Bear Grease - Ep. 26: Eater of Us: The Borderlands Jaguar

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast, we’ll journey to meet the most mysterious and rarest of beasts in the United States -- the borderlands Jaguar. We’ll talk with the man who documented the first live one in the United States and see how it uprooted the conservation world. That man was Warner Glenn. We’ll do a classic Bear Grease “nerd out” with Arizona biologist Jim Heffelfinger to understand how this animal makes a living and about their conservation. And we’ll meet yet another legendary hunter of the Southwest, Dale Lee. Though he’s been gone for over thirty years, you’ll hear his voice and receive an impartation from his passion. The borderlands jaguar is known as “The Eater of Us” and in modern times they live in New Mexico and Arizona. You're not going to 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.

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Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. And so this is what they sound like. On this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, we'll journey into the realm of the most mysterious and rarest of beasts in the United States.

Like a ghost, sometimes he's here, and sometimes he isn't. We'll talk with a man who documented the first live one in the United States and see how. it uprooted the conservation world and how the story rose to prominence in national media. You might recognize his voice when you hear him. We'll do a classic bear grease nerd out with Arizona biologist Jim Heffelfinger to understand how this animal makes a living. And we'll meet yet another legendary man of the Southwest.

Though he's been gone for over 30 years, you'll hear his voice and receive an impartation from his passion. What we're talking about is Panthera Onca, the eater of us, the borderlands Jaguar. I doubt you're going to want to miss this one. But before we start, I've got a question for you. Before this intro, would you have known that there are Jaguars in the United States? Well, the answer is kind of complicated. You would think like an orangish cat with black spots would be so obvious, but very much not so. Those spots are there for a purpose to hide them for a couple months until they get big enough. This doesn't sound fair chase to me, Jim. They got to give these coos deer and havelinas and jagorundies a chance. 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 phfgear.com forward slash bear grease. And listeners to this here podcast, get a discount on purchases for your FHF Gear 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 FHFGear. Check it out. Fish Hunt Fight, FHF Gear. The topic at hand is a rare thing in modern times. I absolutely love it when the natural world jolts us back to a healthy posture of awe and mystery

by revealing something we didn't think was possible. Jaguars are a jungle cat, heavily mythologized by the indigenous people of Central and South America for millennia. The English word jaguar is derived from the true. Tupi-Garani language of Amazonia. Their word is Jaguaria, and it means eater of us. It's easy to understand why humans have been entranced by these beasts from the very beginning. A giant, yellow, spotted cap with an oversized head, and the mystical rosette

pattern of his spotting makes him almost like a ghost. In Mexico, he's known as El Tigre, and the Brazilian layman's term for the Jaguar is Onza, but in science textbooks, he's known as panthera Anka. The genus Panthera is the order of roaring cats. Yep, I said roaring, not purring. That's pretty cool. The tiger, lion, leopard, and jaguar are the only cat species anatomically outfitted to roar.

For the record, don't let my perceived enthusiasm for felines be mistaken. for having any love in my heart for domestic cats, I only like the big, mean ones that work for a living and put the fear of God in every living thing in the jungle. Or the desert. I reckon jaguars are celebrated throughout their territory, which ranges from northern Argentina into Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, and then the cats continue up into Central America all the way into Mexico. In southern Mexico, jaguars are still very much at home in the dense, tropical-like region, but as you head north, something very interesting begins to happen. The distribution of panthera Anca begins to hug the east and west coasts

the further north you go into Mexico. By the time you reach the geopolitical barrier of the U.S. and Mexican border, jaguars are at the very fringe of their range, and I mean fringe. In natural systems, fringe habitat creates interesting populations of animals that are quite different than their kin at the core of the range. They're the outliers who utilize their survival strategies to the fullest point of leverage to make a living. You see, these jungle cats don't seem to particularly like living in arid regions, but it's just tolerable enough for some of them. I like to think of these fringe populations as special, almost like the frontiersmen of the species testing the northern boundaries. It's a mystery, but in their travels, they must perceive the nuanced limitations of the land as they head north, and perhaps their own limitations.

And the magnetism of the South overrides their wanderlust, and there is a point when they go no further. And that point is just barely inside the boundaries of the United States. And here, these big cats are known as the Borderlands Jaguars. I want to understand these Borderlands Jaguars, their biology, and the overlap of how humans have interacted with the eater of us in the Southwest. But first, we've got to hear a story that became a foundational piece of the Jaguars' modern North American story. It involves none other than our friend, Warner Glenn. I'll give you a head start to understanding the significance of what you're about to hear,

because Mr. Warner kind of plays it off like it's no big deal. But before this, we didn't think they came here anymore. This story took place in extreme southwest New Mexico. That was a completely new experience. I'm going to go back a little bit. My dad and I went to Mexico twice trying to catch a jaguar. I mean, they're a beautiful cat, and they're very hard to trail up and catch. And dangers for these Mexican jaguars down here are known for killing dogs.

Yeah. And we never had any luck. So Daddy never got to see a jaguar. Now, in 1996, Kelly and I were hunting in the Pellant Sea of Mountains right east of others. We'd split up that morning, and she actually took one dog with her, Maple, and she hit that track. She didn't know what it was. She thought it, but she knew it was a cat. Right.

She knew it was either a lion, that's what we, or a bobcat. But the way it was pulling out, she figured it was a lion. So she told me which way it was going, and I cut ahead of it. And I finally got to where I could hear Maple, and, of course, my dogs heard it and went to her. And what happened? And the track I read in the book, the track was very big. Yeah. And you thought it was a big mountain line.

