Bear Grease - Ep. 855: Clay's Utah Mountain Lion Hunt | 12 in '26

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

Clay Newcomb answers your questions and breaks down his Utah mountain lion hunt captured in MeatEater's brand new "12 in '26" film series. He hunts with mules and hounds in the mountains, testing his fortitude in some seriously steep and rugged terrain. Presented by @Moultrie.Products and @onXHunt Watch the film now on MeatEater's YouTube channel Connect with MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and YouTube Clips Subscribe to MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTubeSee 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. Wow, what a beautiful animal. God, just to get a few moments to just watch that animal. Few people in the world will ever get to do that. You can be out in this country your whole life, hiking, riding the mule, whatever.

You might see a mountain line in a lifetime. You know, you just don't see them. Only way you're going to see them and look at them like this right here. is with hunting with these dogs. And we are a long ways from the truck. Miles, a miles in that country from the truck. Man, when I see an animal like that, I think about the country it came from.

I mean, this is some true back country. And that sucker has made a living out here his whole life. What you just heard was a clip from my new film out on the Meteor YouTube channel of my lion hunt on mules with some very legendary guys, McLean and Hunter Meekam and Ty Evans. We're going to talk a ton about them. But this was episode two of Meat Eaters 12 and 26 series.

So Meat Eaters always putting out videos. Every week we put out videos. But this year we're putting out 12 long-form films, everyone, films. Not episodes, not videos, not. clips, films. Yeah, Janus. Yeah, Janus. Me and Janus have this argument going on of, are we making episodes?

Janice makes episodes? I make films. That's right. I think Janus makes films. Janus is incredible. This is meters 12 and 26. And the 12, 12, meaning 12 months of the year, 26 being the year of 2026, we're producing 12, full-length feature films.

This film that we just released to mine is 45 minutes long. Janice's first film about his baited bear hunt, the first 12 and 26, was a full hour long. And these are presented by our sponsors, our big time friends, products we use in the woods all the time, onyx and multery. And this is the companion podcast, the companion show called the 12 and 26 podcast. That's where all this has been going, folks, ever since you started. the 12 and 26 podcast, right? That's right. The companion show to the 12 and 26 film series where we go behind the scenes. You know, I've always been a big fan of long form audio, like podcasts. Because when I started making films, you can go on some big expedition and make a

20-minute film, and it really doesn't, it honestly doesn't capture the full story. As if you were just sitting there listening to me talk. Sure. Now, if you're just listening to me talk, you're not seeing the lion, you're not seeing the mountains, you're not, you're not, you're kind of in the moment in a different way. Doesn't hit all your senses. Right, but I feel like a film sometimes doesn't capture the full thing. So what we're trying to do is just like fill in all the gaps. So you got the film, you can watch it. You can see the mules. You can see the lions. We treat three lions. but

this is behind the scenes I'm going to tell you I'm going to spill it all folks it's all going to be on the table on this episode of the 12 and 26 podcast I'm joined by my dear friend and producer Josh Landbridge

spillmaker and if some of you might be if you're not tuned into bear grease all the time you might not know that I gave Josh this nickname name, I mean, like in 2008. A long time ago. Like probably 20 years ago.

I started calling him Landbridge because he's got such a good mustache that this is a true story. One day we go to church together at church, I saw Josh and I was inspired to go learn about the Bering Land Bridge and went and ordered my first book on the Bering Land Bridge. I still got it. Inspired by his mustache. Because inspired by Josh's mustache because it like links continents. So Josh Landbridge spillmaker, who's deep in the weeds on the Bear Grie's podcast with me. Awesome.

Well, Clay, this was a fantastic film, man. I'm really excited to kind of get into it, hear your thoughts on this specific hunt, lion hunting in general. And we've got some great questions from me and some great questions from some of our social media outlets, YouTube, and Instagram. So we're going to throw it all at you and giving you an opportunity to respond. So kind of just getting into it. Can I do a preamble? You can't. You do whatever you want.

You do whatever you want. I just want to set the wider picture for dry ground lion hunting. So you're going to hear that term used in that what that means is when you're hunting lions, 99% of lions harvested in this country, 95 to 99, I would say, would be lions that were harvested over dogs. and it's primarily in the west. There are no lion seasons east of the Mississippi or even really east of the Rocky Mountains. And so it's all happening out west.

And in the northern part of the mountain lion range, there's snow. And when you are lion hunting in the snow with dogs, a human goes out and looks for a track in the snow. So you can drive roads, you could ride your equine animal, you could do whatever. however you're going to get across the country and cover vast amounts of ground, half of the hunt is fine on a track, but when it's in the snow, you can see the track,

you can tell what kind of lion it is, you know, if it's a male, female, typically, you can. But most importantly, scent holds better in the snow and is much easier to trail a lion in snow than it is on dry ground. It was described to me one time like this. imagine a scent particle being essentially like a biologically active particle. And if you put that particle in the refrigerator, it would last longer and not degrade.

Which, this brings up a point. I was curious about that word, which I don't think is a word. Degradate? Yeah. Oh, dang. Yeah. So folks, English majors, forgive him. It's a made-up word.

Degradates a word. Degrade. It's just pronunciation. Tomatoe tomato. So the scent particle, if you were to take it and put it into the refrigerator in the last water. I never thought about that, but it totally makes sense. And so lion hunting in the snow is easier. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's easier. Right. And it takes a dog that doesn't have to have as good a nose. You get into the arid southwest, like in Utah, New Mexico, Arizona. You used to could run hounds and California, can't anymore. They're having to start these lions on dry ground. Right.

And in the hound world, and people turn it up. If you're, turn up the volume on your device right now so you can hear this. In the hound world, the dry ground lion dogs are the Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James of the hound world. There I said it. I said it, okay? It takes a lot higher skill set to tree a line on dry ground than it does to triacoon. I can just see the comments that are going to be stacking it up.

