Bear Grease - Ep. 24: Marrow of American Ruggedness - Warner Glenn (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast we’re back in the Open Country of Southeast Arizona. This is part 2 in our series on life of a living legend – Warner Glenn. We’ll learn more about Kelly, Warner’s daughter, and her life in movies and modeling. We’ll dive deep into dry-ground lion hunting, which I believe will aid in us getting our PHD’s as American woodsmen. We'll learn about his dogs and what characteristics it takes to make a good mountain lion hunting hound. We’ll also learn about when Mr. Warner almost went to prison and how it impacted his life including his involvement in the founding a very influential conservation group called the Malpai Borderlands Group. You won't want to miss this one.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.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. All the things that it takes to be a really good dirt lion hunter, Warner, is all of those. Everyone. On this episode of the Bear Greece podcast, we're back in the open country of Southeast Arizona. This is part two in our series on the life of a living legend, Warner Glen.

We're also going to learn more about Kelly, Warner's daughter, and her life in movies and modeling. We'll dive in deep into dry ground lion hunting, which I believe will aid us in getting our PhDs as knowledgeable American woodsman. You gotta know something about dry ground lion hunting. We'll also learn about when Mr. Warner almost went to prison and how it impacted his life, including his involvement in the founding of a very influential conservation group called the Malpi Borderlands Group. you're not going to want to miss this one. I think if a person doing what he likes to do, that's a big thing for his head and his heart bone.

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, and it doesn't get in the way when I'm riding. my mule. For a limited time, you can head over to FHFgear.com forward slash bear grease. And listeners to this here podcast, get a discount on purchases for your FHFGear system. And you can see how I build my gear system. So go to FHFGear.com forward slash bear grease for a special code if you're buying stuff from FHF Gear. Check it out. Fish Hunt Fight, FHF Gear.

We've again found ourselves on the borderlands of the southern United States in southeast Arizona. On the last episode, we were introduced to Warner Glen. He can see old Mexico from his house. He's 85 years old and lives the life of an authentic American cowboy with a heavy dose of mountain lion hunter. Lion hunting and ranching, you see, go hand in hand and have since this part of the country was settled by. cattle ranchers. Right, right a little one this morning called Rosa Lee. That's the name of the mule you're putting me on?

Yeah. Rosalie. How old is this mule? That's the only problem with her. She's about 17. 17. Yeah, and it's too bad. You hate to see a mule like you.

Get old. We walk over to a bigger bay-colored mule, a brown mill. So this is your go-to meal. What's this mule's name? Yeah, Vivian. How old is she? I tell you, Vivian's got to be about 15 years old. This is your, this is the one you go to when you got a...

Well, usually I ride this, at least every other day. I've got three I'll ride per regular. Bridger and Vivian and Brear. Yeah. So, and Kelly, she got Rosalie and Pete and some of those others. When does a mule get just right in eight? It depends on the mule. Depend on the mule.

do it along, but I'll tell you what. As far as being gentle and trustworthy and everything, I would say like six or seven. Really? To where you could trust them with anybody riding them. And you can ride them two or three, but you better be ready for a little wreck if it should have, you know, because they're just not used to everything.

And also, these mountains, I tell you, they're hard on them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Mr. Warner threads a leather pistol holster onto his belt. He carries a 357 revolver. So every day when you're just out riding, you're carrying a sidearm? I do. And what do you carry?

Well, I tell you, you never know when you're going to need one for it. It could be some kind of abhorment. But most of these ranchers not do. They're carrying its sidearm. The drug traffic through here and also the weather. You never know. So it doesn't hurt to have one. Yeah.

We're now out by the dog kennels. In part one, Mr. Warner told us that he's got 16 hounds. Andy told us about his best hound, hook. What's this dog's name? This is Tracker. He's a young one. He's only a year and a half old. But he's been in on about three lines.

And he's going to make it. I've really got high hope for him. And this is spur. Wow. He's a big old athletic dog, isn't you? He's only two? He would beat number two. Oh, he's the number two dog. With 16 dogs scattered in front of us, we make a five-mile loop, giving them some exercise.

On our ride, we can look into Old Mexico, we can see the border wall, and I'm amazed that an 85-year-old man is still going like he's 45. Warner's father Marvin started lion hunting in the 1930s when their horse colts and cattle were being killed by mountain lions. It wasn't their fault. The lions were just being lions, and it really wasn't Marvin and Warner's fault for becoming lion hunters. It's just what they had to do to protect their way of life. In 1947, Marvin had become an expert at what we say in the business, catching lions. The American economy was booming after World War II. people began to have disposable income, and Marvin turned his craft into a business and started

outfitting. The glens became nationally renowned as dry ground lion hunters. In 2021, Warner and his daughter Kelly still hunt the same dirt as Marvin with some of the same lineage of dogs, and with the same unique mix of integrity, genuine hospitality, and toughness that defines this desert and the people that make a living off the land here. Before we dive into lion dogs and fistfights, I want to talk about Kelly Glenn Kembro, Warner's daughter. She has lived a very interesting life. We heard about her mule wreck and helicopter rescue

and about her getting bit by a lion. Go check that out in part one if you hadn't listened to it. I'd like, though, to hear about two parts of her life that went beyond ranching and hunting. I bet you won't be able to guess what they are. If you're over 35 years old and a gun enthusiast, you've probably seen a picture of Kelly. We were always a part of the hunting,

so my dad and my grandpa Marvin hunted all winter. They hunted a lot of lions and deer. We guided for coos deer, mule deer, havalina, and lion. And it was a busy, it was just what I thought life was about. It was either cooking, fixing lunches, feeding, meals, guiding. I guided from the time I was 17 with them. I did not want to go to college. I loved it.