Big old timeline. Yeah. And so when they all got with her, that thing evidently had heard my dogs and turned around and went back the other way. And it went along. We trailed that from that point on. We trailed that. Well, actually, it was a junk track from then on. And we trapped probably another four miles before they finally bait it.

And, of course, I were trying to keep up on the mule. Kelly had gone back to get our client, and I were trying to keep the dogs in hearing. We didn't have triton collars in on the mule. And when I first, I finally caught up to where I could see them baying off across a big basin with the head of a canyon there on the other side. And I could tell they had it bayed on top of this big boulder. It was kind of a small bluff there.

Yeah. And it looked to me, I could just see it crouched. Instead, it was probably, I was looking a half a mile. And I couldn't really tell, I thought this big old Tom Lund. So I told Kelly, I said they've got that thing bade, and I'm going to get over there to it so I can get with those dogs while you're bringing the client. So when I got over there, I tied my mule,

and I walked down about 40 yards. It's really a rough steep mountain there, and I looked around the Pignon Tree there, and I can see that thing, right? And then that's the first time I realized it was a Jaguar, and it was crowds on top of that. And it looked over and saw me about the same time, and that's when I took the first.

I ran back up to my mule and got a camera out of my saddle horn pouch and ran back down there where I was, and I took a picture. I took three of it there, and then that jaguar stood up and looked around, and then he went over this rock out of the side of me, and I thought, look, none of that, suddenly he was going to be. to jump off of there. And the dogs were all around the base of this cliff, but it was too far for him to jump.

It would have been like a 40-foot straight-off. Wow. So he came back over, so I got pictures of him coming back over the rock, and then he jumped off the uphill side and took off. And the dogs came around and got on his track, so the chase was on. So I ran back and got my mule and went off of the mountain. And I told Kelly what was going on.

I said, Kelly, it's a jaguar. Wow. I said, I've got to get those dogs stopped and get, before I get something hurt. Well, they baited it again off in a big canyon there when I caught up. It's when I got, I tied my mule back. I could hear that thing. It was really bad. It was roaring at those dogs.

And I tied my mule back away, and then I slipped down their foot with my camera. And it was trying to get those dogs back. And that thing looked up and saw me. And it wasn't anywhere where it could go. It was backed into a crevice there, and boy, here he came. His eyes locked onto mine, and here he came. He knew that I was a problem. And how I don't know.

And those dogs met him head on. There was a million. I've got pictures of that meeting. And then they all fell off back into that crevice. And I went in there. He had one dog by the hind leg, and he broke the, it was maple. And I ran in there on top of the shelf, and they kicked a bunch of loose gravel and stuff on, and it hit that stuff hit the jaguar on the rear end, and he whipped around,

and I ducked back and got the dogs on top. And as soon as I got the dogs back, then, he went ahead and left. And I tied four of those dogs, and Maple was hurt. She couldn't go. She had a broken leg. So two of the young dogs left with it. And I thought, boy, I didn't know what to do. I just went in and made sure everything.

And they came back before I got ready to go try to catch you up there. I think it ran them back. Wow. And I was glad for it to get out of there. But that was the first one. That was the first documented Jaguar in the first picture of a Jaguar in the United States. Yeah, it was the first picture of a live Jaguar in the wild in the United States. Wow.

That's why it gained a little bit of notoriety or whatever you call it. I don't know. It just because, and really, at that time, they weren't on the endangered species list, but they were on the proposed endangered list. Okay. And so it wasn't, of course, they were protected by state law and all the side by federal law, but they weren't on the endangered species list, but I still, I still didn't know for sure whether to make it come out in public. with that picture

because I had some good pictures of that thing and I just didn't know what the reaction would be so I had a little meeting with some of the ranchers around in the Mount Pop Borland's group and we decided to shoot it's a neat thing to have that. Yeah, this is a conservation win.

Yeah, we thought it was a neat and it's not going to come up here and put some rancher out of business. I mean, there's just a few of them come through now then. And so I went head and we're public with the pictures. The history of Jaguars in the southwest United States goes back a long ways, like to the

Pleistocene kind of long ways, and it's a complex story. At this point, all you need to know is that this was the first live Jaguar documented in the United States, and it started a tidal wave of interest in the borderland jaguar. It was essentially like someone showing up with a legitimate photo of Bigfoot, the major news outlets in the country featured the old Cowboys Jaguar story. The eyes of the global conservation world were on Mr. Warner in the series of beautiful photos he took of the borderlands Jaguar. And it came with a flurry of research to feed America's new fascination. Jim Hefflefinger is the wildlife science coordinator for the Arizona Department of Game and Fish. He's an author and a full research

scientists at the University of Arizona. More than that, he's a wealth of information on all things wild. He's been stomping around the Jaguar fringe habitat of Arizona and New Mexico for most of his life, and I want to understand Jaguar biology. I think Jim can help us. I want to start off with Jim in some deep history, like way deep. The Pleistocene is a term used to describe a time period on Earth. It started roughly 2.5 million years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago, which was just like yesterday.

This roughly corresponds with the glaciers of North America retreating, the climate warming, and a bunch of species going extinct, and Homo sapiens arriving. It truly was a fantastical period of North American biological history, the likes of which Marvel Studios couldn't rival with a hundred million dollar budget and the world's most creation. digital animators. The place was wild. When you see a Jaguar today, know that he's got some deep history. Here's Jim. As I understand it, the Jaguar used to be, I mean, it was a different species of jaguar that's now extinct, but it was a very large Jaguar. Like most things during that time period in what is now North America, they were giant. It's fascinating because I believe it was Panthera Augusta. was the big, like, Pleistocene Jaguar. And then over time, it got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

As the big animals as eaten got smaller, I thought it was interesting that it out-competed and survived all the big cats, except for the mountain lion. And those are the two big ones that we have left. Sure. We had a North American cheetah. We had a North American Smilodon Fatalus, the big saber-tooth cats. And everything was big.

