Bear Grease - Ep. 22: American Cowboy in Open Country - Warner Glenn (Part 1)

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast, we’re heading to the American West to meet a Rancher midway through his ninth decade on planet earth -- and he still rides his mule everyday. He’s known as one of the nation’s best dry-ground mountain lion hunters. The southern border of his property is Mexico, he plays a little fiddle, and he did a some unconventional roping in an Academy award winning movie. But that’s just the flashy stuff, we’ll hear a wild story that involves a helicopter rescue, but mainly we’ll glimpse into the life of a true American cowboy named, Warner Glenn. We had expectations of who this man would be, but they were scattered in the desert when I met the real Mr. Warner. This is part one in our series on the life of the living legend, Warner Glenn. Connect with Clay and MeatEaterClay on InstagramMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop Bear Grease Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. One time that I described him as six foot six and in perfect physical condition, a slender but powerful man and that could outwalk anybody on their best saddle horse in any kind of terrain.

On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we're heading into the American West to meet a rancher. midway through his ninth decade on planet Earth, and he still rides his mule every day. He's known as one of the nation's best dry ground mountain lion hunters. The southern border of his property is Mexico. He plays a little fiddle, and he did some unconventional roping in an Academy Award-winning movie. But that's just the flashy stuff.

We'll hear a wild story that involved the helicopter rescue, but mainly will glimpse into the life of a true American cowboy named Warner Glenn. I had expectations of who this man would be, but they were scattered in the desert when I met the real Mr. Warner. This is part one in our series on the life of a living legend, Warner Glenn. You're not going to want to miss this one. He always kept up with his dogs afoot, which he did. One day this young man asked him, he said, How do you do that? And dad said, well, I just got slower dogs. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant.

Search for insight in unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American-made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed. to be as rugged as the places we explore. Guys, we've got an exclusive bear grease discount code for FHF gear. That's Fish Hunt Fight Gear. I've been using their products for the last year, and I love carrying my gear in a chest rig or my binos in their bino harness. It's easier and more accessible than a backpack,

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Fish Hunt Fight, FHF Gear. I arrived at the Malpie Ranch in southeast Arizona a few hours before the glowing sunset blanketed the desert. If I'm being honest, I've rarely been more impacted at a first meeting. He was feeding his hounds, and I was greeted with a wide smile and a warm demeanor. I was a stranger to him, but a more genuine and gritty handshake I have never felt. I was invited to get in the side-by-side, and we rode five miles west to a remote generator-powered well. So what is that pump doing?

water into these? Yeah. It fills this tank, and it's full all the time. The overflow is what fills this. That way, if I have a float getting knocked off or something in it or a line break, it'll drain this. But I have that and all. And this just waters all the cattle on this side of the ramps. Yeah.

Yep. Mr. Warren, how old are you? I'm 85. 85. Yeah. Still working 10 hours? 12 hours a day. I tell you, I've been lucky.

I sure have. I didn't do the saddle with a horse and ride, and I tell you, and that's good enough. As long as I can do that, I can get something done, you know. But the saddle's getting heavier every year. And the hills are getting higher. Warner Glen is 6'6,

slender, and wiry like American barbed wire, the expensive kind. He's wearing a faded, salmon-colored button-up shirt, and his t-shirt showing through the neck reveals a tattered collar. His cowboy had his straw and stained with sweat and dirt. He's an old man, but his eyes are as bright blue as you'll ever see. I find that with age, sometimes a man's eyes brighten, almost like they've been bleached by the sun. We made it back to the ranch house, which is quite literally a museum of the West

replete with art, Native American artifacts, photography, old guns and saddles, and antlers. But the dominant theme is beautiful photos of hounds and Mount Lions photographed on Warner's hunts

and a huge painting of a jaguar. More on that later. We had dinner with Warner's daughter Kelly, who will meet later and her daughter, McKinsey, and some other friends helping on the ranch. Thank you, Lord. for this food. And thank you, Lord, for the guidance and safety of us today. And please

watch over through the night and give us all the good night's rest. Amen. I'd heard about Warner Glen for almost two decades, and I knew it was time to go see him. He's known in the hound world as one of the best dry ground mountain lion hunters in the nation. Today, he's probably the oldest active mountain lion hunter left. Later, we'll explain what a dry ground lion hunter is, and that knowledge is very important. But in short, I'll tell you that it's one of the most demanding styles of hunting that there is. Warner has lived a storied life of a true American cowboy. Over the next few podcasts, I hope to do the man and his family partial justice

in describing their way of life, their character, and their humility. Rarely have I seen the like. It's been many moons since Mr. Warner played his fiddle, but he was kind enough to break it out on my request. After a short night and a 5 a.m. breakfast, we headed to the kennel and the mule barn. We're going on a ride. How many dogs do you have, Mr. Warner?

16. 16 dogs. And one or two good ones. I can buy that. So these are primarily walkers, but they're mixed breed dogs. You've got some, a little bit of black and tan, some of them. look kind of dark. Most of them have a little something else in them, a little bit of blue tick.

But mostly it's walking. I can start putting collars on dogs if you tell me which ones to do. You can put that one on him, but don't turn him out. Don't turn him out. His dogs are meticulously cared for. The kennels are clean, and the dogs obey Mr. Warner's every command. Tell me about that. What's the name of the dog you said was the best dog you got?