I craved guiding. I loved guiding for coos deer, especially, and hunting mountain lions. And so, and they embraced that. And it was kind of a man's world. Yeah. You know, I was a little girl growing up wanting to learn how to track a lion and wanting to go glass for deer. I didn't have any reason to go to town.

When I went out to go off to college, my grandpa got me a new. rifle, a parka, all these things to make my life more comfortable as a guide here. Because he didn't want me to go. Yeah. Anyway, mom and dad raised us and my grandparents to work really hard. We always had guests. We either had hunters or in the summer we had kids. So I went to college and then I came back and went into the movie industry and I did

casting in locations for eight years out of Tucson. Wow. And I loved it because I could go work on a show for 31 days, come home and hunt. So I kind of picked. So they would tell you what they were looking for for scenery. Yep. And was it always Western-type films? Not necessarily.

I did 33 films. We did Terminal Velocity with Jerry Lewis, Johnny Depp, Faye Dunaway, Paulina Poroscova. And then we would do young guns and young writers. And sometimes it was scenery. And then sometimes it was... What years did you do that? From 85 to about 93. Okay.

I got married 92 and I kept doing it for a moment after that. That's so interesting your family's connection to movies. Yeah. Well, and there started a long time before that. Right, right. With your dad and the movies he was in and grandfather. I now ask Kelly about a very interesting job she had for 31 years. years and how her presence in the position was groundbreaking. So in 1988, J. Desart came. He was a good

friend, you know, and he asked, he called me and he goes, Kelly Ruger called, and they want me to photograph a girl or a woman that lives a Western life, carries a gun, and uses it, you know. So I said, okay, you know, and I had gone right out of college. I went to Plaza 3 modeling in Tucson because a lot of My family, distant family, said, you've got to be a model because I was six feet tall and skinny. That was their basis. After a few weeks of that, I figured out I didn't want to be a runway model. So we went down here and took a mule, and I had literally, my husband calls them my corrective shoes, because that's all I wear is ugly shoes. I had on my brogams and a gun and braids.

I was who I was, and we took the picture. Well, they loved it. Bill Ruger, Sr. was very skeptical because he was a man's man and he really didn't want his company represented by a girl. And in 1988? Yeah. That would have been fairly new thinking. Yes, it was new thinking. Yeah. So it was a trial run that first year and there was a full page in the Wall Street Journal. It just blew up and it. went really good across the nation. And the Ruger followers loved it. So you were on, you were on a lot of their advertising. Yeah, posters. They did a poster every year. You stayed the Ruger girl for 31 years. 31 years. Yeah. And just on our way here, my uncle told me that he had seen your picture in a small town in Arkansas and a pawn shop

from a poster from years and years ago. Yep. So I would do two shows a year, the NRA show and the shot show. The shot show. The shot show was more dealers, international, national, you know, guys in business suits. The NRA show was Americans. It was coon hunters, farmers, gun store owners that would come with their family because they could. So my job at those shows was to sit in the Ruger booth and they would put a stack of posters in front of me. And I'd sign and they'd tell me who to sign to. The man would stand there and say, my store is.

you know, B&B guns or whatever. And I'd signed to that store. When they all figured out, all those people figured out I was a hunter for real, they loved it. And then they would like flock around and we'd talk about trailing dry ground hunting lions. But it was great. I have, I kept a lot of things. I got a lot of letters. You could tell a person, a woman who wanted to become a shooter and a hunter, she would timidly stand over there.

and listen. And when finally they kind of broke up, then she'd step up and she'd say, is there any way we could talk about this again? And so I'd share my address and, or nowadays, lately, you know, the last 20 years, it was an email. Right. And we'd visit back and forth and I'd recommend what firearms she should buy. So I coached, unplanned, I coached a lot of women and kids. Yeah.

Kelly was a pioneer for women in the hunting and shooting industry. Today, women are the fastest growing group in the hunting space. Fist-bumped Kelly. Dry ground lion hunting. We've said it over and over, and I plan to devote some time to trying to understand what this means, and I hope you'll join me. Despite your perceived interest in the topic,

it's a nuanced and important cog in the wheel of North American hunting. I believe that the characteristic, that it takes to be a darn good dry ground lion hunter are the marrow of American ruggedness. I'm not saying it's the only thing that carries that, but I'm quite certain that it does. Gary Newcomb instilled in me the desire to be a well-rounded woodsman and to get a Ph.D. in woodsmanship. I believe that to be a true connoisseur of North American hunting, you need to understand something about dry ground lion hunting. You don't have to do it. Most probably never will.

You don't have to like it. You probably wouldn't. But I feel like my insides are expanded when I talk to people who've dedicated their lives to a craft. And being a successful lion hunter requires the dedication of a lifetime. Shorty Gorham is one of the world's best bullfighters. He's worked for the PBR professional bull riders for 17 years and has dedicated his life to his craft. His job is to protect bull riders once they've come off of a bull's back and are on the ground. They basically run interference distracting the bull while the rider gets away.

They used to call these guys rodeo clowns. I find that people who are among the best at what they do are good at spotting others in other fields who are like them. Shorty is also a dry ground lion hunter. I wanted to see what he had to say about Warner Glenn. Being from the southwest and hunting lions on dry ground, if you ask around, ask very many questions, you're going to hear Warner's name. And so that's how I had heard of him, just trying to learn as much as I could and read as much as I could. And when that topic comes up, Warner's one of the big names, you know, he's one of the best dry ground lion hunters in the in the world and you could say of all times you know they they all the well-known big time dry ground lion hunters know respect and love warner glens so it's just a household name

you know so when i got to go to his house it was it was quite the experience you know i'll never forget it i pulled in i'd flown there to arizona from a straight from a bull ride and drove a couple hours to the house, pulled in in a rental car, and Warner comes, well, Warner was out feeding his mules, comes over and shakes my hand. And he's a very tall man, so I'm looking up at him. And from that point till I felt like I had known Warner all my life was, you know, 10 to 15 minutes maybe. It's just a, just a great guy, just a genuine man. It's interesting to me how there's some people that have that quality and in your experience with him was very similar to my first meeting him. What is it that makes a person be able to have that kind of connection with people?

