The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 282: The "A" Word

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

Steven Rinella talks with Cathy Raven, Carmen Vanbianchi, Ryan Callaghan, Phil Taylor, and Janis Putelis. Topics discussed: MeatEater's Campfire Stories and a sociopathic elk poacher; when you're a scientist hitchhiking to the grocery store and you have a run in with a total creepster; what the hell are mesocarnivores; collecting data points from kill sites; how you catch and collar coyotes; why skunks stink; Carmen's new non-profit, Homerange; eagles and sexual dimorphism; monogamy and harem breeders; how foxes domesticate easily; visits from a fox at 4:15pm; the "A" word: anthropomorphism; piling up dead things; voyuerism and exhibitioinism; how we humans should see ourselves as fitting into nature rather than revering it; rural folk vs. city folk; preserving silence; 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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without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Meat eater podcast. You can't predict anything. Presented by First Light, creating proven, versatile hunting apparel from merino base layers to technical outerwear for every hunt.

First Light, go farther, stay longer. Alright everybody, this is a special kind of like a literary and biology special edition. Joined here by Carmen Van Bianchi, who's here for the third damn time. Yep. What episode numbers were you in before? I want to look. I don't know.

54 and 94. Alright. It's 94. All right. It's been like three years. Then you missed 100 and some episodes. And now you're back, but we need to check in with you. Yeah. Because I feel like we get all these questions all the time. People be like, how can I have a job in the outdoors?

Or how do you be a this or that? So you're our case study. Okay. Well, it's not been any sort of traditional path. But you've arrived now. I think you've arrived now. I don't know if I've arrived. I don't know if I've arrived.

You trap animals for a living, man. Okay. I'll give you that. Yeah. I have a ton of fun. Do you have a year-round position? No. Damn it. Really? We'll get to that. But you have a year-round position? No. Damn it, really?

We'll get to that. But you're still alive. You're obviously feeding yourself and you're clothed and whatnot. Yeah, yeah. Markers of success. Yeah, we make it work. But it's a hodgepodge. Although I am starting a new chapter.

And hopefully this is going to be a full-time the rest of my time deal so have you're if the if you might you might have to lie because i want this to look positive no matter what but okay has have any opportunities has this has coming on the show to explain your professional path opened any doors don't lie i gotta be honest no damn it really because i felt like i really like laid it on thick and that was you know so sweet of you but um i mean i've got i more get my jobs you know just based on my my skills and stuff. Oh, no one cares about that kind of stuff. Listen, we were half of our listenership back probably the last time Carmen was on the show.

Was trying to get those jobs. Yeah. So now, you know, we have twice the listenership. It probably made it worse for Carmen because a bunch of dudes are like, dude, I'm going to try to get that job. I'm going to go into that line of work. That's good. So everything you do, it's like a meritocracy.

It's a meritocracy in your field. Things, yeah. And I've been really fortunate to have some regular field jobs for the last years. I mean, I think since we did the last podcast, I've been working on the same project. And so that's been really nice, just not having to worry every season about what the next thing is going to be and where I'm going to live. So that was really nice. And now that project is just about completely wound up. And three of my colleagues and friends from that project, well, two of them, there's three of us, are starting a nonprofit doing independent wildlife research.

That's the next chapter? That's the next chapter. We'll get to that. Ooh, that's good. That's titillating. Took the word right out of my mouth. Yeah. Also joined by, well, Cal's here.

Hello. Fresh off of babysitting my dog. Giannis is here, fresh off a big, huge run this morning. Mm-hmm. I was just getting up, and I got a picture from a friend of mine. Did you just run into him up on top of that mountain? No, we ran up there together. We ran up there together.

We hiked fast up there together. Oh, you guys speed hiked? Mm-hmm. That's good. We kind of ran down. Phil? Here. Say something for yourself, Phil.

You don't sound very thrilled that I'm in the room, Steve. Phil's here, I guess, for some reason. And then a very special guest too, Kathy Raven, whose brand new book is out yesterday. Yes. I heard you guys sold, so

the book's called Fox and I. It is. And my exposure to it is your publisher, Cindy Spiegel, took, you know, threw me a real, I don't think she would describe it this way, but threw me a real lifeline many years ago. Bought my second book. I published with her imprint a Random House for a long time. They've gone on to now start their own publishing venture. You're, I think, their first book?

I am their first book. So Spiegel and Grau, it's with Spiegel and Grau. Spiegel and Grau used to be an imprint at Random House, but now it's a very exciting new venture. You were their first book. I heard you guys have,

you've sold the book to 11 different countries. I haven't kept track because that's not my thing, but it's been a lot of countries. Russia picked it up and Korea and Italy and Germany and waiting for Japan. So does this, if you can put in a plug. Oh, a lot of good populations in those countries. So you hear that, you people for Japan. So if you can put in a plug. Oh, a lot of good populations in those countries.

So you hear that, you people in Japan. So it'll be widely translated. Yes. I'm really happy that even the English folks decided to translate it. And I don't know if the Australians and New Zealand's have, but I think that's really helpful. Because when I watch English, I guess Cindy told you I don't have a TV or stream or anything like that. But I buy DVDs and mostly the DVDs I buy for entertainment are English ones. And I have to watch them with the, you know, the closed captioning because I don't understand what they're saying.

So I think English people probably don't understand all of my vocabulary and such. So they hired a professional to translate it from American to English. And I'm really happy about that. Bahamut. Do you mean like the print version? Yeah. Really? Just so they do the little spelling tweaks and all that?

That's a good question about the audio. Yeah. The spelling's different. And I think some of the slang's a good question about the audio. Yeah, the spelling's different and I think some of the slang, I might have used the word term, mother country at one point and I remember they wrote and said, so when you say the mother, I was being facetious,

when you said the mother country, were you talking about us? I said yeah and there was something else that. Oh, I got it. So they make some minor adjustments. Yeah, some minor adjustments something else that. Oh, I got it. So, yeah, they make some minor adjustments. Yeah, some minor adjustments. So, the folks over there, hope they didn't cut out all my stuff about fox hunting. But I talked about England and the fox hunters and Downton Abbey and all that. Yeah, they're trying to wash their hands of the whole fox hunting scene over there.

They might have made that look a little nicer. But, yeah, that's good. So, it's been translated to a lot of different languages and different accents. That's great. So we're going to talk about that book in a little bit too. But first we got to talk about another thing. Now, listen, I don't want you to take this the wrong way. Uh-oh.

Yeah. I think everyone should go buy your book. Oh. But we're going to promote, like we have to promote a thing of ours. Sure. So we talked about a week ago. I don't know when the hell. I don't know.

A while ago. A couple weeks. No, it's out right now. The close calls. Listen. Yeah. If you listen to this show on a regular basis, you heard us getting all excited and explaining our audio book. Yeah, I heard somebody say that.

An audio original, like an immersive audio experience. It's not available in print. You have to listen to it. Six hours long. But I just want to give everybody a taste of it. So this is like, this is a story. I heard this story.

I heard a version of the story, I think from Callahan. Did you originally tell me this story? You had some details wrong, Cal. Uh, that's cause I never heard the story. You heard a story about the story. Brody was like,

Hey, did you hear about that? And I'm like, Oh yeah, that's this guy. It's like, well, do you have his phone number?

I was like, Oh no, but he used to work pheasants forever. Yeah. And I know a bunch of folks in that organization. So I had one email tracked down his cell phone number and, and, um,

and, and I still haven't heard the story. Yeah. So you still haven't heard the damn story? No. No. It's a guy named Sam Lowry. He's a game warden in Arizona.

Before we jump into this, do you want to do a quick summary of what this is, what the whole project is in case they missed the last time you brought it up? Are you going to edit that out or leave that in, Phil? I'm going to leave it in. Your little comment there? Yeah. That's called directing. Now Phil's a big-time producer, huh?

Is that what's going on over there? The director. Big-time director over there? I would never take that away from Corinne. Because Corinne's out of town. Now Phil's going to act like big time Mr. Director. All right, Phil. Phil's taking jobs away from the folks who answer listener emails.

Yep. You know what my dad has a story about? When he was a little kid, he had a job as a soda jerk. And when he came back from the war, he beat the guy up who had that job. Wow. To get a job back? That sounds unnecessary. Found out that the guy had the had that job wow that's that's unnecessary found out that the guy had the job the guy didn't want to give it back my dad beat him up do what's your opinion on that do you think your dad had the right to take his job back he felt that you wouldn't

that you would if a veteran was returning got it okay you would very quickly step aside and not make a play to keep the job. What if you were in that new soda jerks position and some guy came in and said, hey, I want my job back. I would have said, here's the apron. Okay. That guy wants a vanilla soda. Point being, Crenn might come back and beat your ass, Phil. But I'll take that little directing comment and I will – um, it's called meat eaters, campfire

stories, close calls. And it is about, it's a, it's a long, it's a, it's a collection of a wide variety of different storytellers from mountaineers, game wardens, hunters, spear fishermen. I don't know who else is in there. My daughter has a cameo. that's right she did a great job um about close calls near-death experiences and close calls in the wild and kind of the way like sort of the physiology that goes into it the psychology that goes into close calls the way close calls tend to live with you and haunt you um And one of them, just to give you a taste of what this is all about,

is the story of a game warden named Sam Lowry, who was operating in Arizona. And we described this before as he has a run-in with a sociopathic, oozy-wielding elk poacher. So take a listen and see what you think. The Mud Puddle Over the years, I've had the occasion to speak with several game wardens on the subject of poaching. Among the most interesting of these conversations was my talk with a warden who studied what he called super poachers. Super poachers, he found, almost always exhibit sociopathic tendencies. They commit their crimes very quietly. They don't show off

photos or brag about the animals they poached on social media, and they don't tend to poach for material gain. The real thrill for them is killing animals illegally and doing so without getting caught. The hunt for one such serial poacher is the focus of this next story from Sam Lowry, a retired game warden. Sam told us that most of the time he was dealing with normal people

who might have made a minor honest mistake along with the occasional poacher who was deliberately flouting the rules for profit. In this case though, he was playing cat and mouse with a dangerous sociopath. My name is Sam Lowry. I've held different positions with the federal and state wildlife agencies, spanning about a 40-year career in wildlife. Back in about 1993 or so, I was a wildlife manager for what they called Unit 1 and 3B in northern Arizona. Closest, larger town would be Show Low, Arizona. Most people think Arizona is filled with saguaro cacti and desert,

and yet in reality there's a beautiful high country element of mixed conifer and aspens, and that was a district that I was responsible for that held a very, very healthy elk population. In fact, you know, probably world-renowned units for pursuing elk in that particular region of the White Mountains. So usually by springtime of every year, we were looking forward to turkey season with spring gobblers gobbling everywhere. And all the big game seasons were over in terms of elk and deer and bighorn sheep and what have you. And things, for the most part, started to slow down. With the exception of one evening, I got a call, and this would have been about in March that one of our local

outfitters who lives quite a ways out into the boonies heard some shots and reported it to Gabe and Fish. We had a 24-hour hotline where they could call and of course that information came back to me that these shots were fired at night, sounded like small caliber and fully automatic, which is very unusual for the area we were in. I knew the caller, so I contacted him the next day and determined the location he was referring to. And I went out there and sure enough, I found two elk laying down. They were both probably within eight hours had been shot. As normally, you take your metal detector and look the carcasses over. You look for any places where the vehicle, the suspect vehicle would have pulled off the road.

You want to look for any shell casings in the road. You want to look for anything that can give you any idea of evidence to link whoever shot these elk to a person. Unfortunately, there no specifics. I responded to that one the next day as well and found two cow elk. One was alive, was still kicking. When a game warden or wildlife officer comes in contact with an animal that's been poached, what we rely on is evidence. You know, a lot of times these violators are out there at night partying too,

and they'll throw beer cans out or pop cans. You know, you look for anything that might be able to lead you to an individual down the road, and there was never anything on this particular guy's MO. The evidence was always very lacking. With this particular case, I was getting pretty bothered. Because if you think you found this would have been the fifth elk, they looked like they were being shot with.22 caliber, the projectiles that I was able to carve out

of the elk. How many did we not find? So my aggravation started to grow. I wanted to catch this guy. So I actually made a decision to call a reporter while I was going to begin performing the necropsies on these elk. Told him we were again out looking at these elk poachings and hoping that an article in the paper would stimulate some folks to maybe step forward and put an end to who's doing this. The one that was still alive I dispatched, which is one of the duties officers have to do once in a while, never pleasant, but you put the animal out of its misery. And the reporter showed up and walked out to the field.

I remember he looked down at me and he looked like he was going to kind of maybe get sick. And not that we're hardened that much, but to him, I imagine it was a it was a pretty spectacular nasty scene the one that was alive had been kicking all night trying to get itself up so it had had made this kind of circle depression of of soil around it and so he's asking me as i'm carving into these things about what i'm looking for and sure enough i was able to locate a,.22 caliber slugs that were mostly fragments at that point. One might wonder, you know, how did a.22 kill an elk? Well, when you hit them with two or three of them, and a couple of them probably in the spinal cord, it can drop them.

So it certainly does. I reached down into more of the digestive area, the cavity, and this again was in March. And not the prettiest thing in the world, but I reached in and grabbed about a jackrabbit-sized fetus from one of the cow elk. And I laid it up on the rib cage and looked him in the eye and said, you know, this isn't three elk. This is six elk. And that's what really kind of turned him white. And by the end of the necropsy, I had three, you know, two foot long fetuses laying on the rib cage of this one elk.

