The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 259: The Squirrel Doctor Is In

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Dr. John Koprowski, Spencer Neuharth, Clay Newcomb, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: Having a Phd in all things squirrels; what a squirrel has for a penis; when squirrel semen hardens into a waxy plug to prevent other squirrels from breeding; 45 male squirrels chase a single female for six hours; what the hell is a drey?; settling the score on testicle biting; how color phasing works; hitting the ground from 70 feet and shaking off the daze; freakish ways to die; how squirrel incisors never stop growing; eating your own young; being anal about managing your mushrooms; barking at anthing and everything, but especially each other; the stick trick; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. Alright everybody, this is the most special podcast episode we've ever had. That's because we're joined by John Ladd is your middle name, right? Correct. John Ladd Kaprowski? Kaprowski, you got it. Who has a genuine PhD in squirrels. More specifically, what would you say?

I'm a wildlife conservation biologist, but I happen to work on squirrels. I appreciate the finer aspects of life. Yeah. The smaller, less obvious things. I got to ask you this right off the bat though, before we get into Clay, Clay Newcomb has has a squirrel baculum pecker bone, which we'll get into in a minute. But, um, uh, why, like, did you know when you were, when you were a little boy and people said, when your friends were like, I'm going to be a fireman, you're like, I'm going to be a squirrel expert.

First it was center fielder for the Cleveland Indians. And while that seems outlandish, the Indians were so bad when I was young. That was really a reasonable. Why not me? That was a reasonable chance there. But soon after that, I knew I had to do something with wildlife. And I grew up on the west side of Cleveland. And you had pigeons, robins, you know, Norway rats, and squirrels.

And so it was. It was like a wildlife deprived area. Yep. And it was my connection. And my father, I grew up fishing. My father loved to fish. I liked to fish. We'd go out at four in the morning.

I'd fish till about two. Then dad would drop me off on the, uh, drop me off on the shore. I'd walk it looking for, for squirrels, for turtles, anything that I could. And so that was my, it was my connection when I came home to be able to look out the window and see something. So I sat out in the garage live trapping squirrels from a young age. And then painting their sides or something? We got into that when we were little kids for a while. We tried to do our own mark and recapture.

Exactly. With a paintbrush. Yeah, that's exactly what we did. Oh, yeah. If you went to my mom's house right now and went to her garage and went where the Havahart traps are sitting on a shelf, you would see that there's slathered in red paint from us trying to take a paintbrush and do mark and recapture projects on chipmunks.

Are squirrels easy to fool with a trap? Oh, well, no, we would just do chipmunks. We had the chipmunk-sized Havaharts. We didn't put too much effort into it. We thought it'd be cool if you could paint it and then see them running around the yard and be like, oh, that's the one. Well, I had that same childhood experience. We would catch them in have a hearts and then squirt whatever I could on them. And then the neighbor started complaining about the green squirrel, the red squirrel. And so mom and dad weren't

too thrilled about that part of it. But then I went to Ohio State University and I was like, oh, I can't wait to work on mountain lions or elk or something. Something cool and sexy. When I go forward. And I started my master's and got a call from a professor who said, hey, I've got this great squirrel project. I'm like, okay, but my next degree, I'm working on polar bears or lions or something. And I worked on squirrels again, University of Kansas. And then now I'm working on a bunch of those other things, but they're just such a good way for people to connect, you know, to conservation, to value, you know, value the kinds of places we value.

And they tell us a lot about the quality of a forest, you know, how severe a fire was. Oh, is that right? All those things. Yep. They're just great indicators. I want to hit you up with some, a couple of squirrel myth questions.

Go for it. Well, no, not yet. Because we want to talk about Clay's little, Clay's baculum. Go ahead, Clay. Show them your deal there. I'm going to narrate because folks can't see. Not Clay's baculum.

No, Clay's, I can show you his baculum. Okay. All right. your deal there i'm gonna narrate because not clay's baculum no because i can show you his back okay all right i i was actually unaware that uh that squirrels had a a a baculum a bone penis uh the other day i pulled this one out and uh and they do and most a whole lot of placental placental mammals have them and it's i just measured it steve it's exactly a half inch and this is a just a standard gray squirrel he appeared to me to be of average age and maturity so he's got a he's got a he's a that that squirrel is what a pound and a half john two pounds gray squirrel? Gray squirrel? Yeah, at most. Yep. Okay, so he's got a half. So that's an inch per every four pounds, generously.

Which, goodness. But describe to people what you're, like, because people at home, they're driving to work right now, can't tell what the hell you're holding. Describe what you're holding. Describe what you're holding. Right. You know, if you saw this bone on the ground, let's say,

you know, you found a, just a bone pile and it was a squirrel. It, the bone would be totally indiscernible in any recognizable shape. It just, it's kind of, it's about as small as a, a pencil lead and a number two pencil.

The thickness of that, it's a half inch long. The tip of the baculum flares out, which is pretty typical of all these bacula of bears, of coons, it kind of flares out at the end. And towards the backside, it's kind of, it kind of is bulbous slightly, you know, kind of wide and thick at the back, almost like a baseball bat. That would be a good description. You're speaking John's language now, man. Baseball bat.

He used to play for the Indians. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Before he wanted to be a squirrel biologist. Yeah, so anyway, just a little indiscernible bone. John, how schooled are you on physiology and whatnot? I'm happy to go there, and I really loved Clay's description there. I thought you were just going to stop at just this little bone, but all those components that you talked about are what make that bone function.

Another name for it is the os penis, the penis bone, literally. And so, Clay, could you take a look? And does it look a little twisted? Usually, they're also a little kind of corkscrew-y if you look at. That reminds me of a limerick I used to know. This one. Just a bit, bit i think for gray squirrels this one still has a little bit of this one's pretty fresh so it's not i don't have it clean totally it appears to have almost like a thread yep oh like towards the end it looks like a yeah kind of like a corkscrew. Yeah. I see one kind of rib.

You got it. That, yeah. So these are used as part of the squirrel reproductive mating system. Males form copulatory plugs. So when they copulate with a female, they, their, the semen hardens into a plug that tries to guarantee them their paternity. Hold on, I don't understand that. So that when you have a copulation with a female, within just a few seconds, the semen actually hardens into a waxy plug in the reproductive tract and

blocks other males from breeding. And so the corkscrew shape, that kind of bulbous head that you talked about, that actually helps remove the copulatory plug of the previous male. And so. Wow. It's just kind of amazing detail in that if you pick one bone in a squirrel, the baculum is probably the place to go, Clay. You just see that whole mating system laid out right there. Do all rodents do that or is that exclusive to them? All rodents have some form of a baculum.

But the plug part. Oh, the plug? It's not something that everyone's looked at in all rodents, but I think for all that where it's been studied, well, most where it's been studied, they've been demonstrated. Like red squirrels, there's not really good evidence that the red squirrel you find around here, there's not really good evidence that they form a copulatory plug.

But like the whole squirrel family, most of the rats and mice do it as well. I hate the fact that a squirrel has to be lumped in with a rat and a mouse and be called a rodent. I always think about that with beavers, man. Like it bums me out that beavers are a rodent. Yeah. Too cool to be it rodent. I always think about that with beavers, man. Like it bums me out that beavers are a rodent. Yeah. Too cool to be a rodent.

Yeah. Yeah. But that's a scientific term. Rodent? Yeah. Yeah. It's a whole order. So it's everything with those kind of, you know,

gnawing teeth for the most part. Rabbits are a whole different order, but somewhat closely related. And yeah, so rodents include beaver, muskrat, all the voles and field mice, rats, all of those things. Capybaras? And then the really. The capybara? Capybara, yep.

World's biggest rodent, right? Yep. You got it. Chinchilla? Chinchilla rodent? Chinchilla are, yes. I was just going to say, going back to the semen plug and then the corkscrew bacula, it seems counterproductive. Because if the semen plug is designed to keep other males from actually breeding a female successfully, but then you've got an anatomical feature that defeats the semen plug,

then it seems like you might as well, like from a adaptive standpoint of a squirrel, it doesn't do you any good to have a semen plug or a corkscrew. Do you see what I'm saying? It's an arms race, man. And that's it. Yeah. Survival of the fittest. Yeah. They've got this the fittest yeah they've got

this feature but then they've got another feature that defeats the first feature yeah but what it pushes toward is that you would develop a really like that your plug is the best plug on the in the in the field and your extractor is like a phenomenal extractor. So you're like, oh, I don't care if he plugged it. I got the best unplugger, and I'm going to throw something in there that no one will unplug. Yeah. Yeah, I once asked an ecologist, like, is there such thing as de-evolution, like to go backwards? And they're like, well, no, because if it goes backwards, it's for a reason. It's just evolving more.

Despite it losing some trade or backwards, it's for a reason. It's just evolving more. Right. Despite it like losing some trade or something, that's still evolution. It's not de-evolution. By going backwards, it's still going forwards. Yeah, I got it. Well, sure. Ask John. Well, and so this is an incredible opportunity where you can just kind of see this battle, right?

So you say, all right, we need more squirrels. You know, it doesn't really matter who is the one that breeds, who's the most successful. But in this case, you just see that battle played out, right? You talked about plug characteristics, you know, how much sperm is transferred during that copulation, and then this removal tool that helps you be successful. And the other thing is it's not just the males where this is happening. There are multiple males that mate with a female, you've probably seen one of these squirrel mating bouts where, um, usually the females only in heat for a short time on a single day, usually just like six or eight hours. So you'll get really, yep. And you'll get eight or 10, uh, females. I've seen as many as, uh, or

males chasing a female. I've seen as many as 45 Eastern gray squirrels, like the species that Clay was just talking about. 45 males chasing one in heat female. For six hours. Yep. And for the female, that's the one time she gets to mate. So typically it's to her advantage to mate with a number of males and rodents. And so after a copulation, the female actually will remove the copulatory plug if it isn't embedded far enough in a reproductive tract, and then she'll mate with the next male, you know, that's able to gain access. How does she remove it?

She just reaches down and with her teeth, pulls it out. So, you know, rodents have those two big upper incisors, two big lower incisors. Like presumably she can feel that it's seated properly or like not where it needs to be. So every time she mates, she'll actually groom herself and the male will groom himself as well. And then there's a few minute period before she'll be receptive again. And during that time, males are all attacking each other, trying to gain access to the female.

And then during that grooming, if there's any plugs sticking out, she'll pull it out and throw it to the ground, sometimes even eat it. There's a lot of, it's a massive kind of waxy plug of protein. How does a male win about? Like does a female then select one or like what is the winning process like? So it varies a little bit between different species, but it's typically based on size and just the ability to continue to track the female. Males can figure out that a female is going to be in heat about five days in advance. And so they start during the breeding season. Males are just roaming around, figuring out kind of the timing of when some of their female neighbors are going to be receptive.

And then before sunrise, they're out there waiting for the female outside her nest. Was that right, really? Yep. And you'll get dozens sometimes lined up and they're fighting each other. Now, where were you though that you had 45 males? Like where were you that there's 45 gray squirrels in one spot? Because Steve and I are going to go hunt there. I was going to say, is it a park?

I'm not telling you, that's my secret spot. But is it a park where there's just no predators around? Yeah. So this was in Lawrence, Kansas, where I was doing my PhD. And so kind of open park land, pretty high density of animals. And it was, the other part of this is during the breeding season, when males start picking up that faint scent of a female that's coming close to being in heat, they really expand their range. And so for those five days, they're roaming farther than they ever move the rest of the year. The rest of the year, they're in just a couple acres of their home range. But during this

time, they'll expand it five to 10 times. And so they're trying to find mates and be successful in the survival of the fittest battle that we were just talking about by just finding as many females that might be in heat. So they come, we've had males move, uh, three or four miles during, uh, to, to find a receptive female. So they're coming in from everywhere. So you get 45 coming in from, you know, say a square mile or two.