Hook. Hook. Why is he the best dog you've got? He's good at everything. He's a good cold trailers, a good strike dog, and he'll move out and catch one. How old is he? That's the trouble. He's 12.

Oh, wow. Yeah, wow. He's still going, though. Yeah, he'll be all right this winter, but this probably be his last winner. Oh. Yeah. Well, he and I might go out together. I don't know.

I wouldn't count on it. Yeah, he's. one of the best ones, the hook is, and that's his full brother right there, and he's not worth it to. Is that right? Yeah, litter mate. Litter mate. Yep.

So what are we going to do this morning? Well, we're just going to ride, we're just exercising these dogs. I do this probably four times a week and try to go about eight or ten miles with them. And keep their feet in condition, hardened up

and fairly in good shape. Mr. Warner, You're 85 years old and you're still riding a mule. That's pretty unique. How many miles a year do you think you ride? Oh, my word. I have no idea. I heard him say that you ride,

you probably ride 2,500 miles a year on horseback or mule. No doubt. Yeah, no doubt. I still do that. I ride every day somewhere. Unless I have to go, you know, the town or something for some reason. You ride every day. I try to.

either working cattle or keeping these dogs in shape or hunting, you know, that type of deal. Mr. Warner saddles a 16-hand mule named Vivian, and he instructs me to ride a shorter strawberry roan mule. He gets on the Big Bay with the agility of a man 50 years his junior, and I'm not kidding. His mount on the mule was smooth, natural, and effortless. We head out of the ranch house with 16 white-spotted walker dogs canvassing the landscape in front of us. My questions and his stories flow almost non-stop on our two-hour ride through the open country. That white dog right behind is. She's a really good cold trainer and a good fight dog. She's a good dog, but not too good to get around. Okay, that was Clump.

And a fellow, Johnny Clump, a good friend of ours, and also a lion hunter, he gave me that. dog as a pup. And that do nothing to follow my mule around until he was about a year and a half old. I mean, the other dogs would be trailing lions, and he'd just stay with rats. And so one day we had trailed the lion into a big old bluff and couldn't find it. And the guy that was helped, let's say, Cowboys, Tommy Todd, he and I were looking at some blood splattered in spots on a road. rock here at the basis bluff. And I said, yeah, and that, it looks like whatever one went right up.

And I pointed to the right, and the little old female line was right there, about 30 feet from us. And as soon as we made eye contact with us, she just bailed out of that bluff, running, and went off the mountain, then ran right square over old clump, this cannonballed old clump down the hill. And he got up and went to square. He ran that line up in the bottom of a big old canyon there and treat it. And from that day on, he was one of the best dogs I've ever had.

I mean, just like switching a light bulb on. So once in a while, there's hope for those duds you think are duds. Most of the time, they're always a duds. But he did. He made one of the best doggone dogs I've ever had from that day on. Old clump. Oh, clump. He got cannon balls.

Give him a chance. clump. We gain some elevation and overlook a rough section of tall pointed mountains. When in an unfamiliar place, I never take for granted my own ignorance of it. Mr. Warner interpreted the landscape for me. Okay, from right here, you can see this valley up through here. All of these small hills you're looking at it were cinder cones or volcanoes. And going south into Mexico, too.

So this would have been a pretty wild place like several thousand years ago when all this was foreman. You know, it wouldn't have been too place to, too good of a place. Tell me what the name of your ranch is and what it means. Okay, we call it the Malpi Ranch, and that, it's derived from the Spanish word malpais, which means untillable land, bad land. It's untillable. And that's because it's too rocky for farmland. It's pretty good cow country, though, but they better have good feet on them

because they don't sure get sore-footed in the country like this. Good lion country, too. Yeah, it's pretty good. Some of this good country land, it's debatable on how that wall that they build is going to. No doubt it's going to break up some of the wildlife corridors. but it's not continuous. I mean, the Pellon Sea is still open, and it's a good wildlife corridor at Pellon Cia.

We'll see. We'll see what the future hope will. I wanted to ask Mr. Warner about his connection to the land and how his family got here. Here's what he said. Mr. Warner, you've been in Arizona your whole life. You were born in 1936. That's correct.

Tell me about your upbringing, your mind. mom and dad, kind of how your family came to this part of the world. Okay, my granddad, he came out here in 1896 from Texas. They had a little dirt farm right south of Abilene. There was 11 kids in the family, and they were the two oldest, the Wilk and Ira is my granddad. And it was their job to get up early in the morning and go feed the two plow horses. My great-granddad, JJ Glenn, he went in.

And he told the boy, he said, Will, and Ari, says it's time to get up and go feed those horses, and then come back and get breakfast so they'd be ready to start plowing at the daylight. And old Will, he's nudged. I was an hour and hours of night's sleep. So JJ went in there about five minutes later. They were both down asleep, snoring again. So he walked outside, and they had big barrels catching rainwater off the roofs. And they always had water in them.

There was a coat of ice on that water. He got the worst pan and scooped a big pan of that ice water out. Went in there, jerked to cover it back and thrown it on those boys. And old Will, he went to saddle and went up and up, and I said, Will, what are you doing? And he said, I'm leaving here and I'm never coming back. He was 18 at the time when my granddad was 15. And he did it. He did.

Your grandfather's brother. My grandfather stayed there and went to plow on the pit. but they didn't hear from Will for four months. And he came down here and he rode up through that half moon valley. And he rode up in a lot of this country at that time were homesteaded already, especially in the valleys. Yeah. But the mountains weren't.