We had 90-pound beavers in the Pleistocene. We had bison that has a very clearly demonstrated reduction in size through time to the bison we know from the 1800s. And so a lot of things got smaller. So that was a pretty typical kind of relationship. We had dire wolves, which were giant wolves in the place of scene. Why did things get smaller? I think it's probably just a change in productivity. In that glacial environment, you had so much disturbance and you just had a lot of productivity.

And you've got abundance of prey animals. We had so many different hooved animals in North America. Many of them that evolved here and became extinct and never survived to anything else. What we have in North America today is just the remnants of what it used to be, even with the big cats. I mean, we have two big cats. The closest relative of the Jaguar, as I understand it, is the African leopard. They kind of came from the same place, diverged from each other. And the African leopard is obviously still in Africa, but they're a similar species.

And I've read where they can breed. They've bred them in captivity. and actually produce fertile offspring, which is kind of wild. Right. So the cats are prone to do that. You can cross tigers and lions. The liger of Napoleon Dynamite fame is actually a real thing. They can do that in captivity.

So cats will sometimes cross. But the jaguars is from that group of panthera, which is the roaring cats that are vocal and they roar like that. And so you're right. They're related to those old world cats that evolved over there as a jaguar came over here. Talk to me about the roaring cats. Talk to me about the roaring cats. Yeah, it's just some class of cats, those big cats that they call roaring cats.

And they make a vocalization, a lot of different vocalizations. And the Jaguar kind of has an ugg, ugh, ugh, that it'll repeat and increasing frequency and then fade off like that. So it's a breeding call. Is that what it would be? Right. It's mostly a locating breeding call to breed because they're solitary animals and they will get together and pair up just for the breeding season. But that's it. They don't, you don't have male and female groups walking around together, just hunting together.

They just get together and breathe. And it's about a one-day affair, and then they're separate again. So how big are jaguars? Yeah, in South America, and what we say is the real jungle habitat, they're much bigger, more diversity of prey, a lot more bigger items, and a higher density. And so jaguars down there will be 200, 250 pounds for males, 125 pounds for females as an average. But up in this northern, what we call the borderland jaguars, they're much smaller than you would find down at Central and South America. And they're not a whole lot, actually, not a whole lot bigger than our mountain lions are here. And so some of the, there's not a lot of figures, of course, because we don't have a huge sample size of Jaguar weights from Arizona, New Mexico, and the Northern Mexico borderlands.

But some of the weights that we do have seem to average around 120, 140 for males, 80 pounds to 100 pounds for females. And so considerably smaller than Central and South American Jaguars. Some indication that some of these at the northern end are a little bit heavier than those in central Mexico. But again, you're dealing with a sample size problem. And if you weigh a dead jaguar, does it have 40 pounds of deer or elk inside its belly? Or has it maybe not eaten for two weeks? That can make a huge difference. I read that Dale Lee recorded his biggest male jaguar to weigh 162 pounds.

I think that's the record, too. I just dropped a name that will need to know if we want to understand a robust swath of Jaguar history. Dale Lee was from Arizona. He was a legendary mountain lion and jaguar hunter in the southwest. We're going to learn more about Dale in just a bit. But first, I want to ask Jim about some fundamental Jaguar biology. Talk to me about Jaguar biology. Where do they live?

What are they eating? what do they do to make a living? Yeah, so Jaguar, the epicenter of Jaguar distribution is South America. If you look at their map, their core area is South America and then Central America. They'll be in a little lower densities going down all the way to Argentina. So they're adapted to this several different tropical forest types down there. But that's really the core of where they live. But they're so adaptable, they've been able to adapt northward.

And if you look at the distribution, there's this long finger from South America. America that goes up the east coast of Mexico and goes into South Texas historically. And then there's another long finger that goes up the west coast of Mexico into just the southern part of Arizona and New Mexico. And it's really incredible that you've got an animal that is typically kind of a jungle animal that has adapted to some of these more arid forest types all the way up the east and west coast of Mexico and dipping into Arizona and New Mexico and dipping into Texas historically. So there may prey because of that center of distribution is tapers and peckeries,

what we call havelina in the southwest. Coadis, Armadillo, some of those things that you see kind of in a jungle environment. These northern borderline jaguars, of course, are feeding mostly on cows white-tailed deer, the small version of white-tailed deer we have in the southwest. We've got collared peckery that we call havelina that are up here in these mountain ranges. So those things probably make up a vast majority of their diets for these borderland jaguars. Interestingly, they're eating skunks. They're eating little quatties. They're eating basically anything they can get their hands on.