It's just, no, there's every animal and dog used in hunting has to have a specific set of skill sets that make it wonderful and unique. But from my estimation, for whatever that's worse, And the estimation of many really great people in the hound world for a dry ground line dog, he's got to have an almost otherworldly nose. Okay. And for instance, in coon hunting, you don't necessarily want one with a super cold nose because there's coons everywhere. You don't want him to treat, start a track that's 12 hours old.

Right. You want him to go find a hot one. Right. And that's all in his ability to smell and his desire. You've got to have a lion dog that has an extremely cold nose. these dogs have got to be superb athletes. I mean, I'm telling you, McLean Meekam's dogs were running. I mean, we were putting 12 to 20 miles a day on the mules.

We were following the dogs, not step for step. But, I mean, those dogs had well over 100, probably 150 miles. You're going to have to pump the brakes on this preamble a little bit. Come on! Getting into the content that we're going to talk about. People got lots of questions. I hadn't even started the preamble yet. All that to say, dry ground line hunting and the men and women that are dry ground line hunters

often are held in high esteem in very small circles. Yeah. And the meekums are nationally known and respected as incredible dry ground line hunters. And I'm telling you, they made it look easy. Really? Yeah. Yeah. To go out in five days.

It's amazing watching. Don't try to stop me, Josh. To go out in five days and tree three. Well, that actually kind of leads me into one of our first questions here is, you know, you say it's rare to, at first you say it's rare to treat two lions in three days. Right, right, right. When you're getting into it, when you, before you went, what was your expectation? Did you have an expectation? like, could I go five days and us not tree a lion?

Or what did you think was going to happen? I mean, I had a lot of confidence in the meekums, and we were coming at a good time. It was a good time to come. We had optimal conditions. We had some snow. It was really cold. But is it possible to go out there for five days and not tree a lion, even with some of the best? Absolutely.

I mean, I know multiple people. Last night a guy texted me and said, I've been on two guided lionhound. hunts, like paid money to go on guided line hunts, like week-long hunts and never saw a line. Wow. And like, presumably two five-day hunts. I know another guy, I won't say his name, a dear friend of mine, has been on two guided line hunts with very reputable outfitters and has never killed a lot. I think they'd probably treat a female or something.

Wow. And so, yeah, for us to treat three in five days was you couldn't have asked for anything. better. Okay. Okay. We've got some kind of, we've got some footage of kind of just of the terrain of where you were hunting in Utah. Have you hunted in this region before? Never have. This is my first time to Utah. So did you have an expectation of what the riding and the, and would be like before you got there? You know, yeah, it was, it was probably longer than I thought it was going to be. Like we rode over 80 miles per our on-X that we were tracking. That's a lot of miles. It's a lot of miles. And you wrote the same.

meal, didn't you? I rode the same meal. That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable to me. One of the mules, so our cameraman, one of our cameramen, was on a mule, Lauren Moulton. And on the fifth day, I mean, this mule's riding right behind me. I mean, it's gone 80 miles. I asked McLean, how old is that mule? And he said, 25 years old.

Wow. Carried Lauren Moulton 80 miles. And not like 80, 12. miles. Right. I'm telling you 80 miles of up and down and elevation gain and skidding down mountains. I mean, rough. Unbelievable. But it actually, to me, in some ways, is, I don't want to say easier, but when you ride long distance in the eastern deciduous forest, you're constantly fighting brush and getting scratched up. I wondered, was what happened to your nose? I got banged by a cedar tree.

Okay. But most of the time, we're just out in the wide open. Okay. Most of the time. Well, the scenery was, I mean, spectacular. Yeah. So, well, that's great. We're going to watch another clip here.

Three quarters of a century of selective breeding by the Meekums, and you'd have to sell your truck to buy one if they were ever for sale. Line dogs require a unique skill set of hunt drive, physical stamina, which borders on something supernatural, and an incredible nose topped with desire to tree game. I already covered this, Josh. Not just to run it. So you kind of got into it.

Was there anything you wanted to add to? Well, you know, people would look at these dogs and just think, you know, some of them are mixed breed, but they've just, they've bred these genetics into them to do what they're supposed to do. So you talked about cold nose. You talked about them being able just to trail and to have the drug. and the athleticism, anything else that would set apart a lion dog, a dry ground lion dog versus like a coon dog or a deer dog? Yeah. Well, when you look at like some of the bigger hounds in the east, and there's some big dry ground

lion dogs, but typically like McLean's dogs were probably 50, probably 45 to 65 pounds. Okay. And I mean, some of these bigger coondog breeds are bigger than that. And a bigger dog typically breaks down a little faster, just like doesn't have like the stamina, their feet break down. And so when you're going that many miles, day after day, you've got to have a dog with really good feet and that won't go lame on you, you know, way back out there. Sure. And that comes after just selective breeding, you know, litter after litter after litter. and breeding the good ones to the good ones, you know?

And eventually you get this dog that is kind of dialed itself in a way, you know? I mean, when these guys hunt so much, they really do. I mean, they hunt so much, and they just really, their dogs express the potential that they have. But I think the dogs are endlessly fascinating. Another question, how would you respond to critics of hunting with hounds that would say it's easy or there's no hunting taking place? Right. Man, I would say, honestly, anybody that would say that has never, maybe they've gone on a hound hunt, but they've never owned hounds or done it themselves. And I would say that hunting with hounds is actually the most primitive method of hunting. Like if you take out a scope with a rifle on it and go sit in a deer stand and then you, you know,

you say that someone is not hunting when they're hunting with hounds. I mean, you kind of live, you know, there's a dichotomy there. There's some, this isn't going to work for you. But I'm a big proponent of hound hunting, and it's a traditional use practice that goes back to the very beginning of the human story. And so this is a modified version of that. I mean, it's like, obviously we're not subsistence hunting, but it's super hard, man. Yeah. I mean, you load up a pack of hounds and try to go out to Utah by yourself and treat a line, good luck. Yeah.