So he rode up in the, this is the south end, the Cherkow Mountains. And he rode up that half moon valley and the grass was just thick and dragging the stirrups of his saddle. And he went to Wilcox, and at that time they had a telegraph line. and he sent his dad a wire and he said dad if you want to come to some of the best cow country you'll ever find you ought to come to Arizona territory that's what it was at that time and j j j did he brought the whole family out and that's what brought him out wow cold pan of water cold pan of water got him moving and they homesteaded there what we call high lonesome

canyon in the south end of the chirok j j jay homesteaded there and my my Granddad, Ira, he homesteaded about three miles north of there in what they call Hunt Canyon. I want to read an excerpt from the author Stan Steiner's book titled The Ranchers. It might give us a window into something that's hard to understand unless you've seen it or have lived it. Here it is. One thing that ranchers seem to have in common was a sense of place, a place on earth. It was not so much that they owned a place on earth. That the place on earth they owned was where their ancestors were buried, where they grew up and would die, where their children were born.

They were part of that earth. And their feeling came from more than simply owning, buying, and selling the earth. It went deeper. End of quote. The Glenn's connection goes deeper. I saw this quote. inside of a photography book titled The North American Cowboy,

a portrait by a man named Jay Dussard. Mr. Jay is 84 years old and he has dedicated his life to photographing the landscapes and cowboys of the Western United States. He only shoots black and white and his images are meticulously crafted

in composure and lighting. They're stunning. He has multiple photography books. Another one is called Open Country, which I've learned is a cherished phrase and descriptor of the land in this part of the world. In the said book, Mr. Jay described open country. Keep in mind that these words are written by a man who interprets the world through shape, color, and images. These are Mr. Jay's words.

Open country, my kind, does not mean endless plains. Plains alone are too much like the endless sea for this landsman. I crave relief, changes of level, substantial reference points. In a landscape that is vertical as well as horizontal, being earthbound is completely satisfying. From a rim rock high enough to overcome the spherical Earth's disappearing act, it is a mesa or a mountain 100 miles distance that defines the sculptural reality, that give perspective to the intervening ridges, rifts, bahadas, and drainage. Surrounding this with clouds of monumental proportions lit at a low angle from 93 million miles,

and your photographic potential may even surpass postcard. At age 23, I finally realized what I had been missing. Space magnificently articulated by form, relief, light, and unbelievably clear atmosphere took on a new sense of continuity. I simply wanted to live on this grand piece of school. I wanted to be like a little ant or microbe crawling around on its wondrously complex surface. End of quote. Jay headed west and one of the first acquaintances he made was with Warner and Marvin Glenn.

Listener take note that I'm holding a sun-fated mountain lion skull with the date November 22nd, 1963 inscribed on it. Here's Mr. Jay with an interesting story. Well, I got so lucky that I discovered Warner Glenn and the Glenn family, Warner and Wendy Glenn, were so generous to bring me into their lives, into their world. And they traded me so wonderfully. And they put me on the payroll at the prevailing wage of $7 a day. Now, Warner and his father, Marvin Glan, they had a hunting business. They would guide hunts for mountain lions, primarily what they were known for. And since I was working at the ranch, they had booked a hunt with a couple from Sierra Vista.

And they said, well, you can just go join us on the hunt, and you can kind of babysit the clients. Everybody was riding mules but me, and he had the clients, and we split up so we could cover more country. In fairly short order, Warner saw a lion track on the ground. He said, I don't have time to show you this, and I couldn't see a thing. And he says, it's a four-year-old female, and we're going in the right direction. So we were on high ridge and going in the direction that the lion had taken. And then suddenly we came to a place where the ridge dropped off and it was nothing but slick rock and boulders to get down into the canyon where this lion had gone.

And Warner said, you'll never be able to make it down there. and I'm running with my good mule, Motomo. And he said, try and get down there into that canyon, work your way down easily into that canyon. And he said, I'll see you later. And he touched a spur to Motomo, and they just flew down, down that slick rock. It was the most amazing thing that I'd ever seen. And so Machono's steel shoes were trying to grip the rock and striking sparks. And they got down to the lower level down where I couldn't see them again.

And there they took off on a lower elevation. And then Machomo just leaped into the next drop off. It was spectacular. This is a skull of that four-year-old. So y'all caught the lion? Female, yeah. Now, tell me about the date on that skull. So on pencil here, it says November 22nd, 1963.

That's right. And that's a date that a lot of people with a little age on them will remember, because that's the date that President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. and we were about the last people in the civilized world who had known about the tragedy that took place in Dallas, Texas. It was way after dark when we got out of the mountains, and a rancher came through his place, and he said they killed the president today. How did that impact you? Well, it was shocking, and I think it made me remember that. I had voted for Nixon and voted against Kennedy, but...

You can tell something about a person when you learn where they were when a monumental event happened. It's a random one-time sampling, and Mr. Warner was on a flashy mule hunting mountain lions. I asked Mr. Jay to describe Warner Glen. This is what he said. I think one time that I described him is six foot six. and in perfect physical condition, a slender but powerful man and that could outwalk anybody on their best saddle horse in any kind of terrain.