And I remember hearing that even Warner's Jaguar Encounter in 1996 that he mentioned, that that smelled like skunk. Describe the morphology of a jaguar. Like what does he look like as compared to a mountain line? Most people would be pretty familiar with a mountain lion. Proportion of the jaguar's head is going to be huge. And the proportionate of the tail is going to be shorter, actually, than a mountain lion. So a jaguar's tail is going to be not longer than half of the body length of the head. If you take the head and the body together, and they have those spotting, which they call rosettes,

which because they look like a flower. So they're kind of an open, broken rosette, but they have black dots on the inside, as opposed to a leopard would have those open rosettes, but no spots on the inside. And so that spotting pattern, too, is like a fingerprint. And that's why when we get trail camp pictures of a jaguar, and oftentimes they're setting up trail cam on both sides of where they think a jaguar might walk through because they want pictures of both sides of the cat to get a recording of that fingerprint of those spots. So those are, they'll pick out, they'll look at the side of a jaguar from a trail camp picture,

and they'll pick out a couple really unique spots. One particular jaguar had a spot they called the Pinocchio spot, because it looked like two eyes and then this long nose coming off. They'll have some unique spots like that. And then whenever there's a photograph of the Jaguar, they'll look for some of those unique markings to keep track of individual Jaguars just from photographs. A rosette is a circular pattern of black spots.

This could be a combination of four to six spots. A Jaguar has a black spot in the middle of its rosettes. An African leopard has rosettes too, but not a black spot in the middle of the rosette. It doesn't sound like much different. But standing side by side, a jaguar and a leopard look different. Google a picture of a jaguar and a leopard, and you'll see what I mean. I've read that the spotting of a jaguar, specifically with these rosettes, is designed for dappled light, which is just incredible.

Because having been down there with Warner, the sun is all, it's very rarely overcast down there. There's not a lot of rainfall. And so with direct sunlight and when you have vegetation, what you get is dappled light. And man, I bet they're just invisible out there. Yeah, you can picture them on the forest floor with all that dappled light on an already kind of mosaic of brown leaves. You would think like an orangish cat with black spots would be so obvious, but very much not so. Just like you get a fallen deer, those spots are there for a purpose to hide them for a couple months until they get big enough that they can get away from predators. Jim, this doesn't sound fair chase to me, Jim.

I think I'm calling bull on these Jaguars, man. They got to give these coos deer and havelinas and jagorundies a chance. We should make them wear bells when they walk through the woods. No, I was fascinated with that. It amazes me with the greatest possible human technology and reasoning, us using our minds to try to develop camouflage. We really can't replicate. the simplicity of nature. When I look at white-tailed deer here by my house in Arkansas where I live,

like I'm amazed at how they just disappear and the color tones are just right. And the color tones vary, you know, from Arkansas to up in Canada where I hunt. You know, the deer look just a little bit different. It just blows my mind. And then when you see something as complex as the coloring of a predator that makes his living not only by hiding from other stuff that might harm him, but hiding from prey. You kind of see the full gamut of nature doing its best work, I feel like. I know there's a burning question in your mind right now. You're saying, Clay, ask Jim about Black Panthers. In episode one of the Bear Grease podcast, we established that the only large black cat documented by science that wouldn't have to swim an ocean to get to

the United States would be a melanistic jaguar. So here's what Jim had to say. Gary Newcomb, I hope you're listening. No offense to Aunt Ollie and the residents of Buck Snort, Arkansas, the Black Panther capital of the United States. Okay, I've got to bring this up, melanistic jaguars. Okay, Jim, I'm not sure how much time you spend in Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, all these places. but, you know, there's all this talk of Black Panthers.

On previous Bearerese podcast, we've established with biologists that there's no, science has never documented a melanistic mountain lion. But everybody and their brother has seen a black one, Jim. The only possible wild, large cat that could be black that would be within 2,000 miles of Arkansas would be a melanistic jaguar. You have to increase that distance.

It's not 2,000 miles. that jaguars do have a black phase. Even the black jaguars have spots. You can see the spots when the sun hits them right, even on the black phase jaguar. But there's never been a black phase jaguar cited north of Chiapas, which is southern, the very southern tip of Mexico, right where it touches Central America. So north of right where Mexico runs into Central America, north of that, there has never been a black jaguar documented. It's been confirmed to be a wild jaguar. Now, I have seen, there was a local sportsman warehouse that had a pure black mountain lion, full body mount. And I knew the taxidermis that had his plate on there.

And I called the tax thermos right away when I saw that. And I said, what is the deal with this black mountain lion? Because this is the first melanistic mountain lion I've ever seen documented it all. And he said, no, we just died that felt black just for conversation piece. Oh, man, he's stoking the fire. Stoke in the fire. I'm absolutely amazed at the power of folklore and the power of people's imagination and I think desire to believe people. Well, I worked as a wildlife research technician at Mississippi State University for about a year and a half, starting up a buck mortality study around the whole state and spent a lot of time in the Delta with a lot of good folks.

And so I'm no stranger to the Black Panther story. Yeah, how many Black Panthers did you see down there? Yeah. Now that that's settled, we can move on to other pertinent Jaguar biology questions. How does a Jaguar hunt? There's certainly ambush predators, and they do seem to be focused like we're talking around water, because for obvious reasons, the prey's coming into water, especially in an erode ecosystem like this. And so they will ambush certainly near water, but that's where the camouflage comes into play.

They're hiding. They're ambushing. a single animal. They're not a coursing predator like a wolf that would run and run and run. They're just going to sneak out and leap on the animal and then they're going to deliver a crushing bite usually on the back of the neck. And the more experience the Jaguar is, the better it is at clipping that and incapacitating the prey while it holds onto it with those five switch blades it has in each front paw. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker.

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 knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jim brought up the issue of water. Jaguars are considered the world's most aquatic big cat. Despite feline's reputation for hating water, jaguars are competent, swimming, and hunting in water. Of note, too, is that jaguars are the most nocturnal of the big cats.