You've seen where one squirrel has moved. How many miles, three to five miles from his home? During a mating chase, I've seen a move about three miles. I've actually, this is how lonely I am, guys. During my PhD, I would go out in the morning and follow male squirrels and see how far they went.

Well, how do you know you weren't just spooking them along? Well, at a great distance. And do I look scary? I'm a good dude. You're following him with some sort of telemetry or? This was the old fashioned way. It was in an open parkland. So I was just from a distance.

Describe open parkland a little bit better. Well, like big oak and hickory forest, but because it was in a small town, Lawrence, Kansas, mowed grass, some houses even in that kind of thing. And then the whole campus, which is- So you just take a pair of binoculars and keep an eye on them. Yep. Stayed at a distance, followed them around and figured out how much time they were spent. You put miles on during the day. Put miles on.

Yeah. Yeah. Used to be a much better shape back then, following squirrels three miles each way. One of my questions was, is there such a thing as a rut tree? And I think you've pretty much answered it. When we sometimes find a tree where you shoot one, and then lo and behold, 10 squirrels start jumping in. Kevin Murphy talks about finding a rut tree. Yeah.

So it's one female and nine males, and they're just all working that tree. But it's just that they happen to be in that tree. Like that tree could move. Not the tree doesn't move. Oh, yeah. But I mean, you just happen to catch it where it's occurring in that tree, but it's likely to

drift to the next tree, to the next tree. Yeah. So as part of that, Spencer, you were asking about what makes them successful. The female doesn't, she's moving around too. She's trying to feed that day and, and, and so she's moving out there in the forest. And if the males get, they're all fighting and that level of aggression, they're really hyped up and they'll attack each other. Another male tries to mate with the female,

males will try to interrupt it. And so it's risky for her. And, you know, the male, that's the one, that's the one day they have to, you know, they have to be successful. The female has to raise that litter now for the next few months. And so she'll hole up in a cavity, you know, go in one of these, what we call leaf nests or drays, these kind of balls. What was the word you just used? Dray. Dray. Leaf nest.

Clay Newcomb, you ever heard that word? A dray? I've seen it in the literature i would not have used that word but i've seen it written dude i'm gonna start using that word big time man how's it spelled well it depends if you're if you're british you spell it d-r-e-y or d-r-a-y uh and so yeah if you really want to speak that want to speak the language of squirrels. Dude, I'm going to do a PhD in that stuff and I'm going to be Dr. Dre. That's going to be sweet, man.

Do red squirrels participate in gray squirrel bouts and vice versa? No, it's just a single species. And so, but there is some confusion that can occur. And so I've worked in areas where fox squirrels and gray squirrels both occurred. And you would, in that case where there were 45 eastern gray squirrels, there were a couple fox squirrels that were attracted by the noise, maybe like vaguely the scent, but they never really participated. You know, there's enough difference between the species that, you know, it doesn't seem

to get there. And red squirrels are even more kind of taxonomically distant from fox squirrels and gray squirrels. So I've never seen any overlap there. Do you, have you heard, I think we might've asked you about this. Have you heard, are you familiar with the theory or the idea that people put out there that when males are competing,

they'll actually try to harm, like bite the testicles of another male? Are you familiar with this being an idea that people throw out there? I hear this all the time.

Who from? Well, from you. Yeah. From you, Steve. John is the person I interviewed for the article. He was one of my two

i don't trust things coming through sure so i just it's coming through before we go here i want to know can you handle the truth steve you know this is a jack nicholson moment i i can that you'll if you notice my line of questioning i haven't asked you does does it happen? I said, are you familiar? And I want to then get into how far back in time, like, have you heard this theory? And where do you feel that it has come from? I almost fell for your skilled interview technique of sneaking into this. Yeah. I was very deliberate in my question. Well, and I'm also, I listened to the podcast just last night where you were discussing this

previously, and you two have a relationship that's kind of tenuous. And this seemed like something that could really separate you. So. Oh, there's a whole other thing that we're in a fight about that I don't even know about yet, as to something he did to my friend Doug Duren. Uh-oh. Yeah. Well, so I know people who've said their great-grandfathers told them that. And I'm 59 years old.

So we're talking like, you know, last century, you know, people. Two centuries ago. Late 1800s, I know folks who've heard that story. And so it is something that's been passed along from generation to generation. But just zero evidence. Zero evidence, yep. And I mentioned following males for three miles. You don't do that and see lots of things going on between, you know, between different squirrels

and have never seen that. You've seen all the dirty tricks. So they get in fights. They don't need to. They've got the, you know, the copulatory plug and the baculum that, you know, that helps them in that battle. But what happens, what does happen, and so you've hit on something that's kind of unique about rodent biology. You can see why someone thinks that they have an animal that doesn't have any testicles,

because it's just a seasonal cycle in rodents and squirrels. During the breeding season, the testes descend into the scrotum and, you know, enlarge, produce sperm, and they're ready to mate day after day for sometimes two or three months. So they're really functional then. But then during the non-breeding season, they move back into the abdomen up a canal and they're kind of held in the abdomen and they get really, really small. So you, you would have to, if you're just gutting the squirrel, you're not even going to notice. No kidding.

You would have to really look and see it. So just this natural, natural pattern. And the scrotum itself too, sort of just shrivels up and just becomes belly skin again? It looks like belly skin. You'll see if you've got an older male, you'll see that it takes on a darker pigment and you'll kind of see where the scrotum was. And if you kind of spread the hairs a little bit, you'll notice that, all right, you know that this is, you can tell it's an adult male because of that.

Juvenile males will not have a pigmented scrotum. And then once they've gone through a breeding season or two, it gets dark and you can tell, hey, this guy's bred before. But it just, it will, you wouldn't notice that this was even a male if you were just watching them, you know, from a distance with binoculars or something like that. Do you, do you believe in squirrel migrations? Is that true? Yep. Yeah. Historically massive squirrel migrations.

And I think- Like, like, like concerted movements where they're like, all the squirrels are moving in a direction. No. Okay. No. So yeah, loosely using the word word migration, there have been historical reports and even relatively recently, I was getting reports two or three years ago in the eastern U.S. of following mast failures. some of those things. And when you get a failure, it's often a regional failure. And especially if you're looking at, you know, forests that aren't super diverse and they're just, you know,

a long stand of just a couple of species. If it's a bad year, then there are reports of literally tens of thousands of animals swimming across the Ohio River to get into Kentucky, swimming across the Great Lakes, leaving some of the more recent reports of these kind of large-scale movements in Lake Michigan and I think Lake Superior coming off of islands where you've had a failure of mast. Oh, no kidding. And they're swimming to the mainland. Yep. Yeah. Oh, you know, another thing I wanted to ask you about back to reproduction is what is

the timing of the squirrel rut? Right now. Perfect time. These, uh, so right now they're, the squirrel rut's starting. Uh, it, uh, begins sometimes even late December kind of depends what, uh, where you are in our, in are in a country.

But like the heartland of the country, going back to Michigan or Ohio, where we're from, Steve, things are starting right about now. You'll be seeing these mating chases that I was talking about. And for many species like eastern gray squirrels and fox squirrels, the two most common species around the country, those will have a second reproductive season during the summer also. And so there's kind of two peaks. And that's when during those times are when males have scrotal testes, that kind of real obvious case, you know, that it's the breeding season. So then do most females kick off two litters annually? They can. Females in good condition will pull off two litters.

Most often, the average female usually only pulls off one during those times. And if you have a late spring frost, it knocks back. So they're breeding now in places with deciduous forest. The food crop is still not really determined. And so you're just going to start getting leaves starting to pop out and that kind of thing. If you have a late spring frost and all that gets knocked back, often females will absorb their litter and not produce that first breeding season and then they'll be in better shape and reproduce during that second season. But some really, some older females and females in good condition, if you had a good, you know, mass crop the previous year and they've fattened up over winter, they are, you know, ready to go and in really good breeding condition, you'll get a couple of litters they'll be able to pull off.

During a mass failure, nobody will reproduce sometimes and you'll have no reproduction in a given year. And what's the average litter and then a great litter size? So usually about three. So two and a half to three and a half is average for most tree squirrels. And the records are kind of eight or nine, depending on which sources you believe. But they're published records of seven, eight, nine squirrels. Ground squirrels have larger litters typically, but most of the tree squirrels are kind of in that three animals,

two and a half to three animals. That half animal is always difficult to count. What's been your relationship with squirrel hunters and squirrel hunting? Do you find that that's where most of your, of the sort of popular interest in your work comes from? Or do you find it more from wildlife observers? That's the great thing about squirrels. I mean, it's kind of across the board. It's one of the things to me, you know, the, the reason I'm doing what I do in wildlife conservation is to bring people together to save these kinds of opportunities,

you know, keep our wild and working lands, you know, for future generations. And squirrels are one of those species that you can, you know, can bring everyone together. Sure, there's the occasional squirrel hater because their bird feeder is being attacked, but, you know, that's just the cost of having a bird feeder. I have a number of folks who are very interested because just like I mentioned when, when I grew up, it was the connection that someone has with the, you know, with the natural world. And then, you know, squirrel hunters also, it's a connection they have with the natural world.

And then. So you don't have any animosity to squirrel hunters? Oh, no, I, I've hunted squirrels. I've eaten squirrels. Every time I go to my brother-in-law's house, he's got a different squirrel recipe for me to try. You never feel bad about it? There's that one moment perhaps, but then if it's well cooked, of course I don't feel

bad about it um can you explain can you talk a little bit about how the the color phases work with with the eastern gray squirrel i find there is like endless confusion about it's a black squirrel it's a gray squirrel there used to be a lot of black squirrels now it's all gray squirrels like which. Like, which is true. Yeah. It like shifts over time. Just watch my mom's yard. You'll be like, most of the gray squirrels are black. Then it's like a while later, it's like, most of the gray squirrels are gray. What's going on?

So they're all gray squirrels. You know, to someone who's interested in kind of the taxonomy classification, they're all gray squirrels. They're that species. They can interbreed. The gray eastern gray because the western gray he doesn't have a black phase right there just been a couple of cases of of uh and in most species you you have this rare these rare occurrences of melanic forms the you know the black forms and then also some albinistic or just, you know, forms that are, that were some of the pigments gone. So there'll be some kind of something in between or, or mostly white, but not completely. But yeah, it's just a, you know, just like hair color, eye color in humans. It's, you know, it's all due to genetics.

And the, so I'm guessing your mom lives in, in Michigan still. That's right. Yep. So once you start getting north far enough, the black forms become more common and that actually has a physiological advantage. Does that do like with heat?

Yep. That's exactly it. They absorb heat better. Yep. That's it. So the advantage is during winter, during the summer, people have done physiology on them. Doesn't make a difference.

They, you know, they, they're both color morphs have this, you know, kind of same metabolic cost. But during the winter, the ability to absorb and retain heat in that black color, you know, we've all watched. Yeah. When the sun's shining, they come out and splay out on a tree to suck that sun up. Yeah, exactly. And that's usually in the winter. The first thing they do in the morning, they come out of the nest and just lay flat, warm up, and then start their day. Well, the black forms have an energetic advantage.

And when you're on that kind of razor's edge of, you know, do I have enough energy to survive to produce offspring? You know, any little advantage, you know, is something that could be capitalized on. So Toronto, you know, Southern Ontario, lots of black color morphs. But if you go down to, Easter gray squirrels get all the way down to the Florida, South Florida and close to the Florida Keys, black forms are hardly ever seen down there. Is that right? Now, can one litter have full on, like full on gray and full on black ones? Yep. We just talked about, we started off talking about the mating system, multiple fathers for a single litter. And so you've got that possibility. And then just the heritability, people are still working out how that black color morph, you know, how dominant it is and that kind of thing.