That's my description of him. I want to jump back to Mr. Warner as he describes the foundation of their family's lion hunting. So I grew up there, we call it the J. Bore, and it's in the south end of the church. cows and that's where I was raised and my dad was there in that time we were raising our own horses and colts and breaking their own horse he was I was just a little boy the lions would kill those colts he couldn't hardly raise a colt there because the lions were killing them and also they were killing a lot of cows too so he got his first lion dog a red bone hand out of a from a guy down in a valley called El Prida.

And he took that hound up there, and that's when he first started a lion hunt. 1936. 1936. And then you went on your first lion hunt when you were six years old in 1942. Yeah, I think it was 42. That was the first line. I had been with him on a few tracks before, but never caught him thing.

But we did catch a line that day. Wow. It's a long day. We left there that morning, And the dogs picked up that track, and we trailed out all day. We caught that line just about sundown, but we were about nine miles south of the rent. So we got back at 11 that night. It was a long day for a six-year-old.

Yeah. And then he took his first. He continued to hunt, but he cost quite a bit even in those days to get a pack of hounds together and feed them. And the ranch is, the cattle ranch is we own an operator. Considered small rents in this area, he had probably 150 money counties. So to increase his income a little bit, he started taking the hunting clients. Yes. And the first hunting client he took was 1948.

Marvin, Warner's father, would become well known as a mountain lion hunter and renowned guide. He began lion hunting in the 1930s and started an outfitting business in 1947. He was known for a charming personality and his unusual husband. hospitality. His wife Margaret was an integral part of their ranch and business. It was said that she, quote, did everything with infectious enthusiasm, the type of enthusiasm that makes people enjoy your company. Well, this is actually a quote from a book written about Warner. I hadn't told you about that yet. The book is titled, The Life and Times of Warner Glen, a glimpse into the American West written by Ed Ashurst.

I believe the enthusiasm that Ed wrote about for life is still evident in this family today. To understand more about Mr. Warner's upbringing, I couldn't overlook a peculiar streak of good fortune that, of all places, came from Hollywood. I bet you weren't expecting that. Here's the story. When you were 15 years old, you and your father Marvin, We're in a movie. You roped a lion on a movie that won an Oscar.

And nowadays, they wouldn't even let you film that. Right, right, right. You know, because we weren't using any tranquilizer or anything like that. We would just rope him and pull them out of the tree. Of course, you have to have your dogs all tight back out of the way because you couldn't get something hurt. Because that lion, when he hits the ground on the end of that rope, he's ever wearing. and somebody's got to go in there and get him by a high leg or tail. Yeah.

Now, they kind of choke down a little bit, and somebody, once you get them stretched out like that, then you just take your time and get a rope on the feet, pull them back in something in their mouth. We tied up quite a few, and the reason we were doing that was either for a movie or it was for a zoo. We had zoos. Right. I read where you and your father gave a lion to the Bakersfield, California Zoo. Several of those lions ended up. Soos, what's really

is the worst thing you can do to a wild mountain land. Yeah. Really? I mean, I mean, at that time, we didn't think much of it. But, and it was something we did, we didn't think we're doing the wrong thing, but over the years, you kind of

say, how would you like to be stuck, stuck in the two? You know, because I'm used to free life. And so are those lines. Yeah. Some people may think they're cool or that they're cowboys And if they've got a story that will top roping

A Wild Mountain Line out of a tree When they're 15 years old for a Disney movie Yep, I said Disney I'll buy them an Angus Ribby Steak and a beaver felt hat Mr. Warner went on to describe How this movie impacted their lionhounds For decades to come And the poll of the name of Larry Landberg

came out and got us to help him film that. It was really a story about a hound that had got, that came across the Mexican border. And Disney actually, they brought a Walker Hound, Trey and Walker Hound that was nine months old. A fellow named of Jay Sistler had trained the dog. This is nine-month-hound pop, you might say. Yeah.

And that son of a gun took. Well, I mean, he just did everything that we asked for him in the movie. Yeah. I mean, yeah, he did. And it's kind of a cute little story. Rex Allen narrates it. But anyway, it went on to win the Academy Award that year for the best live action short. It was a 20-minute short that showed with a feature film.

Oh, wow. That's something. Before that picture, most of all our dogs were black and tan, red bone, blue tick, you know, red tick, that type of just the old English breeds. And good dogs. I mean, we had some good son of a gun. And then when we saw that Walker, that the train was a tree in Walker, out of somebody right there in your country.

I'm not sure. So when the movie was over, Daddy tried to, they called in the movie, the dog is called Paco. Okay. So he tried to buy Paco and they would sell him. They said,

oh, we might need him for this and that, which they did later. They came back and filmed something for that Disney presents at night. Okay. And they had to do it all. They had to film all of it while he was a pup. So they went to Sally Bacchle. So he said, you know what I'm going to try to give.

He bought a female out of Philly River Chief. Okay. Out of Missouri, I think. Yeah. And then he bought a male out of House of Bali. Okay. And the male was two, and the female was a year. So we got them and started raising pups.

And both of those dogs ended up, did good. Those were just, those were coon-hound stock. You bet. And they made wonderful lion dogs. And we raised pups out of those for eight or ten years, and that's one. Some of those pups are scattered all over the country. And some of the dogs nowadays are still related to go back to the houses, Bali, the Middle River, Chief, really way.