You know, I don't know. I really don't. You know, the thing is, I've met a lot of his clients that have hunted with him. And Warner's return clientele is just massive. Like, I know guys that have hunted with him for 20 years every single year just because they want to go spend time with Warner Glenn. But they just want that connection with Warner. So they keep going back year after year after year, you know.

And there's a real rough and tough lion hunter. He once said, he said, when my time comes to an end and I go off to the other side, he said, if I look around in my second life and I don't see Warner Glen, I'm going to know I really screwed up because we all know Warner's going to heaven. And that just describes Warner. John Belosure has known Mr. Warner for 20 plus years and has professionally hunted lions on dry ground for over 30, for over 30. By professionally, I mean he worked for the state of Oregon managing livestock killing and nuisance lions. In 2018, John was called to ply his craft in a tragic situation.

He and his dogs tracked down the first wild mountain lion in modern times in Oregon that killed a human. Wild stuff. But his hunting wasn't just a career. He loves what he does and is a lifelong student of it. He's one of these guys that's done whatever it took to put himself in relationship with the best in the world in his field, one of which is Warner Glen. I ask John to define for us what dry ground lion hunting is. Hunting lion's dry ground would be without the aid of snow for cutting tracks and tracking conditions. The reason that makes that easier is if you have a country that's got roads in it, that you can go and cut a lion track in the snow, and A, you know the age of it, because you know when it

quit snowing, and B, you know the direction it's traveling. So those two things are two of the more difficult things than lion hunting, and you have both of those taken care of for you. A lot of the dry ground lion hunting that goes on in the United States is in the southwest United States, Arizona, New Mexico, southern Utah, southern Nevada, places like that. And I guess one of many reasons that would be harder is, A, when you dry ground lion hut, most of the time, many of the mountain ranges in the southwest that lions live in are only accessible by horseback or a foot. So your dogs have to be frecasted and be able to start a lion track on their own. Anybody that's hunted with hounds very much or even dealt with dogs very much would know that it would take a little more work to be put into your dogs to have them where they would only start a lion track because,

Hound dogs, by their very nature, kind of like to trail things. And many times there's a lot more smells out there than just a lion track. John, tell me about Warner Glen. That's a big question. Yeah. So I've known Warner for over two decades. I met him in my quest to kind of learn how to be a dry ground lion hunter. That was what originally sparked Warner and ice connection and has kept that.

You know, the glens are, I consider him family. they're very close. There's certainly not a lot of people like that. You know, Warner's a cowboy and a lion hunter and a family person. I don't really think, I mean, I spent quite a little time around him and got the opportunity to hunt within numerous, numerous days. And, you know, there's just not a lot of people like that that have dedicated their whole life to something. And I might be a little bit off, but I think, I believe the first time Warner started lion hunting, he was around seven or eight years old, and he's now closing in on 85, and that's a pretty long career as a dirt lion hunter. And there's not been any gaps to speak of in that.

He was in the military for a very short time, but he's pretty well spent his whole life in those mountains, you know, in the desert southwest mountains chasing those things. You've hunted with a lot of people. What stands out to you? What have you learned from Warner? Oh, boy, that would be a – I've learned a lot from Warner. I think Clay may be one of the big things about that is that when you go with someone that is truly at the top of their game, which it's not hard to tell when you go do that if you have a little background in it and stuff, is, you know, Warner is just one of those rare people that, you know, dry ground lion hunt and doing the stuff that we do is a lot of work and Warner it. He still goes out that like he's hunting snakes and that's pretty impressive. The amount of work it is and stuff. he's just an extremely good track reader and is just really good at reading his dogs and telling

you exactly what they're up to. And he's a cowboy deluxe. I mean, to travel in bad country. I mean, you just don't get any better than that. And he just, but, you know, Warner just all of the things that embodies somebody to be a lion hunter, you know, he's tall and athletic and tough and can get around and just all the things that it takes to be a really good lion hunter, a really good dirt lion hunter, Warner is all of those, everyone. There are two overarching factors that make this hunting difficult. Number one, it takes place in rugged regions without many roads. Lions can travel incredible distances on a daily basis,

so it's got to be an extremely mobile hunt. A hunter has to become an expert at wilderness travel, and it's typically done with equine. Secondly, the arid nature of the land makes for difficult conditions for holding scent. It's really that simple. Dry ground lion hunting is all about scent. Scent on dirt doesn't hold well, and it makes for some of the most difficult trailing conditions for dogs. A good dry ground lion dog is a phenomenal creature.

It may just look like a scraggly old hound to somebody, but in my opinion, they're the Olympians of the hound world. In humans, our olifactory strength is minimal compared to many other animals, so it's hard for us to understand how a dog interprets the world. I think we got to nerd out for a minute to really understand the currency of the hound, which is scent. I asked my buddy Chris Powell for his insight. He's a lifelong houndsman, a former law enforcement canine handler, and the host of the Houndsman XP podcast.

Here's what he had to say about scent. So sin is one of the things that is key for houndsmen, but it's also one of the most misunderstood parts of how our hounds work. And scent, you know, it's a living thing. When an animal walks through the landscape, it is shedding cells at the rate of about 50,000 per minute. And as those cells are shed, it's coming out through being, they're exhaling and they're losing it that way. When they brush up against plants and vegetation. They're shedding cells in that instance, too. And when you look at the composition of a cell, it's 80% water.

