mini deers.
Speaker 1: So what's your gut about all these other sightings? Are
Speaker 1: people wrong or are people right? And it's just not verifiable.
Speaker 1: I think about ninety eight percent of the sightings that
Speaker 1: we get our misidentification, what are they see in? Uh,
Speaker 1: you'd be surprised at the amount of video or picture
Speaker 1: sightings that are sent to me every year. And I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about three or four. I'm talking about ten's
Speaker 1: fifty sixty, you know, maybe more pictures or videos that
Speaker 1: are sent to me every year that are housecats house cats?
Speaker 1: You mean to tell me that people are mistaken house
Speaker 1: cats for mountain lions, a fifteen pound cat versus a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty pound cat. Believe it. Feral housecats are
Speaker 1: estimated to number seventy million, maybe even more. They're everywhere,
Speaker 1: and people don't understand scale often when they see an
Speaker 1: animal and get a picture of it. The biggest misidentification
Speaker 1: is by far and away, Uh, domestic house cats are
Speaker 1: just feral housecats. House cats in general. UH do have
Speaker 1: a lot of bobcat pictures that are sent to me,
Speaker 1: even videos of bobcats. And you know, there's some anatomical
Speaker 1: features that bobcats possessed that housecats or mountain lions don't possess.
Speaker 1: One of them, of course, is obvious, the bob tail.
Speaker 1: But I've seen a lot of pictures where a hind
Speaker 1: foot actually looks like a continuation of a tail, and
Speaker 1: then you look up at the head of it and
Speaker 1: you see these big, huge white dots on the backs
Speaker 1: of the ears, which are specific to bobcats, not mountain lions.
Speaker 1: Mountain lions don't have white patches on the back side. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's the here's the question of the hour. Okay, I've
Speaker 1: found living in the South, living in Arkansas, there's two
Speaker 1: kinds of people. There's people that have seen mountain lions
Speaker 1: and there are people that have not. So myran means,
Speaker 1: taken out of his position at the Arkansas Game and
Speaker 1: Fish Commission, have you ever seen a lion mountain lion
Speaker 1: in Arkansas? Good? Thank goodness, firing. I wish I had.
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean, you know, I tell people
Speaker 1: this all the time, the amount of people that have
Speaker 1: seen mountain lions and everything else. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: think about that, it's it's it's a lot of people,
Speaker 1: a lot of people claimed to have seen him, and uh,
Speaker 1: I'm not here to tell anybody that they didn't see
Speaker 1: what they thought they saw. We're up to like since
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, we're up to nineteen verified sightings
Speaker 1: in the last ten years in Arkansas. To understand why
Speaker 1: people so badly want to believe in mountain lions, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to understand a bit about human nature. Dr.
Speaker 1: Richard Back has been a clinical psychologist since nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: and he has some unique insight into why humans act
Speaker 1: the way they do. Dr Back of the of the hundreds,
Speaker 1: if not thousands, of mountain lions sightings that people would
Speaker 1: have claimed over the years to have happened here in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and the actual number of verified sightings being so small,
Speaker 1: why do people Why do people believe that they've seen
Speaker 1: a lion when statistically they probably actually didn't. Well, it's
Speaker 1: probably two things going on there. One is that it's
Speaker 1: kind of an exciting thing to think is possible. And
Speaker 1: if people have any sort of belief established already, you know,
Speaker 1: whether they've read articles on mountain lions, or they had
Speaker 1: an uncle or grandfather talked about the mountain lions. If
Speaker 1: there's some connection somewhere and the person probably can't even
Speaker 1: identify where it was. But if it's an established fact
Speaker 1: that there are mountain lions, then when they see something
Speaker 1: that can be fit into that perception, they'll they'll they'll
Speaker 1: tend to do it, and then you can't talk them
Speaker 1: out of it no matter what you show them, and
Speaker 1: they are really confirming what they already believe or picked
Speaker 1: up somewhere. Is there a psychological term that would describe
Speaker 1: somebody that had a belief that may not even be true,
Speaker 1: and then something happened and they slotted that event that
Speaker 1: happened into a belief that wasn't real. Is there is
Speaker 1: there a psychological term for that. Yes, it's called confirmation bias,
Speaker 1: and it's just practically every person has it but is
Speaker 1: unaware of it and would certainly deny it if you ask.