Yeah. It's hard to believe, but the Hollywood hound that came from the east was one of the most impressive young hounds Marvin and Warner had seen. They tracked it back to Missouri and built a line of lion dogs with some Apaco's relatives. A good lion dog is wherever you find him. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to eat. use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey

hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out prime cuts at Phelps game calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did. And you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. I asked Mr. Warner about his connection to the beast of burden of which he is quite fond. I'll give you one guess about what my next question is about. Well, I want to talk about mules. Just give me your spiel on mules and horses.

And cattle work here on the rent, we like to use horses. They're a little more responsive than that type of thing. Although we use mules a lot of times, we don't have the horses up if we have to work in cattle. But in hunting, but Dad and I used a lot of horses when we first started hunting. In the 40s and early, 50s and 60s, we were horseback most of the time even hunting, because we were raising all those horses in the mountains. Yeah. And we were breaking them ourselves.

So they were good mountain horses. It's kind of hard to find a good mountain horse now. But we went to use mules. We use mules altogether now when we're hunting. They take care of theirself in that rough, rugged country. They hardly ever get crippled. They hardly ever get hurt. If they do happen to fall with you,

and I'm not saying a mule won't fall with you, they will. I've had them fall with me. But usually when they get in a real bad place and fall, or get in a tight situation, they'll kind of relax and wait a minute. They don't panic. Where a horse will usually panic and go to lunging or kicking and get frantic. You might find one occasionally that would, but most mules will settle down and take it kind of ease out of a tough situation. And in doing that, they allow you time to step out of the middle of the trouble.

Yeah. They're not lunging and fighting. And I tell you, when you get it, when they go down with, if there's a pause, you better take advantage of it. You better get out of the way. I'm going to remember that. Yeah. You told me a statement today. You said, we've had some good mountain horses, but I sure felt sorry for them.

Oh, yeah. Well, a lot of the old timers, rather than water, why do you ride mules all the time hunting rather than horses? And I said, well, to tell you the truth, I just don't feel as sorry for a bit. mule as I do a horse. Can I figure that mule's going to take him and me both or she'll be. I'm not saying there's not some good mountain horses still around. Some of the hunters still use horses quite a bit. But by and large, most of the mountain line hunters in our area use mules.

He's and mules. Most of the time. Tell me about your mule machoomo. Well, I tell you. Yeah, and he came out of Mexico. So at that time, this would have been like 56, 57, 58, 19, 56, 5758. We were doing a lot of hunting in the northern part of Sonora in these mountains you can see from here south of us. And they had a mule called Motobo down there that one of the wranglers down there was riding.

So when we came out of there, the rancher was making Armando Verrella. He was making some really good horses. He had bought some real fancy studs. And he said, for payment for catching some of the lines down there, he said, where I want to give you one of these good horses? And I said, man, I would really rather have that bay mule called Motorola. And he said, you won? And I said, yeah, so he gave me the mule.

That's where he came from. And he's one of the best mules I've ever been there. He was a little wild and rank at first. He kicked me a tower too really bad, but he got over that when he got about 18, years old. It took a while. What was your favorite mule of all time? Well, I tell you, I've had a lot of them.

But of all the time, if I had my pick for one to stay with, I had a white mule called Snowy River. And he would do anything you wanted to do it, and he would do it good. And he was willing, he never balked. I mean,

he was a good and rough country. You could go ahead a cow on him. Carry a lot. He's not a good all around you. He'd carry a lion, too? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he'd carry a lion. Yeah.

Most of our, I tell you, they're not afraid of a lion as much as they are bear. It seems like our mules here, of course, we don't bear a hunk much. It's just very rare that they're even random. I've had, I'm riding, you'll see her in the morning, Vidian. She's one of those. How big a mule do you like? I don't like them too big. I like a mule that weighs probably 10-50 to 12-50.

These are pretty big mules you've got, though. Some of them are? Some of them are. Some of them are. Yeah, a couple of them probably are. But you're a big guy. They're a little bigger. Those are good mules of ones we've got now,

but I'd rather have a little smaller one. I'd rather have one. Snowy River would probably, he could probably wait 10.50. Okay. Something like that. Yeah. When he was dropped down. Yeah.

You've drawn down good condition. Much over would have been, too. Mr. Warner's love of mules is music to my ears. And as you know, I'm fond of the animals too. But my fondness should not mean that much. But coming from him, it should mean a lot. Warner's not on Instagram trying to look cute and flashy. Dang.

I wish he was. No, I don't. It's now mid-morning, and we've ridden to one of the highest points on the Malpai Ranch. Our mules are facing uphill towards the west. Mr. Warner shifts around in his saddle and points to the south. The life of the glens can't be understood without a realization of where they live. The landscape defines their existence. The southern boundary of the ranch is the Mexican border, and he's got some wild stories.

So those mountains are in Mexico. Yeah, all of this country you're looking at right south of us here, We're in OO Mexico. That big range you see right there kind of southeast of us is the starting of the Sierra Madri Mountains in Mexico, and they're continuous clear to Mexico City. I can see the wall down there. Oh, yeah. Wow.

You can see it on that side going out through the hills and that side going into the mountains. So used to, it was just a... A barbed wire fence? Just a barbed wire fence, yeah. When we bought the rent, it was just a, it was an eight-strand barbed wire fence and they had a steel teapost ever 12 feet. So it was a pretty good fence, but it was old. It was wore out. We were mending fence all the time.

So that was, and then the first thing they did was build that vehicle barrier, and that was in the early 2000. Of course, the vehicles could still get over it. I mean, they would just ramp over. Really? Yeah. You've had some encounters with, I mean, lots of encounters with people carrying drugs over the border. Oh, yeah.