But typically that melanic form, we do know that it is a dominant morph. So if it's, if that gene is present, then you're going to get the production of lots of black pigment. It's going to be dark individuals. So you can have mixed litters of mixed coloration, usually that kind of grizzled gray color that you're familiar with, and then the black morph. Guys, I'll go on for three hours, man. Do you want to throw one in there? So I read from an aerospace engineer once that squirrels can survive a fall from any reasonable distance, like any height of any building. What's like the furthest you've seen one fall and live? I've seen one fall 70 feet and hit the ground and just get up and start running.

They're always a little dazed. They're always a little dazed when they hit the ground. That's excusable, though, right the ground. Um, they, so. That's excusable though, right? Yeah. Well, no kidding. And it, just like you, if you fell, you know, you usually see them kind of shake their head,

blink their eyes a few times. 70 feet though. Yeah, 70 feet. And doesn't shatter every bone in his body. I guess they're not like, they got like enough air resistance or. And that's it. It's kind of a surface area to volume, you know, that people have, people said no one has experimentally looked at this, but, you know, that a mouse could fall off the Empire State Building and survive that fall.

You know, where a squirrel with its size, when they've calculated it, they wouldn't be able to survive a fall that far. But during those mating chases, I mentioned all that aggression. Males do not sit there passively when you've got, you know, 10, 15, 45 males. They'll knock each other out of the trees all the time. And, you know, it sets their competitor back a little bit. But I've seen them fall, you know, 70 feet and hit the ground. They shake around a little bit. You know, they're stunned for a few minutes and then they're back at it during those baiting chases. So what was going on at the 70-foot fall? So they were at the top of a large tree. The male and female were copulating and another male came and knocked them both out of the tree.

The female was able to hold onto the tree. The male fell 70 feet. And, you know, he went from, you know, thinking that he was going to be successful that day to falling 70 feet and trying to work his way back, you know. Waiting in line to fight his way back on. So have you ever seen one die from a fall then?

Nope. But people have looked at skeletons in museums to look for breakage of long bones and that kind of thing. And not surprisingly, somewhere from 5% to 10% of the animals have broken long bones. So they may sustain some damage on those falls. You know, those broken long bones could have come from lots of things, but you know, they, there's some evidence that may, maybe, you know, they, they do, you know, take on some, some real physical damage too. We've come across dead squirrels laying like

inexplicably on the forest floor. That's exactly my question right now. And deduced with, for no reason whatsoever that they must've fallen. Well, yeah, I mean, it might be an impossible question to answer. But, yeah, it's probably been the same squirrel a couple of times. But I know that just with my kids, I've been walking through the woods squirrel hunting, and there is a perfectly fine-looking squirrel.

Like, not eaten. Not eaten. No claw marks. No talon marks. No.22 hole in it. I mean, looks fresh as a daisy. Like you'd almost want to just put it in your game pouch and take it home, but you don't

because you don't know what killed it. So a couple of things. Often when you find those animals and you, and you actually, if you skinned them out and looked, you'd see that there was a talon that whacked them and the, and you know, if you skinned them out and looked, you'd see that there was a talon that whacked them. And, you know, the hawk or the owl ended up, you know, losing it. Sometimes they'll fight over each other.

So we've had a number of times where I'll get an animal and I'll say, oh, there's absolutely no reason for this animal dying. And when you skin it out, you just see those, you know, you can see where the talon marks were. So it's possible that it's that. I hate to go back to squirrel mating systems again, but we're going to go there. So where I have seen animals fall dead was that during the breeding season, those males are getting up early every morning, going out, trying to mate with females during the day, then trying to figure out when the next female is going to be in heat and plan their next day of activity. And when you do that for 40, 50, 60 days, males are often in horrific condition and they're fighting each other. So we've had, I've seen probably a dozen animals that have, they'll wake up in the morning and fall dead to the ground. And you'll, and you will just find them.

They'll look like they're- They're just malnourished. Yep. They're just malnourished. We skin them out and we do a necropsy on them. And you'll see often 15, 20 puncture marks from other males, the incisors where they beat each other up and then they've

got no body fat on them. So, you know, they're, they're giving it their all, you know, and, and, you know, as far as survival of the fittest, if they made it with some females, you know, that they've done all they need to do for that year. But so I have come across male squirrels like that on the ground and they have, and I've watched them fall out of, fall out of a, you know, from a den first thing in the morning or early in the morning, just haven't been able to, had enough energy to, to, to continue to move.

You know, uh, I was at Doug Duren's house. He's a buddy of ours in Wisconsin. Deer hunting one time. And I heard, uh, noise that like like that most people wouldn't recognize but it was a mink they have a very high pitch like like this high pitch squeal when they're agitated there's a mink trying to gain entrance into a squirrel hole and there is a squirrel hole. Into a squirrel hole. And there is a squirrel fighting. Yep. Like the Dickens to keep him out of that hole. And eventually the mink gains entrance into that hole.

And I never heard another peep and never saw that mink come out. Well, it's got a lot of food for a while. He like went in there. I don't really know, but it was like he went in there, killed the thing, and then just settled in. Well, I'm sure that's the case. There may have been more than one squirrel in there. Most squirrels, especially during the winter, you'll get groups of especially female squirrels. Eastern gray squirrels are actually really highly social, so there'll be several generations living together of females.

During the day, they're out. You won't see them in groups. But at night, they all come back. And it's that same, instead of a predator trying to get in, it's another squirrel trying to get back into that nest. You know, they use each other's body heat. That gives them an advantage. And so you'll see multiple animals. I've seen nesting groups. I think, I think the largest I've seen is 14 related females together in a nest and then males will

get together and nest, um, uh, and they're not based on relatedness. So you'll sometimes find eight or 10 males in the coldest nights nesting together. And then first thing in the morning, they take off, but that's a finding a quality nest that they can defend from inside is one of the biggest resources. You know, we always think of food and that kind of thing, but those quality dens that you get in big old trees are huge for these groups of related animals. So when we think about managing forests, retaining some of those big old trees, you know, becomes really important to, to quality forest management.

Uh, I'll tell you something you ought to write a paper on. Two years ago, I was hunting squirrels and Brody Henderson was there. He can back me up on this. We were hunting squirrels and we got a bad hit on a fox squirrel. He goes into a hole of a cottonwood tree.

But then a fight ensues and another fox squirrel kicks him out of the hole. Yep. Fought him back out and then we wound up getting him. Well, I'm glad. I would call that, I don't know what I'd call that paper. How would you name a paper like that? Steve is a poor shot and elicits the assistance of fellow schools. No, because we, Heffelfinger, who you know, recently sent us a paper where a guy got a publication off of

the fact that uh he got they got a publication off of that they had a trail cam set up and a jaguar came and drank from the hole leaves an ocelot comes and drinks the jaguar kills the ocelot and this guy gets a scientific publication out of it. It's just like an observation. And then you're like, huh? So I do feel that you could publish this piece. Well. But with that attitude. But, you know, I'd be game as long as we can put the Steve is a poor shot.

Yeah, like in the abstract. It could be the first line of the abstract. But those kinds of rare observations are really critical. I know some scientists get a little snobby about, oh, sample size and things like that. And for some things, we obviously want to have enough sample size so we can make rigorous management decisions and conserve species. But for these really rare events, to me, it's really important to get that information out. And so I am all for those kinds of publications myself.

I sent that jaguar ocelot thing to my brother, who's an ecologist. He thought it was interesting, but he felt that in that article that talking about that this was possibly something to do with climate change, he felt that in that article that talking about the that this was possibly something to do with climate change he felt that that was a little going too far yeah he thought that was a little so it's important to document these things but yeah yeah understanding the significance more challenging Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

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slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all john i've got a i've got a question for you about something that I read, and it was a research project, and it was actually done between 1939 and 1943. And this guy was studying squirrel populations in Illinois. The height of World War II. Yeah, and the height of American squirrel hunting. That's what he's thinking about. Yeah, the height of American squirrel hunting. That's what he's thinking about. Yeah, the height of American squirrel hunting, too.

He said that the earliest they saw a female squirrel come into estrus was December 11th, and the latest that they saw a female squirrel come in was January 27th, you know, for the winter rut. And he was real clear that there were two breeding cycles, especially with older females. And he said that from Northern Illinois to Southern Illinois, there was a 10 to 14 day delay. Like the Southern Illinois squirrels came into breeding cycles earlier than Northern Illinois. And I just saw that parallel I guess with a lot of mammals that are the breeding cycles of the north are gonna be later so that the the offspring survival is better because they happens later in the spring but I was just gonna say like here in Arkansas if you were to ask just the squirrel hunter down the road when's the squirrel rut they'd say early December you know that that's kind

of what they would say but like I heard you talking about Michigan being, is it later, John, up there? Yeah, correct. It's a little bit later up there. And it actually varies between species a little bit. If you have both gray and fox squirrels, fox squirrels usually are a week to 10 days earlier. Not really sure why that is, but that's kind of a widespread pattern. And they'll start a little bit earlier in December. And you hit on it, Clay, that the farther you go north, they're usually a little bit delayed.

And that all makes sense, right? Reproduction is all about producing young. Those young, you want them to emerge when all those buds are coming out on the spring trees so that the female is going to be in good condition while she's producing milk. Because the most energetically costly event for a female mammal is lactation, not pregnancy. Pregnancy is costly, but trying to nurse those young and produce all that protein and fat-rich milk, that takes energy. And so the timing of these things are really critical. And so as you go a little further north, spring's coming a little bit later, and you're going to see that change in the timing. You're right on the money clay i asked a veteran guy veteran squirrel hunter

here in arkansas the other day i said what's the toughest time of year to squirrel hunt and he said late january because the females are denning and not leaving their nest much much can you is there any research on the movement of males and females during that time of year? Because it is really tough right now. And he said it's because they're denning up, they're close to their den trees. Is that about right? Well, if we eliminate poor squirrel hunting from this, then you're exactly right. Poor dogs, not great dogs. So you're exactly right though. So the females have gone through and reproduced already. Now they're, you know, they're pregnant. And so they hole up.

They don't, they're not using much energy. They'll usually go out for literally just an hour or two a day, feed, you know, eat whatever nuts they can and then go back in. The males though, it's, it's usually still the end of the breeding season and they're still roaming around and they start ranging even more widely trying to find, you know, one of the last females that might still be available. So you're, yeah, you're, you're basically trying to hunt half the, you know, half the population now because females are holed up. And unless you know where a den is, you know, where the female might be coming out, you're not even going to see them very much during that time. So you nailed it.

Okay. That was an interesting thing you brought up about the lactation takes so much energy because in people that hunt, people that hunt a lot of wild pigs will say the best wild pig, the best condition is a pregnant sow. And I always thought that like, that there'll be fatty. And I was like, how could that be?

Because how is it not so taxing to produce it? And they're saying the worst pig is a nursing sow. Yep. Yeah. They just get like sucked dry. Well, that's, that's exactly it. You know, you, milk is really expensive to produce.

And so typically they're putting everything in to just produce in as quality and offspring as possible, giving them the best start in life. And so with, with female squirrels, they won't even, the, the second most energetically expensive part of their life is changing their pellage, you know, molting their fur and growing new fur.

It's all protein, right? A bunch of it's protein. That's costly. They don't do that until after they've finished nursing their young. So you'll see these really raggedy looking females late in the spring. I get calls where someone's like, oh, there's

some kind of, you know, horrific disease going through the squirrels. Look all mangy. And mangy can be a problem. But they're just females who are giving everything they can to their offspring. And so they're producing that milk. And if you look at fat stores of females at the end of nursing, there's no fat store. Just like males are investing everything in those breeding seasons. And I mentioned some of them dying

because they don't have any, they're just so malnourished. That's exactly what you can see with females at that kind of end of nursing. You're exactly right. I got a double question for you. Rattle off like what normally kills squirrels, like from a predatory standpoint. And then what are some of the freakish things you've seen? So usually avian predators, hawks and owls are the number one predator.