As this animal moves through its environment and it's shedding these cells either through exhaling or it's called scurf. It's actually got a scientific name. When those cells are shed, it's called scurf. And it comes off of this animal, this living being and it's falling onto the landscape. It acts differently in the different environments that it falls in. So when it falls in moist environment, it doesn't dehydrate as quickly. So therefore, the scent exists for a longer period of time.

And when it falls into dry, arid conditions, just simple evaporation causes that scent to not be able to exist for as long. Now, in the case of dry ground, you know, rock, those sort of things, it's a deal where if the rock's got a crack in it, the least bit of shade will actually shelter that thing from direct. sunlight and arid conditions just for a little bit. And that enables a hound to be able to smell that scent that's deposited there. I asked Chris about another component of scent and trailing that doesn't involve the actual scent of the animal, but rather ground disturbance. So when an animal walks through an environment or across the landscape, he is actually disturbing natural bacteria in the soil.

And he uses the combination of animal scent, the bacteria. Fresh Earth has a distinct smell that we can smell as people. A dog's nasal plane in their olfactory is able to pick that up at, I mean, compounded 75 times greater than what we can. So as an animal walks across this landscape and he's disturbing leaves and he's kicking over rocks and different things like that, it's activating the natural world right there and the microscopic organism. in that, then the animal scent falls in that same scent picture, and now he is able to develop what we call a scent picture, and all that stuff is mixed together. It's all brought together. What you're telling me is that a dog is not just trailing the scurf of a lion. He's trailing

ground disturbance. He's trailing ground disturbance of where that lion's foot touched the dirt and made the ground smell different. Just like if you tilled the soil. It has a scent. I heard a good analogy once comparing a dog's nose to humans. It went like this. A human may walk into a house and smell lasagna cooking in an oven and think, man, that lasagna smells great. A dog walks into the house and he smells layers.

He smells the Italian pork sausage starting to crisp, roasted tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella cheese, basal, ricotta cheese. He smells the individual. components with extreme precision. If you haven't listened to episode 22, you're missing a bunch of background information that will give context to Warner's life. I'm assuming you know how a series works, and ultimately, we're in pursuit of getting a glimpse into his world.

I wanted to ask Mr. Warner specifically about his hunting. Well, I tell you, it's kind of a tough old life to be a dry ground line under his country. You got to really like it. Yeah. I like being out in the country, of course, and watching those dogs work, good work, riding a good mule in that rough country. And, of course, we're working cattle a lot.

There's probably eight months out of the year. We're working cattle, but we have those dogs year-round, and if the line comes in and kills a calf or cold or whatever, then we go and try to catch that lion. But usually the lion hunt we do, which is mostly on dry ground, And it's called that because we very seldom get snow in this country. We do it once in a while in the wintertime we'll get snow.

But we do that about four months out of the year we would take clients. And then the rest of the time, it's just when we had a fresh keel. Either our neighbors wanted to catch one or something like that. Yeah. But that drag around line hunting is different because you do a lot of riding and those dogs. Before you ever pick up a track, you've got to find a trail. And then you've got to find which way it's going. In snow, it's pretty easy.

You can see the tracks. But in this country out here, just play grass or dirt or pine needles or whatever you're in, usually that track's pretty hard to find, especially with a pack of hounds, all red dredent muffin, the tracks out. So you just got to ride until you find that track. If you're going the wrong way on it,

you've got to get them turned around and head and ride, You're going to see a lot of country that old line lists left. You're not going to catch anything. If you're going the right way, you're in good shape, then you just go on and concentrate on. And I tell you, you've got to help your dogs in this country. It's a rough old rugged rimrock country, and there's a lot of country.

That line goes through that the dogs can't go. Bluffier, big rims, you've got to take them around and hit it on top, and that type of thing. So there's quite a bit of footwork that goes in. somebody's got to be with those dogs of foot to help them. Now, you were known and are still known, even in your latter years here, of being able to follow these dogs on foot.

Yeah, I don't do that. I can't do that anymore. I wish I could. Okay. And that's one thing I really enjoyed about hunting was following those dogs of foot. Yeah. Yeah, I could do it. I was lucky.

I was physically able to do that for several years. And it's a wonderful way to see what dogs. dogs are doing what? It doesn't take very long to learn who's the cheerleaders in the bunch and who's doing the actual work. And you were doing this too before there were GPS callers and you were able to track dogs. So you had to, somebody had to stay with them to hear the dogs. You had to stay with it within hearing if you could.

Yeah. And I couldn't stay right with them on a good, I could if they were just cold training and I'd be right with them. But when they got that line moving, got a jump track in what we could. call they go so fast i could but i would uh i would take my time climbing the mountain but on the other when we started down i i could really smoke it going on some of those mountains but i had to but of course in those days i could hear it good i kind of lost the hearing now Kelly's been pounding around with mr warner since she was a little girl here's what she

had to say about dry ground lion hunting? So I love dry ground lion hunting. There's every challenge there. There's, you know, you have your hounds and you hit a canyon going at an angle. You're either going up or down it. And if there's a track there, they're going to hit it and they're going to go down. If they're pointing down, they're going to go down. A hound can't tell what direction the lion's going by sight. Right. So the first challenge is we get in there and we find that track. And then, turning them around. And then there's, in this country, we have so many conditions. And we always say, we have more excuses than team ropers. There's, there's, we're always in a drought. It's how much moisture content is in the soil, the wind, the heat. We hunt in a lot of warm temperatures and

evaporation. And this is really bad for scent conditions. That's right. That's right. People don't even realize the menisculal moisture that's still in the soil, even if you haven't had rain. and we're used to not having rain. When you look at a track, a lion track on a cow trail, it'll still have, if it's fresh, like an hour old, it'll still have color in it. So the track is still a different color than the soil. So the soil's faded out and the track will have some color. There's so many factors and it's such a challenge.