I tell you, Kelly and I probably have run into like 25 or 30 bunches in the mountains over the years that had big bails right on them. And we just ride, I mean, you come around the end of the canyon and there's nowhere to go and they're right there. We just ride up to them. We've always got our dogs. And we got guns. I think we got, we've never been worried about.

We've never been threatened by them because it surprises them as much as it does us. And I just talked to them in Spanish and tell them we're lion hunting and we're on our way. But yeah, but the looks on their faces sometimes those drug mules they call them. It's a big relief to them when they know we're not carrying a bad. or something. But when we get away from them, we don't sure report those. We turn those and that's why the Border Patrol worked with us so good. We've had a lot, I've run into quite a few carrying bales right through the ranch here. In fact, we found probably over the year 30 or 40 bales that have been abandoned. And when we do, we don't pack them in. I get to Border Patrol,

take them and have them pick them up. Well, I've been on this ranch less than 24 hours, and while we were driving into your ranch, the Border Patrol was pulling out of your driveway. They told us six people they had picked up just yesterday, so that's common. That's right. Yeah, that's kind of an everyday occurrence,

or at least two or four times a week now. Honestly, some of his stories, and there are some very specific ones in the book, remind me of Daniel Boone's encounters with hostile Indians in the backwoods. Mr. Warner has used his tack, genuine demeanor, and cultural understanding he can speak Spanish to get him out of trouble a lot of times. Speaking of trouble, I want to hear Warner and his daughter Kelly tell about the time they got into some big trouble in the backcountry hunting lions in 2015.

And this is also a great place to introduce you to Kelly, Glenn Kimbrough, Warner's daughter. She's worked on the ranch and in lion outfitting with her father for decades. She is an accomplished rancher and dry ground lion hunter herself. And honestly, we could be doing a whole podcast on her life. What an incredible lady. Luckily, we'll hear more about her in part two. These next interviews were done separately,

but Kelly and Mr. Warner are telling the same wild story. There's a mountain in the north's end of the Pelham Sea is, actually it's in the New Mexico side, called Pratt Peak. And it is a terrible, rough, bluffy son of a gun and we had come over the top of Pratt Peak, and we had led down through some really bad rims and rocks and stuff. And I told Kelly, she was behind me, and we had two, a couple behind us. And I told him, I said, I think we can ride from here on. So I got him a mule who was sitting there, and Kelly went to get on her mule, and she had stepped, she went on the uphill side just because it easier to get on.

Here's Kelly. And there was about a couple inches of the snow on the boulders and stuff. On our mules, we do it all the time. We get on the off side. If that's the uphill side, we get on the off side. Right. So I stepped up on a boulder and put my right foot in the stirrup to get on. And when I did, the boulder was cracked from the freezing and thawing.

And it broke off and it hit her on the back leg. I had just, it was literally the second day I started riding after having my shoulder rebuilt. So I didn't have my full strength and I was able to grab on to the saddle, but my right foot was hung on the stirrup. So I was off hanging on. It was going to be a disaster. And the mule has lunged. She is bailing off the mountain. And it was frozen ground, boulders.

It was a terrible deal. And I knew it was going to hurt if I hit the ground. So I'm trying to hang on. And then she stepped, this leg was back here, and she stepped right on it, and it broke it in seven places. But what it did, it flipped it around backwards. But when she stepped on it, it jerked this foot out of the strip. And it jerked me free. Well, I was going so fast that they were watching, Dad and Rick and Heather, the people that were with us,

they said I made like two full flips, and then I hit a boulder with this side of my head. And in those flips, I remember seeing my leg going by a point in the wrong direction. She looked up and she said, Dad, my leg's broken. And I said, boy, Kelly, it sure is. And I mean, what can you say? It was pointed south and she was heading north. It was a bad deal. There was blood spewing out.

I had put like a 357 bullet hole right here and fractured this whole corner of my skull in one inch when I hit that rock. Wow. But it was just pouring blood, but it didn't hurt. This hurt. And he said, I know. And he grabbed my leg, and he said it was like a bag of bones. He was just loose. There was a man and his wife with us,

the man, Rick, he got to tell him by the arms and held her there on the hillside just to help her stabilize her so she wouldn't slide or roll any further down the mountain. I could see. I knew I had to straighten that leg. I mean, we were way up there. We knew we were going to have to. ever evacuated somehow. So I went ahead and I told Kelly,

I'm going to straighten your leg, Kelly, and then we're going to splice it and we'll immobilize it. So I just pulled it out and pointed the toe of the right direction. Yes. I went ahead and cut four or five of those yucca poles into a stock that grows out of the yucca plant. Cut them in about 18 inches. And then I took them down there and I had to roll that electrician's tape in my

saddlebag and so we got it we got those we used those stocks for splints and taped them pretty tight with that electrician tape and then we went this was 11 o'clock in the morning and this was this is last day of December and cold we knew there was snow about an empty snow on the north slope we were on the north slope so it was slick and the ground was a little frozen it's kind of uncomfortable place Then we tried to get cell service. No service. Because we were in a basin on a peak. So it was all blocked.

What was your anxiety level, fear level? Well, I hurt really bad. And I was laying, it was 27 degrees. I was laying there. The man was still holding me. I honestly thought they'd get me out of there pretty quick. I thought, I know I can't walk out of here. I wasn't panicked.