You know, it's very difficult. And then the beauty of it from a conservation perspective is you get to be selective on the animals that you harvest, which was pretty much the theme of our film. For sure. Okay, we got another clip here. To the African tracker's ability to follow Plains game. Hyper focus on obscure details. for decades produces unique

while following the dogs step for step. And there's a reason these Western lion hunters typically use mules. They're more sure-footed, safer, and last longer in rough country than horses. There's a...

It's a few clips put together. Temperatures are hovering in the single digits. And we're going into a completely new canyon. Oh, not supposed to hear the audio on this anyway. We'll just watch it. So that spot there, when Ty's mule slips on the rock,

that could have been pretty hairy right there. You know, Ty Evans' heartbeat would not have skipped a beat. Really? Yeah. He didn't. He wouldn't have even, and he knew that everything was okay because of that mule. Right.

I mean, that's when you want to have. an animal that's very sure-footed, and that's where the mules thrive. And I mean, obviously that mule slipped and fell, but it recovered, didn't tumble down the mountain. Sure. Would you say this is probably some of the roughest riding you've done? You know, I have done, there was one section on day one that was super steep, and the camera just didn't pick it up.

There were a couple of spots, though, where you could get a little. bit of an idea of how steep it. I mean, it scared me, you know, having been on a mule a little bit, it scared me looking at it. Well, the first, the first two hours we rode, the dogs just went over this mountain and bailed off. And it was, I mean, I don't even know how to describe how steep it was. I would say 95% of people riding an equine animal would have walked the mule down. Right. And we knew we could have. Right. But I was there with Ty Evans and McLean Meekam, and I was like, hey, let's just ride.

That scene where I don't know if it was McLean or if it was Thai, where they're coming down and you mentioned the britchin, that was steep. Yeah. I mean, that was really steep. And you mentioned the britchin that you use the brittion on mules, and that's the strap that goes around the hindquarters of the mule. Would you ever use a brittion on a horse? I typically don't. And I wasn't able, this is a prime example, people, of where it films doesn't give you the time to tell the whole story. Sure.

So the reason that you only see Britchin on mules is because a mule's front shoulders are narrow. And so the saddle has a tendency to slide forward because the mule doesn't have very strong withers, which withers is an anatomical term for basically the front shoulders and like the hump on the neck. of a horse or a meal. So a horse has big, strong, broad front shoulders. A horse is more typically has more muscle than a mule. And they have a lot of it up front. They have big, big hind quarters, sinks in, than big front shoulders. A mule has big nice hind quarters and narrower front shoulders. The saddle slides forward. You need a britchin to keep your saddle from sliding forward. Right. Yeah.

Are these mules shooed? Yes. These mules were shod and had ice. I was unfamiliar with it because we don't have that here, but they had like ice cleats. Oh, really? Yes. They told me, when I was originally going to bring Izzy, so Izzy is my nine-year-old meal that you would see on the logo of the Bear Grish podcast. So that's the mule that I trained.

and still have. When I told, originally we were going to go out there and take our mules. Me and Justin House, my friend Justin House from Arkansas, we're going to drive out there. And there was actually an equine disease that was going around the rodeo world at that time. And interstate travel of equine animals was in jeopardy. Like, it's possible we could have got out there. And if it had escalated, we might have had to left our mules there or something.

So we decided to fly and to ride his mules. But when we were going to take mine, he was like... Which ended up being a good decision. I think it was. Yeah. When we got there, or he said, when you and Izzy get here, we'll put these basically snow shoes on her. Okay. Like they were that serious.

They were like, you need these. And man, in some of that stuff, I was very glad to have a grippy shoe on those mules. Right. Right. We had a comment on YouTube by Brooke Anderson, 1423, said this is the most unique camera work I've ever seen on a hunting show. Really makes you feel like you're riding along with them. I'd love to see more hunts on horseback film like this. And I just want to give a quick shout out to the camera guys. Yeah, Drew Steckline and Lauren Moulton.

Yeah, they not only filmed, but they weren't just riding, but they were also filming. So they were there the whole time. You know what there, a lot of those, a lot of that, riding stuff was done with those Osmo cameras. Yeah. These little gimbal. Yeah, you're letting people see behind the curtain. A little, little gimbal cameras. Yeah.

Pretty slick. Pretty slick. Well, shout out to those guys. Hey, not to, I won't say which one, but behind, this is behind the scenes, right? Behind the scenes. This is like unplugged. Yep. Right.

Yeah, that's like a backstage pass. So one of our cameras got lost. Osmo cameras got lost underneath that. lion tree, the first lion. Oh, really? Yeah. So if you recognize that tree, if you find it out there in the Utah backcountry, let us know. 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,

all, 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' 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 Rennell, A mella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. We've got another clip here. From the truck, we went down some steep stuff that might have deterred us if we didn't have to follow the dogs that bailed off the edge. Dogs often force your hand to go places you wouldn't choose. The strap around the back of the mules hide.

Oh, I guess that's it. kind of help us understand you kind of described the the qualities of a good dry ground line dog but when you're running dogs what are you trying to do are you trying to maintain a certain distance from them what what's what's that process and and you use the term of dog race what does that mean so these guys are free cast and hounds which means they don't always know where the track is. If you, well, let me back up.

Freakasting hounds just means you just turn their dogs out. And they're just looking for a cent. They're not on a leash. They're just out hunting. Right. And so we freecast dogs, and they have a ton of control over these dogs.