And I thought, you know, if that doesn't stimulate someone to come forward and help me nab the guy doing this or guys doing this. I don't know what can. And the article did come out and all I got was feedback from the public that we'll do everything we can to help you catch this guy. But no information ever led to that from that necropsy. You know, I can't not tell a little piece of a story that comes to mind about this individual poaching all these elk. And the first thing you want to do as a warden is catch the guy or guys. And an old mentor of mine, a warden that had been around for many, many years, we called him the herd bull. And we were referred to

as satellite bulls. And he used to always tell us satellite bulls to walk to the dance and you'll finally get to dance. Don't run to the dance. And so that message to me always said to me to just slow down and eventually the person is going to make a mistake. And I kept going back to my old mentor thinking, someday, somewhere, this guy is going to mess up and I'm going to catch him. So after the newspaper article came out, nothing ever turned up. Things were cold. And in fact, there was a point at which I kind of thought maybe the person moved away, which could be a good thing. At least the more elk were going to get tipped over. My wife and I lived in a little town called Vernon, and it was about 20 miles from a little larger town called Sholo. And every once in a

while, this was prior to us having any children, we'd head on into the big town for Saturday night. On one particular Saturday night, we took off to Bill's Bar, a famous little tavern in Sholo, Arizona. In fact, I have another story where some old codgers back in the 60s backed up to the back door of Bill's Bar and let a mountain lion loose into a crowd of patrons. And you didn't go in there very often without probably seeing some kind of fisticuffs occur. So you had to be a big, broad-shouldered, burly bookeroo working a wide-open-winded wilderness to get in there. So my wife and I did, and we had dinner and went dancing.

And luckily that night there weren't too many cold beers going down the throat, but enough to have a fun night. And we were headed home after closing about 1 o'clock in the throat, but enough to have a fun night. And we were headed home after closing about one o'clock in the morning, about a 20 mile drive to our little cabin. And about five miles from home, I could look up into the vicinity of where all the elk poachings were. And my gosh, there was a spotlight being thrown around. Spotlights are just very, very, uh, distincting and being able to say that's not your headlights. Headlights when vehicles drive, don't sweep across the hillside as if they're searching for something. It's kind of like a

searchlight if you will. And I could see that spotlight being kind of covering different hillsides and, and no, no doubt in my mind, there was some activity going on. So I know my, my little bride wasn't happy, but I decided to, to hurry on home and put the uniform on and go out and get this guy. I certainly wasn't in any condition that would prevent me from doing that. So I made the decision I'm going to go suit up and catch this guy. Too good of an opportunity. Jumped in my game and fish truck and notified the dispatch that I'd be out attempting to make contact with this potential elk poacher or spotlighter and took off and i had about a

five mile drive to get to where i could see the spotlight working and in those days we had what you call a blackout light that would go to the front bumper of your game and fish truck and it would allow you to slowly proceed down a dirt road without any other lights on. It was a military device that we got for all the officers in the state. So I proceeded kind of in the direction of this spotlighter, occasionally stopping and listening. And I, you know, it was difficult to tell. Sometimes I thought I heard rapid fire, kind of automatic weapon, if you will, and sometimes it it was more of a crack, cracking noise, like more of a report of a rifle. But nonetheless, I kept

inching my way to where I thought this guy was working, which is a Forest Service road, home to, you know, 500 elk running in and out of that vicinity that time of year. So I positioned my game and fish truck at the end of that and thought, I'm going to get him. He's going to come out. And now you start to feel the old adrenaline coming. You're going into full-blown enforcement mode, and you're pretty sure you're going to make a stop on what was likely to be the worst poacher I'd ever encountered. And then all of a sudden the lights changed and they went a different way. They were going back the same way, but they then turned west,

which, you know, when you're responsible for these districts, you know that country like the back of your hand. And I knew that he turned on what I assumed was this little dead-end two-track road, and I need to reposition myself to that road, and now I'll have him blocked in. So I did, and when I got to that road, there was a little dip onto this other two-track road. There was a dip with a mud puddle, and it was probably 12 feet across, you know, 10 feet wide, maybe eight inches deep. And if a vehicle goes through that mud puddle, you can tell there's going to be bubbles in it or wash out on the other side where water dripped down from the frame. And so I exited my game and fish truck and I grabbed a flashlight and I just slowly

approached that mud puddle and I got down on my knees and I kind of muffled the light and could see no bubbles. And then I, I kind of walked over to the other side and looked on the, the, where the vehicle would have driven through, and there's no tracks. There's no sign of any washout. I just was bewildered. I thought, this guy didn't go down this road. So I was discouraged, and, you know, this has probably been an hour now that I've been pursuing this guy, thinking I'm going to get him,

and he gave me the slip. So I got my game of fish truck and backed out and went back on the other side of the 267 road all the way out towards Vernon. I was done for the night. And the only thing I can remember is when I got back to the cabin that night, my wife was, let's just say, happy to see me there. Not necessarily excited about the fact I'm running out to catch a bad guy at two in the morning. So after that happened, I was again discouraged. And I thought, when am I going to get another break? I just don't know.

But that night I thought I had him, but he slipped away. So following that evening where I felt I was the closest at catching this guy, things continued on. We ended up getting a couple more calls on elk that were shot. No again, no leads. And I do recall the vicinity, though. It was a very localized area, you know, all right around that 267 road that I found the spotlighter on. And those elk would soon be moving out of their winter range up into the north range,

up into their summer country. So we kind of felt things would be slowing down. But after an elk or two more, it just stopped. And while I thought maybe it had to do with that migration to a higher country, there was still enough elk in that lower range to warrant some shooting if the guy was still around. But I felt like it just stopped and pretty much kind of stamped the case unsolved. We couldn't put this one behind us. And there was a lot of people trying to make this case work. Never did. And I just felt it was onward to the next one, then. That's going to be one for the books. And out of the blue one day, our investigator called me and said, hey, we got a weird call today from a narcotics agent up in Holbrook, which is a town about 40 miles north of Vernon. is being held on some pretty serious drug trafficking charges and attempted homicide charges, most likely going to be moved to Albuquerque, but he's in our holding facility. And during interviews, he mentioned something about shooting a bunch of elk in the Vernon area. And so this narcotics agent asked our investigator if we had any

interest in interviewing him. And of course, I jumped at the opportunity. I thought to myself, if this is the guy, I can finally maybe get some closure to this. And it's not going to be a citation for killing 15 elk out of season. This guy's going away probably to a much bigger house. So, yeah, I want to go visit. I want to go talk to him. And the narcotics agent relayed to our investigator that he's a pretty strange duck. And you might want to bring him a Baby Ruth candy bar because he likes candy bars. And if you bring him that, he might be willing to talk to you.

So we did. I stopped the store, got a Baby Ruth candy bar, and I wore civilian clothes so I didn't intimidate him at all with the uniform and drove to Holbrook and checked in with the officers there and let them know what I was there for to interview the suspect. His name was Oki. And other than that, I didn't have any more details other than the fact that he was being held on pretty serious charges. He was running a little meth lab.

And some involvement in a murder case in Albuquerque, something to do with a past girlfriend or something of that nature. But he was being held on both narcotics and homicide charges. So they led me down this, you know, kind of sterile hallway and got me into an interrogation room where I sat. And then five minutes or so passed and the door opens up and here's this straggly looking character in a orange jumpsuit. He had what we call a transport belt around his waist with his handcuffs on attached to that transport belt so you can't swing your arms at all.

He's confined. Kind of looked at me like, you know, absolute careless. He didn't have any regard for, you know, what I was there for, obviously. But the officer that led him into the room explained that, you know, I was with Game and Fish and I just wanted to talk to him about some of the unsolved elk poachings we had in the White Mountains. And he reluctantly sat down, and he kind of just stared at me like he was looking through the back of my skull. And he had these kind of dark, steely-looking eyes, which kind of rang the old sociopath in my mind, that this guy doesn't really care much about me or what he's about to tell me. So I introduced myself, Oki. I'm Sam Lowry. I'm with the Arizona

Game and Fish. And I know you're in here for things more serious that I want to talk to you about, but I really wanted to visit with you a little bit about something he's told the officers about your elk poaching in Vernon. And he kind of let out a little sigh and sat back in his chair almost to almost relax a little more. He looked right at me, just, again, these cold shark-like eyes. And yeah, that was me. I said, what do you mean that was you? I mean, what?

I was the one. I've shot probably 30 elk up there and you guys, you guys can never catch me. I said, what do you mean that was you? I mean, what? I was the one. I shot probably 30 elk up there. And you guys, you guys could never catch me. And I kind of leaned in and wanted to find out why. And so what was the cause? And he stopped me and looked and said, I'll tell you one thing, though. You got a warden out there with angel wings. And I kind of paused myself, and I thought, well, what do you mean there, Oki? What do you mean

by that? And he said, well, one night, he said, one of your guys was after me. He darn near had me. And he said, I played cat and mouse for a little while. And he came down this two-track road where there was a big mud puddle. And he said, I was parked probably 50 yards from that behind a big juniper tree. That dumb bastard got out of his truck and walked up to the mud puddle with his flashlight like he was some kind of hero. And I had made the decision decision if he comes through that mud puddle i'm gonna spray him i had to pause i i mean he probably saw my face i said spray him what you know what what what do you mean he said i have an uzi that's what i was shooting those elk with and whether he came across on foot or in vehicle, that was going to be his last night.

But strangely enough, that guy got in his truck and turned away. Maybe he knew I was down there. And I have chills on my neck telling you guys that story. I can remember just walking out of that room that day thinking, holy mackerel, that was me, whatever reasons. And I can't explain it to you why it didn't look like he had driven through that mud puddle. But he had. And he was 50 feet or 50 yards from me, ready to take me out.

So we had talked a little more. You know, I was pretty much shot, no pun intended. I thought, you know what, I just want to go home and hug my wife. But I tried to end the interview. There was no doubt in my mind it was him. He was on meth. He told me he was cooking meth up in a little cabin, not far from where he was doing all the shooting. He was by himself.

And he just liked to kill stuff. As he told me, I like to kill shit. And no remorse, no, no, nothing. And I never did recover the Uzi to match those bullets with, but I'll never forget them, you know, walking him back down the hallway and he kind of looked up over his shoulder and looked back at me one more time, not knowing that I was that angel. I was that game warden that had wings that night,

and I never let him know that anyway. But he walked away, and that was never to be seen again. Old Oakey. Oh, he ate the candy bar too. Okay, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. That's just one little sampling. One little sampling off of the broader project. Again, like I said, it's five, six hours long.

Sixteen stories. There's one of them. They're all good. So go out and get that. It's available now. That's for your listening. Kathy Raven's book's for your reading. That's for your listening. Yeah. Well, it's available for pre-order right now. That's for your listening. Kathy Raven's books for your reading. That's for your listening.

Yeah. Well, it's available for pre-order right now. Tomorrow, it's available to buy. Is that how it works? Yeah. Yeah. So pre-order now, and it'll just magically show up. Mm-hmm.

As a download. As a download. We're going to continue. So when you hear that story and you go listen to the broader story let us know about your crazy stories because when you send an email and just send it in it says like a crazy ass story as a subject line and we might hunt you down because we like that kind of story like you just heard yeah we liked working on this project that was fun oh yeah it's tracking people down was great yeah makes you think

about things all the time though because a lot of these stories involve like very micro like incidents and like just small things that happen that you know make the whole day have a much different outcome and so when i know when i'm out in the woods and just taking a step on a rock that's might be over a precipice or something it makes me think twice after hearing some of these stories yeah it was yanni's in the yanni's in the project because people that listen to this show are familiar with maybe familiar with a couple episodes we had called the meat tree part one and part two we uh revisit that story and some aftermath issues from that story and if that day hadn't happened if that minute minute hadn't happened where we had a a very close encounter with a with a brown bear that yanni smacked in the face with a set of trekking poles um this book this audio project wouldn't exist

like that set me down the path of uh like being haunted by that day set me down the path of kind of exploring what close calls do to do to you and how they live in your mind what do you think phil that was great we good to move on as as corinne stand in i'd say yes where do uh people uh oh yeah order this audio project phil's not cut out for this job after all so to get it you got to go to audible you can go to Amazon. You can go to our publisher, Penguin Random House's website to pre-order or just order, whatever. Meat Eater Campfire Stories Close Calls. Comes out July 20.

But secure it now. Again, you can find it on Audible. You can find it on Amazon. You can find it at Penguin Random House website and get it. Meat Eater Campfire Stories, close calls, fully available, July 20, available for pre-order at any point. All right, Carmen, do you have any close calls you need to make us aware of for our next project no i have not had any what i would consider close calls but i do sometimes think back on ways that i've done things in the field and and know now that that was pretty stupid and not not very safety minded so you mean uh in dealing with animals or in dealing

with just conditions yeah in dealing with animals but yeah mostly dealing with just conditions and landscape. Yeah, and dealing with animals. But yeah, mostly dealing with just getting around on the landscape. Like I think about the first job I had where we were using four wheelers a lot. It was in Alberta, Canada and in the Alberta Rockies. So super rugged terrain and people just kind of blast all over the place on ATVs there and so it kind of feels like you can go anywhere but um I mean I was you know flipping ATVs and we were doing some really not smart stuff just just stretching what an ATV should be doing with more people on it than should be on it that sort sort of thing. Um, snowmobiling too. I learned to snowmobile in the Northern Maine

woods in winter. So I was working with two guys who'd been doing it their whole lives and basically learning on the fly, you know, blasting around at 60 miles an hour and again, wrecking and flipping snowmobiles and all that. So the machinery is more expensive, more dangerous than the animals.

Oh, I would say so. Yeah. Traveling. Yeah, I guess that, I could picture that being true. Yeah, my other not smart traveling thing was hitchhiking between our field camp and town. I look back on that.

I was like, I think I was 19 or 20 doing that. Because you're and in town i look back on that i was like i think i was 19 or 20 doing because you're going in town to whoop it up or get groceries but yeah yeah going into town on your days off and we just hitchhike and um i remember this one guy pulled over it was me and and and a girl i was working with and he just one of those instant creepy vibes. Oh, but you're out, you got your thumb out kind of hitchhiking. Thumb out, standing on the side of the road. Okay.

Yeah. And he's probably not thinking, oh, here's a couple of biologists going to town to get some groceries. No, older, older fellow. He's like, here's some people that want to party. Oh, I've never told my parents this. I don't know if they'll listen, but yep. Stopped, pulled over i started to get into the front seat and there were various things you'd get in a truck stop bathroom like

different colored condoms and lubes just strewn on the floor and in the back seat as my friend was getting in soiled or new oh i hope new i don't remember that still in the backseat as my friend was getting in. Soiled or new? Oh, I hope new. I don't remember that clearly. Still in the package. Still in the package. And then as she was getting in, she said, she told me, there's a gun on the floor here and there's a pistol in this car on the floor. And just that combined with his vibe.