Then you start getting into things like, you know, foxes and bobcats also take a large number of them. Catching them off the ground. Catching them off the ground, yeah. Much harder, obviously. You know, squirrels can get into the trees pretty quickly, but raptors nail them. Raptors, in some of the studies we've done, raptors account for 80% of the mortality of red squirrels. And then the remaining 20% of predation events are from foxes, bobcats,

that kind of thing. But when they're in those, I mentioned the necessity of those quality den cavities and that being part of, you know, kind of good forest management. If you don't have a quality den cavity, lots of things can get in. Raccoons will come in and, you know, eat a whole litter ant or a group of these nesting adults that are in there. You mentioned the mink, you know, being able to get in. We'll see crows. Crows will go into those nests. Crows, actually, the leaf nest, the drays that we were talking about, those piles, kind of a basketball-sized ball of leaves up in the trees. Crows will fly from tree to tree looking at those nests and trying to pull out squirrels from within.

Some raptors will do that as well. But gopher snakes, bull snakes, there's a really cool study that showed they actually will climb trees that have those leaf nests in them more than they'll climb trees without them. Yeah. Yep. And they go in. How does he know?

Just smells the activity at the base of the tree? Could be. Usually though, squirrels, they come in from, they don't come from the bottom up into their nest tree. They're usually coming in from the canopy. And that's something we should talk about is some of the kind of subtle scent communication that goes on between squirrels. So snakes are great nest predators as well.

But there are some incredible records documented, a lot like the jaguar and ocelot that you were talking about. They've been reported in the stomachs of bullfrogs. That's a big bullfrog and a small squirrel. But, and they've been, largemouth bass have plucked them off of tree branches. So there are a couple of reports of, you know, seeing a bass come out with a squirrel, you know, eating some berries, you know, in this idyllic setting, you know, you can imagine the, you know, the Bambi music in the background and then, you know, out, out leaps this, uh, this largemouth bass. So, you know, they're anything that, you know, they're a nice chunk of meat. So, so anything that can, anything that can get them is, is going to go for it. I had a read that squirrels like all rodents, their teeth never stopped growing.

So they have to grind them down. And if they don't, they'll grow into their skull and kill them. Is that something you've ever like witnessed or seen? Yeah. So you're, so you're partially right. The cheek teeth don't, the molars don't grow. They're not everlasting. You actually can age squirrels by looking at The cheek teeth don't, the molars don't grow. They're not everlasting.

You actually can age squirrels by looking at their cheek teeth. So if you're out there hunting and, you know, you get a young of the year, it'll look like a kid's molars, you know, a human child's molars where you can see every little nook and cranny, but they get worn down, you know, as they get older. So really old animals, you'll see those teeth worn down to the gum line, you know, just like a heffle finger was in here. I'm sure probably talking about deer aging numerous times, but you can do the same thing with squirrels. And, but the incisors are ever growing and that's really the, you know, the business end of the squirrel. If they can't gnaw into things, then, you know, they're not going to be able to survive. So those are ever-growing. And, you know, if you take a look at them,

they've got that kind of orange or yellow part that you'll see looking head-on at a squirrel. That is harder than the white portion that's behind. And that's so they sharpen to a wonderful point that, you know, then, and they're able to, you know, open a hickory or a walnut. And so occasionally those will get offline. They rub up against each other and they kind of, you know, just like you would sharpen your knife. That's essentially what's going on with each bite that the squirrel's taking. But if they're injured, you know, in a fall, in a battle, whatever, you know, causes some injury and they get offline, that's where you see these things grow back. And they've got that kind of wonderful circular shape that helps with the self-sharpening. But if they're offline, that means it circles right back and usually hits the eye or

something like that. So now they're not able to gnaw into things, you know, they're going to be weak in condition. And so you don't see it very often. But you do occasionally get an animal that survives long enough and still, you know, still able to get enough food to be able to see that, you know, a death that's a result of that malocclusion. Do they use those teeth to like kill little animals since they're omnivores? That's right. Excellent point. They are. They're omnivorous. They will eat lots of insects. They'll eat, you know, they'll eat small mammals, but they also are cannibalistic at times. And there are a number of cases.

In some ground squirrels like prairie dogs, they're actually infanticidal. They'll kill other young. They'll go into the burrow of their sister and kill her young to give the advantage to that individual's own young. In tree squirrels, we've seen them kill birds. They'll frequently kill birds. They're known. Red squirrels are kind of really nasty egg predators and nestling birds. Most ornithologists, there's a group that will hate squirrels perhaps because of the nest predation that they have.

But I've even seen cases where they haven't killed the individual. Three or four times in my career, I've seen a young animal who's just learning to kind of walk and hold onto a tree fall to its death. And so we talked about adult animals surviving falls, juveniles that don't have the muscles and probably the balance yet, they'll fall to their death. I've watched the mother go down, check the individual, bump it a few times, realize that it's dead, and then literally pick the animal up and they start eating the brain. And then they, you know, move on to other tasty bits of their own offspring that, you know, they were just nursing up in the tree maybe that morning. And, um, you know, now they're, they're, uh, they're going for, they've switched to carnivory.

That's called being like a pragmatist, man. That's like really something. It's like, well, they invested a lot in that offspring. Life gives you lemons, man. That's like really something. It's like, well, they invested a lot in that offspring. Life gives you lemons, man. That's right. Hey, when I was in middle school, I had a friend that was at like the city park, and he saw a squirrel get hit on the road. And for whatever reason, he went out and picks up this squirrel. And the thing, you know, we're talking about squirrel teeth and how sharp they are and the squirrel bites him right in the webbing between the thumb and his pointer finger just nails him deep into the meat right there

and he like shakes the squirrel off his hand and he it cut his tendons in his hand and he had to have major reconstructive surgery in his hand. Wow. To get it all hooked back up again. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I think about that when we hunt, picking one up that's half alive.

I've had them bite through my thumbnail before. So yeah, they, and cut all the way to the bone instantly. That story that you just mentioned, Clay, I was, my first time ever in Arizona was driving along and I wanted to see an Aberd squirrel, a tassel-eared squirrel. If you guys have seen them, pretty amazing. Super interested in those squirrels.

And we were driving along. I hadn't seen one yet, just north of Flagstaff. And I just turned to my wife and said, I can't believe, you know, squirrel biologist hasn't been able to see one of these. And I'm driving along and literally one runs out from the Ponderosa Pine Forest and I hit it. And so I'm like, crap, you know, what do you do? You know, and one, I wanted to see it. And two, I'm like, crap, you know, what do you do? You know, and one, I wanted to see it. And two, I'm like, well, you know, it's now donated its body to science. And I had a collecting permit so I could legally go back and pick it up. So I turn around, pull over, and it's just kind of a narrow two-lane road with forest right there.

So I had to pull over probably a couple hundred yards away. I'm walking along, and I'm almost up on it. And this Winnebago drives over and as it, that suction, as it goes over, you see the tail flip up, but I kind of thought the body also popped up a little bit. And so I go running up, not wanting it to, you know, to be hit by another car. So I'd have a good carcass. And I go to grab it and it jumps up, runs off the road and does that just like the fallen squirrel that we talked about before, climbs up a tree, sits there and just keeps trying to shake it off. And so I got a really good look at the squirrel, but it turns out that that's actually really common. What squirrels do when they're going to be attacked, right?

If you're getting attacked by a hawk, you jump first, and then you hit the ground and start running. And that works really well if there's a hawk coming in or a fox, but it doesn't work well if there's a Chevy minivan that's driving over. You jump right up. So they often just knock themselves out on the undercarriage and then, and then get hit, you know, by the next car that comes by. But yeah, I've, so I almost had that same experience myself.

Okay. Yanni's got to zap you with some questions. He's got some doozies. Well, real quick, before we get off, what kills them? What's just just average lifespan? Average lifespan, if you start from when they're born, you're just talking a little over a year. Very few animals make it to adulthood. Once they reach that first year, which is when they can start reproducing typically, sometimes a little bit earlier, you're looking at two and a half to three years is kind

of a good lifetime. If you're looking at pet animals, red squirrels, fox squirrels, gray squirrels have all been, people have had them for about 20 years. So they can even live that long. And in some of our studies where we've monitored animals of known age for a decade or more. We've had animals get to about 10 years in the wild and maybe a little bit more, some species a little bit less. But for a small mammal that you think, you know, isn't going to live very long, they actually, once they figure it out, once they have that den, once they, you know, know where their food is, they actually, and they're wary enough of predators, they actually can survive pretty long. Hmm.

Did you like the ones I had highlighted or the ones that I had under my name there? Under your name. And I added a couple of doozies in there, but I just stumbled across those. I just stumbled across that section under Yanni's. I stumbled across that section under Yanni's name in my document. Let's talk about how they stash stuff and that whole process. And Spencer's got a follow-up there too about stashes. Yeah, were you involved in that study everybody got all excited about,

about whether they could remember where they put their nuts or not? Well, I've been part of a couple of those studies. Okay. I'll step away. Well, so a couple of different strategies that you're looking at. If you're talking about red squirrels or Douglas squirrels out here in the West mostly, they're what we call larder hoarders. So you've come across, I'm sure around here, around Bozeman,

you've come across what we call middens, these big piles of cone scales that they actually bury more cones in. Those are, those middens, those cone scale piles are effectively a refrigerator for the squirrel. They keep their, they bury cones from subsequent years in there. And we've actually studied, we put little temperature transmitters in and studied that they function just like a refrigerator does. The cones don't open. If the cone scales open, seeds fall out, anything can eat them. If they stay closed, mostly just squirrels can eat them. So by keeping them in the refrigerator, you know, food doesn't spoil. So that strategy works really well with pine cones and in places where there are lots of coniferous trees. But those mints are also just a result of them just sitting in the same tree on the same branch and just chewing on pine cones, right?

And so that's often how these things start. You'll have a tree that's got lots of cones in a good year. The animals just start feeding there, and you get a little bit of a pile. And then a juvenile squirrel that's trying to find a place to live often starts with that place, buries a few cones there, tucks a few in a log, and then keeps eating and building these piles. Sometimes they get three or four feet high, kind of the size of a baseball pitcher's mound. And they're typically a huge resource. You can imagine, you know, a refrigerator that's, you know, already proven itself in previous years, that becomes a huge resource. And so they're passed on from generation to generation. We've followed middens that have

been occupied by squirrels continuously for 30 years, 40 years, not the same squirrel, you know, just as soon as one dies, another one moves in. As soon as sometimes when we're doing some of our live capture studies and marking them, even when the animal gets in the trap, the neighbor realizes, hey, I can go steal a few cones. So we have to check these live traps and let animals go quickly because the neighbor comes over and starts stealing cones right away. So that's a strategy that works really well with pine cones out here. And the red squirrels that we have around here in Bozeman are territorial. So their whole life is packed into one of these middens. Everything that's going to enable them to survive this winter is found there because these guys don't hibernate. And they're relying on stored fat and then whatever pine cones that they've saved.

So being territorial and piling them in one place works here. The other strategy that you see in more deciduous forests typically with fox squirrels and eastern gray squirrels predominantly here in the U.S., they're scatter hoarders. So rather than pile them all in one place where they can defend them and it's just theirs and they last for a long time because your refrigerator's working. With things like acorns, they spoil relatively quickly and tons of things can eat acorns, right? You know, those deciduous forests and those good years, you got turkey, deer, every small mammal, some other crows and some other kind of, you know, good-sized birds will eat them besides squirrels. So they take a different strategy and they scatter them out. So they actually go under a tree that has a concentration of them and they spread them out.