We help our dogs. My grandpa and my dad both taught me you get off your mule and you help them. You find the track. And that's pretty, for other types of hunting, that's not necessarily normal. Right. So there's more human involvement with the actual dogs on the track. Exactly. So these dogs have to be, you have to be able to call them to you.

You have to, I mean, there's another layer of complexity with training these dogs. So in every pack, so we only take five or six in a pack. In every pack, you'll have your slower moving dogs. You'll have your strike dogs. And then you'll have a dog that'll, you can watch them. Dad has a lot of silent dogs. They don't do much barking. But you can watch their body language and you'll see a dog out there 100 yards and it's a good dog.

You know him. You know he isn't a deer chaser. And you'll see him just working up and you can tell. He's just working up in the body language in his tail the way it's wagging. We scoop up our dogs and take them to him. A lot of times, one of us will be looking at the track and helping the dogs on long. And it's by watching the body language of, and that's a challenge because there's rocks everywhere. And in this country, scent holds longer on rock than it does in the dirt. It holds,

you'll see an older dog going along smelling the underside of leaves in a thicket. And that's where that lion's body, and you, and they'll, they'll stop. There's a dog named Catch It. She'll stop. She'll stop her whole body will be frozen in time and she'll be smelling and you know she's getting she's she really dissecting that same yep yeah and then she'll trot forward and do it again and i'll tell dad if catch it smelled it and so we go to her with those other dogs the slower dogs because if you don't do that in this country you probably won't get the lion jump how long of a track let's say let's say it's just an average day of lion hunting and you find a track early in the morning we trail to lion one day's 36 miles. Wow. And we jumped him at 9 o'clock that night. Wow. And pulled him off because they were all

give out. I mean, it was, we knew he was jumped because even though those dogs were exhausted, their body language and their attitudes had a second wind. Right. But we pulled them off because we had gotten, we were 18 miles from the truck. We lead a pack mule with water. Okay. Almost every single Unless we've had a big rain. Water for the dogs and for you guys. Well, but ours, you know, normally we can all pack our own water. Yeah. But those dogs, especially in the bighorn sheep area, it's a very dry, rough, rocky, hot, sunbeaten region.

Yeah. When they start trailing, dehydration is what slows them down first. A typical week of lion hunting, dry ground lion hunting here. Would you catch a lion? When we were guiding all winter, we would average a lion every four days. Okay. Yeah. That's really good.

Yeah. That meant sometimes you caught one, day one on a hunt, and then the next hunt you might have caught it on day six or whatever. It was kind of an average. We book a 10-day hunt. Okay. And that's because of the conditions. Yeah. You know, you just don't know what your conditions are going to be.

Yeah. Freezing, thawing, heat, wind, extreme cold. We've had some cold temperatures down here. and no snow. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag.

And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions,

from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere know something. I'm Jordan Sillers.

Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hunting with dogs is one of the most primitive styles of hunting in terms of deep human history. It's primitive because our connection with canines is undeniably ancient. Long before the modern politically correct trends began to regulate how humans think about and utilize animals men and dogs were getting along just fine. The human dog relationship is truly unique in the animal kingdom and many attribute our success as a species to that relationship.

Deadgummit, while I'm on my soapbox, I want to share something with you. I believe that the opposition to the dog thing is much deeper and significant than it seems on the surface. I believe that hunting with dogs inside the boundaries of science-based wildlife management is an integral part of the expression of being human to some people. It seems like our society is very interested in preserving people's rights to express their humanity inside of their culture and in their way, which is a good thing. I believe that by changing the rules on us about dogs and saying it's not okay anymore to use them inside of hunting is to redefine part of our

humanity. Hound hunting certainly isn't for everybody, and yes, there are some rugged parts of it that many people aren't used to, but we're not asking them to participate. If my conscience doesn't condemn me, and it's inside the boundaries of the law, and the activity that I'm participating in actually helps wild animals and preserves wild places, don't try to take it away for me because it condemns your conscience. That's the only thing I'm asking people to consider. Man, here we go. I got to say it. I'm sorry, guys. And for the odd hunter that says that hunting with hounds isn't fair chase. Man, I've got a few questions for you. What are your thoughts on the use of optics that give a person amplified supernatural vision?

What about range finders? What about cellular trail cameras? Supplemental feeding, food plots for white tails, digital mapping programs on your phone. I'm not suggesting that these things aren't ethical or fair chase, not at all. I'm just asking us all to explore a broader way of thinking. Please hear my heart inside of this. My intent is not that this conversation would divide us, but it would actually rather unite us as hunters and allow us to see through the eyes of our brothers and sisters that live life differently and do things different than us. I said all that to say. It was a long way to get here. I wanted to ask Mr. Warner about his dogs. If you're a hound or dog person, you'll enjoy the nerd out. But if you're not,

You're being brought into an intimate conversation if you'll listen. But I tell you, now I have mostly tree and walkers. And I'm not saying they're better. I don't think they're better cold trailers or strike dogs or even tree dogs. But they're ferret, all of that. And they're really good catch dogs. They're pushers. Once they get a quarry, joked, and running, boy, they're fast on the truck.

track. They're fast on the track. And I tell you, they're not really aggressive. Those hounds, they bay something, but they kind of keep their distance. They stay back. Yeah. Even on a lion, that helps. What do you think is the most important characteristics of a dry ground lion dog for the way that you hunt?