Guy was ready to go. Ready for anything. Yes, ready for opportunity. He's like, this day could go in any number of directions. Yeah, so we... You know, it's Tuesday. Go on. Anyway, I refused to get in and he tried to convince us, but

we waited for the next car. I want to role play for a minute. Hold on, now would be a good time to let Carmen explain what she does. I want a roleplay real quick. Before we get too far. Okay.

Do you want to use the root words roleplay following the description of the interview? No. I'm Carmen. I'm Carmen. And she's the trucker.

So yes. Okay, ready? I'm not going to get in. I've changed my mind. He says... Just get in. Oh've changed my mind. He says Just get in. Oh, okay. So not being suave. No, no, no, no. He was strange and creepy.

Yeah, that's all. It's just very quick role play, Cal. Thank you. I appreciate it. Keeping it tight. Thank you. Yeah, it wasn't what you, I wasn't going to do what you worried was going to happen. Thank you. Okay, fill people in now.

Moving on. Okay. So, a million years ago when you came on the show. Yeah. You were getting engaged, you were not getting engaged, you were engaging in a long project, I think way back then. Let's see, the second time I was on, I was starting on what is the Washington Predator Prey Project. Yeah. Okay.

Break that down. Okay. So, like I said, that project's winding up, but it was a project between, a cooperation between the University of Washington and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Basically, in a nutshell, looking at how recolonizing wolves could be affecting a number of other species. Deer, elk, of course, and then cougars as well. And then the component that I mostly worked on was mesocarnivores. So bobcats and coyotes, um, with sort of the. Explain the word mesocarnivores.

Medium sized. Okay. Medium sized. What's the word for like, uh, what, what, what's a little teeny one called? Oh. What would you call a weasel? One of the little guys.

I don't know. Yeah. But meso is mid-sized. A small carnivore. A small carnivore. A small carnivore. Okay. Yeah. Um, all right, go on. Okay. But meso is midsize. A small carnivore. A small carnivore. Small carnivore. Okay. Yeah.

All right. Go on. Okay. So bobcats and coyotes. So basically just looking at the premise that with the return of wolves and with any larger predators that are taking down larger prey, they could be creating, this is kind of the theory behind the study, they could be creating either food opportunities for mesocarnivores because they can scavenge the deer carcasses, elk carcasses, etc. And so that could be a benefit to the mesocarnivores. But it could also be what they call a fatal attraction because these mesocarnivores could be attracted to these spots and then they themselves get killed by

the bigger predator. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Is that the true definition of fatal attraction? Is that where that comes from? If it's a movie, dude. It might just be applied to this ecological theory.

What was that movie about? That was Glenn Close. Oh, that's why phil's here come on phil lay it down uh i don't know what was the sharon stone one that's basic instinct oh thank you yeah there you go yeah glenn close gets very jealous and uh you know goes off the deep end got it that. That's the quick summary. It's not about, it's not like a David Attenborough narrating the thing about miso carnivores. You know what's interesting

about the creating more food resources? We have a friend who likes to run his hounds. And he runs mountain lions mostly, but he also runs bobcats and he was telling me that in december when the season starts you don't cut a lot of cat tracks he says because there's too many there's still all the deer and elk carcasses from hunting season

on the ground interesting yeah he says you kind of his theory is you kind of wait and as those deer and elk carcasses from late november get mopped up then you start seeing cats spreading out more and they're not just stuck in one place yeah feeding on some you know carcass and gut pile yeah no i mean that makes sense doing going to on on various other projects, wolf clusters is what we call them. It's basically wolves that have had GPS collars on. They're taking a fix every two to four hours. And so you can then download those GPS points onto your computer, algorithm that pulls out spots where gps points have been sort of clumping up within a certain you know radius of you know something like 200 meters within a certain time frame so basically the wolves were hanging out in this little spot for a while and so you can that's done you guys

have figured out how to do that automatically yeah because it's got to be every 15 minutes it's got to be like an enormous amount of oh no it's every two two to four hours oh i'm sorry okay i mean what the hell am i talking about did i where'd 15 minutes come from i just made that up i think so okay every two to four hours yeah so every two to four hours he like makes it drops a pin basically yeah i see yeah and you can set that that fix rate is what that's called too i mean you could do you can some projects just depending on what question you're trying to answer you could have a really really fine scaled movement path of an animal because it could be getting a fix rate every 15 or 30 minutes or whatever but for kill sites they've they've done the stats and every two hours is is what you want really and so does your um does your program or whatever the hell

just start it just starts spitting out waypoints where there's a cluster of activity yep yeah so in the morning um you just download the latest batch of data you run it's just a computer algorithm it pulls out those um those clusters and then you you put them on a map and you see oh okay they spent time there they spent time there they spent time there and so there's my day i'm gonna go out there and investigate these and it's it this is um yeah they you know use this for cougars and and it's a common so how many days a week do you get to go do that well when i've been working on projects where that's been my full-time job for some projects is going to kill sites. Just every day.

It's pretty lucky. That's one of my favorite things. I would trade you jobs in a second, man. I'm not going to lie. Do you bring a lot of that junk home or are you probably not supposed to? I got a lot of junk in my house. I've definitely reined it in a bit, but I've always been like that.

I've always been picking up dead shit. Yeah, because all that walking around, you're probably finding shed antlers and dead heads. Oh, yeah. Yeah, lots of cool stuff. So when you go to all these kill sites, what are you looking for? What are the data points you're picking up there?

Well, again, that sort of just depends on the question, but usually if you're all these kill sites, what are you looking for? What are the data points you're picking up there? Well, again, that sort of just depends on the question. But usually, if you're going to kill sites, one of the main things you're trying to figure out is, okay, what happened here? Well, let me back up because one thing is for wolves, I know, I don't remember what the rate is with cougars. But with wolves, it's about 20% of the clusters that you go to have a kill at them. So you might go, you know, to lots of clusters and they were just taking a nap. I mean, they sleep a ton. So you end up going to a lot of bedding spots. And so you might have just spent, you know, half your day getting there and it's a bedding spot.

I got you. But you start to kind of put together a picture, especially if you go in order. You're like, okay, this cluster, it's winter and it's up on a sunny, you know, south-facing slope up on the ridgeline. I bet that's going to be a bedding area. Sure enough, you go there and it's a bedding area, usually. Then you see a cluster and it's down in some gnarly, thick-looking, you know, canyon. A hellhole. And you're like, ooh, that one, I'm excited about that one. Oh, really? You get a good feeling about it.

Oh, yeah. Because a lot of times I think what happens is the deer or elk are getting chased and where they get hung up is down in these bottoms. So, for example, I was at a really cool kill site this winter. It was in a really deep canyon, just, you know, creek down in the bottom. And I could reconstruct what happened just from tracks in the snow, another sign. And there had been a moose that was feeding on a willow and kind of bedding and whatever. And then you could see where the wolves came down this really

steep mountainside. And there was a short sort of chase where all tracks came together. You could see where the moose had sort of leapt and been up to his belly in the snow heading down and it hits towards the bottom and you know how when you're snowshoeing in the winter and all of a sudden you step too close to a log and you're sunk into your hips that's what happened to the moose it so there was a blanket of snow from the mountainside to or you know from the ground to this big huge log and it looked like the moose had just stepped in the wrong spot gotten mired and that's when the when the wolves overtook it and so anyway bloodthirsty killers you think the moose knew at that point that the jig was up like lost a wheel it probably. That's not good. Lost a wheel. Yeah. Do you find, do you find, do you find where they ever like surplus killing events?

Do you ever find that in your searches? I've, no, I've never seen that. It's not like when, like when a mountain lion gets into like a sheep pasture and just gets a little carried away. No, no, I've never seen that. You don't see that in the wild? No, no. At the bedding sites, don't you also collect, you're collecting fecal matter, right? Yeah, no. I've never seen that. You don't see that in a while? No, no. At the bedding sites, don't you also collect, you're collecting fecal matter, right? Yeah, yeah.

So you can see what they've been eating and the percentage of alphas and the percentage. Right. We collect on, yeah. I mean, you can get so much information from collecting SCAD. You can do diet. You can do genetics. That's a lot of what we've been doing. And the status, the percentage of low status and high status. You can see who's eating the meat and who's eating the fur. Well, and a cool thing about scat is you can see from the type of scat. So if I'm arriving at a

place where I think, you can't, it's not always easy, especially at wolf clusters, to find the kill, especially in the summertime. In the summertime. Because the clusters is too big? Because they kind of go all over the place. They'll go and eat for a while and then they'll go, sometimes a ways off in bed. What a ways i don't know maybe i mean 200 meters and if you're in a thick i got you broken up terrain it can be tough and so knowing that there's probably some amount

of remains of an animal within a 400 yard wide circle right When you're in a hell hole. It's just a lot of scrounging. Yeah, it's a lot of scrounging around. That's a lot of scrounging and crawling and just looking for any sort of sign. But when I arrive at one of those clusters and I see, I don't know what, I call it a carcass, early carcass scat. So when they eat the organs first and the breeder male and female usually get to eat the organs because they're high in nutrition. And then when they take a shit, it's really nasty. Is that right? It's like black and runny. Because it's not bound together by hair.

Right. It's black and runny. And so, you know, okay, there's a decent chance that that's the breeder male or female, and that's, they just ate the organs. So it's an early carcass scat, so we're getting close. And so then I often will get excited, like, okay, there's a freaking carcass here somewhere, and we just gotta find

it. Like it runs right through them. It goes, well, I mean, they're usually there for a while. I don't know how long it takes. Long enough to, yeah. Human babies have similar poops the first week of their lives. Remember that, Steve? Yeah, it's even got a special name. Yeah, I know. It's not even called poop. Meconium. Meconium. Long enough to, yeah. Human babies have similar poops the first week of their lives. Remember that, Steve? Yeah, it's even got a special name. Yeah, I know. It's not even called poop.

Meconium. Meconium. Meconium, oh yeah. My pet theory about the organ consumption. Yeah. My pet theory is this, is that I understand

that there's like a nutritional load, right? But I also like the idea, and I think I maybe invented this, you can eat it fast. that there's like a nutritional load, right? But I also like the idea, and I think I maybe invented this. You can eat it fast and you don't know when you're going to lose it because someone else is going to show up

and beat your ass. Right? I think that's a good hypothesis. So you're like, you can just inhale the liver. That's correct. And then all of a sudden, whoever else shows up,

here's a grizzly. They don't get meat drunk from eating that. I haven't read that. And you might be the first one. That's a. And then all of a sudden, whoever else shows up, here's a grizzly. They don't get meat drunk from eating that. I haven't read that. And you might be the first one. That's a good hypothesis. You should write that up and send it to them. Oh, you watch bears? There's very few animals that are comfortable on a carcass.

The amount of energy they're expending whipping their head around, investigating every sound, every smell. It's not like, okay, investigating every sound and every smell. Yeah. Like it's not like. Yeah, that's right. Okay, time to relax and eat. Carmen, do you ever show up on the, when you're on the clusters, how often do you show up and bump them out of there? Well, we try really, really hard not to do that. We don't want to be affecting their behavior, bumping them off a kill and and if especially if you're doing a kill rate study you need to be well you always need to be really careful about that but you wouldn't want to accidentally affect their kill rate by following them so closely as they go around the woods that you're bumping them

gotcha carcass yeah so what like when you show up usually how many hours have passed since they've moved on days okay yeah for and and there's, for different species and states, I would imagine there's different rules on how quickly you can go in. I got you. So it would never be that you'd wake up, you would never wake up and see that there was a cluster from midnight and then run out there?

No. I see. No. Okay. And by design, you don't do that? Right, by design. It's always, I mean, if we didn't have to worry about affecting their behavior, it'd be really nice because very quickly, you know, with scavengers and that sort of thing, the longer it's been since the kill event, the harder it gets to really accurately assess what's going on because um it kill side analysis is kind of one of those things that um it's easy until you start learning more and then you realize it's easy except for when it's not because uh you

don't really ever know if they are the ones that killed it no that's not true sometimes you're you're really really confident that they killed it your animal avengers killed it but there's a lot of scavenging that goes on out there. And so there's a lot of just weird stuff that can happen to it, to any animal, you know, to die. And so it can always be a scavenging event.

When you, to get to the miso predators, um, are they often there? Hmm. Trying to think if I've ever come up on a kill and seen i've i've heard a cougar once um i've seen bears coming up i don't i don't think i've ever come up on a kill i mean we're usually kind of you know we're on a snowmobile or we're crashing through the woods stuff like that

we're not we're not trying to sneak in especially when it's summertime and bears are out. So relate the work, though, to how do you then roll in the impacts on coyotes and bobcats? Okay, so it's not just – so going to kill sites, for that question, putting up cameras was one of the main goals. So we get to a kill and put up a trail camera and leave it there for at least a month, trying to capture different interactions between apex or large carnivores and mesocarnivores. You set it on video? No. It takes too much battery and memory to do that. Do you do like the clusters?

Three shot clusters? Yep, three shot clusters. So we usually have thousands of photos and that's always like a little just opening up a treasure box. Do you have software

that sorts through all that? The project is going to use software, but I mean, whenever I collect a camera, I certainly go through it because I'm excited to see what's on it. So.

Yeah. You get in there and look at all those images. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so the other, the other part of that is that we're trapping and collaring, we were trapping and collaring coyotes and bobcats so that we could, and then the wolves and cougars are also collared in the area.

And then, um, they can use those different movement patterns to see how they might be avoiding each other on the landscape or not, that sort of thing. And then also collecting scats for genetic analysis for some different population demographics and that sort of thing. And you were involved in putting the collars on them? Yeah. Yep. So I was in charge of – so my job on the project, I don't work for the state. I don't work – well, I work for UW. There's some wonderful graduate students that are heading each section of the various research projects that are under the Washington Predator Prey umbrella. And you can look those up online.