Speaker 1: It's all over our lives. I guess, yeah, it's all
Speaker 1: over our lives. We end up believing things not even
Speaker 1: knowing where that comes from. In terms of what we
Speaker 1: think is the best model car or or the best
Speaker 1: football team or the best state to live in. We
Speaker 1: end up believing that and we couldn't really even probably
Speaker 1: voice reasons why We just like that, and then we
Speaker 1: cherry pick any sword of evidence, whether it's from newspapers
Speaker 1: or sports announcers or neighbors. But we cherry pick in
Speaker 1: terms of selecting information that supports what we already believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it would be like really reasonable if if you
Speaker 1: were a young child growing up in somebody that you
Speaker 1: respected or maybe some of you didn't respect, told you
Speaker 1: that there were mountain lines here, regardless of that was
Speaker 1: like patently false, you would probably go through your life
Speaker 1: with a slot in your mind that there are potentially
Speaker 1: mountain lines here. So if you saw a flash a
Speaker 1: brown fur across the road, that might just easily slot
Speaker 1: into that place and it just be fact inside of
Speaker 1: your mind. Yes, yeah, that would happen. Can you tell
Speaker 1: me about naive realism what that means. Yeah, Naive realism is,
Speaker 1: I guess, in a sense, the foundation of confirmation bias.
Speaker 1: Naive realism is really kind of uh, fancy term for
Speaker 1: what I think we've probably all noticed, and that is
Speaker 1: almost everyone else we deal with thinks that they're right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that's because most people do think and believe that
Speaker 1: their way of perceiving the world and interpreting data and
Speaker 1: selecting and making decisions. We all believe that we've come
Speaker 1: up on the right way of living life. So it's
Speaker 1: like you could be living just kind of you could
Speaker 1: just kind of have this false reality. Yeah, well yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of people do. And if anyone tries to convince
Speaker 1: them that they have a false reality, then they fall
Speaker 1: back on confirmation by us to really ignore anything they're
Speaker 1: saying that disputes what they believe and that, but they'll
Speaker 1: select all sorts of data that confirms there body confirms
Speaker 1: or bias. This is a great place to hear a
Speaker 1: story that actually happened. Scott Brown is my longtime good friend.
Speaker 1: He's a veteran woodsman, and I trust whatever the guy says.
Speaker 1: You're gonna get a kick out of this story. But
Speaker 1: I want you to ask yourself, which character in this
Speaker 1: story are you? So you know where I where I work,
Speaker 1: we sell hunting licenses, and usually the first the week
Speaker 1: right before modern gun Deer season opens, it just gets
Speaker 1: really busy. So I'm back there one night, I'm helping
Speaker 1: out and just trying to help him sell licenses, and
Speaker 1: a guy walks up and he says, Hey, I need
Speaker 1: to buy a license, And I said okay, no problem.
Speaker 1: I said what license you need and he said, well,
Speaker 1: I just need the Big Game license, the annual Big
Speaker 1: Game license. And said, okay, no problem. And so I
Speaker 1: asked for his driver's license and I'm I'm plugging his information.
Speaker 1: He says, well, that license allowed me to kill one
Speaker 1: of these and I said, what is it? And he
Speaker 1: shows me his phone. He's got this picture on his
Speaker 1: phone and when he shows it to me, it is,
Speaker 1: without question a bobcat. I mean it's it's, without question
Speaker 1: a bobcat. I've seen a lot of bobcats and I'm
Speaker 1: a hundred percent certain it was a bobcat. Had speckles
Speaker 1: on its belly. I mean it was. It's a bobcat,
Speaker 1: no question. And I said, yeah, yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 1: trail camera picture. Something he had on his trail camera
Speaker 1: there around his house somewhere. And I said, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you shoot bobcats, coyotes and allow you shoot all that stuff.
Speaker 1: And when I said that, he was just I mean,
Speaker 1: he just snapped at me. He just said, that's not
Speaker 1: a bobcat. And I said, oh, it wasn't, and he
Speaker 1: said no, and he kind of hands the phone back
Speaker 1: over to me again. I'm thinking maybe I made a mistake.
Speaker 1: So I look at it again and I come to
Speaker 1: the same conclusion. It is a bobcat. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: just no question about it. And of course, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't say anything. I just said, yeah, yeah, sure enough,
Speaker 1: you know, and just kind of blew him off, you know,
Speaker 1: as if he wants to believe that, he can believe that.
Speaker 1: I suppose. Well, it gets better. So as he tells
Speaker 1: me that there's three or four guys waiting and they're
Speaker 1: they're just standing around us. They're waiting on us, you know,
Speaker 1: so they can get a license. And the guy goes,
Speaker 1: did you say you have a mountain line on camera?