And so that reduces the risk of other things eating them. But the problem is, you know, how do you find them again? And so it turns out that part of its memory, part of it is a strategy that they, you know, this is their general area. So it's not territorial where it's just exclusive use. They will, but they tend to bury them in the same general area. So a squirrel goes back to that area, uses its memory to say, hey, over here, you know, I know I buried some nuts, you know, if you're thinking like this from a person. But they actually find them typically not solely by memory. It's the smell. They've got an incredible sense of smell. Their eyesight's just okay,

but their sense of smell, they've, they've been shown to be able to find a nut three or four feet under the snow by smell. Smells it coming up out of there. So it gets there, you know, it says, okay, this general spot, I know I buried them. And that makes sense if you, you know, it looks a lot different with three feet of snow. We've all, you know, been hiking in a forest and said, you know, and notice how different it looks in the winter. So memory alone, you know, that log now is covered up and, you know, the, even parts of that tree are covered up. So they go in and they smell through three or four feet of snow.

They'll, they'll pick up that set. I got two related questions here. One is, do they ever stash meat? And then the other one is, can you explain deceptive caching and have you ever witnessed it? I'll take the first one. Yes. You are correct, Steve. You know what a problem I think your field has created?

Don't say red squirrel. I'm all about solutions, so I'd like to know what problem. Expunge red squirrel from your vocabulary. Okay. Pine squirrel. Pine squirrel. Unless there's a problem there. Because I find, like, I got a buddy from Missouri who now lives in Michigan, and he calls fox squirrels red squirrels.

I'm like, it's not a red squirrel. It's damn sure is red. I'm like, okay. I said, just to clean it up, I said, listen, with him, I'm like, pine squirrels, which he's not accustomed to because he didn't grow up with them i'm like you got pine squirrels once you live in a place with pine squirrels don't say red squirrels because everybody gets mixed up i feel like nationally like biden's assigning all these executive orders i think he should add that in and clean that up and in terms of spencer's question uh i read a paper one time where they were doing a study, a mortality study in Alberta on leverets,

so baby snowshoe hares, and they would find the bulk of the dead ones in pine squirrel middens. And I'll add quickly that I have seen where grizzly bears dig up and raid middens. And I'll add quickly that I have seen where grizzly bears dig up and raid middens. I'm back out now. Okay. So first I'm going to go with your pine

squirrel suggestion. While I am incredibly appreciative of your suggestion there and will take it into consideration. Everybody loves clarity. So red squirrels, and I said red squirrels. Yeah. In the Eastern U.S., you find them in deciduous forests.

So there aren't even pines around and you can find red squirrels. Still a pine squirrel. Well, emperor penguin's not an emperor. It's still a red squirrel too. So I know, having grown up in the Midwest, lots of people call fox squirrels red squirrels. Yeah, you know the red ones. Yep. And they're orange, right?

Yeah. They're more of orange squirrels. So let's go with orange squirrels. We'll talk to Joe Biden and see if he goes. If he can get in there and sign an executive order. Go more orange squirrels. So the middens that you talked about and that we've kind of discussed as a refrigerator, they're a refrigerator for more than just cones. Squirrels will put mushrooms in there and they will store meat. So we found chipmunks and leverets. We found them buried in, cached within those cone scale piles.

It's kind of risky, though, because lots of things eat meat. So more frequently what they do is they hang them up in the trees. They hang mushrooms up in the trees, but they hang small bunnies up in the trees. I've seen that, man. I didn't know what that was though. It's amazing. I thought it was like Blair Witch stuff, man. Yeah, like muskrats, or sorry, mushrooms in

trees. Yep. Yep. Like someone put it there. No kidding. Yep. So they're, they're putting them up there and they, they actually manage them.

So you guys have seen red squirrels, you know, they just, they're constantly running back and forth protecting this pile in, uh, the, the midden. And there, there also is, you know, anal about managing their, uh, their, uh, mushrooms. They will just pick them up and move them around the sun, you know, the sunny side of the tree, they'll put them there to dry out a little bit and they'll move them back. But they do the same thing with little rabbits as well. So we've seen them a few times kill rabbits.

But the first time that we came across this, probably 20 years ago when I first moved to Arizona, I'm looking up and I think that there's a squirrel in this tree above me because there's a big dark blob, you know, kind of backlit and it's kind of blowing in the wind a little bit. So I thought it was its tail and, you know, it was a small rabbit that had been hung up there probably to dry. You know, you got to make good jerky if you're going to use this all winter long. That's great. So, yep. Amazing. The next question was about deceptive caching. Can you explain it and have you witnessed it?

Yep. So this goes at that, you're scatter hoarding these nuts around, right? You're trying to spread out a resource that's concentrated under one tree and you want to end up with as much of that as possible. So there have been a few cases that I've seen, and it's been reported a little bit in the literature that squirrels will, you know, do the head fake and, uh, you know, go in and, and fake caching things. I've seen them pick up like a rock, put it, dig a little hole, drop it in, move a leaf over it, and then go back and grab an acorn and bury it somewhere else. And so there is this thought that – and it makes sense that this is such a competitive – if you don't get enough energy, you're going to die over winter. So every little advantage, you know, can, can play out. So we've seen that and we think that's due

to different squirrels, you know, trying to, uh, trying to be deceptive, but, uh, because squirrels can smell so well, you know, that probably isn't a great technique solely to reduce seed competition from other seed predators. But for birds that typically birds can't smell, you know, there are a few that do use smell, but most birds can't. So they, by going in and faking, here's where I'm burying this, where I'm caching this seed. A bird is not going, they're going by those visual cues and, hey, he's, you know, that squirrel's burying nuts over here. I'm going to go check it out and bounce around until I can find one. And so we think that it actually may be more advantageous for that kind of competition than within your own species where, you know, you can, you can pick up the smell of a nut much more easily. I watched one.

I don't know if it was doing a deceptive cache or if he just wasn't happy with his first spot, but I was, I was quite surprised to find I was on a, maybe a hundred foot sort of knoll knob in an oak forest in Wisconsin, but a solid 100 yards from the nearest stalk of corn. I'm standing there just observing, and up onto this knoll pops a squirrel with at least a half a corn cob in its mouth, runs along some logs, goes to a spot, sets it down, digs what I thought was a pretty, like puts some effort into making a hole. I mean, digs what I thought was a pretty, like, puts some effort into making a hole. I mean, he's talking about a half a corn cob, and then just leaves, picks up his corn cob,

you know, goes 10 feet farther, and then stashes it in there. But two things, well, the biggest thing that struck me is how far he had gone to go get that. I'm guessing the caloric value of what he was stashing was worth that trouble and putting him away. But my, what you said earlier brought up a question, you keep talking about like near the same tree.

Like how big is that stash zone for a squirrel? So it can be the size of their home range, the area that they're roaming really varies on the kind of the quality of the forest. So if you're in a really poor forest, you've got to range more widely. And so the zone that they're burying them, you know, varies by those kinds of conditions. But typically you're looking at the home range of most squirrels is kind of a football field or two. We're talking just a couple of acres. And you are, although males during the breeding season roam 15, 20 times, sometimes more than that.

But within that, they typically will bury, if you're talking out in an oak forest, they'll bury them in kind of concentrated areas. But they also, you know, it's energetically costly if you're going to grab an acorn. You know, if you have to run a mile to bury it, you're not going to, you know, that makes no energetic sense. So they typically don't go very far, but they're spreading them out sometimes hundreds of yards away from the tree. And that's actually kind of the thought to be, that's to the advantage of the tree. You know, the acorn falls straight down. Now it's, you know, its parent tree is the competitor for sunlight and water, but giving this nice tasty tidbit that a squirrel is going to take out and bury, you know, is that really the advantage

the tree is looking for out of the deal. So we have seen them. They're known when you get a walnut tree that's in fruit, you can actually smell it if you're out there. Squirrels are known to come from a couple of miles away to get a walnut tree that's a black walnut tree back east that's in you know in fruit and just you think they're smelling it yep they smell it yep it definitely just like they find females from from far away that scent is really the way that squirrels communicate i know we've all heard the saying probably you know even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes sure yeah they don't use their eyes to find squirrels. Really, technically, it should be even an anosmic squirrel finds a nut sometime because they use smell to find these things.

They use smell to find females. They use smell to find food. They also use smell to communicate. And, Clay, I'd be really curious if you've seen this. They use scent marking sites, fox squirrels and gray squirrels in particular. If you look at the underside of a branch or the base of a big cottonwood tree, you'll see areas that look like something's, you know, maybe a buck has come by and scraped along there. But if you look at it closely, you'll see squirrel incisor marks. These are set marks that all the males roam by and mark there.

Sometimes they'll urinate. Is that right? Yep. Sometimes they'll urinate on it, but they have glands in their cheeks and they just, they'll wipe them. They got a little scrape out in the woods. Yep. A little buck scrape. Yep.

Base of big trees. I've in the woods. Yep. A little buck scrape. Yep. Base of big trees. I've never seen that. Never. Never seen it. Never heard that. Look at some hickories and look at some oaks. And especially on the underside of the lowest big branches, or if the tree's got a little bit of a tilt on it, it's less exposed to weather where that scent probably stays. You'll see these things.

They'll get as big as maybe two feet by like a foot and a half or something. Really? Yeah. You'll see them. They're all over. I'm coming. I came here from Laramie where we've got fox squirrels. They're all over the trees there.

So like, would that be a good strategy to sit that little scrape? So if you sit there, and I was going to say, if you sit there long enough, you'll see animals come through, especially as you're approaching the breeding season. So in the spring, it is a good place to go to see squirrels and likely to hunt squirrels. And it's male biased. So, you know, you're, you're not, you're not hunting. Getting the big bucks. Yeah.

You're getting the, you're getting the big 1.2 pounders. Yeah. Huh. What, what are some other things like that, that hunters are probably ignoring or don't know about? Like if, if they're in the woods and they're

trying to find a good place to hunt, besides the obvious, like actual squirrels, what are some indicators that this is going to be a good place? Well, if you put like actual squirrels, what are some indicators that this is going to be a good place? Well, if you put your deer stand up, you can almost be sure that squirrels are drawn to deer stands. That's one of the best places. But so a couple of things, those in the mornings, the animals come out and almost the first

thing they do, if you're talking fall, winter and spring, is they'll bask in the sun. And that's when you get a group of squirrels. So you'll have, you know, six, eight, 10, 12 squirrels all nesting together. And so finding those big old trees that have some cavities in, they're not, they don't like the incredibly decomposed one wind and we're going to fall over kind of, kind of tree. But if you're, if you're in a place where you've got some pretty good older, large, older trees, they may not even produce, they may be so old, they're over mature, aren't producing any tree seeds, but they've got some good cavities.

That's the place to go. You've all seen those den cavities probably, and you can tell where a squirrel's been gnawing it and the tree keep kind of keeps regrowing. So it's kind of a nice smooth edge. That's, you know, that's a, a good indicator and, uh, to, to assess whether they, the animals might be there. I like to go out the night before because that's when animals are going back to the nest. And so if you follow animals back, that's when you get six or eight animals coming together right before sunset.

So picking up an animal in the woods and following it back, you can usually figure out what tree or a couple of trees they're going back to. And, and that's, that's a really good indicator. Uh, uh, and then just the noise of them. And most hunters will, you know, use that noise or the falling of, you know, cone scales. If you're looking at red squirrels, you're looking at pieces of, of nuts that are falling. Uh, that's always a great indicator. But these scent marks are something like clay scent. I know clay loves squirrel hunting, and most people haven't seen that. But if you go out and look, I guarantee that you'll find a bunch of those.