And I never went into shock, which is amazing. The hounds kind of grouped around me. One of them, I didn't realize. it was so much was licking blood off of me and Warner and Heather took off and hiked up to the top and got cell service and then they started coordinating this rescue well a rescue helicopter came within about an hour and they circled us and they left it was the winds and it was too dangerous there's nowhere to land because it's in a steep rocky canyon yeah so in the meantime when everybody knows us just because we've been in this country for so long.

The sheriff in Hidalgo County was talking, trying to get some help. And Border Patrol in El Paso, a pilot in El Paso was sitting in their coffee room or whatever, and they heard this, a woman had been hurt on a peak in southwest New Mexico, and that nobody could rescue her, helicopter-wise. And he said, I can. And he had just got back from Afghanistan. And there was a guy there that day. a board of troll supervisor that wasn't a pilot, he said, I'll go with you.

And they loaded up in one of those little Border Patrol helicopters. They flew to the mountain. They got there about six hours after I'd been hurt because all this took time. Wow. They landed on a boulder, 175 yards above us, on a saddle. And it was sundown already. And Warner had ridden off to the valley and gotten one of those basket stretchers from a rancher. How far were you guys back in from the truck?

We were like three or four miles from the truck. Okay. But it was terrible country. Yeah. Border Patrol got the coordinates. They started riding in on horses, hiking in. There was nine border patrolmen showed up there at this. And one came, and they all knew us.

And one guy came right to me and he goes, I'm not allowed to administer pain medicines, but I have some Advil. And I, so I took two. But then I was, I was hurt. Wow. So you're laying there on the rocks for, seven hours with no pain medication. Yeah.

Busted face. Yeah. Broke leg that's been set by your dad. Yeah. But Warner and Rick about two or three hours into it, they dug a, because literally we were like this angle. I mean, it was the whole time. You're just holding yourself.

So they dug out some rocks and stuff and put a saddle blanket, and then I could sit, I could finally relax and be down and not be slight. And that poor man that was holding me had held me all that time. So when they did that, then I said, I told him, I said, Rick, I'm cold. I said, you're going to have to build a fire. Well, there was snow on everything. So-tall burns. It has a fuel in it, a dead so-tall plant, Sakawista.

These are things that we have out here. So he lit so-tals. And he'd light one right there by my feet. And so he got my feet warmed up. But the border patrolman, dad rode up, and there's a person. picture, an epic picture that Rick took. It's a Life magazine kind of picture. It's Warner on a mule with that stretcher in front of him, riding up the bluffs behind him, and those Border Patrol kind of lined up waiting for him to get there. And they took the stretcher, and they lifted me. They were

awesome. And they put me in that basket stretcher. And then those guys, by now it was dark. And they carried me all the way up there. Never one of them slipped or fell. I mean, they just, they were a team. And they got me up there, the co-pilot, he said, okay, ma'am, he said, you're not going to fit in our helicopter. So he said, we're going to stick you through sideways. And he said, we're going to put your head against the door. And then your legs are going to be sticking out in that for about two and a half feet outside. And so they tied me in with cargo straps and he held on to me. And off we went. We had 11 people up on the mountain, up on Pratt Peak to get off there. And we got everybody off there. We were back to our

trucks and trailers probably at 11 o'clock. We got back here at 1.30 next morning. Wow. Lone day. Long day. It could have been so much worse. So yeah. And Kelly Kelly, she made it fine. Yeah.

That's just that there's one of the times that Kelly got her. I don't know. I was going to the other side. More wild stories, you say, Mr. Warner? That sounds interesting. I got bit by a lion. Did that tell you that? No. Okay. So yeah. So last, so March 8th of 19, we're hunting in New Mexico. We tree this calf killing lion in a stand of pine trees. And the guy

with us shoots him twice in the chest. Everything's good. And he falls out. Then the dogs pulled him downhill and they wrapped his body around a tree. And it was kind of steep. And then he went limp. And you know how dogs wool are lying around. They're all wanting to chew on it. Then it's a reward. So dad and I said, he's dead. Yeah, he's dead. He's dead. But I am a mispracticality. I didn't want him to drag him down the hill, so we'd have to pull him back up to skinning. So I put my foot on the back of his shoulders to hold him against the tree. And no kidding. He stands up, turns around, and I remember thinking, oh, man, his eyes are yellow. He's looking, and then he just reaches out, grabs him by this, like jerks me down, and bites me right through the calf,

slipped off the bone, did not break the bone, right through the meat. Well, Warner, Mr. Fearless, Warner is wailing on him with his fists to get him to turn loose of me, and the dogs are gone ballistic, because I yelled when I hit the ground, and he bit me, and he lets go. Then he takes off and runs off and the dogs went and Warner went and Warner shot in point blank with his pistol. Well, the poor guy with us had never been in on a lion or any of that. First he says, did you see him by you? And I'm like, yeah, I did. And I'm thinking, oh man, I'm thinking he broke my leg. It hurt. I said, go help Warner. So I took off my shoe and rolled up my long underwear and blood was everywhere. And I had 14 puncture wounds, the canines and the claws. So I put my