There's a website. But I was hired by UW to run the field component of the Mesa Carnivore Project. So every season, our main goal was in the winter, trapping bobcats, and in the summer, trapping coyotes. And how are you catching the bobcats? With cage traps. Okay.

Yeah. Which doesn't fly with coyotes, right? No. Unless they are a very desperate coyote. I think the project, we've got two study areas and not in my study area, but the other one, we were working with some trappers. So if they caught a bobcat that they didn't want to take, they could us we'd go over there put a collar on it got you well they contacted us once with a coyote that had gone to a into a bobcat gotten one of their cage traps super hungry and are you guys

when you're rigging up those cage traps so you do are you guys using a like an audio element like you put like a call like a bird bird squawk mechanism or anything like that near it i have used those before um and we didn't use those on this project though we were we were using visual little teddy bears and not little teddy bears but shiny stuff basically cat toys i mean seriously i've had cameras on on traps and i i like, so I set my trap, I cover it with branches, get it all tucked in real nice. And then just outside the door, I'll hang just a little ball of shiny, you know, monofilament. No, no, sorry. What's that called? Bird tape.

Really shiny bird tape. Tinsel type stuff. Yeah, that sort of thing. Basically hanging that from monofilament so it can kind of blow in the breeze and hopefully catch the moonlight or whatever. And I have pictures and videos of cats playing with that like a damn house cat before going into the trap. And what do you bait in the trap with?

Odor or do you use any meat? All kinds of stuff. We use lots of just lures and baits that you can get from f and t for trappers or whatever it's a regular trap and lure but you guys haven't done that because you see a lot of guys that use those cage traps will take little stuffed animals but get really high quality eyes pull the pull the bad eyes off and put good eyes on it and place that in there yeah no i've seen that um and well, in the back of the trap, I usually then hang some feathers to kind of catch the wind too.

So I use a visual in the trap as well. And then whatever smelly stuff, you know, and then. What are you doing to mitigate your own scent? With cats, nothing. Yeah. Yeah. They're not, I mean, you can just look at their

skull and see they're not, they're not built for super, super smelling like a coyote is. That's very judgmental. Yeah, that is. But you know what? They got squashed faces. You're the type who reads book title and knows all about it. It's just physiology.

And when you're trapping cats, are you setting on sign? Is it pretty important to set on sign? Yeah, because where we're trapping, it's not like there's a bobcat around every corner and so you can best case scenario you see fresh sign you set a trap and they're still in the area for the next couple days and happen you know to go by your trap and detect it and go in but sometimes you you see sign you set and they're not back for two weeks they're cycling over in some other area of their home range. We find that the bobcats have really big home ranges and made some crazy movements. It's pretty incredible.

But yeah, so setting on sign is really important. So basically, you just get to go out tracking. And when you see something good, set a trap. Yeah. You get to log a lot of hours out see something good, set a trap. Yeah. You get to log a lot of hours out there wandering around. That's fun. Are you by yourself mostly? Depends on the project.

There's some, some work that I've done where I'm mostly alone. And others where I'm not doing this. We were, we worked in teams. Yeah. And then when you run into people, are people kind of like curious what you're doing

do you bother to explain it to them do you try to act like you're doing something else no i mean i'm yeah no i'm always happy to talk to the public if they come up and have questions or or whatever and people do and um sometimes they share their stories and sometimes they're really out there but a lot of yeah no i definitely talk to whoever and the study you've been working on is there uh do you feel that there was a um meaningful stuff came out of it now that it's winding down like do you feel that like actionable meaningful uh i'm trying to use the word data results no i was trying to get data yeah data in my sentence. Results. No, I was trying to get data. Yeah, data's great. Yeah, data.

Data. I didn't finish the sentence. I just said data. You know what I'm talking about, though. Yeah. No, I know what you mean. Did you get any good data? I think that this, the group of grad students that are, and WDFW employees that are working on this study are, I'm really excited to see.

They're still in the analysis phase and the results are not mine to share. But just knowing these people, they're going to do a great job thinking about the data that they're getting and being really thoughtful and thorough and answering important questions. And we've got a ton of data from this project

so are you doing that sciencey thing right now where um you're not saying what happened because you guys got to go through your little process and everything i really don't know i mean it's i it's you can't really look at first of all i haven't been involved heavily in in all the other facets of the project for the meso carniv, I mean, we've just been out there busting it and collecting and collecting data. And so without analyzing it or at least visualizing that data with graphs and stuff, it's hard to say what kind of trends you might be pulling out. Yeah, you got to wait for the paper to come out.

Yep. I think Steve was trying to ask you, are you doing one of those government science-y things where they give you the conclusion first and then they hire you to get the data that fits? Yeah, I've done all that. Oh, yeah. That's what you meant, right? Show us that wolves are made of rainbows.

That's pretty much whatever they want. That's what they hire you to do. Yeah, no. You ever felt that kind of pressure? No, absolutely not i i've um the integrity of the science that i've worked on i i think has always been really yeah it's just good scientists just out there trying to answer questions that they're interested in do you feel that um but do you feel that people are like, they want to demonstrate that wolves will bring us these beautiful trophic cascades? Like they want to show that.

I mean. We recently talked about a paper someone put out that was, my goodness, here's one thing about wolves is they really reduce car deer vehicle collisions right right and in reading the paper you're like you said man here's an interesting thing to do i should show that it reduces car vehicle collisions because that'd be helpful yeah no it really smelled like that yeah yeah. I totally get what you're saying and getting it. And I've, you know, seen that in papers and stuff, but my, my experience has this fellow, Jonah Keim, who looked at the advantages predators get by traveling roads, you know, clean trails, things like that. This is in Canada, so there's all sorts of like oil pipeline roads and cut line roads and things like that. This is in Canada. So there's all sorts of like, uh, oil pipeline roads and, and cut line roads and things like that. And so he put together the study where he looked at just the efficiency of travel in these areas and how that impacts the, um, prey species. And it was

all very good stuff, but you kind of had this feeling that he was coming down to. So the solution is not killing wolves. It's making the country harder to travel. So like putting up impediments on roads and trails that we make for, to make life easier for us. Yeah.

Um, and I was like, eh, well, yeah. But then at the end, he's like, however, this is not, uh, like this golden solution to a complex problem. And he laid out the complexity of the issue and then came down to saying like, and if you're in a scenario where your prey species are so reduced that the predator species population, uh, has a distinct advantage. This is not the only thing that you can do the, like there will have to be some sort of lethal removal on your predator population. So in the end, it didn't feel like you were reading cancer research sponsored by the

tobacco company. Exactly. Yeah. So that's a shout out for lead author jonah time i hope i'm saying your name right that was a good paper 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

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uh, two, two questions for you. Two more questions for you. Um, talk about catching the coyotes, like how you catch them to put a collar on them. And then I,

then I'm, then I need to hear what you're doing next. Now that you're done with doing this. Um, catching coyotes. That's probably my favorite kind of trapping just because of the challenge. It's also in a lot of ways my least favorite just because of, well, it just kind of makes you feel bad on a lot of days. It's like you can't wait to get out there and check your traps.

But, man, i don't know things can foothold trapping is just it's kind of um it's a little harsh it's a little harsh and so we're we um our foothold trapping for coyotes it's really the only practical way to catch canids um because they are so smart and they're so wary and um so it was, in that regard, really fascinating because you're just having to work really hard to get to know the animals that are in the area that you're trying to trap and you never really figure it out.

They're always, you know, just throwing something new at you. And so it's really interesting in that way just i mean from exactly how you set your trap to where you put your trap to what area of the mountain that you're you're trapping on you got to there's just so many different variables that you're trying to trying to figure out and it's so frustrating what kind of traps you guys use uh victors number three coil. And then we use, um, They got like the laminated jaws or like a soft. They've got a rubber offset jaw.

Yeah. So, I mean, I could, I could, you know, I often got my hand stuck in it for whatever reason, just not being careful and stuff. And it didn't, you know, it doesn't feel good. That's for sure. But it's not like it's breaking skin or. And then you, do you anchor it with like an earth anchor or do you use a stake? We, so we'd use, well, we used lots of things. Stakes, but in our area, it's so rocky. The soil is so bad.

It's really hard. You see these YouTube videos of guys catching coyotes and they're out in, you know, cornfields where every single rock has been picked and the ground is so soft and loamy and they're just like punk punk punk you know punching a trap in two minutes we're out there in you know 95 degree weather because we're having to trap in the summer because you can't do it in the winter where we are so you're trapping in the summer which is a whole another set of um difficulty because because we are trapping for research and so our our ethical

standard for how we're treating these animals is different right we've got this professional you got to turn it out in healthy condition right and so we're trying to do we're trying to especially on this project i wanted to really raise the bar on our both of our well the capture element so so making it as uh humane as we could which is difficult with foothold trapping and then also the handling part so when you actually come up to an animal in the trap and then drug it and do the handling those can be pretty rodeo-ish. And there's been a lot of kind of just, I don't know, cowboyish culture around those handlings traditionally. Not, I mean, that's not across the board by any means. But I think that we're getting better at

being really thoughtful about not only just getting our animal to live through that experience, but to have it be as least stressful and painful for them as possible. So we've been working really hard to raise the bar there. But back to the different types of anchors. So we tried stakes, way too rocky, used earth anchors, but the main thing we used is a grapple hook on a long chain. Which you bury down under the trap? Yeah, usually. Or sometimes just kind of bury it in the bushes under leaves and stuff behind it.

But basically, as you're selecting your exact trap site, there's a lot of things you've got to think about. Aside from just, is this a good spot to catch coyote? Is it a likely spot? You've got to think about, is there a drop-off somewhere? Because they could then drag the grapple, and the grapple could get hung up, and then they're off the cliff dangling from the trap. So you're thinking about that. You're thinking about shade, because it's that. You're thinking about shade because it's summertime. You're thinking about human traffic.

Is this road too busy? That sort of thing. So there's a lot of safety variables that have to come together. And so most of the time, what ends up being the preferred staking method is to use a grapple because then they can get off the road, get hung up in some shade be a little bit away from from the road if people come by whatever yeah then you don't have some motorist freaking out or hurting the thing or calling the cops or whatever the hell exactly and we're out there super early checking traps so hopefully before people are there but but yeah and then you work them up like you tranquilize them put a collar on them. Yeah. Take like biometric data off them. Yeah.

I just use the word data. You hear that? Take biometric data off them. So we call it body measurements, but. Oh. Yeah. I went overboard. You went overboard, but that's good.

That's good. Yeah. So you come up on the trap and with the grapple, it's always even more exciting because you sometimes you get to the trap and you see, oh, it's just not there. It doesn't look quite like I left it. And so then you're looking around in the bushes and it can actually be hard to spot the animal because they've usually just, they're usually just frozen with fright. And so you're, and our traps have little transmitters on them so if we have to we can oh okay use um radio telemetry to find it but usually if you just sort of follow the sign you can find the animal pretty quickly and they're tangled up and they're um having the worst day of their life

probably they are yeah yeah yeah and so we we work again really hard just even with our body language and how we carry ourselves um to be as non-threatening as we can be but also confident you don't want to it sounds kind of out there but your body language matters in how they're going to perceive you. And so you want to be confident, but calm, you know, no big movements, certainly no talking, that sort of thing. Um, so keeping them as calm as possible and you just, um, we get, um, um, our drugs pulled up and we use what's called a syringe pole. And so it's basically a syringe on the end of a long pole so that you can, uh, you know, from a little bit of a distance administer the drug. Got it.

And, yeah, wait for them to go to sleep and then remove them from the trap and do a medical check and, you know, get their vitals recording and start putting the collar on. When you guys get bycatch doing that, like a skunk or whatever, do you have a way you release it or do you have to drug it as well? It depends. Most bycatch I try to just release. Skunks are tricky. But I've found with them, again, if you're really slow and calm, we hold up a tarp in front of us and just slowly calmly if you can walk up to the skunk and then at the last second this is where it gets kind of a rodeo but you you uh throw

the tarp on it and then grab it and then somebody takes it off and they spray and if you get any of it on you oh it's like getting so when you do you do the throw, he's going to cut loose. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you get, oh man. I always say it smells like getting punched in the face. When it's that much, it's just,

the rest of your day, you've just got a headache. I stopped smelling it so much after a while, but I know other people could smell it on me. It gives you a headache. Yeah, it's powerful. Yeah, it's much after a while, but I know other people could smell it on It gives you a headache. Yeah. It's powerful. Yeah.

It's nothing like the sweet, pleasant smell of a roadkill skunk that you just drive by at 65 miles an hour and you go, oh, a little skunky today. Yeah. I got two ounces of it in a jar in my fridge right now, but it's in a jar in a vac sealed bag, which is in a vac sealed bag. Is it pure? Pure.

Yeah. I pulled it out with a syringe. Oh yeah. Okay. And so, you know, it's like, it looks like a cartoon skunk spray. It's like bright green. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's crazy looking. Yeah. Well it's, yeah. Be careful with that. Oh, you're going to use it as lure? Yeah. I don't know. I'm going to use it as a joke on someone.

I thought about injecting it into the upholstery of someone's car. That is. But yeah, most like a call lure, you know, I don't know. There's a cool study done on breaking down skunk smell, like exactly why does it stink? And one of the interesting like chemical compounds, chemical compounds, um, as, as like the sulfur, um, hydrogen bonds break down, they actually release more smell and they're water soluble. So the harder you try to wash something out,

the more intense the smell gets. Oh, is that right? And the theory is, is that is to remind whatever came in contact with the skunk that they do not want to come in contact with another skunk. He's like, lest you forget. Exactly. Just get wet.

Yep. Yep. So it's, it's a multi-day process for whoever comes in contact, but like eight, eight different chemical compounds and two of which like very, very rare on the planet. I want to get this, when you, When you approach it with the tarp, you're holding up so if he takes a shot at you.