They just don't move much in the daytime, making them even more elusive and mysterious to humans. If you want to see some wild video, go search for Jaguars hunting Cayman, little alligator-like things in South America. It's some of the wildest nature, kill-seeing stuff you'll ever see. Another interesting thing of note,

when inspecting a livestock kill, it is possible to distinguish a jaguar from a mountain lion kill. Jaguar kills typically have the first and second vertebrae of the neck broke and they eat in a different order than a mountain lion. Jaguars start at the head and show an unusual preference for the tongue, ears, and nose.

Mountain lions usually start eating a carcass just behind the rib cage and they prefer the internal organs. To each his own, I guess. So they have a very big jaw structure that's bigger than a mountain lion. That huge head is not fat. That's all muscle, massive.

muscle and that's all those huge muscles that work that jaw and create that crushing power. There was an account of veterinarian that had what's call a speculum, a thing that you put in an animal's mouth to hold his mouth open in order to get a tube in there or take a sample. And he had a speculum in a jaguar's mouth that was a half inch steel and the jaguar crushed that half inch steel. So I don't know what the bite strength is, but it's pretty amazing when you've got a head full of muscle that big like Jaguars. A lot of people would understand what a mountain line print would look like.

How would a jaguar print be different? Yeah, to an experienced mountain line hunter, Jaguar print's going to look different right away. And so they're larger overall, but that's not the only thing. Proportionately, they're different. The jaguar heel pad makes up a greater proportion of the overall print on the ground. And also the toes of the jaguar are more roundish and also kind of larger in proportion to the print. We're supposed to a mountain line toes might look a little more almond shaped, a little more oval shape,

and jaguar's toe pads be a little bit rounder. Let's talk about the range of jaguars. So pre-European settlement, there would have been Jaguars in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. And I want to talk about how far they naturally would have come up into the United States and kind of what records do we have and how do we know they were here. I did read that in the 1850s, jaguars would have been fairly common, quote unquote, common in Texas, and that there were six Jaguars killed in Texas in the 1900s. How far north did these Jaguars go?

Yeah, I don't think there are, all the evidence I've seen indicates they weren't common at any time. Even when the first European explorers were coming in and contacting, you would have a Jaguar that was killed. And it was often reported in the newspaper as the first one ever in the country. And sometimes it wasn't. It was just there were so far and few and far between that people weren't even aware of any other Jaguars ever being killed in the country. And when one was cited or one was killed,

it was big fanfare. And people made a big deal out of it, which is evidence even in the 1850s that this wasn't a common animal that was a commonly part of our natural fauna. But there's evidence in Arizona all the way up to the Grand Canyon, which is the northern part of the state. And we have to clarify, too.

We're not talking about licensing district. where they were all over the country. If we just talk about, say, that 1800s or so on, when Europeans were coming in, and more importantly, when some of the stuff was being documented in writing, when we actually start getting records of what kind of things were killed. But we've got records all the way up to,

actually it was a Hopi Native Americans that killed a Jaguar up by the Grand Canyon and records from their south, but extremely sparse and almost entirely male in Arizona. We haven't, the last female that was killed in Arizona was 1949. There's never been a documented female killed in New Mexico in our, in our written record. When you look at the distribution of Jaguars and you see these little fingers coming way up through Mexico on the East and West Coast and just touching the U.S., it's a pretty strong indication that we didn't have a big, robust breeding population of Jaguars. We had just the fringe where it feathered out as it got across the U.S. border,

we did have some females that were documented in the U.S. near the border, and actually that won by the Grand Canyon, and we did have some records of a few young. And so there were females that probably bred in the U.S., but it would be a stretch to say that we had a breeding population of jaguars. We had a few that were feathering out into Arizona, New Mexico, and some of those happened to be females, and there were some kittens that were born. Their prime habitat is not this arid, open country habitat that you see in Arizona, New Mexico. I mean, they're a jungle cat. Yeah, primarily a jungle cat. They've adapted to these mountain ranges up here, and so they'll live in small, isolated, usually fragmented populations, and they're persisting.

Some people probably wouldn't want to argue that it's not their habitat because they're living here and they're doing okay. But, boy, they're just, the jaguar distribution is reaching up onto tippy toes and just touching the United States. States at the very southern border. And that was historically when you think of, there's reports in the 1850s where people make a complete, scientists make a complete list of the carnivores and they don't list jaguars. And then when one does show up, it's a really big deal. And if you look at the Native American cultures in the Southwest, there's really not much jaguar motif. There's not much jaguar symbolism at all. That tells you that if the Native Americans, that's such a powerful animal. And in Central American, South America, it's

prominently in all of their culture and all of their stories. And you have some of these Native American tribes that have no stories that include the Jaguar and really no symbolism that has a jaguar. Once in a while, there are a few pictures of spotted cats. And so probably just like today, once in a while, there would be a spotted cat that someone would kill or someone would see. And that was, of course, a big deal to them. And they would talk about it.

They may make some symbolism. You know, it's kind of surprising to me that the indigenous cultures of that region didn't make a bigger deal about it. For the very reason that it was rare, presumably they would have encountered them at different times. I've got a theory, though. I think that they just said all the guys that saw them were liars. And so just like we do today, too. People say, I saw a Jaguar down there and you go, no, you didn't.

You saw a mountain lion. I'm sure there were some warrior braves around the campfire mocking some guy that said he saw a spot a cat. Yeah, yeah. The absence of Jaguar's symbolism in the southwest United States is peculiar, but only as it's contrasted with the indigenous people more central to the range of Panthera Anka. In Central America, the Olomek people adopted the Jaguar as their principal totem. Totem means a natural item of spiritual significance. They dress their nobles and warriors in jaguar skins.