foot against the tree and gently pushed. And my experiment was, if it moves, it's broken. And if it doesn't. So by the time they got up there, it hadn't moved. And I said, Dad, it's just superficial. Just superficial. It was a best. Just 14 puncture wounds. Don't worry, Dad. Let's go. Well, ironically, we bandaged it up and stopped the bleeding and went down and skinned the lion and rode out an hour and 45 minutes to the truck. And so they gave me a rabies shot in each puncture. They don't sew up puncture wounds. It took 75 days for those to heal. But I drove back over there the next day. We caught two more lions in the next three days. I hunted. There was no pain. And we caught two more lions on that hunt. There were calf killers. On part one of this

podcast series, we've just barely introduced the glens and they've given us insight into their lifestyle, history, and some iconic family stories. Next episode, we'll dive in to deeper into the craft of dry ground lion hunting and will learn that Warner was the first person to document a live jaguar in the United States. He wrote a short book about it called Eyes of Fire. We're going to hear the whole story directly from him. I truly cherish the opportunity to highlight families like the Glens. In my opinion, Mr. Warner is the embodiment of a living legend, and we haven't even heard half the story. Later we'll learn how he and his wife, Wendy, who has since passed away, helped start an influential conservation group called the Malpie Borderlands

Group. You also haven't heard about the fistfight in his younger years that catalyzed a life-altering change in Mr. Warner about how to deal with confrontation. Later in his life, he'd be known as a diplomat for the open country of Southeast Arizona. Here's what you. Kelly had to say in closing about her father. We have a unique lifestyle. We have a unique family because we were raised to respect each other, to be cohesive, to collaborate, whether it was to collaborate with our family to get it done or to collaborate so with changing of time and conservation becoming such a big deal.

You know, we are so blessed. McKinsey is sixth generation. She will carry on the ranches. She wants to. We've given her every choice not to. What she's doing right now in her side business, we want her to be able to develop something that she can call her own. Because until Warner's gone and then I'm gone,

she will be under the umbrella. You know, she won't be the leader. However, Warner has gracefully let McKenzie and I take her on more and more. And we do it respectfully. I know the answer, but I ask Warner. One thing I think is left out in a lot of families as they transition through the generations.

A lot of times the elderly generation doesn't really give the next generation a lot of respect because they're still stuck in that mindset and they are still in power. And dad's pretty good. that. He's pretty, there's now and then he'll, he'll say, he'll say something real quick and forceful and then he'll backtrack immediately and say, tell me the rest of the story. Because I know the rest of the story. It's like whether it was to do with the border or whatever was happening, I'm the one that's getting the emails, the phone calls. Dad has a great life. He's, he goes and exercises his dogs. He does his ranch work. We kind of run interference with, with the

way life is nowadays. As you know, there's so many issues. But I would just say something that's forgotten in a lot of families is maintain your traditions and the history of your family and the ethics and respect and morals of your family, your community, your environment, your landscape. Because we're only here for a short time, but we need to, when we leave, we need to be remembered as Warner will be as a legend. It's been a great life. I've been so blessed to have such a mentor. Yeah. And sometimes it's been really tough because I'm a woman in a man's world. Luckily, my dad has respected women and the fact that they can work equally hard. Like I said earlier, be your personal best. Do your best. And that's what Warner, that's all he asks of people.

whether it's clients or family or whatever. That's incredible. We just did an extensive podcast series on Daniel Boone. Yes. What's wild about the end of Daniel Boone's life. Boone lived to be 86 years old. They said when he was an old man, he hardly recognized the life that he had lived. And he was quiet and he was humble.

And you would have thought he would have been this proud, boastful guy for all the incredible stuff he did in his life. And there was a woman, a family member that said the old woodsman that had spent their life in solitude. When they were old, they were humble. They were meek. Yeah. I see that almost in your dad. Exactly. There's a humility that is unique, that you would think that life would have built them up inside of their accomplishments.

But it actually has made them more humble. Exactly. Exactly. And he'll tell. So young houndsmen will ask Warner. You know, we've always said he always kept up with his dogs afoot, which he did. One day, this young man asked him, he said, how do you do that? And dad said, well, I just got slower dogs.

Humble. Yeah, yeah, humble. And just like the example of that lead dogway up there quietly going on, the old dog, we have an old dog named Hook. And when you see Hook, 200 yards out there quietly going on, that's a worker you know that's an example of what Warner is

I had never met nor spoken with Warner Glenn before I showed up in his barn lot I knew he was a man of character and a man of the land but what impacted me the most was something I wasn't expecting it's a trait that the gun slinging John Wayne images of the Western cowboy

typically don't embody which is an authentic human humility. Manhood is an interesting journey because we want to be bold and confident, which are both honorable traits, but we might be fooled into thinking that is supposed to be the dominant, most important feature of who we are as men. However, what Mr. Warner showed me in the very short time I was with him, that confidence and boldness flow out of humility and servanthood of those who you're around. What you wouldn't have seen when the recording devices weren't on was Warner Glenn putting away

our dishes from the table, serving us food, taking genuine interest in our lives, and doing things for us he didn't have to do. One could argue that anyone could put on their best behavior for a guest, but I can tell you there aren't two Mr. Warner's. There's only one. And that is the definition of authentic. and that's what I want to be when I grow up. Again, I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease.

Don't miss part two of this series on Mr. Warner and Kelly. I have a feeling it's going to be better than the first. Please do me a favor and share our podcast with the buddy this week. Good hunting and keep the open country open. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Felps. helps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest.

It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds. on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut,

and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast, Guaranteed Human.