Yeah, yeah. What's the farthest you've ever had him take a shot at you? Oh, not very far. They don't, I don't think they want to waste that spray. No, give it to me in like feet. Oh, I don't know. Maybe 10 feet. Okay.

Yeah. But you've never been in a situation where you've been able to like try to pin his tail down? Because that's supposed to work, right? They got to lift their tail to spray is what everybody says. All the old man wisdom I listen to. I mean, have you talked to anybody that's actually done that? No.

I don't see you being able to get close enough to pin the tail down. And I mean, when we throw the tarp on it, we're trying to, it's kind of chaotic because then you can't see it, but you're trying to pin everything down. But it's just, it's just kind of going. It's just going to go. Yeah. Now in old, like in fur trapper lore of old, it would be that if you could pull off a heart shot with a.22. Right. He's not going to spray, but everybody knows a brain shot he's going to spray.

But now guys use those, like people use those big long poles and inject it. Oh yeah. And just drug it. No, even to try to kill it, like damage, like people that are doing like damage control work and stuff, they give it an injection with a big long pole.

I haven't seen that or done that. Yeah. It's dicey work. It is. Yeah. You got to handle those guys with care. And then when you go home, is your husband like, you smell like a skunk?

Yeah. He'll say, you got a skunk today, didn't you? Yeah. I'm pretty sure I go home smelling like all kinds of stuff because I've been using lures and everything all day. What's the most you ever walked in one day? Oh, I don't know how far. I don't really keep track of that.

Some pretty good tracks. Yeah. Yeah. For pretty good tracks. Yeah. Yeah. For work? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how far, especially doing wolf clusters and cougar clusters. You're hiking all over in the mountains.

Man, I'm jealous of that job. I like that job. Okay, what's your new thing? Okay, so the new thing? Okay. So the new thing is. Is it something we could be helpful with by promoting the business? I don't know. I mean, we're, it's, it's.

I want to help you. I just don't know how. Well, I'll explain it. I'll explain what it is and then you can see, but it's, we're calling it Home Range Wildlife Research. And it's a nonprofit that, that we're calling it Home Range Wildlife Research, and it's a nonprofit that we're starting. And it's going to be sort of three different prongs. So I'm in charge of the research component.

So that will be just doing either research that we feel like is important and want to do um and we're we're really um driven to do research that's going to be applicable and is immediately uh needed so um not just sort of what's interesting but um so that's one component then a workshop component for for young biologists uh just field skills because we have found over the years you know having um wildlife techs come a lot of them are maybe just fresh out of college and and maybe even grew up in the city and don't have those sort of basic technical skills that they need to a feel confident b be focused on collecting good, clean data. And C, aren't going to be rolling four-wheelers and costing projects money. So some workshops based around that and doing some, you know, hopefully some tracking workshops, animal track and sign, and just various skills that people might want before they start heading into the field. And then a community science field because we live in a place where we feel like

if the community is invested in your research, you're going to have better outcomes, but also we have a lot of, you know, hardcore recreators in the area. And so if, say, there's somebody going out to hike in the wilderness or whatever and we need a camera out there or something, we can be using community science to help us. Oh, that kind of community science. Yeah. Yeah. Oh.

Yeah. And where were you guys operating? What's the name of the outfit going to be again? Home Range Wildlife Research. Yeah. And you're going to operate out of where you're currently at? Yep. Winthrop.

Winthrop, Washington. And you'll start local there, and then who knows what will happen. Yeah. I imagine it will be local for, for quite a while where we've all been working on that landscape for, for a long time and, and we're invested in it and we've spent so much time in the field there that, um,

it feels like that's a really good foundation for, for our research because I think there's a lot of value in having scientists that are good naturalists and that are out there and noticing changes over time on the landscape and picking up those patterns of what's going on out there. When will you get started? We are, we're still in an early phase of figuring out and, and pulling together the non-profits. So the, just the sort of structure of it. But we're all, we're starting to write curriculum and, and write, I'm working on a proposal for a links and, and wildfire project. And then we've got a community science project that's going to launch this summer looking at natural food availability

for bears coupled with whether there's good natural food ability or not a season, how that affects human-bear interactions, getting into trash, stuff like that. Oh, that's cool yeah and then you're

gonna do that project i was telling you about where you go and see if bobcats like to eat on gut piles and that's why you can't find them in early december right right the importance of hunters to bobcats yeah and we'll test the hypothesis that you got to eat the organs quick yeah oh yeah that's great so with this new thing, are you going to have, are you going to like have like a, you'll be a full-time. Yeah. You'll be a full-time salaried person. Yep. That's the plan.

Hopefully we can pull it together. It just took like 10 years. Yeah. And here you are. Yep. Arrived, hopefully. Almost 40 and. And you have some grant writing in your background.

Yep. Yep. We've all got some. That's helpful. Yeah. For sure. That'll be. Yep. Yep. We've all got some. So that's helpful. Yeah, for sure. That'll be. Yeah.

My question when I heard about this is, how comfortable are you asking people for money? Yeah. Comfortable? No, not me. You don't like doing it? No, no, no. But hopefully our board will be comfortable.

You're going to have a board? Yeah, you legally have to have a board as a nonprofit. Yeah. Yeah. Huh. That's cool, man. Yeah. That yeah that's great thanks full-time job yeah make your own job there you go that is the moral of the story and that is i think what's going to be needing to happen for for wildlife biologists more and more because it's just it's

the field is really flooded and so it's hard to get jobs just from a competitive standpoint and also um because there's so many people wanting to do that field work there's um well it's hard to get paid well they'll do it for nothing yeah exactly i would yeah yeah i don't know if i do i mean it's intriguing. Oh, the folks that I worked with on the GRIZ study there in Idaho, it was just like they created their own jobs and then had to recreate their lifestyles in order to do those jobs. And it's, yeah, it's, it's a passion, passion deal for sure. It's, it's not a, it's a tough way to make a living for sure. So it's not a meritocracy. Exactly.

That's just what you said at the beginning, but it's not at all. You have to come from a family with money, don't you? Yeah, basically, or just- Oh, to be able to- That's an interesting point. Your kids can't do that. Yeah. I think it's being talked about more and more.

Your podcast is rich, are they? I don't know. You have some normal people. I'm assuming not. Yeah, it's being talked about more and more. Not everyone who watches your podcast is rich, are they? No. I'm assuming not. Yeah, it's not a meritocracy. But I know a lot of people who's, but I mean, you know, my brothers included. I know a lot of people who are, were certainly not rich who slugged it out and pulled it off. But it's like becoming a writer. You got to commit yourself to spending a bunch of years living below the pot like living below the poverty line and not be seducted by a plan b i'm sure that's

so yeah i think that that's a gravy way to do it i had someone explain to me one time that like to be an olympic skier they were saying it's in large measure it's a function of your family's finances because you either can ski six months a year or you go live in New Zealand and you ski 12 months a year. And the people that can ski 12 months a year have a leg up on the people that ski six. And the people that do that are people from wealthy families. And it's undeniable. But I mean, I don't want to like, I would hate to say that point and then discredit people, many people that I know personally that slugged it out. Tell us about your brother.

I missed that part. You said something about your brother. Oh, just that they most certainly were not coming from a wealthy background and did it, you know, starting out doing like creel surveys for a dollar an hour, whatever. Or free. Yeah. like creel surveys for a dollar an hour whatever or three yeah and then eventually through like sheer will sheer force of will got there but it takes forever yeah yeah and so that's that's kind of what is happening in wildlife for sure and there are definitely people that slug it out but um it does leave a lot of people out and we're missing out on attracting the best and the brightest. So do you think you're going to approach this from a project standpoint or you're just going to try to have a fund that people can apply for grants to? I think we'll do some just general fundraising.

So start out, especially like we need to raise money to, you know, just start up costs, that sort of thing. But then definitely for different projects, be applying for different specific grants. Identify a project, try to rally some folks around it. Yeah. And then you guys can use your expertise to say why this is a project worth pursuing. Right. So just sort of like...

For the benefit of all mankind. Yeah, exactly. And the wildlife, yeah. Yep. I like it. Yeah. Best of luck, man. Thank you.

Let's hope we'd be helpful. I don't know what we'd do. But if something comes up. All right. Exactly. Okay, we're going to talk about foxes for a minute. Is everybody ready to talk about fox? Yeah.

Fox, foxes, fox and I. Okay, Kathy, can you give us kind of your bio, like a quick bio? Sure. I was one of those who tried to slug it out, I guess. I have my undergraduate degrees from Missoula and my doctorate in biology from Montana State University here. I was a park ranger in a wild land, firefighter for many, many years. I didn't know you did firefighting. Yeah, a long time.

And even after I finished my doctorate, I was on the lines. Hard to give it up. Is that like seasonal firefighting? Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And I was just living by myself, trying to use my PhD, trying to find one of those just piles of job applications to fill out for getting a university position. I had started at the University of Montana, but it was a part-time, it was a contract, you know, like a postdoc. In fact, it might've been called a postdoc,

but they called me, it should have been called a postdoc. I guess they called me an assistant professor. And I was looking for professorships and then Fox showed up. Did you do graduate work in bald eagles? Yeah, I did. My doctorate was in bald eagles. That's right. What about them? Looking at, so I'll throw out this term, evolutionarily significant units, which is the scientific term for species, what we casually call species. But species is right.

It's not a dynamic process. Species are constantly changing. They're hybridizing and they're moving. They're becoming, they're on a a pathway they're on an evolutionary pathway so technically they're the endangered species act is about species are defined in that act as evolutionarily significant units but nobody wanted to call the act anything that had the word evolution in it for obvious reasons right people get all riled up all riled up up. All riled up, even today. And also, it sounds complicated,

but the evolutionary significant unit is how species are defined by scientists. So it's looking at the pathways of the bald eagles, and is there just one species of bald eagles in North America? And no, of course there's not, because they mate according to size. So you can figure, and you know that a female won't mate with a larger male.

I'm looking at Carmen because she knows this, but maybe, you know, I've heard that, but I've never understood the significance from Alaska. So a female and smallerrizona is not going to be she doesn't have the opportunity to mate everywhere in north america because those boys up north are going to be larger than her and she will not mate with a larger male so they are on a separate pathway of course the size so size does make a difference you guys already knew that but we've been telling you it doesn't but it does and so females absolutely choose their mates based on size. And if the sizes are separating distinctively, then they're going to speciate. Yeah, there's a point where they cross like a threshold of incompatibility. Correct.

And then they will eventually. So if you took one from Arizona, if you took a female from Arizona and put her in Southeast Alaska, she might never reproduce. Yep, that's right. Just barren. Just because of the size differences. She's not going to make, yep, that's right, that's Yep, that's right. Just barren. Uh-huh. Just because the size differences. She's not going to make, yep, that's right, that's right, that's right.

So she doesn't want to. You notice that's true of all the hawks. You see hawks all the time here. But I didn't know it was a. You didn't have it notice the size differences?

So it's like falcons, you've noticed that the female is much bigger than the male. And then when you start looking at hawks, like red tails, the females bigger, but not much bigger. And eagles are a little bit closer.

But the more ferocious of a hunter they are as a bird of prey, the greater the differences, size difference between the sexes. We need your hypothesis on that because scientists don't really know the reason for that. And there's a lot of hypotheses. But eagles are a little bit closer. I want to make sure I understand it. So eagles are a little bit closer to that. Hold on, hold on. Say that to me again. I want to make sure I understand it. So eagles are a little bit— The more ferocious? So what's the most ferocious bird of prey that you can think of? The ones that really go after meat versus just dead stuff on the road.

Like a peregrine. Yes, exactly. The falcons. They're just only going to eat meat, live things, fast things, big things. So golden eagles, falcons, they have a huge size dimorphism, di meaning two and morph meaning size. So there's two different sizes, one for the males and one for the females. Humans are dimorphic. Males are bigger than females. Because humans, the males are bigger than females. And because scientists tend to be humans, we look at the world human-centric. And when animals have the opposite,

so that the females are bigger than the males, we call that reverse dimorphism. So, bird of prey have a reverse sexual dimorphism. Females are bigger

than the males. In humans, males are bigger than the females. Have you ever read that Neanderthals didn't have as much sexual dimorphism as we did?

No, I didn't. But I am reading and shocked at how much we are prejudiced against Neanderthals. And, you know, there was a time when we just thought they were like just – I mean, just data just came out a week ago showing that all those things we said about them not engaging in art and not having a sense of aesthetics, that's all just crap. No, I joke to Cal that we're going to someday soon find out that they had laptops. They keep getting better and better. Every day it's like, oh, it turns out Neanderthals had bicycles. It's true.

Every day it's like, oh, they were into art. Oh, they were poets. Yeah, you're bicycles. It's true. It's like every day it's like, oh, they were into art. Oh, they were poets. Yeah, you're right. You are right. But they sat around, they hung out in Europe for 600,000 years, man. Like everybody's like,

oh, they're dumb and they went extinct. It's like, dude, they had a long run. They had a long run and they were so diverse. Prejudice against them. All over the place.

They were living off the land in every way imaginable. That's right so clam diving exactly the neanderthals was swimmer's ear that's how much time they spent in the water they're really advanced just because they're extinct doesn't mean i mean i'm totally with you i'm glad you think that because you're right that people thought they were just a dumbass caveman because they're neanderthals and we use it as an insult. Yeah. But it's really, they're like European people, but Americans maybe. I know my European graduate students didn't think Neanderthal was an insult, especially if they're from Northern Europe.

They had more respect for them. Well, because they're named after the Neander Valley. So that's where the first. And they were kicking around on the same ground. To them, it was like an. It was like their ancestors. Yeah, that's right. To get back to the bird thing a little bit because um it's cool i want your hypothesis someday i don't have one yet but i just want to make sure i'm getting it right um

okay as you go up so if you go look at a uh what's in that family that would be like a like a not for give me a not bald eagles for example you call it not a not ferocious, give me a not ferocious. Bald eagles, for example. You call us not ferocious. Bald eagles are the least ferocious ones. They can survive just scavenging. Just hang out at the local dump. I mean, look at this. Yeah. Look at the salmon that they eat.