They made art that depicted half human. half- Jaguar deities. They named temples after Jaguars. They believe that Jaguars could impart hunting prowess to humans when humans dreamed about them. And they had rights involving sacrificing Jaguars and humans. There is evidence that they raise captive Jaguars just for this purpose. That's some wild stuff right there. But you know what they say. When in Jaguar country, do what they do in jaguar country. That's a joke. But the point is that where there are a lot of jaguars, they dominate the culture,

and then the tribal cultures of the southwest U.S., they don't. I think now is an appropriate time to try to understand how humans are interacting with jaguars in modern times. Here's what Jim said. Talk to me about the greatest threats to jaguars today. The Jaguars range wide, it doesn't really matter where they are. One of the greatest threats is loss of habitat, especially in a rainforest. That's not new news of rainforest destruction, but also other stresses on their habitat and in other places that fragment their habitat, even in the north. But the second really big issue is just retaliatory killings for livestock depredation.

You have people living very close to the land, living on the landscape. Their entire bank account is that little hurt. of cattle that they have and you get a jaguar coming and start killing and it's just like removing money out of their bank account and so they they're they're just trying to make a living and you're talking about Mexico right talking about Mexico right not in the US but Mexico in Central America and South America you have these people living with small groups of cattle and that's their entire income and when a Jaguar comes in and just start taking all their money away that doesn't go over very well it's that retaliatory killing that is there's a drain on those local

population. Now there's a lot of really good conservation groups that are working hard and working with local landowners to increase tolerance and to compensate. But in some of these countries, they don't have a lot of money for compensation. They don't have a lot of money for some of these programs. And so it's difficult. And that's really where the rubber meets a road in conservation these days is finding innovative solutions to allow people to coexist with large carnivores that are impacting, natively impacting their existence. Here's the bottom line for conservation. The fate of jaguars in the United States is dependent upon the population in Sonora, Mexico,

where there are way more jaguars. All our jaguars come from there and they all return there at some point. There's a lot of good conservation work going on in Mexico for the jaguars. However, a big consideration on the migration pattern is the border wall between the United States and Mexico. the lowdown. Currently, there is about 650 miles of the 2,000 mile long border that is fenced. Of the 650 fenced miles, 300 of it is just a vehicle barrier, meaning wildlife can pass through it. More math, that means that 350 miles of the border wall has a wall meant to keep out people. This type of wall is definitely difficult for wildlife to cross. However, I saw with my own eyes, creek crossings

on the border wall while I was down there in Arizona that a bull elk could have walked through. It is a complex issue, no doubt. Do you think we really have a bead on if there's lions here right now? We have all of these mountain ranges completely full of cameras. There's a lot of cameras out there and people have come to understand how jaguars use the landscape and how they move through and they can most efficiently place some cameras where they can. I mean, is this the agency that's got cameras? I mean, like Arizona Game and Fish? Well, the agency has some.

The University of Arizona has some. There's a whole bunch of different entities that all have cameras out there. And then you have a lot of sportsmen out there with their cameras. So do we think there are Jaguars there here right now? There's one that I know of that has been. here a while and last photograph in December of 2020. So that Jaguar may still be there, but the last one I knew about was photographed up to December of 2020. So it could be as few as like one Jaguar in the United States. Because of the way the cameras are canvassed in all of these

mountain ranges along the border and a lot in Sonora and Chihuahua on the southern part of the border. I feel pretty confident that if there's a Jaguar walking around these mountain ranges, we're going to get some photos of it. Jim, I tell you what, the only way I'll believe that there's no Jaguars in Arizona if Warner Glenn tells me he went down there hunting and didn't tree one. That's right. I don't buy into your fancy camera stuff, Jim. Warner's better than any camera.

But hey, we need to go back further and map out the regulatory history of Jaguars in the United States and Mexico if we want to make sense of all this. Here's the short version. There's been a fair bit of legal jaguar hunting in semi-modern times. Until 1966, jaguars were game animals in Mexico and could be hunted from November 1st through December 31st, and the limit was one per person. In 1967, the season was closed except for depredation purposes by farmers or those with livestock. In 1980, the jaguar was classified as an endangered species, and in 1980, all legal methods of jaguar hunting were banned in Mexico.

Here's Arizona's history. In 1919, jags were classified as a fur-bearing animal, meaning it could be hunted. Between 1929 and 1969, they were classified as predators and could be killed by anyone at any time. In 1969, however, they were protected by the state. The last legally killed jaguar was in the past, Patagonia Mountains of Arizona in 1965.

Federally, in 1972, the Jaguar was listed on the endangered species list, so it got federal protection. Now for New Mexico's history. Stay with me. The last known Jaguar killed here was in 1909, and they were officially protected by the law, starting in 1999. There just weren't that many there, so they didn't have much reason to make regulation. about them. And what I haven't told you yet is that Mr. Warner actually caught two Jaguars.

We heard his first story from 1996, but he caught another Jaguar in New Mexico in 2006, 10 years later. That's a big deal. I want to hear Mr. Warner's opinion regarding the intersection of conservation and government regulation. He has something to say. We'll go a little further on the Jaguar deal. There's a lot of, After the 1996 one, about two years later, they put him on the endangered species list. Yeah. So far, they haven't declared critical habitat. I tell you, the endangered species act doesn't bother me.