Red squirrels don't do that as far as we can tell. But all squirrels have these scent glands in their cheeks. And when they're going back to the nest, they wipe those. They'll stop every few feet on a branch and wipe their head back and forth, called a face wipe. And they're depositing scent that probably says there's an animal here. This nest is going to be occupied. And, you know, if you're a friend, come join me. Share your body heat for the, you know, for the night.

Or, you know, be prepared to, like that mink who won the battle. Be prepared to duke it out. Be prepared to duke it out there. I once did that by accident. Follow it. I was not just like following it to see where the dentry was. I was chasing this group of squirrels and they got to the dentry ahead of me. I thought, well, by by golly i'm hunting tomorrow

morning i know where i'll be sitting in the dark and waiting for them now i had a very successful first 10 minutes of the morning uh am i doing anything uh like am i hurting the squirrel population by by doing that should i felt bad about like just like you know getting close to three quarters of my limit in the first 10 minutes of the morning out of that one tree. So spreading, spreading your, your hunting effort out would be a good strategy. Uh, those groups though, uh, especially if you're not taking all the animals in the group, they're, they're either groups of related females and that, that group of females, although're not territorial, is, you know, that's kind of their space. So if you're not taking all the animals, you know, there are some that are still going to be there.

Or it's a group of males and the males are typically, if you're not a male youngster who's with your mom and your grandmother and you're, you know, maybe a great-grandmother kind of in that spot, then you disperse from where you're born and you're in a group with males. And, you know, as we know, the really important demographic class is going to be those females. So, you know, just being a little bit attentive and spreading it around. They have good litter sizes. They typically rebound from hunting pressure that's not constant and immense without any problem at all. So I think you don't have to feel so guilty. I can see it in your eyes, but I think you're okay. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers get irritated well if you're sick of you know sucking high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love in on x are available for your hunts this season the hunt app is a fully functioning gps with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast.

Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try On x out if you visit on x maps.com slash meet on x maps.com slash meet welcome to the to the on x club y'all with all the raptors and everything killing them and all the other stuff that kills them, have you ever seen where squirrel hunters have had like a localized impact on population that was of note?

So there's – no, I've never seen it. And because of the difficulty in finding them, I mean, you know, we just heard from Yanni that he can only find them 10 minutes out of a day. So we've got that kind of ineptitude. You know, they're always going to, you know, going to be squirrels around. They tend to have good litter sizes. They tend to be able to have two litters a year if the resources are high. So when density start to get low, you see, and you have a good cone crop or good mass

crop, you have the ability to respond pretty quickly. There was a study back east in Virginia where they tried to have an impact. They hunted them exceedingly high and it's something like, geez, I want to say 70% mortality, something like that where they really were hunting an area very heavily. Then in that case, they showed some impacts of hunting. But what happens is you have more individuals producing two litters a year to, you know, kind of compensate for that because now they're getting more food, they're in better shape, you know, don't have, they're not being chased around by other squirrels as much. And they can, squirrels, tree squirrels can reproduce at about six months of age.

So if you're in a time when you have a really good mast year, young of the year will reproduce really early. So you're born in February, March, and you can reproduce in that. There are cases where they've reproduced even in that second breeding season. So they're born in one breeding season and able to reproduce just a few months later. So, you know, they're geared to be able to take advantage of these boom and bust mast crops. So a good year, you know, of mast, you're going to get lots of young. They're going to reproduce quickly and capitalize on it. Squirrel hunting is really so inefficient.

I mean, you realize that when you do a lot of squirrel hunting, how you may hunt this big block of timber and you realize how many times your dog's tree and you don't kill that squirrel or how many squirrels you see that you don't kill. And so, I mean, you would have to hunt very, very hard to be able to knock them down. And they seem to be a species, like you said, that just bounces back so quickly.

And the other way I think about it as a hunter, and I'm trying to calm Giannis' nerves here and bring him back a little more center here. I'm joking, Giannis, is that if you had a 100-acre track of land to squirrel hunt and you just pounded it and maybe you killed 70% of the squirrels in there, which you probably couldn't, there would be a vacuum around that place. I mean, squirrels would just fill that in because think of all the land you're not hunting around that like so if you could like grid off and just hunt equally like some huge portion of land like maybe you could knock them down does that sound about right john yeah exactly the you know prime sites are always

somewhat limited out there and you've got when you're having a litter size of two and a half, you know, three and a half young, maybe a couple of times a year. Animals, we talked about how long they can live. You know, there's not this massive turnover of adults. And so when an animal dies, another animal's moving in really quickly. You always have individuals that are looking for quality spots with red squirrels that are territorial, even more so, as I mentioned, you know, we put it, we catch an animal in a live trap and, you know, just for 30 minutes and the neighbor knows that this spot is available and, you know, we'll be over there in a minute. So yeah, you're exactly right, Clay.

I didn't want Giannis to be too soft-hearted when he comes to Arkansas here later this winter. You take what you can get when you're squirrel hunting, buddy. Listen, I've put a lot of time and effort into hunting squirrels, and I've only had one episode like that. So, yeah, I've yet to not pull the trigger on a squirrel opportunity. All right,alizations. Let's do it just the... I'm guessing fox and greys are

pretty similar. Let's do them because that's what most hunters concentrate on. I know... I think that red pine squirrels have interesting vocalizations. I've heard a lot of them and I think that they can sort of be valuable to know maybe to an elk hunter because

you hear them in the woods and somehow it might be associated with you. So let's, let's break it up, but let's, let's kind of maybe go through all the ones that you know of, what they mean, and then maybe how we can use them to our advantage. So it's, they're a series of chucks, you know, kind of that cluck, cluck, cluck.

Mm-hmm. You know, chucks, kind of that cluck, cluck, cluck. Mm-hmm. You know, cluck, cluck, cluck. That kind of noise. Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. Very good. Yeah. That's really good. Very good.

Yeah. So that – and basically it starts there and they become more prolonged, closer together, louder with the level of threat or, you know, the more. Yep. Yep. That's not it. No, that's not it. I can't do it. It's like a.

Exactly. It's like it becomes a home almost. Right. So, and that's it. You take these kind of, you know, separate notes that are just cluck, cluck, cluck. And then you push them together and it becomes a bit of a hum. And then if they're really upset, then you get the whine at the end. So, what? And that is, and that's even worse than yours.

Yeah, that was bad. I know exactly what you're talking about. But that's like a super agitated, pissed off. Exactly. And he's telling his buddies there's trouble brewing. We think that it's more they're telling the predator that I know you're there and I'm really pissed off. And so they'll usually stand their ground. Things like some of the-

Yeah, I was going to interrupt and say that usually when I hear that, I feel like I got a good chance of killing that squirrel because I feel like he's sitting there and like, I don't care that you're walking towards me. Yep, exactly. So they're going to sit there and they're just letting you know that they know.

And you know, that typically works if you're, you know, if you're a squirrel against other squirrels, probably most predators who aren't going to waste their time and effort. You know, if you're a, if you're a squirrel against other squirrels, probably most predators who aren't going to waste their time and effort. You know, if you're a, if you're a bobcat or a, you know, a gray fox, and I've seen gray foxes climb trees going after squirrels. You know, you're not going to spend all that effort if you've got something that already knows you're there. Like you're busted and there's nothing you're going to do about it now. Yep.

Okay. So it's just the fact that I'm aware of you that's going to make him not go, not because he's like, oh, there's a mad squirrel. I'm not going to mess with that angry squirrel. Uh, and so you'll hear those alarm calls. You, you've been walking in a, you know, a meadow and heard a bunch of yellow-bellied marmots, you know, start sending off their alarm calls. That's, those are often related individuals. They're alerting other members of their own species in that group know that there's a predator there, but it also lets the predator know that you've been recognized. And initially we used to think that was altruistic, you know, that you'd have, you'd have ground squirrels alerting everyone and drawing attention to themselves. Turns out that when you actually watch what predators do, they don't go for the one that saw them and is making the call.

They're going for the one that's running for its burrow because it doesn't know where the predator is. So now we think that that's actually kind of a selfish activity. You call, hey, watch all these other animals scurry around and, you know, the hawk's going to get one of them and they're not going to get you because, you know, you've already identified that you see them. Plus those high pitch calls are really hard to locate sometimes. And that's the thing, the chucks that you hear, those individual notes, the barks, a lot of times you'll read about squirrels barking. Those are a little easier to locate.

When they go into that high-pitched mode, those high-pitched calls are really hard. They're harder to locate. So once they get to that level of agitation, you know, they, it's thought that if they're that level of agitation, the predator's really close, then it's a little bit harder to actually locate. I know they're in this tree somewhere, but the squirrel is going to see them before, you know, the predator sees the squirrel. I've seen them when they're like chasing each other, like rutting around, I've seen them do some amount of agitated chirping at each other. But when you're squirrel calling, my understanding of this was always that you're making the alarm call when you do that noise,

thinking that other squirrels are going to wonder what the story is and come out to try to figure out what the problem is. It's not very effective. It's like at a certain time of year, making the distress noise seems to get females out. But I don't, it's squirrel calling is not like a great thing, I don't think. Yeah, the squirrel calls, depending which ones you have, the ones that I've used when we're trying to locate them, it's a percussion kind of instrument, you know,

you're pounding, and it's the chucks, you're getting those chucks. It's like a little plunger. Yep. And, and that makes sense because that's one, they're easier to locate. So, and usually use them when the squirrel's on the backside of the tree or a big branch and they kind of look around, you know, that's, that's where they're effective is actually getting their, you know, getting their attention. Rarely do, do theyly can you draw them out of a nest. And so- So you use those for research purposes.

Yeah, we use them for research. If we know, if we're trying to check on, is this individual alive and we don't have radio collars on all our animals, you can go in and use that chucking call or use my really lame chucks. That's enough for a squirrel typically to peek around a tree. Oh, no kidding. So you'll hear them scurrying around the tree a little bit, running against the bark. And it's a great way to locate individuals. Oh, yeah, it's red right ear, green left ear kind of thing. The other call that you'll hear during those mating chases is that it's kind of a snorting of males. And as they run along, it's a great way to locate, I mean,

that's how we locate mating chases in kind of natural forest. That's not a parkland like I was describing before. So we work on endangered Mount Graham red squirrels in Arizona and really dense forest. But during the breeding season, you can hear this kind of sneezing or snorting as all these males are chasing the female. And it's thought that one, they're just, they're trying to clear their nasal passages so they can pick up scent and figure out where the female is as quickly as possible. So it's thought that it's related to that. The only other call, well, there are a couple other really rare calls,

but probably the other one that's similar to some of these, that high-pitched wine that we talked about, females, if, so during these mating chases, the females will avoid males and kind of incite this chase so that it's thought so the most, you know, the animal that's in the best shape has the best ability to locate a limited resource can find her. And so she'll run through shrubbery and things like that. And then she'll just sit at the base of a tree. And it's usually the first male that finds her that'll get to mate with her. So the success is a little bit on dominance, but it's on your skill in locating the female. If they don't find her, she's now, you know, she has to mate. She's only in heat for six hours. If she doesn't, you know, then she's not going to reproduce. So she'll actually issue that alarm call, that really high pitched call, and it'll attract all those males again to the site. And then she'll mate with the first one if they find her before the other males do. So the same calls used in a slightly different context.

Are you familiar with, I'm sure you are, when they're sitting there doing that pissed off call, that their tail's moving. And that's what gives them away. I heard someone suggest that they're using that tail to trick predators. Because when the hawks come to slap them, they hit that tail because they see the tail moving. And then the squirrel skinnies out because

they got them by the tail. So a couple of things. One, that flicking the tail also kind of is correlated with how pissed off they are. So the more worked up there about something, you'll see them flicking that tail more. People have tried to see

how much information's really conveyed in that. You know, is there a hidden squirrel language? And, you know, there's not at that level where it's like, oh, here's a? You know, is there a hidden squirrel language? And, you know, there's not at that level where it's like, oh, here's a, you know, meaning of that flicking the tail. But it does seem to be correlated with how risky the situation is so that perhaps the predator sees that, but other individuals may see that as well and recognize, okay, you know, there's something really close here that's bothersome. But that tail itself has a couple of different functions. One is that it is used for dissipating heat.