And I mentioned in the film, you can, you know, they kind of hunt them like bird dogs. Right. They want them to stay fairly close. But then, because when they, the dogs start running a track,

they want to be able to go over to where the dog is barking and see if they can physically see a track. Okay. So they don't want a dog to go three miles in there without them and start a track that they can't immediately go and check out. Right. Because these dogs will run bobcats and mountain lines. And they don't, a dog is not going to distinguish between, let's say,

a female with kittens and a big tom. I mean, they'll run either one just the same. And so if it was a female with kittens, they would immediately pull the dogs off. And they do that through just training. I mean, vocal commands, but they can also tone the dog, which is not shocking it,

but just beeping it and getting the attention of the dog, and they can call them back from long distance. I want to say something about that little clip talked about how when you're following hounds, you go places that you would have never gone. otherwise. And that is a cool part of hound hunting because if you were just going on a pleasure ride through all those canyons that we went through, I mean, you would pretty much take the easiest route or maybe a route that went by some aesthetic point or something. Man, when you're following the

dogs, you just have to go where they go. Right. And so you find yourself in all kinds of kind of just places that just are off, literally off the beaten path. And that's what I've always liked about hound hunting is, you know, you just get a tour of the world. And that kind of goes as well to what I was so impressed with. We would be so far from the truck, Josh. Yeah. And McLean would be like, man, when we drop off in this little canyon, we're going to pull up

and there'll be a big bluff. and behind that bluff is a set of pine trees. And that's where those cats like to mark, the male cats like to scratch, and we're going to go there. And, I mean, we've been, we're like seven miles from the truck. Right.

And he would just have this. And he knew exactly. Topographic memory of just every detail of the land that, I mean, you just wouldn't be able to have that detail. of a map in your head without a lifetime. And McLean's in his 50s, but also being on the back of a mule or horse, like you can just cover so much ground.

But they also elk-hunting mule deer hunt in these regions. And I think that's an interesting place we ought to go probably sooner rather than later, is what the film dealt with so much, which was lion conservation. We've got that coming and we've got a lot of comments about that. Okay. So, but we're almost there. Well, they, they, they, mule deer hunt, elk hunt, this. I mean, they just know it every possible way in and out.

Right. Yeah, at B spoke to said this was much harder before GPS dog collars. He's correct. Yep. Okay, we're kind of, we're getting to the lion here. Well, we got a lion, man. they started it way the heck over in that other canyon and we can see it right up in the tree

just glowing up there try to get a lot got his head and then about four inches under the base of his tail will be a black dot if it's a tom so we'll get up here and get a look at him and fool it will let's look at and scream so you got that first lion

How many days in was that? That was the second day. Okay. What's it like to be standing that close to a full-grown mountain line? Well, I noted it of just how rare it really is. I mean, if you're a lion hunter, it's not because you see them because you have the dogs. But really, in a natural situation without dogs, just in a, you know, you would, it'd be very rare to be that close to a lion without it disappearing.

I mean, lions are notorious for being unseen. And then a lot of the GPS college studies they've done, they see how close these lions let humans get to them, and the lions never, you know, reveal their presence. Right. Like, so a lot of people out west that live in Lion country that are doing a lot of backcountry stuff have probably been within 20 to 50 yards of many lions that they never knew about.

Right. Which is interesting. Right. But no, this line, when I first, I knew we weren't going to shoot a small line. Right. And we really hadn't talked about exactly what was acceptable. You know, I mean, I didn't know what kind of line. We just knew we needed a mail for sure.

Right. And an adult, you know, a full-grown one. And, man, when I walked up to the tree, I was like, dang, that's a pretty good mountain line. I mean, it had a pretty big head. And but I could just immediately tell, well, I mean, they told me, they're like, yeah, that's like a two-year-old line, you know. Did you think it was older than that? I would have thought it was older than that. But I have no basis.

Because you've lion hunted before. You took a lion? Yeah, this lion weighed 112 pounds. Okay. It was a male. That was where? In the panhandle of Idaho. Okay.

Leon Brown, guy named Leon Brown Plotman. And I mean, that's technically an adult. I mean, like it wasn't like still with its mother, but this was probably a two-year-old line. Okay. 110 pounds. Okay. Which is, you know, you're your husband. hoping to take out the big ones. And the biggest lines of North America, and these would be

like phantoms, but would, you know, push 200 pounds. I mean, there have been 200-pound lines taken. But a big Tom in Utah, I would say, would be in the 150-pound range plus or minus. I mean, like, that would have been a... And that's what they're looking for. That's what they're looking for. But then again, these guys, like I said, Hunter has never killed one. I mean, they're just not... Did he say why? Did he say why?

I mean, surely he's seen a mature cat. I mean, he's... Well, number one, they are outfitters. Right. Like, so they do take people that they're trying to get a line. So presumably, a lot of the big ones they've, they've treed, they had a client with them, you know, so they would have shot the line. But I get it. Like, it's just not...

That's just not what they're in it for. Right. Like just to shoot a line just doesn't mean that much to them. They'd rather let it go and treat it again or someone else. Right. Take it. Right. And so I thought that was interesting.

And that made me feel good when I passed that line. Right. Because it was hard. I would have been so happy with that line. I think it was probably bigger. You know, McLean said it was between 110 and 100. 120 pounds. And I feel like it looked quite a bit bigger than this one. Okay.

I do. This hunt is on the Bear Grease YouTube channel. Okay. My lion hunt from like 2016 or something, probably 10 years ago. I went up to the Panhandle of Idaho. I killed that one with a traditional bow with Leon Brown. So we have another comment from YouTube, I believe. S3V3, ND3T, lots of threes. Okay.

And that username. How does passing on a kill affect the dogs? How do you reward them and also disengage them from a successful hunt when you don't understand the harvest of an animal? When you don't harvest an animal. Right. You know what? I think it's, that's a good question because it would seem like those dogs.

I like how he says successful hunt, too. I mean, the dogs did their job. Right, right. Well, I think the reward for those dogs. dogs is just to look at it. Yeah. And see it up in the tree. Were you able to get them pulled off and get them disengaged from that line to move on? Oh yeah. They just call them. I mean, they lead, they would lead some of the younger dogs away. Some of the older dogs, they'd just be like, let's go on to the next one. Okay. And now, I hope that we're soon getting to line management.