That's okay. Yeah. Critical habitat bothers me. Because what they do, when they declare critical habitat, then they penalize anything else, like the hunters or the ranchers or the whatever. or the logging guy, they stop that, all that activity just for this one animal. And that's the worst thing they could do for the animal

because that makes the people there want to shoot shovel and shut up. I mean, why should they say they got one if they're going to get penalized for having it? If we're looking at a global overview of wildlife management across the planet, a unique part of the North American model of wildlife conservation, has been the system's ability to incentivize the average person to value wildlife because they've got stake in its well-being. The stakeholder's personal well-being benefits from the animal's presence.

That has been a valuable cog in our model. What Mr. Warner is saying that by penalizing landowners with overbearing, quote, critical habitat regulation, you de-incentivize people's willingness to cooperate. There's a strong argument by biologists, the experts, that Arizona and New Mexico aren't critical habitat and never were. There simply have never been very many Jaguars here. So let's do a little inventory, and I'll tell you what we're going to do. We heard Mr. Warner's story of bay and a Jaguarer, and we learned that he actually caught another

one in 2006. Jim has given us the lowdown on Jaguar biology and their current status, and we've explored the regulatory history of jaguar hunting. I think we've now built a platform that will allow us to go back in time a bit. We couldn't do a podcast on Borderlands Jaguars without talking about Dale Lee. Remember his name? Dale was from Tucson, Arizona and died at age 79 in 1988. I wanted to learn a thing or two about Dale, so I connected with my friend Brett Vaughn.

He's a dry ground lion hunter himself from New Mexico. Here's what Brett had to say about Dale Lee. There was like seven of those brothers, those Lee brothers. And I guess at one time or another, they all hunted. Dale, I mean, he was the one who took it serious. And he was the one who went on and made a living doing it. And they started out catching lions. They were right there by warners, you know.

They were on the east side of the Cherokawa's shooting. I think they caught their first lion or what they called tied up their first lion when Dale was really young. And they had a brother named Ernest. And Ernest was the one who kind of took care of the business. They started guiding hunters and taking hunters. And one thing led to another. They caught lots of lions and lots of bears.

And then they started going down into Mexico and catching jaguars. It was a totally different deal. The way they hunted down there, you know, they had canoe or they called them canoes with their flat-bottomed boats. and they had a gourd that they, and I guess they learned this from the natives down there, and it was a gourd, and they had a rawhide thong, and they would pull that, they would, they'd float down this swampy country on the rivers, and they'd pull that thong through the gourd, and it would make a roar or a sound like a jaguar, and these, these jaguars would answer it, and that's how they would

locate them. And then after they located them, they would go out, and from talking to several people that had hunted with them, they would go out and keep the dogs on a leash until they got the Jaguar started. And then they let the dogs loose. And they had some natives guys down there that were just phenomenal endurance athletes. Those guys would more or less go with the dogs and Dale and them, I think, would stay with the hunters. They quit going, I think, in about 1962 due to regulations. They said the regulations just got too tough for them to go down there. But in that period of time, they'd caught and harvested, I think, over 124 Jaguars. And their best year was, I think they caught 13 or 14 Jaguars in one year.

That was their best year. The Lee brothers were commercial outfitters for Jaguars, Mountain Lions, and Bears. They hunted Jaguars from the 1940s into the early 1960s in Mexico, and bears and lions through the 1980s in the United States. I asked Brett about the difference between hunting mountain lions and jaguars. He talked about how jaguars typically don't tree, but will bay on the ground and how they're much more dangerous for the dogs. And then he said this. So I think that is probably one of the main differences.

And then the conditions of the area where they hunted, I'm sure it was terrible. I hunted with a man one time that hunted some jaguar down there. He was an older man, Mr. Fletcher. And I, you know, I was pretty young. And I told him, I said, man, I'd love to go down there and hunt jaguars one of these days. and he just looked at me and he said, man, you're not tough enough. He just straight up told you that. Straight up told me. He said, you're not tough enough.

And I probably believe him. Why is Dale Lee a name that we still talk about? What was he known for? Just being a houndsman. I mean, being a houndsman and a lion hunter, mainly. I mean, he caught a lot of bears. I read somewhere where he'd caught over a thousand bears and caught over a thousand lions. He just devoted his life to it, you know, and I listened to a story he told about, you know,

they had to learn the heart, they just had to learn on their own. They had nobody to teach them. And Dale devoted his life to it. And he was also real instrumental in developing the blue tick breed as lionhounds. Dale Lee hasn't been around to chase lions or jaguars for over 30 years, but we're in for a treat. Brett hooked us up with something really special. We're about to meet Dale Lee. For those of you who did not know Dale, these tapes are in Dale's own voice. For those of you that were fortunate enough to have met Dale, you will recognize his distinctive voice and his unique way of telling these true stories.

I can still visualize Dale even now around the campfire telling these stories. So please, enjoy these true stories and realize they were told by the greatest lion hunter ever lived. Dale Lee. Well, now, this is about a hunt that took place somewhere around 56, 57. And it was in the swamps of Naira, Mexico, and our guests were two Iowa farmers. Now, one of them was a man that was around 65 years old. And he was tall and slim and wasn't carrying any extra weight. And his partner was a man that was probably around maybe 45,

and he was tall and fairly slender, but he was carrying a lot more extra weight than the older man. And so then I was talking to him about the hunt, and I told him, I said, well, now here is the procedures of the hunt and about how we would call at night. And then if we didn't get an answer, we would take our dogs and make a circle. From our main camp, we went down about two hours by boat.