The nose, good feet, and to have that instinct to run cats, all of them don't like to run cats. Really? But I'll tell you, they don't necessarily have to be the fast. this dog in the block, but they've got to be able to keep that track moving. Do you have a favorite hound you've ever had? That's kind of like that mule deal you asked me about it. There you go, I wouldn't say this in front of the dogs down there, but probably a half-walker and a half-black and tan, a little dog named K-I-N-K.

He was probably one of the smartest dogs I ever had my life. And he'd go get in some way. He could do it all. He could, he was a strike on the track, he could cold trail. He was good in the bluffs. You got to, in this country, you've got to have a dog that's not afraid of height. He's got to be good in the bluffs. Yeah, he's got to be able to climb and navigate.

That's right. And take some chances. You don't want to reckless, I mean, the words, they're jumping off the 40-foot bluffers. I mean, there's nothing. But you want them to, if they come to a 10-foot drop, you want them to pile off that tucker and keep going. Yeah. You know what I mean? Most of them, some of these, you need, you need a dog to get in that rough country.

I want to ask Mr. Warner about a wild component of hunting lions in the karst, bluffy regions of the southwest. These lions don't always run up trees. Some of these stories might blow your mind. I tell you a lot, in this country, you're hoping you tree one. You hope you tree a lion or bay it out on a bluff. But a lot of times, they'll get back in some kind of a hole or a crevice or crack or a cave, a shallow cave or a deep cave. Sometimes they get way back. We've had them get back in my old abandoned mine tunnels.

And those are dangerous because you don't know if they're going to cave in. So anyway, the time that's mentioned in there, Kelly and I were together, and we had that line back in there. And we got her dogs out and I said, do you want to go in and see the last? line or do you want to hold a dog? She said, I better hold a dog. So I went in and I did. You want to make your shot count. You've got to, it's not a dangerous deal as far as the lion goes, but I tell you what you've got to think about in these caves, especially in wintertime.

Or rattlesnakes, hibernating. Because they hibernate, and you don't want a belly in there and crawl and get on top of those days. snake or scorped pins or stuff like that at what yeah you're really the danger and also when you fire that shot and then you've got to have your ears plugged but my hair is not too good but i always really plug them yeah good before i fire a shot and it came and you sure want to make sure that bullet goes into a vital place yeah and any hunter knows you can shoot an animal through the heart and they can still run like heck for about 30, 40 yards before they dropped dead. So that's what happened.

I hit the line in the chest with three, five-saint-knit pistol. And, boy, he just boiled out. And I was laying on my belly because it came was only about this high. Yeah. And I just ducked, he run a hundred. I don't even remember if he stepped on me. He might have jumped completely over me. But it all, it happens so fast.

And it left a blood trail right down your back. Yeah, the blood was right. down and I didn't even know that Kelly told me a letter she said what did you do to your back I had a string of and I said well few I didn't do anything and she said you get

then we figured out it was that's a lion yeah and that's a fairly common it's pretty common for him to go in caves down here and to go in and shoot them in a cave yeah and you've got to you've had one run between your legs too haven't you yeah yeah the first thing you have to do

get all your dogs behind you You got to get them all. And that's hard because they're all competition for who's going to get the first bite, a hold of the light. You've got to get, and it's noisy, it's dusty. Those caves are, it's hard to see. And you've got to have a good flashlight. You've got to have a good light because that's what equalizes.

Well, it changes everything in your favor. When Mr. Warner wants to tell you a story, you listen. He wanted to tell me this one. It involves a young hound named Catch It. I'm going to tell you a little story about a dog that happened this year. We got a little dog down here, I'll show you in the morning, named Cacchit. And she's making a really good dog, young dog. And we went over here in that sheep area and hit a good track early in the morning

and ended up baying this pretty big old tom out on a bluff. And the bluff was probably, where he was backed out on it, was probably 40 feet straight. down to a ledge and then another 20 feet into a big rockslide, boulder pile. And he was backed up on the edge of it with a tail over there. And the dogs were all right there. It was five, five dogs there. And Kelly and I had come in, got off her mules and I had the rifle.

And I could see the dogs were here and the line was right here. And I could see it broadside. And so I thought, well, I'm going to go ahead and shoot that thing before it knocks on those dogs out of the blood. I am just barely behind the shoulder and I squeeze it off. It was 223. I carry a little 223. And I hit it just where I ate.

But it jumped like that and at my shot, those dogs got in a little close. The line reached out and grabbed catch it just like that. And pulled it in and went over backwards and they both of them fell off the blood. It just makes you sick. How high is the bluff? It was 40 feet to the first ledge and then another 20 feet,

and this was bad stuff at the bottom. We knew she was dead. Told Calais, said, going down there. The dogs had gone back and were coming around, and I went back to get the mules, and she got me on the radio, and she said, Dad, catch it's all right. She's standing on this lion fighting the other dogs off.

The lion was dead, of course, she had hit right on top of the lines. body and evidently it broke because while we were skinned in the land old hook went up hit another track there'd been two lines and we didn't know it and they went on and she went with them and they bade it in about three hours they buried it in another big patch of bluffs and that's another story so that dog was totally fine after falling she sure was 60 feet using numbers in hunting is always touchy business but we use math and every other part of our lives to understand the world around us So it's relevant in this space too. I asked Kelly if she had any idea how many lions her dad had caught in his lifetime.

When Mama passed away, we went through a bunch of books. She had kept records. Dad keeps a journal. My grandpa kept a journal all the way up till the year he died of every lion they caught, whether it was here or Sonora, Mexico or wherever. So we counted. There's a certain date that they had caught their 500s, And he documented that.

Wow. Then we went on through all of everybody's accounts. And I compared it. If Wendy wrote, my mom, Wendy, if she wrote down, they caught a lion in Hogg Canyon on December 12th. I made sure that I didn't report the same lion out of Warner's Journal. I see. We were honest. I had two women help me.