We've got one more clip. We've got one more clip with a short question and then we're getting into lion man because i have some insider information i love insider information okay next clip we have we've ridden six or seven miles from the truck and man they've got that cat tree you can see him through banoes down there thought he might be baited in one of these rocks we got one of the guys going to him we're going to try to figure out how to get down there looks like tom just from the track but just unbelievable country when you come to Utah this is where you'd hope to tree one I already don't like it pretty sketchy getting down here but we're going to try to look this line over we don't we think it's probably the same caliber of line as yesterday so we

really don't know one we're going to try to take or not so you mentioned how steep it is and and that you don't like it. Where'd that come from? Well, you know, Justin House was there. Hunter Meekam was there. Dustin from Arizona was there. There were multiple people there that went down with us. And it was not that big of a deal.

Like there were parts where we had to slide. Right. And there was always handholds. But I was trying to just be vulnerable and honest. honest, it just kind of fluttered my heart, like one of those flutters that you can't control. Yeah. And I was just like, what is going on? Like, this is not even that bad.

It was bad. Right. Like, Ty Evans had cowboy boots on that day, and he chose not to go down because he had, like, slick cowboy boots. Right. And the consequences of Volan were high. I mean, like, it was just. almost straight down in several spots in snow. And no, I had my buddy Justin carry my gun.

You can tell I was kind of wigged out. I was like, sorry. Well, you had a pretty harrowing situation with your mountain, mountain gun hunt. Well, that's what I, that's what I, well, I know is part of it is, yeah, we were, me and Dirtmouth were hanging on the side of the cliff for two hours. Yeah. Retrieving that goat. Okay.

the moment you've been waiting for. Okay. We're going to talk about conservation. These cats are, I mean, they're carnivores, 100% living off meat. And they follow these elk herds. And what's kind of interesting being here in Utah is that they really liberalize the lion hunting. And, I mean, you can trap them, you can snare them year-round season. Don't need a tag, just need a license.

and you'd think that the lion hunters would be happy about that but they're not you know they feel like they should be managed a little more conservatively but the game of fish has done it because the mule deer populations are down they're trying to save some mule deer so you know there's probably like two sides of it but when you're with lion hunters they're the ones who are you know wanting to be more conservative, but... Taking a beating, you know, and we, everything needs to be regulated, you know, every species. But just wide open for one species is not going to change our mule deer. There's so many other factors, there's highways, there's drought, there's habitat,

there's so many other things, and I think as humans, we play more and apart in hurting the muleeer population than these lions are. you take an area like this where there's quite a lot of elk, so they eat elk also. They eat coyotes, eat bog cats, they eat skunks, all kinds of things. But it's amazing how many people I take out in the hills. The first thing they see some bones, it's automatically a lion kill. The theme of the film really was lion conservation. And in the last year, Utah has opened up.

mountain line hunting to the widest gate possible. It's a year-round season. There's no quotas. You don't have to have a tag. You don't have to buy a tag to hunt one. Even as a non-resident, all I had to do was buy a non-resident hunting license, and it was legal for me to harvest a mountain line. Now, after you killed it, you do have to check it, and they pull a tooth, and they gather biological data. Right. But basically, this is my understanding of it, which is not the full picture. But there was a time when there were probably 500,000 mule deer in Utah, okay, like in the glory days,

which that would have been, you know, I don't know, 50, 60, 70s. At some point in time, there were 500,000 mule deer in Utah. with whatever is happening ecologically, management-wise, today, as I understand it, they have roughly around 300,000 meal deer. Okay. Wow. And it's been that way for a long time. Well, Utah is a trophy elk and mule deer state big time. They also have about 3,000 mountain lines.

In 2007, 20 years ago, and it's... The guy I talked to believed it was probably similar to that today, 3,000 mountain lines. So that's one mountain line for every hundred deer. Okay. And lions undoubtedly are eating deer. And when I talked to Chuck, oh boy, let me, I'm not even going to say his name. He's a great guy. He's helped, he's worked a state agencies, knows a lot about lions.

Basically, the lions typically are after the mule deer more than the elk. And they don't just prey upon the mule deer in uniformity. They trend heavier towards males. Oh, really? Yeah, because males are solitary, more solitary, they're traveling more, they're just more vulnerable. So they're definitely eating doze and fauns, but there would be a higher percentage of the males that they eat. And so that actually, there's a biological term for it, but it sounds bad for a sportsman to think of a lion killing a big trophy mule deer. But from a population level, it's actually less consequential than if that lion killed a dough.

Because if the lion kills a dough, you're not only killing that dough, but you're not only killing that dough, but you're killing her reproduction potential for the rest of her life. And so basically, when they introduced elk, the first lion studies in Utah were back in the 1960s, and all the lions exclusively ate mule deer, and it was because there were hardly any elk there. They introduced elk, and they started taking primarily juvenile elk.

okay, but this is the most interesting thing that he said, is that what you really, if you're thinking about mule deer populations, what you really have to be focused on is the amount of mule deer fawns getting killed, okay? And he said what kills a bunch of mule deer fons is coyotes. Huh. And so he said, he said it's very complicated, but basically it's the he believed Chuck, I got to find Chuck's name. Hold on.