Now, we had our men and all in one boat, and then two Mexican boys and our dogs and another one. And these were kind of flat-bottomed canoes that I had special made out of a special kind of plywood with plastic glass. Well, we went down and we called that night from about 2 o'clock until daylight and didn't hear anything. So the next morning, just as it started breaking day, we took her dogs. and started out. Well, within an hour or less time, we hit the tracks of a big male jaguar, and it was a running track,

and it went into one of the worst parts of the swamps in that area. Well, anyway, when they went down into there, they went at least two miles right straight away, and they were going fast. And I was coming along with one old Mexican fella and myself, and these two hunters as fast as I could go. And I had Charlie Settle from Dover, Tennessee, and a Mexican, are running the dogs to protect them.

Always sent some fleet-footed people with those dogs to keep them from all getting killed and losing them. And I had six hounds and a cur-dog. And this cur-dog was a springer spaniel and shepherd, real long hard, and he was a jaguar dog. but he didn't bark on anything but a jump track. Now in a minute they just went right straight away, and they were running,

and this little old curdog was saying yip, yip, yip, and I said, boys, they're jumped, let's go. And that thing run in front of them for at least, I'd say, at least three quarters of a mile before they stopped him. And they treat him then. And he was a good specimen. And we came up and walked right up to them, within 20 feet of the foot of the tree

and up about, I'd say 30 feet, 25 to 30, stood this jaguar right broadside. Well, he raised that old gun up and course it was just a shaking and his shimmering as he put it up to his shoulders and he pulled that trigger and that jaguar just dived out of that tree and hit right in front of Charlie Settling.

And old Charlie shot at him and missed him, right in front of him. And away the dog and the jaguars went went and they did go down into an awful bad place where you was going through that mud up to your waist and if you wasn't careful it's a lot deeper and they didn't go over about 75 yards and they stopped him and oh that jaguar was a growling and them dogs as a hollering and a bawling and a screaming now the noise was something terrible and now the minute i heard a shot down there Old Dale seems like a well-put-together man with a mine like a steel trap.

He tells a hunting story like he's calling a horse race. This was a very condensed version of this single story. I mainly just wanted us to hear Dale's voice and sample his passion. This man, like Mr. Warner, was a no-doubt lion and jaguarine-hunting legend. Mr. Warner actually knew Dale Lee. These recordings were put together by Dale's nephew. you, Mike Ashley, in the 1980s. They're a real treasure and there are over 15 hours of his recordings. I'll tell you how to get those at the end. In this final recording, Mr. Dale uses a gourd and a piece

of leather to make a jaguar call. It's a pretty amazing clip. Now this is supposed to be another Jaguar and that's what they think it is and they will not all the time they will answer but I'll I've called up lots of them and I've had other men call them up. And it'll really work and it helps when you're hunting them because you can call them up and have a good fresh track to put your dogs on. And so this is what they sound like. Well, now this is the way that they go when you're calling them trying to get them up. get them up. In 2021, there's a massive celebration going on in the hearts of those who love

wild places, and it's because the mysterious visitors from the south still roam into the American Southwest. Though the beasts are few in number, like we believe they've always been, the rarity of the borderlands jaguar makes it the most unique large mammal on our continent, in my opinion. I'll never see one, and I doubt you will either. But my dreams will be ripe with the possibility of a fantastical encounter when I close my eyes because of the knowledge that they're here. Maybe in the night watches I'll find myself a Jaguar hunter with the Olamec people or Mr. Dale. And like the dream of a Jaguar imparting hunting prowess to the sleeper, my hope is that our Jaguar dreams would make us stronger as we seek to protect the wild places of North America

and fortify the lifeways of the American hunter. Hunting is such a complex thing that can't be understood at a glance. It's nuanced and layered. Part of me longs to be a jaguar hunter, but I know that I would never take one even if I could. I also know they'll never be legally hunted again in the United States, and that is a great thing. As hunters, we value wildlife and we'll be the first to say, we're done.

That Mr. Warner let two Jaguars go that he bade is no small thing. He didn't shoot, shovel, and shut up, but rather use the encounter to fuel conservation. This is the template for the modern American hunter. But in the same breath, we can look back and celebrate the life of a great hunter like Dale Lee. who traveled down into Mexico and lived an incredibly adventurous life. The dedication, toughness, both mental and physical, the planning of such a hunt, and the spirit of adventure of men like all the Lee brothers is admirable. And I know that they have character traits in their lives that we do well to adapt into our own.

This is the final podcast that will have Mr. Warner on, and I hope that you've enjoyed them as much as I have. Mr. Warner and Kelly will be people that I'll never forget. My hope is that these discussions will garner a deeper appreciation in us for wild places and beasts, and that will become smarter and wiser and more inspired to help them thrive. My hope also is that we'll find deeper value in the human relationships that we have in our lives, because they are of great value. Long live the beast, the chief of which, on this continent,

is the mighty borderlands jaguar. And long live the great men and women who seek to partake an impartation from the wildness of that sucker's life. Thank you so much for listening to Bear Grease. Please leave us a review on iTunes and tell a buddy about this podcast this week. I've got a couple of housekeeping items.

You can buy Mr. Warner's book, Eyes of Fire, at this website. www. www.roatsrundeepaz.com. That's roots run deep a.z.com. Secondly, check out my friend Brett Vaughn's YouTube channel called Born 100 Years Too Late. Lastly, you can buy the recordings of Mr. Dale Lee's stories, which it encompasses at least 15 hours of content. But you'll need to contact Brett through Facebook or Instagram at Born 100. 100 years too late. So check out the book for Mr. Warner.

And check out born 100 years too late with old Brett Bond. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and 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 calls. who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.