So if you watch a squirrel during the heat of the summer and clay, you know, in Arkansas, you probably see this sometimes, but you'll see them splayed out sometimes on the ground in some moist soil. They'll flick their tail up. And if you look at the base of the, if you look at the base of the tail, they actually spread the hairs and you'll see blood pulsing through there.

So it's a way that they dissipate heat. And you can, in Arizona, some of the squirrel species that we have down there, like the Mexican fox squirrel, you know, they're in 110 degree temperatures. And, you know, if you're out running around, you got to get rid of that heat fast. And you're wearing this, you know, this fur coat. So they literally sit there and use that tail. So they'll flip it up over themselves. And send blood through it. And send blood through it. And send blood through it. It's just a surface to get rid of heat. It also, we know that they'll

use them during the winter. It's like kind of an added layer of insulation. So you'll see it laying over their back. Some of the kind of classic squirrel pictures in the winter are usually just, here's another, you know, another blanket you're throwing on or they use them like an umbrella. You know, they're, I've seen them with, you know, half inch of snow on the top of the tail and they're just, you know, kind of huddled down. So there's that advantage as well. But if you're going to have, if you're going to be attacked by a predator, you know, talons in, talons in the, you know, in the tail are much better than talons in the rib cage. So they do, you do occasionally find tailless animals. Some of that may be due to

predators, but really if a predator gets you, you know, and you're that close, predators are really good at making sure they, you know, seal the deal. More often we see these broken tails and clipped tails are actually the result of battle between animals. So they don't clip each other. He's going for the nuts and gets the tail. I was going to say, they're not going. I don't want to go back there, Steve. I thought we were past this, but we can revisit if necessary. So they don't go for those, the testicles, but they will go for tails.

Every time I see a squirrel with a broken tail, I make up a mind movie where the fox gets him by the tail and he busts off. And I'm like certain that that's what's happened. I never thought it was like squirrel on squirrel violence. It's usually squirrel on squirrel violence. Very rarely. I, I, I have seen probably 30 or 40 predation events by, by mammal predators and never once

had, they've grabbed him by the tail, but never once have, has that tail broken off before they've, you know, got the kill shot in there already. Oh, okay. Um, but when squirrels, especially during these mating chases, when two males are fighting, they'll often grab the other one by the tail and literally kind of fling them around and throw them out of the tree. So, uh, they, that's where we think most of the broken tails come from. And you see a more commonly in males than females because exactly that kind of biology. Got any more calling questions, Johnny? I mean, I guess if you think there's something interesting there with the red pine squirrel chatter, like I used to always walk this irrigation ditch, you know, it was a great way to sneak through the woods and it kind of cut through a piece of woods

that separated some ag fields these elk fed and up above it was where they bedded. And I used to just hate it when up ahead of me or near me, boy, you get one barking at you. And I just felt like, man, every elk within 150 yards is like, ah, I know Yanni's coming down the ditch. Yeah, but what I like is when you aren't doing anything and you're being real quiet or whatever. And you hear one light up. You hear a pissed off pine squirrel. And then you're like, there or whatever, and you hear one light up, you hear a pissed off pine squirrel. And then you're like, there's no way he's mad at

me. Like, there's no way he knows about me. Then I get real curious over in that direction. Like, what is he mad about? Because I think they'll bark at, I think they'll bark at anything coming through the woods, you know? Yeah.

So is that true? They will bark at anything? Like an elk walking through the woods, they'll bark at it because they're annoyed by it. I have seen them bark at elk and deer before. They tend, they use it for, more often they'll use it for other animals, other squirrels, same species.

Oh, they do? Yep. So it's a territorial. Oh, that's why I should have pointed out that I have never heard one light up. And then lo and behold, here comes like. A bear. Here comes an elk.

It's always like, I never could find out what he's mad about. So they, they'll use it. They use the same kinds of calls that we were just, we were talking about for fox squirrels and gray squirrels typically for like a predator that's, that's come through, but they use that territorial rattle call. It's that, that kind of call.

Is that, is that any better? That was good. Is that okay? That was, yeah. Okay, not bad. Five, five, six. Okay. That's, that's cool.

I'll take that. Take whatever I can get. You know, I think, I think having that call when you're hunting some other animal other than a squirrel, I mean, you've got to be paying attention to a barking squirrel. Like what I've seen is there's some percentage of times that a squirrel is going to bark at a deer. And they love barking at bears. If you're hunting bears over bait, be listening for squirrels. They'll bark at a bear for sure. But then, you you know some percentage of the time they're going to be barking another

squirrel so it's you know not relevant information but i mean lots of good woodsmen are listening for squirrels barking and some percentage of the time maybe 20 of the time they're barking at you know a target animal that you're after. Yeah. I would agree, Clay, especially those eastern greys and fox squirrels. Yeah. They very often do that. The rattle calls that we're talking about with the red squirrels are, those are a territorial call that tends to be focused on members of their own species, although they will. I had no idea, man. That explains so much.

So you can blame your lack of success on. Well, no, just, I mean, I'm like, I hear one and I'm always dissatisfied of like, that I could never find out like what it was he was mad about, but I didn't know he's just mad at some other squirrel. Cause if I saw two squirrels sitting there, I wouldn't be like, oh, he's mad at his buddy.

So it really is an indicator that space is occupied. So during, and especially when you'll see it most often is the fall when they've built these new piles of cones. And it is letting their neighbors know that there's somebody there. That's their pile of cones. Where you do see it used is you mentioned, that bears will go in, you know, grizzlies like to go in and rip open these, these middens and sometimes eat the little bit of meat or mushrooms, but they're mostly going for like, you know, some of the larger pine seeds that'll be stored in there.

And that's where you will hear those rattle calls, that territorial call of red squirrels, because now you've got another competitor for seeds. So we tend to see that call used against competitors, mostly other members of your own species. But grizzlies like to go in and rip those open for food. This is, I didn't write this down on our little list, but I'm going to hit someone else's question here. Whose question is it about how to get them out of a dray? I put that in there. Okay, check this out. Let's say you're a squirrel biologist, and you're trying to observe a squirrel.

And you see him running across the forest floor, and you're like, ah, he spooked. And then he runs up and goes into a dray or goes into a hole and you're just a biologist trying to do a friendly squirrel study short of like smoke bombs and whatnot like well how would you be like i'll show you how i'll get him to come out tricks of the trade you're asking me for tricks of the trade here but let's say a friendly squirrel biologist was in that situation. So in those leaf nests, those drays, the basketball-sized ball of leaves, really hard to get them out of those. They typically are going in. When they have young, they're almost always in cavities.

The tree cavities, the old rotten hole. So once they're up in those balls of leaves, it's really difficult to get them out. That's what I found to be true. But in cavities, you know, you mentioned this with the mink, that the animal seemed to know that that animal is, you know, there's an animal outside. And just like you, we've all heard a squirrel walking up bark and kind of how noisy that is. The animal in the den cavity knows that you've got an individual coming up. So the way we, if we were doing a survey as friendly squirrel biologists, we would, you just take a stick and you work it up the side of the tree like an animal that's a potential predator, an animal that's coming up. And if there's a group of squirrels in particular,

they'll come out right away to kind of defend the turf. Is that it? Ooh. Dude, don't be telling anybody that, man. Let's talk more about- Well, I'm cutting that part out. There's so many cavities that don't have squirrels in. That's going to be your sole strategy.

Oh, no, but a lot of times you see them go in there you know you get a bad feeling and then i always think this and maybe you can answer this uh i always think i'm gonna sit here until that son of a comes back out but man that could wear a fella out oh well one out of ten times yeah he comes out in less than 10 minutes it seems like the other nine times you sit there for 30 and he hasn't showed up you're like right, it's more efficient to keep walking. So those, those cavities are a limiting resource for, for squirrels.

And, and so they'll go in and just explore to kind of, you know, likely see what their options are, you know, are they going to upgrade and move into this, you know, this cavity? And, and then females when they're, will often go around and start exploring these more protected cavities where they're going to raise their young. And so you either get the, this is, you know, a quick visit and, you know, we've all gone looking for a house or an apartment.

You walk in like, nope, not for me. And then you turn around and come back out. So sometimes you'll get those kinds of experiences. But when you spook him in and he runs and you're like, it's obvious he knew where that hole was. He ran to it to get away. How long do you think, on average, it would be until he's going to naturally come back out again? It will often be hours. So it's typically it's not, it's not worth it.

So yeah, well, you know, when we're doing our research and you're following animals and you're like, okay, what, you know, I'm trying to find this animal's nest for the night, or you, you, you know, they're kind of in this area. You want to, you know, see if they're still alive and then you spook them by accident. It, it often is hours.

And during the heat of the summer, you know, they'll go in and they'll spend sometimes three or four hours in the middle of the day. Keep cool. Yep. To cool off. And then females with young go back and usually nurse for a couple of hours. So if you just happen to, you know, catch them on the way back to the nest or, you know, you spooked them in and they're close enough to the nest that they ran in.

They're not going to come out for, for several hours. So the stick trick though, like diameter of the stick. And then is it like a tapping or are you more of just like, like making some friction by rubbing? Do you have to get a 10 foot long stick so that you can actually make it work all the way up towards the hole itself? It really just depends on how far up the hole is and it doesn't always work, but you'll have

pretty good success rates with it if there is an animal in there. How is that not broken into the squirrel hunting world? I almost think it doesn't work. So, well, oh, so now you're calling me a liar. Oh, I'm going to try it, man. I spend a couple hours of my day with you, and then right at the end, the truth comes out.

Bam. Still feeling a little salty about the squirrel testicle questions. We will report back. I can guarantee you I'll be messing with this. Oh, yeah. But I want to know, is it more of like a tapping or just like, are you just like a rubbing sound? It's a rubbing. You're trying to imitate an animal coming up.

If you watch, so I would encourage you to go out sometime in the evening and follow animals back to the nest, especially during the colder seasons. This is with fox and greys. Red squirrels are pretty solitary, although in winter sometimes they'll nest together. But, and you'll watch the animal. It'll typically come in from the side. It won't typically come straight up the nest, but it'll come in through the canopy, jump on the main stalk, and then go up to the cavity. You'll see animals inside just kind of peek their head out just a little bit. And we know that they have ultrasonic calls too. And they

haven't been very well studied. So we're talking about vocalizations. We can't hear the ultrasound, but we know that they can hear in that range. And so they're probably, and those ultrasonic calls don't travel very far. So they're good for that really close use, you know, really close distance. So we think that they're actually communicating, you know, friend or foe, you know, something there. Sometimes you'll see that they'll get chased out, they'll run down, pick up some leaves, like some warm bedding and try to use that almost as a gift to get in. Sometimes it works. But the, so you're really trying to imitate something moving up, maybe a predator that they all need. If it's an animal that could – a member who should be part of the group, those ultrasonic calls are probably going to work. So you really want to imitate – it's a raccoon coming up where they're all going to jump out of the nest and you and, um, you know, you'll be able to see if that's, you know, if, if it's occupied or not, but it's more just a, a scratching,

a light scratching. And so I think, yeah, I think that's something most people won't be familiar with, but if you watch animals in the evening, you'll, you'll, you'll see that. And then the other thing is the scent marks that we talked about that can tell you if the area is occupied. If you smell enough of them, you can tell here's one that's really active and that there are probably a higher density of animals that are in that site. So those are a couple tricks of the trade. This is my last question. Then these guys can ask their last questions too. My last question is in your field as an academic, let a study in which you took squirrels and dropped them from various heights to see what happens to them?