Here, it's Chuck Bodenkirk. Bodenchuk. Mike Bodenchuk. Mike. I was calling him Chuck. Yeah, Mike Bodenchuk. Mike Bodenchuk. He's a consultant, he's worked with state game agencies with carnivore management for his entire

career, like super knowledgeable guy. And I'm not quoting directly. I just had a conversation with Mike today. but basically it feels like there's a lot of pressure coming from the sportsmen of Utah to hammer down on the lions and and basically Mike Bowdenchuk and I'm not going to quote him you can ask him yourself but he doesn't think that this he thinks that this is unsustainable what Utah's doing really he I actually thought he was calling me to tell me I got it wrong because he somehow we got hooked up with

him and he watched the film. Right. It's this expert. And I actually thought he was going to say, Clay, you painted this in the wrong light. This is actually good. And he was like, he was like, well, he said, I don't think it's sustainable. And the only positive thing that he did say about this new rule, the new regulations, is that it does just open up a lot of sportsman opportunity.

and the state agencies aren't going to be killing problem lions. A sportsman could actually go kill a problem lion. So they do have livestock, depredation in Utah. Sheep, cattle, stuff gets killed, less than it has been in a long time. But in the past, if you had a sheep get killed by a lion, you would call the state agency, and they would send out a government hunter to come kill that line. Today, with 365 day, a year season, you could call your buddy that's got lion dogs any day of the year and go trail a lion and kill it.

And, you know, he said, you know, that's positive for sportsmen. Right. So the total reported harvest of mountain lions in Utah from November 2023 to 24, 530. 530 lines. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it doesn't. I mean, in some really simplistic way, you would just go, well, a lion on the, that line that I passed on the second day, he's killing probably a deer a week. So that's 52 deer a year. And you're like, remove that lion. You have plus 52 deer.

Well, I think what McLean and what others are saying is that mule deer poise, even thriving mule deer populations, they have natural systems built for some level of mortality. And there's a whole lot more mortality coming from human-induced stuff and stuff beyond our control. Droughts that are producing degraded habitat and just increased people in the state, hitting deer on roads. hunters taking deer there's just a lot of little points and basically the lions are one data point that are taken

deer off the landscape and to just smash in that button is to the people that I've talked to that are in the know think that that's not really helping we've got a comment here from Joe Pruitt 663

I'm sure that the game commission knows that lions aren't the only fact but they're most likely the easiest factor to control. That's probably a fair statement. Yeah. And the other thing is that, you know, how many very serious lion hunters are there in the state of Utah? I don't know, a couple hundred maybe, a thousand.

How many serious mule deer and elk hunters are there in the state of Utah? A lot. Hundreds of thousands. And so it's one of these things where it may not be, best practice, but it's, it's, it just seems like the easy thing. And honestly, it's a philosophical question, too. If there were no lions in Utah, there would be more mule deer. Right. I mean, period. Yeah. But so it's like, it raises the question, do we want a Utah with no mountain lines? And I think the answer in 2026 to, to the modern sportsman is,

No, we want wild landscapes with intact trophic structure inside of, I mean, we want some predators on the landscape. Our ability to manage those predators is essential. Take that away from us and we're in bad trouble and we're going to fight to the bare dirt to get it back. And there's places where they've done that. In California, they've completely just like taking the legs out of predator. management and it's wild over there what's going on and just to just to be clear the only way to actively hunt mountain line would be with dogs well no so this is in in open landscapes like in utah and now there will be a lot of just happenstance hunting like if you're elk hunting and you

see a line over there, 300 yards, stalking across the ridge, you can shoot it legally. Okay. And so there is going to be quite a bit of harvest that's going to come from just kind of by accident.

There's a term I'm looking for. What's the term? Secondly, there's a lot of trapping going on in Utah. Okay. A lot of guys are trapping mountain lines. Okay. And so in the past, pretty much the only way you would have done it would have been with dogs.

But now everybody that's got a tag and a weapon in their hand could shoot a line. And I mean, I would. If I was out there at Elkutton and saw a big mountain lion walking across the ridge. Yep. Oh, I mean, that's pretty cool. Yeah. But so what it, what it, Mike Bowden Chuck, he watched the film and he, you watch the film, And he said, Clay, your experience there in Utah was exactly what I would have predicted.

He said the top end of male mountain lines is gone out of Utah. Because of the open season? Yeah, or will be gone. Okay. Because year round, no quota. So in the past, they would have had the state separated into quota zones for lions. So, like, maybe where the, and I don't know this, but perhaps, like, where the meekums were hunting, there would have been a 30 lion quota with a female quota, too. So, like, maybe you could kill 30 lions, but if you killed 15 females, it shut off.

Right. But you could kill 30 males. Right. So they regulated it pretty tightly. And so this is essentially going to take that top end because guys are going to go there, run dogs and the big ones they're going to get. Because you can hunt them 365 days a year. Oh, really?

Oh, yeah, you can hunt them every day. Wow. Wow, that's a big deal. Yeah. And so he said us seeing juveniles like this or sub-adults, he said, was pretty typical. And honestly, the McLean and them and Hunter, you know, just kind of said, Clay probably a lot of lion hunters in Utah would have shot those two males. Like they're just looking for, you know, a grown male.

So a couple other comments. Austin Sickich says as a Utah hunter, I appreciate you guys bringing awareness to our backwards approach to predator management, killing lions to help mule dealers like putting water in a grease fire. We need to prioritize water and habitat not killing lions. I thought that was a good comment. Yeah. We had another comment that talks about wild horses.

Yeah. He says the mule deer in Utah have a lot of competition for feed and water as well, elk, pronghorn and tons of wild horses. I've watched a group of wild horses run a herd of deer off of a waterhole in a couple years ago. Those horses just hung out guarding that water like they owned it. DNR will remove every line from the state, but leave the horses alone. seems really off to me. Ooh. Guys bringing the heat.

So anyway, it's definitely, it's definitely a controversial topic. Yeah. But I think the film kind of shed some light on some good practices. So I've got a quote. Mike told me this quote. And this wasn't from him. He was quoting somebody else, a biologist that he once knew. he said in the absence of wolves he said the way to save elk is to reduce the amount of lead in the air

basically this biologist was saying hey well in the absence of wolves he said the way that you manage basically deer and elk populations is by how many get killed by human hunters well we had another comment, Andrew Ferris 2205 said, limit the mule deer tags, easiest way to control. And they have done that to the point that you can hardly hunt mule deer in the state. Okay. I mean, yeah, like anybody that knows the draw system or has played in the draw system knows that Utah is one of the hardest states to draw. It's also some of the best mule deer hunting in the country, so everybody wants to go there. but even residents don't get tags every year in good zones.