Speaker 1: And guy said yeah, yeah. So he kind of turns
Speaker 1: his phone around and shows this other guy and it
Speaker 1: kind of draws a crowd, and there's a three or
Speaker 1: four guys there and they're all like, oh, man, sure enough,
Speaker 1: you know it's a it's a big mountain line. Look
Speaker 1: at that thing. And they're all just handing around there.
Speaker 1: In the span of about one minute, he had convinced
Speaker 1: five people standing back there that he had a mountain
Speaker 1: line on camera, and every one of them believed it
Speaker 1: and had no trouble believing it. The only person by
Speaker 1: back there that thought otherwise was me, and it was
Speaker 1: it was because it was clearly a bobcat. This is
Speaker 1: how it started. Yeah, And I thought, man, this is
Speaker 1: how the legends and the myths and all these things
Speaker 1: you hear about people of seeing mountain lions get started.
Speaker 1: It just takes one person to see one. Now, all
Speaker 1: those five guys they left, I went wherever they went
Speaker 1: for the rest of the day and told how many
Speaker 1: people they saw a mountain lion on some guys game camera.
Speaker 1: And then thus, there's a mountain lion around and everybody's
Speaker 1: seen it, when actually only one guy saw it. It
Speaker 1: wasn't even a mountain lion. Now back to Myron, do
Speaker 1: you want to delve into the black panther myth? Absolutely yes.
Speaker 1: I meant to say that. In the South, particularly Myron,
Speaker 1: you hear this. You hear people talking about black panthers
Speaker 1: like I with my own ears, have heard countless grown
Speaker 1: men that I believe to be like rational thinking people
Speaker 1: tell me that they've seen black panthers. What's the deal
Speaker 1: with that? Well, I'll speak in scientific terms of black panthers.
Speaker 1: We can't have this discussion without talking about black panthers.
Speaker 1: My old, my, what a topic. Before we start, let
Speaker 1: me ask you a question. Do you believe in black
Speaker 1: panthers in North America? If you do or you don't,
Speaker 1: I gay wrong? Te you? You know some people that do,
Speaker 1: and they're probably normal, maybe even successful humans. I want
Speaker 1: you to think about that for a minute. I was
Speaker 1: shocked when my own father told me this story. When
Speaker 1: I was a kid, would go to Bucks Nord ain't
Speaker 1: Ali and Aunt Ali. They weren't an they ain't ain't
Speaker 1: Ali and ain't Ali. And then you'd go down to
Speaker 1: the Ali's house and she had the dog trot, and
Speaker 1: you'd spend a night down there, and you'd hear a
Speaker 1: panthers scream every now and then. Now, do you I
Speaker 1: don't have to be honest with you. I would be
Speaker 1: afraid that it was this cognitive disconnect where Lewin had
Speaker 1: talked about it so much, and they talked about it
Speaker 1: so much that when you mean, when you were there,
Speaker 1: it was like in this place you can hear panthers,
Speaker 1: oh man. And when you drove you, when you drove
Speaker 1: into Bucks, North, it was like if you were a
Speaker 1: city boy and guys like you and I that have
Speaker 1: a heart for the outdoors, even as a little kid.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would just be so exciting. The trees
Speaker 1: were over the road, and when you pulled up an
Speaker 1: ain't Alley's house, the yard was all sandy dirt, with
Speaker 1: doodle bugs everywhere in this big old dog trot down
Speaker 1: the middle, and a big old porch across the front,
Speaker 1: and june bugs. We'd always catch june bugs and fly
Speaker 1: those june bugs and we doodle bug and then at dark,
Speaker 1: you know, case man, he's thinking panthers would scream, or
Speaker 1: you know mountain lions. I think there's panther. I think
Speaker 1: there's black mountain lions myself. Do you realize Well, I
Speaker 1: mean I don't have a proof of it. I just
Speaker 1: always have heard that. You've heard so you've heard of
Speaker 1: cognitive DIC. I mean I just believed the propaganda. You
Speaker 1: so you you have like you're seventy two years old,
Speaker 1: that in Arkansas whole life, and you believe it. I'm
Speaker 1: not worried about you believing that. I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: get to the root of where that comes from. Hey
Speaker 1: who told Hey, Hey, when when I when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, when when you'd have a group of kids
Speaker 1: around and your favorite aunt would be there and she
Speaker 1: would it would say, hey, tell us a story, and
Speaker 1: they go, well, you know, there's just a little family
Speaker 1: and when they were you know, they were walking home
Speaker 1: one night and all of a sudden they looked around.