I mean, they're not really fishing like an osprey very much. I mean, they're, they're getting the salmon that are sort of slow moving dead after they've already spawned. They're bright red. They're on the surface. So they're not ferocious hunters.

So they have less sexual dimorphism. Maybe define like ferocious because it seems like it's. Paragrins. No, no, no. But define it as like as the way you're using it. Because it's kind of coming out like as in the more energy they'll expend to get food. Right. Oh, I don't know about energy, but.

I mean, you're going to go and tussle with it. They're taking the most difficult target. So paragrins and eagles are real hunters. Technically, a bald eagle is a scavenger. They don't even have to physiologically. They're not obligated by their genetics or by their physiology to hunt. They can just, like you, did you say hang out at the dump? That's right.

Yeah. They can hang out at the dump. Or sit next to the stream and eat the dead salmon. That's right. Or hunt in the osprey nest. And the osprey is going to catch live fish. Yeah. They can hang out at the dump. Or sit next to the stream and eat the dead salmon. That's right. Or hunt in the osprey nest. And the osprey is going to catch live fish. Yeah. And then they wait until the osprey brings it to its nest.

And then the bald eagle steals it from the osprey nest when it's already dead. That's what. Yeah. You know Ben Franklin didn't like eagles because they're scavengers. Yeah, he was a really good naturalist. I read the letter that he wrote to his daughter. I wrote to the museum there and asked them if they would send me a copy of it because I was tired of just hearing the rumors about it and I wanted to read the whole thing and not take it out of context. But he wanted, he did believe and he knew that bald eagles were scavengers. I mean, he knew that although it was beautiful, it was not a bird that was really capable of hunting. It wasn't really a bird that if we wanted to use a symbol of a really fierce nation of people,

it was a good symbol if you were going to like head people across to the West, land that you didn't own, but belong to Native American nations and you were going to steal their land, then the bald eagle was a great, great symbol for that. And that's actually what the United States did. Right. So bald eagle ended up being good, but they didn't want it to be that. They thought it was going to be like the big fierce hunter, the noble. Yeah. I got you.

It's not real noble. Golden eagles are i guess more noble uh if you've ever tried to mess with one i think bald eagles got a lot of their most recent cachet because they were it was for such a long time it was rare to see one and then i think that's gonna wear off now and i think that you know because growing up you'd be like oh my god an eagle uh you know so and so saw a bald eagle and now they're just like oh there's 25 of them in that tree right there you know every day for the last what 10 20 years yeah i think that it's like it's cachet it's cachet i'll be diminished by its

success there's a bald eagle that lives essentially right here right here at the office like it goes from uh we have a little cut hay field here just to the west of us. And there's some power poles right there. And it'll sit on those power poles and it'll jump across to the north side of the interstate and sit right there too. It's getting roadkill. Even roadkill? I would assume. Yeah.

But that, you know, that speaking of their cachet. So in the seventies, when they got covered by DDT, united states and a lot of non-profits they spent so much money they're so trying to help the bird recuperate there are so many graduate students in this country that you know we're just like this huge club we belong to people who got their doctorates working on bald eagle because it was all the money in it back then endless a pot of money to work on bald eagles, endless. And the osprey got like nothing. And they ended up recovering faster anyway. I mean, the osprey is just really a well-suited bird for this country. I mean, they're amazing fishermen.

I mean, they are just amazing fishermen. They're talented birds. And they have really great common sense. I mean, they don't waste their time fighting with a big, a bird that's much bigger than them. If the bald eagle wants the fish, the bald eagle can get the fish. The osprey just goes and gets another fish. I mean, it's easier to just go, they're just that talented. They'll just go get another fish rather than fight over, like you see all the birds fighting at carcasses, but osprey don't hang out at carcasses. They're like the only ones that fish that well. So they just fish. They've done really, really well in this country. And they don't eat

trash or scavens like the bald eagles. And they have high sexual dimorphism. Is it fair to say high? Yeah, they have a degree of sexual dimorphism. That's right. But eagles still will have, I think eagles have a little bit more even. Osprey are only eating fish, of course, and not chasing down mammals. So the ones that are chasing down mammals and big mammals, golden eagle will take a deer. I mean, you've certainly seen them chasing after, I've seen them chasing after deer. They chase me, and of course I'm not quite as, all the time, they hate me. So they have a lot of sexual dimorphism.

But you never notice that the females were always bigger than the males. I've heard that. Yeah. But no, I haven't noticed it. And the first... I think if I was looking at them in a nest, I wouldn't be able to tell you who was who. Yeah. That's probably my problem.

But big one is... Because they don't have the remarkable differences in coloration. That's right. Most birds that you know that there's a male and female, it's because they have different coloration. That's right, and they're the same size. So it's good that they're different colors. So you're looking at some English sparrow

eating your, the crumbs from your scone underneath the table at the cafe or whatever. Yeah, they're everywhere. He's got a big black throat patch. You're like, that's the male. But I'm not looking at size. Right, because they're almost the same size. I'm just looking at coloration differences.

All the little Tweety birds are pretty much the same size. Yeah, like the most extreme version being like a pheasant, right? Like everybody on the planet can tell you a male pheasant from a female pheasant. Well. By coloration. If you're hunting, at least, we hope, you know the difference. But you know what I'm saying?

It's like, it's not. It's color. That's true. I hadn't, I'd forgotten that because, because I don't spend a lot of time looking at Tweety birds because there's so many hawks where I live and there's not a lot of little birds around very long. But bluebirds come in, but then the kestrels clean them up. Boom, boom, boom.

Instantly. Which is so much fun to watch. Oh, yeah. Incredible. The kestrels are so amazing, aren't they? All day. Yeah. Yeah.

But I don't put out bird feeders or anything to attract birds to come there so that they Because you just lure them into their death. Just lure them into their death. Fatal attraction. That's ridiculous. Fatal attraction. So I won't do that. to their death. Just lure them into their death. Fatal attraction. That's ridiculous. Fatal attraction. You know, I got an email the other week talking about big bird seed,

like, you know, like big pharma and how big bird seed is. Oh, the big bird seed lobby? You're kidding. The big bird seed is in conjunction with Autobahn to keep the perpetuation of feeding birds out there, even though it's

providing this endless death cycle. It is. There's so many. Oh, there's hawks that don't even leave Bozeman anymore. You must know that, even when I was a grad student here. We get a great hawk migration. No, I'm saying, but I get a lot of value out of it. We have a little bird. We have a

modest little bird feeder way high up in the air, so it's not adding to the bear problem. And whatever in my children get a tremendous amount of, we get a lot of education opportunities. It's for the children. We keep a running list.

We keep a running list that we constantly update of what we see in our yard, see or hear from our yard. So there's things on the list that we've never seen, but we heard it from the yard. And I'll give up my bird feeder when they pry off my cold, dead hands. Change my mind! So this winter... It's a modest little bird feeder.

You look at your modest little bird feeder, and you can tell me, or you can tell Carmen, about the hawks that should be in Florida for the winter but decided not to go because they're hanging out at your bird feeder. They're not at my bird feeder. Are you sure? Yeah. You're not seeing red tails that didn't migrate? Well, they're on my list, but that's not what they're doing.

They're riding the thermals on the hill behind my house. They're supposed to have migrated, though. Well, I'll keep my eyes. I can't tell you that they're there in the winter. I just know they're on my list. I'm just curious. The list is going to get more intricate, which will be fun. You want to set up a science study?

I got a science study for you. I'll pull my bird feeder down and you tell me that caused birds to leave. It's just like, it's a lot of value. Very modest little high up bird feeder. I think there's a lot of value for the kids. Just add some more columns to the list. I don't have a problem with people feeding birds. But what's funny is that everybody used to feed birds a long time ago and put a little food out for foxes and things too it suddenly became like we're not supposed to be feeding animals and

the birds are the last ones right i mean everybody like a fed bear is a dead bear and oh yeah yeah they just say that mostly because it rhymes but I think maybe they also think you shouldn't be feeding bears. There's a limit to that, though. I mean, obviously, if you live in the middle of nowhere and there's not any other houses around you for 100 miles or bears aren't going to go more than 25, does it really matter if you let bears eat food on your property? Probably not.

But if you're in Yellowstone National Park at a campground, you don't want bears coming around where there's food. So you can't really be attracting bears at a campground. It's just going to lead them to trouble. But it depends on, it's a very individual thing. But you talk to your grandma and I bet that generation, they used to feed squirrels and stuff like that and chipmunks. And I think in England, you're not even supposed to feed birds anymore. I'm pretty sure about that. I think I read that inen mcdonald's new book vesper flights and so yeah they're coming for your bird feeder they are coming for it i agree i agree that uh until they finish reading my thoughts i don't know if you heard but it's modest it's a modest bird and it was way up high feeding animals is

not uh in vogue for sure but it seems like the stuff that makes the paper are the folks that have gone, that are making up for a lot of their neighbors not feeding, right? Like some lady in Florida was getting like truckloads of Costco chickens. Oh my God. To feed alligators in her backyard and stuff.

Yeah, barrels of feed. You know, we recently had on our website? I don't know if you've seen it. It's really something. There's a whitetail fawn swimming. He's got himself in a lake somehow and there's a seawall. So it's like the fawn's out and you can't get up

on the beach because there's a seawall. And so he's swimming parallel to the seawall and a bald eagle comes down and very like very deliberately like it knew what it was doing. It comes down and lands on its head and drowns that thing.

I mean it knew it wasn't sitting there and it happened to drown. It came down and drowned that farm. And then drug it up on the beach and ate it. That's interesting. Definitely not saying like oh that's and then drug it up on the beach and ate it. That's interesting. Yeah, it was really interesting. Definitely not saying like, oh, that's very normal, but it was very deliberate in,

it kind of like, it knew that it was drowning something. Yeah. And I knew you were going to say it sat on its head. So I do think it's pretty expected for a ball because they're large birds and they throw their weight around. Think about, again, think about a peregrine falcon. They're relatively small compared to a bald eagle and they don't throw their weight around they have great eyesight they're talented they're fast prairie falcon nothing's faster but the throwing the weight around thing fits perfectly with your fierceness hypothesis right they're just they're slow their eyesight isn't

as good as a falcon oh no sorry peregrine falcons yeah peregrine falcons are fierce like that added mass when they do the the steep or the stoop you know where they drop out of the sky on their victim that's got to be a tremendous advantage think about it like hunting so you hunt if are you going to use are you going to go for knockdown power if let's say you've got a 270 are you going to go for knockdown power and put like 180 grain weight in or are you going to go i'm going to get something maybe it's not legal to buy it but you're going to go for knockdown power and put like 180 grain weight in? Or are you going to go, I'm going to get something. Maybe it's not legal to buy it, but you're going to load your own. And you know that you're a straight shooter and you know that you're a great shot. You know that it's going to be a long shot.

So load down to like 120 grain weight. So it doesn't kick the hell out of you when you shoot. That's what I mean by mass. But don't you think the advantage? Ball Eagles using no weight like somebody putting in 180 grain weight in a 270. Because they need knockdown power because they're not going to make a good shot. They don't have finesse. Or you think the advantage? Bald eagles using their weight, like somebody putting in 180 grain weight in a 270, because they need knockdown power, because they're not going to make a good shot. They don't have finesse. That's the word.

Thank you. That's the word I needed. You hearing this, Cal? It's finesse. I am, but that doesn't fit with the physics of something dropping out of the sky super fast. It doesn't matter. No, if you... It's better.

No, no. So a red-tailed picked up a skunk on my property the other day, and I wasn't real thrilled about it. And she dropped... She did come back and get it in case you're a red-tailed fan, but she dropped it, right? And it was a baby. It was just a few weeks old.

It picked up a live skunk. Yeah, she killed it though. But I picked up the carcass from the ground because she dropped it on this little trail. And I thought that I was going to bring it over by the den so the mom could see. I wondered how they would react to the dead baby skunk. But anyway, I saw where the red tail had picked it up. You wanted to know how the mom skunked? I wondered if she would recognize that that was hers or if there would be any kind of reaction.

But the red tail came and snatched it back from me before I got to do anything. But anyway, the skunk, it was dead, right? She dropped it. She had managed to get her claws right through its head. I mean, that's talent. You don't need any weight if you've got that much finesse. It's dead like that second. If she had tried to grab it from its mass, it wouldn't have been dead. Maybe having extra weight would have helped. But red tails are really good hunters. I mean, you see them pick up snakes. They're really good. Yeah, that's a good point. That can't be easy.

Red tails have finesse, so it doesn't matter how much weight they have. A bald eagle that doesn't have finesse, because they're used to killing things that are roadkill, uses their bulk, their mass. They're the 180 grain weights in your 270, basically. Just using their bulk i know you

guys don't go for knockdown power because that's not what you advertise probably oh i like things that thump yeah i shoot a big yeah i shoot i shoot a what would be regarded as a heavy rifle yeah depends yeah but it doesn't yeah i used to load my own and so i would always load down down down lower than what i could buy in the market because I don't want to, if it hurts me more than it hurts what's dead. Yeah, you don't want to loosen your molars and stuff. It's a bad thing. Yeah, why hunt if your arm's going to fall off?

Cal, can you take it up offline, arguing about the birds? Yeah. Because I want to keep moving. What am I supposed to do? I'm saying if you want to argue about birds more, you'll have to call Kathy up later. Oh, yeah, no problem. I know to keep moving. What am I supposed to do? I'm saying if you want to argue about birds more, you'll have to call Kathy up later. Oh, yeah, no problem. I know where she lives.

No, am I arguing? I don't know. No, I'm teasing. I'm teasing. You're not arguing. All right. So that was a big digression. Sorry.

No, it's my fault. Not my fault. I'm glad I did it. It was prompted by me. But I want to keep moving forward. That was just Kathy's bio, by the way. That was Kathy's bio. So now you know who I am. That was Kathy's bio.