Typically, the residents get priority. Like in some of the premium western states, let's take, for instance, Montana. If you're a Montana resident, every year you get a general Montana elk license, which means that every year you can hunt elk. You may not be able to go to the premium zones. Right. But there's a lot of general elk zones.

Okay. And I mean, in Arkansas, can you imagine if we couldn't hunt deer and turkey every year? Yeah. Like if, like, once every five years we got to deer hunt. I mean, that sounds like unconstitutional. Yeah. And so in Utah, in its other places to New Mexico and Arizona and other states, but there are plenty of places out west where even the residents have to draw a tag to be able to hunt

and may not even get a tag to hunt. South Dakota is like that? Yeah. So it's like, well, not hunting this year, didn't get a tag. I mean, to those of us in the east hunting deer and turkeys and bear, that just sounds. That is a God-given right. It just sounds unbelievable. But it's the reality out there.

And so they are really. regulating the tags. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to 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. falling 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 Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Okay, let's watch another clip. So that was a Tom also. Yeah, it was.

Not quite as big as the other one, or was it similar size? It was similar size. It didn't look as big. It didn't look quite as big. But it was a male inside of that same range. So when you're dealing with cervids like Elk or Deer, you have these rut windows that produce very specific fawning times. And so all the juveniles of a given year, a cohort, are basically the same age, okay?

Right. With lions, it's not like that. Like, you know, it's not like they breed in this window and they have kittens in the spring. It's not like a bear. So there's a lot of speculation when you see one. Yeah, so you might be looking at, you might treat two lions that were born four months apart or five months apart. When typically in other species that have these really red, regulated breeding windows, you would be looking at animals that would be a cohort of a year.

Right. Like bears. Like you'd be like, that's a two-year-old bear, three-year-old bear, four-year-old bear. Does that make sense? Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, because the breeding with the cats, as I understand it, they can basically breed any time of the year. Okay. Just when that female comes in.

I actually learned that an adult female lion is basically constantly pregnant. or with kittens her entire life once she reaches sexual maturity. Wow. She's either pregnant or nursing or rearing kittens. Now, do you know, will they typically have a litter of kittens? I mean, will they have multiples? Yeah, yeah. I'm not a lion expert.

You know who was? Teddy Roosevelt. It'd be nice to throw him up. He was the premier lion, mountain lion guy in America in the early 19- We'll see if Steve Renala has his phone number. Yeah, no, but they have like two kittens. Okay. And obviously could have three or four.

Sure. Could have one, but typically two. Kind of like bears. Okay. Let's look at this last clip here. Oh, yeah. This dog stayed with him. We got this little female.

He was the reason we got this cat. This guy right here. So that was obviously a female. Is there a term for a female cat? Yeah, and I don't think we can use it on this podcast. Okay, got it, got it. Wait, never mind. So you said that dog stayed treed for hours.

Yes, that, this is, again, where video just doesn't really allow you to tell the whole story. We started that day on the track of a magnum tom, like one that we didn't think we were going to find. Right. and they were running it. And I mean, McLean was like, hey, this might happen. And we were going into good country. Every time that you're there with them, the dogs are going to direction. They're like, well, boy, if they get over into there, it's going to be tough.

Or, man, if they go that way, we're in the chips. And so last day, find a big track. Dogs are running it. And I go, well, tell me about the direction. And I think they're going to say, oh, Clay, it's going to be really tough for them to catch that line going that way. And they go, this is great. This is fantastic. They're going the right way.

And it's like mid-morning. So we've got plenty of time. A lot of times you just run out of daylight. Right. You just trail it, trail it, trail it, trail it. And it gets dark, and your dogs are still running. You've got to call them off. And so it's mid-morning.

we're running a big lion track bigger than the ones. They were like, you'll shoot this one, Clay. You know, I mean, that was the idea. And as we're going, we're like seeing the lion's tracks and the dogs tracks. And you can tell it's big because of a big track and the distance between the steps, right? Yes, yes. They can just glance at a track and, like, tell you the, you know, what that dude had for breakfast, you know. I mean, it's unbelievable.

And so as we're going, it was like fate. And we couldn't show it in the film. It just was too hard to capture. A female crossed that lion's, the big lions track. Oh. And the dogs turned, and I think actually might have gone backwards on the female. Oh, okay. Even the best dogs in the world sometimes.

but Waylon broke off and just drifted into no man's land. And so we actually followed the dogs, and McLean immediately smelled a rat. He was like, something's wrong. He's like, they're not doing it right. And then he sees the female track and sees they went the wrong way, and we spend a bunch of time going down to them. And Dustin from Arizona was with us, Dustin Clark,

and he looks at his garment and he says, McLean, Waylon is like two miles away showing Tried. And we were, we thought maybe it was an error on the GPS. Just the likelihood of this dog, Trey in a line by himself. And I was like, was it a good dog?

And Dustin's like, man, that's one of my best. I was like, really? I was like, do you think it's Tried? And he said, he was like, who knows? I think he wanted to say, yeah, it's true, that he was being reasonable and was just like hard to say. Well, the dog is so far away that we almost didn't go to it. I mean, that's what it felt like.

But we finally get the dogs gathered back up from kind of going the wrong way on this track. And I remember it was late in the afternoon, and we could have, it would have been way easier to just go back to the truck. and McLean said, what do you want to do? And I was like, well, I want to go see what that dog's got. Right. I want to keep going. And he said, okay.

And so we head off and go on a multi-mile, very treacherous, you know, like up this canyon and across and down and back up. And the dog's still treed. And we think it's possible that it's got that big male trade. It's possible. Yeah. that's what I thought anyway. These guys were looking at their garments, and I think they kind of had it figured out what had happened.