We went. Yeah. And right now we're at about 1,200 lions. Wow. Yeah. And that's the ones in the sheep area, the depredating. That's a lot of lions. It is for a lifetime.

When I hear a huge number of animals harvested, my mind doesn't think of a tally mark or hides on a wall. I think about the number of times that he had to hook up his horse trailer in the dark, wake up at 2 a.m., load 16 dogs in the truck, and the literal hundreds of thousands of miles he's put while on the back of an equine. And I'm not throwing that big number around lightly. Let's do some more math. is lion hunted since he was six years old. As a conservative estimate, he's ridden on average 2,500 miles per year for the last 70 years of his life. And that's 175,000 miles. And he's still counting. He rides every day. I now want to ask Mr. Warner about how they've been involved

in some meaningful ways to preserve the open country of the southwest. This is some legit conservation. Tell me about the Malpie Borderlands Group. I tell you what that there was a fellow here a good friend of mine named Drummond Hadley that bought a ranch over here in New Mexico, a big ranch, a big ranch. He bought it, actually he bought it from the, it was owned by Nature's Conservancy. And they were looking for somebody to buy it to keep it in a viable rent and not develop it. They didn't want to sell it somebody that was going to break it up 40 acre parcels and that, you know, sell all the sites. They wanted to keep it as an open country,

as an operating cattle ranch. And they got to talking with the Nature Conservancy people, and they met us. And they said the ranchers ought to get together and form a group to keep this country open and get to where we could buy conservation easements on some of the deeded land on these ranches to keep from subdivision out,

what we've been trying to do. So that's what got us together. It was trying to keep these ranching and ranching and not for the acre parcels. Very interesting stuff. Mr. Warner and his wife Wendy, who has since passed away, were some of the founding members. And Mr. Warner is the director to this day. Here's the scoop. The Malpie Borderlands Group is a 501C3 nonprofit that was started in 1991 as the relationship.

between ranchers, the federal government, and some environmental groups began to deteriorate. They work with private landowners, government agencies, and non-profit organizations to help manage over one million acres of unfragmented land in southeast Arizona and southwest New Mexico. The group says, quote, our goal is to restore and maintain the natural processes that create and protect a healthy, unfragmented landscape to support a diverse. verse flourishing community of human, plant, and animal life in our borderlands region. Together, we will accomplish this by working to encourage profitable ranching and other traditional livelihoods while we sustain the open space of our land for generations to come.

End of quote. This is a summary of what these guys do and have done. They've helped acquire conservation easements on 78,000 acres of private land. This basically means that private landowners choose to put limitations on what can be done with their land, like it can't be subdivided when it's sold. Since 1994, 75,000 acres of land have been involved in prescribed fire, which is an important part of what the group originally promoted for ecosystem health. Over the last 20 years, the Malpi group has been involved in efforts aimed at making the protection of endangered species in the area

more compatible with rural livelihoods. In cooperation, their efforts on behalf of the Jaguar, the leopard frog, the log-nosed bat, the ridge-nosed rattlesnake, among others, has resulted in a more secure future for these animals, as well as for the landowners whose livelihoods help maintain their habitats. Here's a great quote that demonstrates the influence of the organization.

Quote, perhaps as important as any single thing we've accomplished, it's the fact that this small group has had significant influence. on the way that ranchers, the environmental community, the government, and the public perceive conservation and ranching today. The focus is moving away from confrontation, regulation, and litigation toward finding common ground and working together, using the best available science, working at the level closest to the ground, and exhibiting real stewardship. End of quote. What you seem to be able to do, and you were able to work with a lot of different groups mr. Warner we had to I mean we had and it was it was a pleasure I tell you we

were nature conservatives who was a big one to help us get to know the right people and not only with the environmental type people but the agency people the service to BLM the state land yeah the Fish and Wildlife Service all of those have something to do with all this country so if you can get all those people together and agree on keeping it open and keeping it the way It is. I mean, for hunters, for ranchers, fragmentation. We're trying to keep it from being fragmented.

You know, tell me if this is a true assessment, and this is partly what I read inside of your book, is that, and this book was written about you. You didn't write the book. But the author, Ed, said that you had a lot of tact and wisdom in working with all these different people to bring it in. with a lot of people, maybe some of these groups would have naturally been in conflict with one another. But you were able to say, hey, we're really all on the same team here. And you were able to bring a bunch of people together for a purpose, which was, I mean, quite a feat. I was part of it. But I tell you, we had some other players, our neighbors, some of these ranchers, were more better at that than I was.

But I helped any way I could. Yeah. And we would have, we had the head of the Forest Service, the head of the BLM, the head of all these fish wildlife service, come from Washington. And we put them on mules. That's where I came in. I put them on a good mule and take them to the top of the Philadelphia Mountains and show them what we were talking about. We were a part of it. We hosted a lot of it because we had the facilities here to hold meetings.

And also we could feed groups of people that come in. Yeah. We didn't wind them and dying them trying to make them. We just kind of rewarded them for taking the time to come and look. Yeah. You know, and I tell you, we got a lot done. The fruit of success almost always grows from the seed of failure, and sometimes that part of the journey is overlooked.

An influential event in Mr. Warner's life took place in the early 1980s, long before the success of the Malpie Borderlands Group, and I want to see if Mr. Warner is open to talking about it. You got in a tussle with one of the border agents. Yeah, I did. Did that change the way you saw that you needed to deal with people? Can you talk to me about that? Sure.