Speaker 1: There's a black panther and they take the booty off
Speaker 1: the baby. And you know those stories that just was
Speaker 1: all through was just always there. Yeah, you know, throw
Speaker 1: a booty off, and then the diaper, and then the shirt,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden he pitched the baby back. Anyway,
Speaker 1: but i'd hear I'd hear adults talking about black panthers.
Speaker 1: Now back to Myron, People for generations have called panthers
Speaker 1: mountain lions, catamounts, cougars, lions. They're all the same animal,
Speaker 1: you know. They have a whole litany of common localized
Speaker 1: names that people have called them, but when it comes
Speaker 1: right down to it, they're all mountain lions. They're all
Speaker 1: the same animals. There's no other species in North America
Speaker 1: of big cat, no currently on the land, well not
Speaker 1: in the United States anyway. Well, jaguars down inside are
Speaker 1: the only animal large cat that has known to exist
Speaker 1: or have occurrence for a melanistic color face, which is
Speaker 1: a quote black color phase are two of the large cats,
Speaker 1: jaguars and leopards. Okay, so there has never been a
Speaker 1: documented melanistic color phase of the mountain lion in history. Okay,
Speaker 1: so not even in people, not even in the Smithsonian Institute.
Speaker 1: So if you think in terms of black panthers, what
Speaker 1: most people are calling black panthers are black mountain lines,
Speaker 1: and uh, scientifically the animals never existed. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of it is folklore. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: it is uh, misidentification, folklore, you know, things of that nature.
Speaker 1: And uh, I mean, is it is it plausible that
Speaker 1: a large black cat, jaguar or leopard could never occur
Speaker 1: in Arkansas? It could if one of two things happened.
Speaker 1: Either A it escaped from someone's cage somewhere and it
Speaker 1: was a jaguar or a leopard, or b you had
Speaker 1: maybe a jaguar move up from Central America into Arkansas,
Speaker 1: which is just not plausible. Uh, you'd probably have just
Speaker 1: as good a chance to see in an ostrich as
Speaker 1: you would have black you know, jaguar. I have a
Speaker 1: lot of people you know that getting mad at me. Well,
Speaker 1: you're trying to tell me I didn't say it. No,
Speaker 1: I don't try to tell anybody they didn't see what
Speaker 1: they think they saw, or someone they know didn't see
Speaker 1: what they think through saw. I just stand on the
Speaker 1: on the scientific facts of the issue and the scientific
Speaker 1: fact behind the whole black panther deal. It's just that
Speaker 1: that particular animal does not exist or it's never been
Speaker 1: documented to occur in a melanistic color face and black
Speaker 1: color face. Believing and trusting people is part of the
Speaker 1: community structure of humankind. It's part of what separates us
Speaker 1: from the animals and what's made us biologically successful as
Speaker 1: a species. If we doubted everything people said and demanded
Speaker 1: proof of everything, we wouldn't have made it past the
Speaker 1: difficulty of our archaic past of slinging rocks and stuff
Speaker 1: and huddling and caves. Blind trust in our fellow man
Speaker 1: is evidence of our humanity, and deep down I believe
Speaker 1: that we want to believe people. Deep down, we want
Speaker 1: to trust our brother or sister. If there is any
Speaker 1: good in the folk lore of the Mountain lion in
Speaker 1: the black Panther, it's found in the social mechanics of
Speaker 1: wanting to believe the best of your neighbor and taking
Speaker 1: your friend at his word. Perhaps we need some more
Speaker 1: of that in today's time. Though mountain lions were certainly
Speaker 1: gone for the large part of the last hundred years
Speaker 1: in the South, wouldn't you know it, The truth has
Speaker 1: swung back around and found us still sitting here believing
Speaker 1: mountain lions are back. And this is a conservation success story.
Speaker 1: But it's also a story of how the truth, though
Speaker 1: temporarily labeled as folklore and it was, has once again
Speaker 1: been found as truthful. Mountain lions are here, and maybe
Speaker 1: they always have been. And if anybody ever doubts that
Speaker 1: Gary Nwcomb or Brent Reeves did not see a mountain lion,
Speaker 1: I'll punch him in the teeth, because I'll believe those
Speaker 1: two until the day I die. Long live the beast,
Speaker 1: and long live the good word of our brother and
Speaker 1: sister m HM.