It's like they're playing chess, and I'm just kind of like watching the game board, don't really know exactly what's going on. And when we got to about 100, 200 yards from the tree, we could hear the dogs. By this time, all the other dogs went to join Whalen, that English red tree. And so, you know, all the dogs are going,

and we know they've got a lion tree. and McLean is like, I think it's that female. And so we get down there and sure enough, is that female. And when you look at her in the tree, you can see how slender she is. I mean, she actually has a feminine kind of face, you know?

I mean, just like the lines on a smaller head, smaller feet. She was very nervous. Those males would just sit up in the tree and just kind of. Yeah, they seem, the Tom seemed unfazed. They were just sitting up there. They didn't care. That female was just constantly... On edge.

Just kind of acting like she... And she ended up jumping. Yeah. You know? Did the dogs chase her when she... Yeah, we tried to catch most of the dogs back, you know. But they actually... Yeah, they actually chased her and treat her just like 100 yards away.

And then we gathered up all the dogs and took out of that. And you said, you know, this animal's legal to take, but we're not going to. Yep. And I think you've covered it well enough. But just to be clear, you wouldn't take a female because... So the only lion that is illegal to take under the current structure is you cannot shoot a female with kittens. Okay. And typically a female is going to tree with her kittens.

Okay. If she's got kittens. That's the way I understand it. And lion hunters in general are not going to shoot a female. I mean, they're just, it's kind of the code of the West. Because like you said, the reproductive potential of that cat. Right. And in most places, there's the quotas, the female quotas.

And there has been. So, I mean, these regulations create culture inside of states. And so there's been female quotas all over the place. So for generations, it's been not okay to shoot a female. Or, you know, you kind of get, I mean, people do because the female quotas get met. Right. But it's like, don't shoot a female. I mean, the guys that are serious pretty much are saying that.

There would be exceptions. I mean, maybe you're with a kid or maybe you have some reason to want to take in a girl female. And I don't, that could happen and be legit. But in general, guys are after the males. Sure. Okay. Last question. So looking back, you decided to pass that first cat.

Yes. If you had to do it again, would you change your mind? Well, no, I would do it just the same. But would I have liked to have taken that cat? Yeah. if I had, if I wasn't with these guys that were so knowledgeable and I respected so much and had such strong opinions on the deal, I mean, I could see a scenario where I was with different people that would have just been like, shoot that one, man, that's the best one we're going to get.

This is awesome. I mean, I think to a lot of people, to a lot of lion hunters, that would have been. like what you, the best of what you expected. Right. You understand? I mean, so, so, but again, you're a product of the context that you're in, and I was these people's guests, and they told me, Hunter, yeah, what's not on film is that Hunter and McLean both were like, Clay, take that, shoot that cat.

Oh, really? They were like, do what you want. Right. I mean, and, yeah. I mean, they were like, yeah, if you want to shoot that cat, you can. Right. I mean, this is legal. Like, they know what's happening.

And I think they knew that the chances of us tree and a bigger one were slim. Slim. Yeah. And so, but I could tell they, they didn't, I mean, I don't want to put the blame on them. I made the decision. Sure. Because, I mean, they told, McLean told me, he was like, you do whatever you want. But I was like.

Kind of taking your cues from him. 100%, which I would, I think, you know, somebody new to hunting or, I mean, that's what you do, you know. I mean, when you're with people, you know, I guess other parts of life are like this, but in the hunting world, I feel like there's this hierarchy of knowledge kind of on any hunt. And there's usually somebody that's the de facto leader, just based upon their experience, the respect they have with the group. And I mean, I kind of typically would kind of hat tip to the leader. Right. You know? Well, they've got a long history and legacy in that region for what they do.

Yeah. Well, great. That's all the questions I've got. Man, I thank you guys so much for watching Meat Eaters 12 and 26. We've got 10 more films coming out this year. Two of them will be with me and Bear John. and the rest of the team, I mean, Brent's got some,

Yonis has more, there's a bunch of really great films that are coming out. And there was a little bit of a snafu on the release of this one. For the first five hours that this line film was out, we actually had the wrong version of the film up on YouTube. So we replaced it late on the first night.

It's kind of a bummer. It happened, but the current film that's up is the one to watch. If you watched it in the first five hours, you would have seen a film with no narration. And, I mean, I watched part of it. So did you. I mean, it kind of made sense. Yeah. It was just kind of odd, long, musical pauses.

Yeah, you kind of filled in the blanks with your emotions. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I had a couple of people be like, You're like, man, that was awesome. And I was like, maybe I shouldn't talk. But no, it means the world does that everybody watches what we do. I mean, we never take that for granted. And just what, I mean, every time I relive some of these moments,

I mean, I'm just grateful to be an American sportsman. And I want to be responsible. I want to be knowledgeable. I want to be ethical. I want to steward this opportunity that we have. in modern times to be the caretakers of wildlife and wild places and the culture of American hunting, which is deeply, deeply part of our national identity, which we just have to foster in the coming days. Because, you know, I think hunting and being actively engaged in wild

places is, it's good for society. It's good. You know, Teddy Roosevelt believed, you know, his strenuous life doctrine. He believed that to go and test yourself in the wilds was essential to the national character. You know, and I think there's part of that that's probably true. Not everybody in the world gets to do what we do. And whether it's going turkey hunting in your backyard or going on a, lion hunting, Utah or an elk hunt, whatever version of your excursion into the wild, whatever version that is, is awesome, whether you're squirrel hunting or small game hunting

or whitetail hunting, and I'll never, we get to do some cool stuff, and I realize we're kind of anomalies in a way, kind of propped up by, I mean, this is my job. Right. Working for meat eater. So I realize I get to see a lot of cool things. But my favorite things in the world to do are right here within 30-minute drive in my house. And that's the truth. So thank you so much for watching this 12 and 26 podcast, the companion series, to Meat Eaters 12 and 26 films.

Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called Prime Cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to 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 Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. This is an I-Heart podcast.

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