Yeah. Okay, walk me through. Whatever way makes sense. Walk me through how we got from that. Here you are studying bald eagles to you got a brand new book about about not foxes but a fox yeah based on a fox it's really important to distinguish between foxes and a fox so scientists do research gather information so that you can enlighten us staring at carmen again about foxes, just like sociologists are studying about humans. But when you write a book, a novel, you're not trying to show us about, you've got a protagonist

who's one human. My book isn't about foxes in general. It's not encyclopedic information about a particular species. It's about one particular fox. but it is important for us to start realizing that we shouldn't just generalize. We have tended to generalize animals and put them all in one big clump. It keeps us from empathizing with them. I think you'll feel the same when you think about other groups of people, but when we put people or animals in a big group, when we generalize, it capes us from empathizing. And when we empathize, then we can really understand and accept and respect them and understand that they're a little bit closer to humans than we thought that they were. So my book is about an individual fox. And it is important to understand

the difference between the generic fox for, I mean, there's lots of things that are true about foxes that I believe are true. I've read them in in my textbook that I use in my classes. And so foxes do have an instinct to evade, for example, something flying overhead like a golden eagle. But my particular fox didn't. I mean, I would watch him run down the hill and I've got a bald eagle nest on the cliff there. And he just would just be bouncing aroundes. I don't want you to think that, oh, it's not true that foxes evade. It's what's true of the generic fox. It's important that we have – when we get scientific information, we're talking about the ones under the high part of the bell curve. And we assume that people know that there's outliers.

But some people forget that there are outliers and they think that everything is the same. We know that humans have outliers too, though. I'm in a room with like four outliers or so. So, you know, humans are outliers. But we forget that's true of other species as well. Yeah. Outliers. No, I understand what you're saying with humans.

Like humans are kind of generally monogamous. They generally reproduce. But that's certainly, you know, not the case. I think humans, scientifically speaking, are harem breeding species. Isn't that right? I mean, they're harem breeders. But Mormons are monogamous, maybe, I guess.

But not humans in general. We're harem breeders. I mean, biologically speaking. Biologically harem breeders? Yeah, but I know what you mean. You mean our culture. Like the rest is like a sociological overlay, a cultural overlay.

Yeah, you should read E.O. Wilson's Sociobiology. I'm giving you another picture. See, but yeah, but I don't know, man. I was reading this thing about how... That doesn't apply in your house? No, it'd be like that human females, there's no outward visual. There's no outward visual to tell someone that they're in heat. Okay.

If you want to talk like purely like mammalian terms, there's no outward visual. And it's not like a seasonal thing. It's not like once a year. Females ovulate. Yeah, so viable. It would be like a human female would be sexually viable 12 times a year, not one time a year, like some wild animals at higher latitudes. And then – The temperature changes, you know that.

But it's not outward. I'm just telling you. I'm not telling you my thing. The viscosity of the vaginal fluids. Can you know that. But it's not outward. I'm just telling you. I'm not telling you my thing. The viscosity of the vaginal fluids. Can you say that on your radio show? Yeah, sure. That definitely changes. But I'm talking about outward visual displays as opposed to like a baboon.

Because we were, okay. Yeah, but a baboon. Yeah, but on baboons, for instance, there's like an outward visual display. Okay. So someone was saying, like I just read this thing one time explaining monogamy and staying at home. Okay. So someone was saying, like, I just read this thing one time explaining monogamy and staying at home. Okay. And it would be that you couldn't, like a bull elk.

Let's take a bull elk. Okay. He knows as long as he shows up in September around the cows, he's not missing anything. If he goes off into his own zone in November and stays out there and has no interaction with cows at all. Totally antisocial. Hides out, antisocial.

He's not like, he knows he's not missing out on breeding opportunities. And they do, Hank. Right. You're right. But with a human, it wound up being that you could be missing out and in your absence, there could be things going on that you don't want to know about. So that compelled people to spend their entire time together. Wouldn't that just compel one guy to, like Genghis Khan,

to have more females around him? When I say that we're harem breeders, I don't mean in the last 200 or 300 or 400 years. I mean, humans have been on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years. So I mean the history of Homo sapiens. And I'm not even telling you. I'm just telling you like a thing i read a thing i read so never mind what was i saying there's a there's all sorts of fun stuff we could talk oh you're talking about outliers yeah and i was trying to say i was trying to make like some

general things about humans like oh sorry sorry i forget that sorry forget that there are outliers you're there are outliers in humans yes yes'll move on. Yes, yes, yes. You're right. And sorry about that. So we started talking about monogamy and you were just because you picked a weird thing to be an outlier and actually. I should have picked something different. We generally like marshmallows.

Yeah, we generally like marshmallows. People like sweet things. And then there are some people that don't like sweet stuff. Big job. That's safer than monogamy. Good job. People like certain kinds of food. And then every once in a while you run into people that don't like that kind of food.

Or people are basically all the same sizes. And then there's like some people born that are like seven or eight feet tall. Some people that are very short. So are you holding out? I want to help out here. Are you holding out the fox? And fox and I could be like a wild outlier? Oh, he's yeah, he's an outlier, not super wild outliers. I mean, you know, there's research that was done in Russia over a 50 year period and shows that Dr. I doubt he's even one in a million. It's just that in my experience in my very short life, and I've always had foxes on my property for a long time anyway, I've not been able to get this to work with a relationship like that with another fox.

But I haven't seen a million foxes, you know, a couple dozen. So maybe he's one in a thousand or something like that. But he's not that kind of personality. Isn't that rare? He could be one in 24. Yeah, he could be one in 24 because the research shows that foxes are relatively easy to domesticate, almost as easy as dogs. So Dr. Belyaev was able to do it with about 50 generations. That's pretty quick. Hey, folks. Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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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 OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the onx club, y'all. Okay, lay out the fox. Lay out the scenario. So the scenario is this little fox starts coming around to my house like all the time at the same time. And I had.

What time did he come? Right. He was 415. He was watching the sun. He was. He's really sensitive to the sun. He kind of gerrymanders his whole life routines around. Like he doesn't like the sun in his eyes.

But he does like the sun on his body when he's sunbathing. And he doesn't like to walk into it. So he does things according to the sun. When you say little. Sorry. When you say little, was it a young fox? No, but he was certainly a runt. I'm guessing, I was guessing about six pounds. You think he was a runt of a litter? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, the fact that he couldn't talk. And then when you see, when you go and see like the certain rock that he used to stand on all the time, and I have photos of him of all four feet on that rock. And then you go and look at how small that rock is and you just oh yeah he was a real small fox foxes are smaller in the in the rockies than they're going to be in england and probably even in a more moderate climate than in in washington state oregon they're small in the rockies everything's smaller here because the growing seasons and they can't, is short and they can't eat as much. So he was a small fox for sure.

And he planned his life around the sun pretty much. But I think that he had decided he wanted me in his life. He wanted a person. There wasn't any other choice around for him besides me. And I didn't really want to have anything to do with him, but he wore me down. And eventually I really believe he became what I would call my best friend. We were together every day, every day for years. I mean, just, I read to him and we walked around together and we played games together, but it took a while to get to that. you feed him no but i do keep um egg yolks outside

not very close to my house but when i was just eating egg whites in the days before you could just buy the whites and i would separate them out so i wasn't eating egg yolks every day i would put egg yolks out by a tree through about 300 meters from house. And so he would eat those once in a while, but not many. He would come by and eat like one. The magpies ate most of them. And I don't think that he ever associated those egg yolks with me. So no, then I don't think. I was pretty careful not to put things in my mouth in front of him, even if I was just drinking tea while I was sitting on the steps with him. I wouldn't even drink it while he was watching. I didn't want him to see me put stuff in my mouth.

So there was a day. I didn't want him to associate food with me. But there was a day, like a day when you first took note. Like what was the day you first registered his presence? So the first time that I realized he was odd and something was going to happen when he wasn't just like some errant animal. I mean, there's always foxes and badgers and skunks around and deer. That day happened when I was hanging out outside and I always have scabby knees. So I had the scabby knee and this huge house fly was playing with my scab,

sucking all this blood and playing with the blood. And I was like blowing it to try to get it off my knee. Why did you have scabby knees? Fall the cliffs climbing up the cliff oh i thought maybe you had like psoriasis or something no no climbing up well that was from a fall when i was jogging where i shouldn't have been jogging by myself and took a little bit of a roll but climbing the cliffs or jogging on trails that i shouldn't be jogging on so i was playing with that fly and then i just kept playing. The fly wouldn't give up.

So he would just get off my knee when I would blow really hard. And then he would take a few reconnaissance laps and then boom, right back on my scab again. Start pulling up the blood again. This nasty little arm, so to speak. They don't really have arms. I know you know that. And I just got totally obsessed with this fly and forgot about everything else. And I was just staring at this house fly.

Then I looked up and there was a fox like two, like arm's length away from me. It was him. And he didn't even know I was there. He was like staring at that fly on my knee. He was just obsessed with that fly. And I was obsessed with the fly. And at that point, I didn't know what to do because he was so close. So I just said, fox.

And then finally, he looked up at me. And when he looked up at me, he turned his nose down so that, you know, the snout will be in the way if you're trying to look eye to eye. He turned down and then we were totally eye to eye. The width of a six-pound animal, his eyes are just about the same width as ours are. Another reason I don't think it's one in a million for a fox and a human. I mean, their eyes, you know, I have a skunk that's almost the same size hanging around all the time, almost the same size as that fox. But there's no way you'd ever look eye to eye. I mean, you can barely even see the eyes on a skunk.

Sure. They're so small. And their head's so small their and their eyes are so close together so fox when i'm sitting and he's standing uh standing on all fours his eyes are the same height as mine and the same width as mine so we were just eye to eye for just the longest time and that moment that was the moment that I knew there was no going back, really. I mean, I tried, but there was not one near that close. I mean, he could have reached out and swatted me.

I could have, you know, reached, grabbed his little neck and strangled him. But we were just that close, just staring at each other. And then I locked him in. He locked me in. I think he knew he had me and I had him at that point. I started taking stuff out of my pockets, tapping them on the wood steps like geodes and feathers, every, mostly all natural things. I had some brass because I keep, I don't just let my brass hang out. So I had some brass in my pocket. I took that out too, told him I didn't use it to shoot the deer that's hanging on the wall. Oh, brass, like ammunition brass yeah brass and ammo i i had that so i took that out and tapped it but you know brass is pretty if you roll it in the sun so i did that he liked that and he liked the rocks he really liked the

feathers that were in my pockets and then i just moved away and let him how did he show you that he liked it these things well he's not he was really curious about them i eventually moved away a couple of meters and just let him nose everything that was there. And he just, I kept him coming back for days, just putting my little trinkets out in front of him and letting him show his interest. Then I worried that, well, it was getting boring for me. And he had a very short attention span. So he would look for a little while and then he'd put his head up. One of those types of friends. Can't entertain themselves.

Yes. So I started reading to him after that. And then he was really good about that. He liked it. Absolutely. He stayed. I mean, I, I timed him quite a lot and I, he averaged 18 minutes so that he didn't like it a lot.

I mean, he wouldn't sit for a very long period time 18 minutes is pretty long for that's about as long as a person can say okay explain like i understand reading to it but explain that just so that i was making what is the fox's response to it so the reason it's like basking in the noise it's noise i mean the reason i was reading is because i just wasn't used to talking about just myself telling stories and that's boring and that's hard to do. So I got something that was easy to read. And then you talk for a certain amount of time and look, hold up the pictures so he knows you're trying to communicate and then you stop. And then you look at him. Count to 15 to yourself so that he realizes that you are trying to communicate if you just make noise he thinks you're just ignoring him that you know it's just a person who's making noise i mean you you have to do it in that pattern as if you're trying to communicate and i kept up that pattern and he got used to that pattern so he knew i was trying to

communicate with him and he had every reason to want me hanging around him because. Because what? I have hands and big bad tools. And he knew I hated feral cats. I mean, he watched me chase them away. He didn't know about the bad words I was saying to those cats, but he knew I hated feral cats and he hated feral cats. And there was protection there or reduced predator load, reduced competition. Yeah, he got to hang out in the sunshine in the middle of the day because I was there.

Normally, fox wouldn't be able to just, you know, not with dogs and feral cats around and eagles. So he got a huge advantage from being my friend. He's huge. What does he, okay, but what is he eating all this time? Oh, he was a great hunter. So he's eating lots and lots and lots of voles, mostly voles. That's, I think that's chapter three of the book is called Vole Forest. And it explains how I accidentally got a huge forest filled with voles on my property. I didn't mean to, but I was just,

to make a long story short, I just wasn't paying attention to my property. And I had this massive, massive amount of voles. I mean, they run over my feet attention to my property. And I had this massive, massive amount of voles. I mean, they run over my feet while I was walking. I mean, one of them gave birth on my boot while I, I'm not kidding. You mean just because the grass load? There was so, it ended up just growing too high with the weeds, those kinds of woody things. And then it lays down and creates that kind of like that sort of buffer between the ground and the decaying vegetation. Animals that hunt voles from the air aren't going to go in through woody things that are

thorny. And animals that take, skunks take voles, foxes take voles, badgers, animals that come in from the side, especially animals that pounce like a fox, they can't get in either. So the voles just start proliferating and proliferating and proliferating until there's this huge amount of them. I mean, they were just everywhere. So that really attracted him. But he was a good hunter anyway, even after I figured out how to kind of limit the voles a little bit. He was a terrific hunter. There were days when he had five voles piled up on my front doorsteps. He would wait, he would hunt. He would pile them up by your doorstep. Yeah, I thought that he was giving them to me, but he wasn't. But I thought he was.

Was it just a safe place to put them? It was just because he figured out that the only place the magpies wouldn't steal them. Magpies were really aggressive and they'll come to my steps, but they won't come right to the door. That's like the limit for magpies. So he would put them right up the door so that the magpies wouldn't steal them. And he would keep hunting until he had so much enough to fill his whole mouth. Then he would gather them all up and run them up the hill to where the kits were because he was helping feed them. But if he had to just run up and down, up and down every time he killed one, it wouldn't be very efficient. So he liked to pile his dead things up and then grab them and then bring them up the hill. So he wasn't giving them to me. He was just leaving them there because magpies wouldn't eat anything on my doorstep.