You bet that did. Just tell me the story and then tell me how it affected you. I had a pretty volatile temper when I was young. younger. And a lot of stuff I did then that I wouldn't do that day. I'd give my butt cake nowadays. Anyway, I don't know. You still look pretty wiry. That fellow was, that fellow was out of life, no doubt about it. He told me what he could do anywhere he wanted on my needed land, and I couldn't do anything about it. And I told him, I thought it could. And he said, well, you sure can. So I did. But anyway, it got me in a big trouble. You're not. It wasn't

thing about he was a federal uniformed officer I darned took him to the ground and rubbed his head in the dirt I mean it was just how old were you mr. Warner probably 47 48 okay I could go on and on about that but that of course that's a felony anytime you would touch a federal officer in assault a federal officer you're that that's a felony charge and there's no doubt about it. I did it. And I never made any excuse that I just told them why. I did it. And I didn't go to prison, but I came that close. And also, if you have a felony charge, you can't have a firearm for so many years. It affects your way of life. It taught me, big boy, you better be careful what you're doing. And they told me there, some of the agents, they had an agent that

dealt with things like that. And they came and talked to me. And they said, what you should have done has gone to his supervisor and let them take care of it. And I said, well, now I can see that. At the time, I was hot, I was tired, and this guy was told me what I, and he was standing on my private land, and we were talking about the effect of vehicle traffic over my private land where there was no roads. Right. I just figured that, in my way of thinking, right then, I had a right to protect my property, too.

But he wasn't a federal. I wasn't wrong, no doubt. But so was he. And, well, the way it turned out, I didn't go to prison and they shipped him out of here. Yeah. But it was a thing that I wished I'd have gone about a different way. But what I take away from it is that later you became very skillful in dealing with these people. And that event changed the course of kind of who you were.

and how you worked with these people? Absolutely. Yeah. And really, I respect to law enforcement. Yeah. 100%. There are some guys in law enforcement that probably don't deserve it either. But by and large, I back those guys.

Sure. And part of that's just, I kind of learned, you know, they've got a job to do. Yeah. And it's a tough one. I'm not ashamed that that happened, but it taught me a good lesson. You know, I deeply value that you can say that because a lot of times negative things happen to people and it shapes them and makes them bitter and changes their life for the negative. But what I respect about your character is that that, you know, you can own up to it. But I think it changed you for the better.

I'll tell you a little. I went up and told Daddy about it because I knew he was going to find out. And he sat there and listened to the same thing. after I was through telling me, he said, I didn't know if you get to the line to hit one of those bastards. Man, your dad, he was taking your side, wouldn't it? That's what a good dad's supposed to do. I didn't know if you get to long.

Anyway. Oh, that's great. In closing, I asked Mr. Warner if he had any advice for life. This is what he said. I tell you, it really doesn't pay you to, to worry about a lot of stuff. Because just go ahead and do your best at what you're doing and don't let things get into your brain that's going to worry you.

And that's hard to do. It's hard not to worry about, especially if it's family-oriented. And other than that, just kind of eat as healthy as you can and stay active. Yeah. Don't sit on your butt. You work very hard, don't you? You know, it's harder they can. Yeah.

It's not very hard anymore. Well, I know tomorrow morning you're planning to get up at 4 a.m. Oh, yeah. And I know this evening we were with you and you worked until dark. I mean, that's a pretty long day that you're putting in, which is probably pretty average for you. Yeah, yeah. I tell you, in the summertime, I try to take an hour's nap in the middle of the day.

Okay. After lunch or something like that. But as far as advice, just eat well and, of course, leave the, any of the substance abuse out of your, I don't think a guy needs to smoke. He darn sure doesn't have to use alcohol in excess and then just do what you're happy doing.

I tell you, I wouldn't, you could make a lot more money if you're interested in monetary type reward doing something besides hunting and renting. Yeah. But I love to do it. I mean, it's something that, I think if a person doing the way he likes to do,

that's a big thing. for his head and his heart. Why do you love doing what you do? What is your reward for the kind of lifestyle that you live? Oh, my gosh. Well, it's very few people that get to be out in the Lord's creation every day. A lot of people never have the chance to even think about what I see during the day's time. And, you know, I pray, it does you good to pray.

I tell you what, it does you. You may not get what you asked for, but it's sure, at least you know you've done everything you can. But they're darn sure something created the world we live in. I mean, just think about what happens. I mean, the sun, the moon, and things that are tied to the tides and the oceans, the landscape. A little fun born and that little sucker jumps up in a little while and goes to looking for a nipple. You know what I mean? That's something that the creator figured it had.

And we haven't figured it all out yet. Sequences of words strung together in English communicated through human vocal cords only carry so much weight by themselves. However, when those words are connected to a robust life, they have the power to truly impact us. I don't have a lot to say in closing, other than I cherish the opportunity to know people like the government. Glens. On a personal level, I was deeply impacted by Mr. Warner's humility and how he carried himself

despite his accomplishments, which could so easily be translated into pride. On a wider scale, I think the character and value system of the Glens is something that America can look to to remember where we came from. You and I can't change the course of a nation, nor can politicians or man-made laws, but you and I can dictate and change how we live, our character, and our responses to the things that life will throw at us while we're on this planet. I'm not suggesting lack of civic involvement, but I am saying that real change starts in the heart of man. And that is really the only thing we can control. I love dry ground lion hunting, mules, and hound dogs. I love everything that the glens have done for conservation.

but what I mostly took away from them was deeper and almost indescribable. Long lived the open country of the southwest and the wild beasts, the cowboys, and the lion hunters that inhabit it. I can't thank you folks enough for listening to Bear Greece. We'll have one more podcast that will involve Mr. Warner. On the next episode, we'll be talking about the borderlands jaguars in the United States. It's wild and interesting stuff, so don't miss it. Please share bear grease with a friend this week and keep the open country open.

On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag and there was a pool of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't.

This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left. behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something.

I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.