Or would that just get shut down as being like, just sort of like the reward wasn't, there wasn't enough to like justify it. Right. And I think that's it. It's the kind of weighing the benefits and the costs, the ethical costs of doing that. So in that case, you'd want to know – I do the study of looking at museum bones and see how many are broken. Does that seem to be an issue? There may be other ways that you get there. You know, while that's, while it's interesting, you know, learning about their mortality, that may not be, you know, in my mind, that wouldn't be enough to sway it to let's drop squirrels from, you know, a bunch of different heights to learn the little bit that we might add to that. Just like the pain and suffering doesn't warrant the. But for instance, we've worked on some squirrel removal projects where you've got an invasive, a non-native species, and that's in a place on Mount Graham.

We have a federally endangered species, a subspecies of red squirrel there, and there's introduced aberde squirrels. And so we've done some removal studies because the real conservation goal is let's make sure we still have the native species here. And in that case, you know, we viewed it and so did our institutional review board and the state with their permits viewed it as a reasonable trade-off, this species that wasn't supposed to be here. And so what we've actually done is the state of Arizona increased the length of the season, bag limits, all those things as a way to kind of control that non-native species. So I think that, you know, in that case, you say, okay, you know, it's a lethal method. We're removing these individuals and they're, you know, they're being, hunters are taking them and helping with conservation. In that case, you know, we thought that the balance, you know, there, the cost versus benefits warranted, you know, doing that kind of lethal removal to try to have an impact on a species that, you know, might otherwise go extinct.

Got it. You've written multiple books and like dozens of of papers on squirrels right i have that right hundreds of papers hundreds of papers that's okay okay so like and i know it's not a sigurd olsen award winning uh kind of i don't want to bring this i've done my homework here do you Do you prioritize like studying squirrels in wild areas or would you do a study in Central Park and be satisfied with the observations? It really depends on what your question is, you know, what you're trying to accomplish. And so, you know, if you wanted to know something like social behaviors and some of the things that we've talked about, being able to observe animals is really critical. And although some of their social structure might

change, some of the basics, you know, are they willing to nest with other individuals, scent marking, those things are things that would be almost impossible to study with radio telemetry or, you know, with observations in a real natural woodland with, you know, lots of different layers to the canopy. And, you know, it just would be very difficult to see. But we can learn a great deal in those kind of open areas. And we can also, by comparing the, you know, an urban area, an urban parkland, and a more wild natural situation, we can also learn something what might change and how, you know, habitat might be influential, how human impacts, you know,

might work. Squirrels are just a, to me, they're a great indicator of change. You know, things that we might not even yet see, squirrels are able to pick up on those things. And because they're common enough, we can see changes in density. We can see changes in behavior. I've mentioned a couple of times things like the size of the home range changes based on the quality of the forest. We go in and we look at a forest and say, yeah, maybe, you know, maybe not enough mature seed producing trees here, but it looks pretty similar structurally to other places. But squirrels, you know, that require enough food energy, enough of those seed-producing trees will let us know that there's a problem. You know, beetle kill, huge problem in many of the forests here in the West. By the time we often even notice beetle kill, we've seen squirrel decreases in squirrel

numbers in those areas that they're already responding to those changes. So in some ways, you know, a lot like the canary in a coal mine that, you know, coal miners would take in, they're kind of an early warning system and they're common enough that they can, that we can learn relatively quickly. And because they don't live that long, they respond pretty quickly. Their numbers respond quickly. You had it in your notes that noise can impact them. Yeah. One of the things that we've all been down, you know, dirt roads with lots of red squirrels on, you know, each side of the road and thought, ah, you know, not many people go down this road, probably very little

impact. We've actually done some studies where we've mapped the noise in. So we've gone out in the forest with a bunch of noise detectors and mapped, you know, had a map of the amount of noise. And then we've just driven a single truck through there and looked at how that noise level changes. And there's enough of a change that squirrels can avoid those roads a little bit. And red squirrels in particular, they won't build middens near roads. And it's not the structure of the forest. It's actually the noise that's there. So they are really sensitive.

And I guess, you know, that makes sense. We're talking about all these vocalizations. And if you're trying to listen for predators all the time, you know, you're kind of a bite-sized morsel for lots of things, then, you know, your ability to detect predators has probably decreased a little bit. So they're kind of a good, they're a good indicator. You know, if you have the occasional vehicle moving down the road, that's not problematic, you know. But if you've got, if you're hitting a point where there's so much traffic now that's going down these areas, squirrels are kind of an early warning system that, okay, something's changed. Traffic levels are getting a little bit too much here.

So, you know, maybe we need to look at how we're using the forest, how we're using those roads. If you Google squirrel expert, your name comes up, right? Like that's, that's how we, that's what I'm going to get at here. That's like, uh, how we tracked you down, right? Like you are North America. I'm regretting that right now. Authority on squirrels. Okay. This, this is going to be an ignorant question, but like how does someone like yourself, the squirrel expert, end up at Arizona and Wyoming? That seems to me like the nation's elk expert being in Nebraska or like the greatest diversity of squirrels in the U.S. is in Arizona. So we've talked about when you think of that kind of basin and range landscape where you've got mountaintops that are forested where you're going to find squirrels. And then you've got ground squirrels, first of all, in the open grasslands, the kind of seas in between these mountains. In many places in the West, you may have different species. And this is the case in Arizona. When you just move 50 miles

between two different mountains, you've got a couple of different species. You know, they've been, most of those mountains in Arizona have been isolated since the Ice Age and, you know, from a squirrel's perspective. So it's just, it's really fascinating for diversity. Wyoming, you know, just the wonderful, wide open, kind of wild and working lands that so many of us value about the West. Same here in Montana. You know, the ability to have species like this that are great indicators of change, the ability to go in and, you know, really help manage these natural areas really is critical when you have, you know, species like this that can be wonderful indicators, be an early warning system. You know, the opportunity to make a difference here, you know, is really wonderful. So I've enjoyed living in the West and having moved to the Hobbs

School of Environment and Natural Resources, you know, just in the last few months for exactly that same opportunity to have an impact. And that's why you guys are as much fun as we have in these kinds of shows. You know, you want to make sure that we have these opportunities in the future. And that's the same for me. So that's what's brought me here. Can't speak for the elk biologist in Nebraska, though. Clay, what do you got? You got any final questions, final thoughts, man?

You know, my only question was about squirrel meat, just real quick. I'm trying to fuel this narrative that we all have that squirrel meat is like rocket fuel and this great meat. Do you have any info on protein and nutrient content of squirrel meat as compared to other meats? No, I don't, Clay. You know, it is very tasty. Yeah. And, you know, I've enjoyed squirrel, but I don't have a comparison. Sorry. Yeah.

Can't help there. You know, most people, a lot of people have kind of a stigma with squirrel meat. You know, I was just thinking, you know, their diet is just so much plants, fruits, and nuts. I mean, they're, that's a really clean animal. I mean, when you skin them and eat them, it's, it's, it's really a lot of just mental stigma, but, uh, well, since you don't have that data, I'm going to go ahead and just keep telling my story that it's like the most healthy meat in the world. That's all Steve. Well, I, Clay, I will say that, you know, I think you're right that squirrels get a bad rap. It's probably back to the tree rat kinds of things where we started today.

You know, there's a bit of a stigma, but they are, they're omnivorous, they're eating a variety of different foods. And so in that sense, you know, they are a good meat. The other thing that I think, you know, from a hunting perspective, it's a great way to get kids involved, you know, early. It's one of those species they see enough of. And, you know, you may not have great luck in the day, but you're out, you know, moving through the woods, appreciating the forest. Lots of sign to teach, you know, kids about. You can see those, you know, the hulled nuts. You can see some of the diggings. You can see these scent marks.

It's just a great way to teach, you know, teach folks how to really enjoy those natural areas. Okay, what do you got, Yanni? We'll wrap it up. I don't have anything else. I'm just going to throw to John and see if there's anything that you wanted to add that you feel like we missed in this big squirrel conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed this time and hopefully everyone's learned a little bit about things. We're filming this on the 20th or we're taping this on the 22nd of January, the day after Squirrel Appreciation Day. So I know it's probably hard for many of you to pull yourself out of bed and get here.

Yeah, what is Squirrel Appreciation Day? Because that's my brother's birthday. So it is every year, January 21st, it was just designated as Squirrel Appreciation Day. So we're kind of in the high holy days of squirrel biology. February 2nd. Yeah. Yep. Groundhog day coming up. So this is, you know, you're lucky that I was willing to drive here on squirrel appreciation day.

Well, no, I would think that you drove here because of squirrel appreciation day. We're here to appreciate squirrels, man. That's right. And so really have appreciated the discussion. But, you know, it's just I really feel that squirrels, we've talked about them, you know, as a resource for us to enjoy, you know, as hunters. You've got folks in urban environments like me growing up, really the only mammal that I could, you know, could see and enjoy, you know, their teachers use them for, you know, for projects and biology early on. And then they're, they're indicator species of, you know, of forest change. So to me, I really appreciate, you know, anyone can appreciate the beauty of an elk moving across, you know, a meadow.

But to have the finer level of appreciation. Takes someone special to appreciate a squirrel. Yeah, it takes that special level of appreciation. How does someone find your books on squirrels? They're all on Amazon. You've got Squirrels of the World is the one that we're most proud of. And we're working on a new edition of that. North American Tree Squirrels of the World is the one that we're most proud of, and we're working on a new edition of that. North American Tree Squirrels. There's a book on the College of Endangerment and Mount Crown Red Squirrels. And most recently, the book I shared with you is International Wildlife Management that looks at things broadly.

But there are a few squirrel mentions in there. I wouldn't mind getting me a signed copy of North American Tree Squirrels. We can make that happen. Dude, I would love it. I just- I haven't read that book, but I need to read that one. You think hunters can learn something from your squirrel books? Most definitely. I think Squirrels of the World is kind of a compendium that shows

everything from chipmunks. So when we talk, we've talked mostly about tree squirrels, but you've got flying squirrels, which are mostly nocturnal. You've got prairie dogs, you know, groundhogs, marmots, chipmunks, all of those things are squirrels as well. That covers all of them. North American tree squirrels, a lot of these topics we've talked about, one of the great things about writing a book like that is those few, those observations where you only have a couple of cases of them, you can weave them into a book more than you get a scientific publication out of it. So North American Tree Squirrels has a bunch of these kinds of things. Talks a lot about the scent marking sites and nesting behavior, social behavior. So it would be a good one to learn a fair amount from.

All right, John, once again. John Ladd. You do the last name. Kaprowski. That's not that hard. John Ladd Kaprowski. Dean and Wyoming Excellence Chair at the Hobb School of Environment and Natural Resources

and a squirrel man. I'm proud of Environment and Natural Resources. And a squirrel man. I'm proud of all of those things. Dr. Squirrel. Thank you very much. Even prouder of Dr. Squirrel. Thank you very much for coming on. Yeah. This is great.

You answered a million questions for us. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks. You know, hardly anyone wants to talk about squirrels. So when you have the chance, you guys are lucky I'm not staying an extra day. Oh, I, I, uh, an extra day. It's great. It answered a lot of lifelong questions. I'll look at them differently now.

And I can tell you that I am going to start trying to find some of those buck rubs, those squirrel rubs, which is fascinating. I can't believe I didn't know about it. So if you find some, send me some pictures, everyone out there, of your buck rubs, squirrel rubs, which is fascinating. I can't believe I didn't know about it. So if you find some, send me some pictures, everyone out there, of your buck rubs. Squirrel rubs. All right. Thanks a lot. Thanks, John. Thank you. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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