You knew that, but I didn't. You mentioned. So that's how vain I was. Present from a fox. You mentioned how short-lived they are. Yeah. Yeah. I was a little bit surprised. I think if you had a, I can't remember what you said, but it's like a few years, right?

Yeah. Like if I would have guessed, I don't know, I would have thrown out seven or eight years. I don't know why. Probably in a zoo, but wild animals don't live very long. Yeah, I think that's probably one reason why their personalities might be a little bit different than human personalities. You think back to what your life was like when you were a 20-year-old. You were talking about crazy things that you've done and how you think about those near-death experiences. But you think about those near-death experiences differently based on what decade you are

in your life. But they don't have like decades of their life. It's short-lived animals. But for us humans, a 20-year-old human has a little bit different person. I mean, you don't change the person's genetics. It's the exact same person. But your personality changes

when you're 20 versus when you're 80 probably. Your idea about what a near-death experience is. Even your idea about the passage of time. Exactly, exactly. I read somewhere

where someone was trying to capture when we hear that whatever, a fly or whatever, some aquatic insect has a day or two days, right, once it emerges. Uh-huh. And someone was describing, though, I can't remember who was talking about this, but they're talking about when you go to swat a fly, right?

So in your mind, you're like, it's fast, like, wham! Right? But in the fly's mind, it's like, oh, there's this thing that's coming that I'll eventually... That's right. That I'll eventually need to take into consideration and avoid.

You know? It's just like, it's trip. You know, who really knows? But it's... Like a meteor coming down. It's comprehension of who really knows but like it's it's like a meteor it's comprehension of time is thousands of light years away there's a meteor up there it's gonna hit the earth yeah that's right that's you can look at trees you know you look at trees that are hundreds of years old like is it you know not that it's regarding time but just whatever the experience is isn't you know we're sort of built built in. I think that we're born and we pretty quickly get a grasp of kind of what a year is. We quickly get a grasp of when people die and we start to measure because we have a like there's a fair sense.

Like if you're live right now, you know, you're going to be around 80 and you start ticking that stuff off, man. I know. And then you realize ticking that stuff off, man. I know. And then you realize that it's unavoidable. And there comes this awareness of things going by, time going by. And you act differently. And you're burning a fuse. That's right. And I don't know what a, you know, maybe you know now better, but I don't know what a fox.

I don't know if a fox is aware that it's ticking. I don't, but it seems like it would be innate i think it's one of the reasons why humans have often set themselves apart from other animals and always forget even your even your students even your undergraduate students in the middle of a biology class forget that humans are animals there's only six kingdom of life and there's an animal kingdom and we're in it. There's not a separate kingdom for humans. So we are animals, but people forget that. But one way that we have been different from most of the animals that are around in modern America is that we're so much longer lived. And that's even more drastic because maybe 100 or 200

years ago, we lived maybe 60 years. And now it's 80. But maybe it's going to be even longer than that. But the lifespan of the animals hasn't changed. So we are separating ourselves a little bit in terms of our longevity. Bears can live 40, 45 years, grizzly bears. Large animals can. But we're wiping out the larger animals because they threaten us. So there aren't a lot of large animals around.

But, you know, bison are large animals. And they probably don't live more than 16 years. So we do live a lot longer. And if the length that you live changes your personality, then it would give you a reason to believe that, yeah, humans, we have a personality. And I think that I don't believe that humans are the only animals that have certain personality traits. I think that anthropomorphism has just been mischaracterized and is based on assumptions that just don't make any sense anymore. I want to talk about, you got to define it, but I want to talk about anthropomorphism. But first I want to talk, and maybe you answered it. What's the fox's lifespan? Just a few years yeah so you get into this routine with this thing and it's like you know that it's no it's won't last that's right and i and i thought that was really stupid i remember i was jogging and um thinking to myself

this is really really dumb why am i spending this? I was spending a lot of time. I mean, my whole life was pretty much geared around you have to be home at 4.15. That's just insane. An animal that's just going to be gone in the blink of an eye. But, you know, in Paradise Valley, there's all those rainbows out there. And double rainbows are really common. And I was jogging on this trail and suddenly this rainbow came up and then it doubled.

And you can see end to end. You can still see end to end from my house, but I could see end to end from where I was jogging because it's so open country out there. And then I realized that a rainbow, I mean, how long does that last? And I stopped to watch it. I mean, I didn't just like,

oh, I'm not going to waste my time with a rainbow because it's short lived. And I just, and that't just like, oh, I'm not going to waste my time with a rainbow because it's short-lived. And that made up my mind. I thought, that's just so stupid to worry about how long something lives when a rainbow doesn't. And I'm not the only one. When you're up in the mountains and you look down, you can see cars. I mean, they just stop. People that are like going 90 miles an hour to get to the airport and they're like, whatever.

People just stop when they see the double rainbows do that. And these people have seen hundreds of rainbows and they just stop anyway. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, it doesn't really matter how long it lives. How does the fox, can you tell, are you afraid of ruining the story if you tell how the fox dies? Yeah, I am. Glad you asked.

I'm not telling you how the fox died listen we got real numbers here and these people want to know how that is reading the book right now there you go thank you yeah carmen is reading the book do you want to know i don't want to spoiler don't tell me i'll find out i don't want to know how the fox dies either talk about anthropomorphism because that's what everybody's going to say that's what a guy like me is going to say. They're going to say, oh, you're anthropomorphizing foxes. Yeah, I know, everybody. I mean, I've heard that so many times.

I mean, that's... You're unapologetic. I mean, as a park ranger, as a professor and students, and that A word is a word that a lot of people in the public like to say because they think that it's really pedantic i think but it's only just now becoming pedantic think people think it makes them sound sophisticated and pro science if they accuse everybody of being anthropomorphic but i think we need to first you first got to identify or you have to identify define it define it it means that you are crediting human traits to an animal that's not human. So a human trait might be, for example, this is one of my students gave me this. She said that Adam and Eve experienced or exhibited modesty.

And she said that's a trait that we think only humans have. You mean when they covered themselves with leaves? Yeah, I never, I needed, one of my undergraduates explained that to me, and I really loved that. It was part of, it had to do with sort of like Neanderthals, but it's a question that I used to ask. I thought they were introduced to shame, not modesty. I'm not a Bible person, so maybe it's shame.

Yeah, no, they were made to feel shame. Okay, they were made to feel shame. And so that's a human trait. And then if you see two little chipmunks mating, you say to yourself, they're just out there mating and they don't care that all these people are standing around watching because they don't – They have no shame. They experience no shame. But really – But that's voyeurism.

On the part of the humans. But they're not into voyeurism because they're in. It's exhibitionism on the part of – Sorry, exhibitionism. Yes. Thank you. No, the voyeurist is – you're the voyeurist for watching these poor things. Animals are exhibitionists.

There's a lot of that going on. No, the voyeurist is the, you're the voyeurist for watching these poor things. Animals are exhibitionists. So between the voyeurism and role play and exhibition, this is the most risque episode of the Meteor podcast. Phil's going to walk out and protest. He's like, I didn't sign up for this kind of stuff. I'm a family man. No, this is what I want. You all went to the University of Montana. This is finally going in a direction that Phil can get on board with.

Yeah, the giant red squirrels that overran the campus on the University of Montana, that exact scene you just described played out many times during my stint at U of M. You went to U of M too. Yeah. For writing.

You studied writing there. Yeah. Good school. You went to U of M too. I did, yeah. So now, you know, at Anthem of Physicians. I don't know what that makes us.

It makes us grizz because you always belong to the undergraduate school. So even when I'm in my regalia, maybe I shouldn't say this on the air. My regalia is from the University of Montana, my undergraduate school instead of my PhD program. Gotcha. Because I just think you always belong to your undergraduate school, don't you? I don't look at those institutions in that way i felt i felt it was very transactional and like i don't have any sort of when they call about fundraising you just help everybody no i just have things i'm dedicated

to but it's like i just viewed it as a transactional relationship i like i i i you know i go to wayland tire here in town okay um if like i don't imagine Wayland Tire calling me, wanting me to send them extra money. Like we engage in a transaction and the transaction is done. Don't call me later and be like, Hey, you know, you had your oil changed here and bought tires here. How about now just sending us money for nothing? It was, I feel it was very transactional.

But I want to get back to. When I dropped out of the University of Montana, nobody ever called and said, hey, really missed you in class. Did you go back? I never did. No. No.

Mom listens to these two and she'll- She'll back us. I'll be like, you know. Okay. Sorry, go ahead. Anthropomorphism. So you know what it means. So you get what it means now where you're saying-

Oh, yeah. I just want to make sure everybody i want to make sure everybody's tracking so if you pretend that an animal has a certain quality a certain personality trait people think you're pretending that it couldn't possibly then they say you're being anthropomorphic because it's not possible that an animal could possibly feel loyalty or pain i mean i think I think I give an example. You write about buffalo, so you'll know this example from my book. Are you familiar with Dr. Hornaday's work? Oh, yeah. Okie dokie. So I've read Hornaday's journals. I love them. That's another plug. Dr. Hornaday's

journals are fantastic. And so- He's emerged as a very controversial figure. He did. But his family called me when I finished publishing an article about him. They said it was the best piece they've ever, it wasn't just about him, it was about Buffalo, but they said it was the best piece they've ever read about him. And I was not trying to be complimentary. I was very objective. I mean, I talked about all his warts. There were many of them. He had a lot of prejudices they were getting shot a lot in the late 1800s, when one falls from a bullet, then the other ones just all kind of stand around. And Hornaday said these animals are complicit in their own. I mean, he wanted to save them. He was furious. But still, he said, they're complicit in their own extinction because they're he called them stupid brutes because they just stand around and one's gone down the the hunters probably on

the choo-choo train are just going to keep shooting and they're going to shoot all of them yeah and the hide hunters would even manipulate that exactly where they knew which ones and so down to keep the other ones around and why don't you believe some of the stories that say that they simply had loyalty? Now, when that character, what was his name? Custer. When Custer did his last retreat, running retreat, everybody tried to turn that into his, they call it a stand, even though he was doing a running retreat. Because it was considered honorable to stand in the face of danger. It makes you loyal and brave because he was a human, and that's a human trait.

But if an animal stands with her comrades, she's an idiot. They're foolish. You see, Hornad's really no way to know. I mean, sometimes science doesn't have an answer for you. You just have to use your instincts and your common sense. But neither Hornaday nor I know what's going on, really. We could both be wrong. I don't know. But all I know is that he didn't consider it, and I just throw that out as a possibility. That's what I mean by anthropomorphism. So if I were to say those buffalo aren't stupid, they're just, they're there because they're loyal. They're standing with their comrades because they're loyal. Then you, if you were pedantic, would say to me, you're so anthropomorphic, Raven, get the hell out of here.

But couldn't you also, because we often talk about and try to teach our kids that kids that no the animal's not being stupid that's like this human thing we want to we want to attribute to it it's just being an animal so is there another version where they're not they're not being anthropomorphic but they're just being buffalo yeah i think that well go ahead you're about you wrote a wonderful book on Buffalo, by the way. That's another plug I want to put in. That's one of the books I own. It's great. I rebel against, okay.

One, I discourage my kids from outrageous anthropomorphism. I discourage that. I also, even more vehemently, discourage them from describing animals as stupid. Yeah, right. If something doesn't run away, I'm like, is it benefit you're not a risk why is it beneficial for it to expend all kinds of energy and put itself in the in the way of potential harm by running headlong into some other area to get away from something that's not risky so when you say like the turkeys in our yard are stupid because they just stand there,

maybe it'd be really stupid for it to run away from something that's not threatening it. And then it lands in the neighbor's fence and gets eaten by the neighbor's dog because it's retreating from something that poses no risk anyways. Maybe the turkey is really smart and doesn't run away. And that's perfect. I mean, that's the first step that we have to take. And in Hornaday's time, animals were always considered, I mean, if they had a personality, even though stupidity is not technically a personality, it was always to negate the idea of constantly calling animals dumb when they you see skunks uh getting run over by cars all the time they're so dumb why are they because they can't evolve fast enough to realize that humans used to walk and then drag dogs with them which are a little faster and then horses and in like a hundred years we now have semi trucks doing a hundred miles an hour on the same trail that humans used to walk

on. Skunks can't evolve fast enough. We can't either. It's not that they're stupid. It's just that they haven't evolved with semi-trucks coming across the highway like this at these outrageous speeds. But we do have a bad habit of calling animals stupid when they do things that we don't – like you just explained to your kids. Why would it make sense? I mean, how could they possibly know that something like a semi-truck even exists? How could they possibly know that anything could move that fast on the road? So we should stop calling them stupid. So as an academic, like, I don what do you do you call yourself an academic i

don't know yeah i've had sure i know what you mean i mean i i don't generally identify myself with labels because i generally prefer to identify myself with verbs rather than nouns but yes i teach at the university i've been trained as an academic anthropomorphic the anthropomorphism accusation, being that your training – Yeah. I don't know. It's one animal. It's just one animal. Well, I'm not accusing you of going against your training.

No, no. I'm saying that to do a work like this, no doubt people from your world, from your professional world, will look at a work like this, and maybe without reading it, but as a surface examination, it would be that you've gone over to the other side. Of course, of course. Do you care that they think that? I just expected it. I knew from the, I mean, I hid my relationship with the Fox for ages and ages and ages and i remember starting conversations with people that worked in the academy with me and i would say something in the middle of a conversation i might slip in something like oh and uh fox and i and then someone that a colleague a close colleague would say just just as long as you're not being anthropomorphic, go ahead with your story. And then you're like, oh, uh-oh.

I mean, oh, absolutely. They like police you? Oh, absolutely. It's a dirty secret, right? You had a dirty secret in those circles. It was a dirty secret, absolutely. I mean, it's a taboo. It absolutely is.

So, yeah, I mean, I'm ready for it. But I understand that. I've been listening to that complaint for a long time. But you asked if there's a middle ground. And, of course, there is a long time. But you asked if there's a middle ground. And of course, there is a middle ground. It's just to say that there's a less of a separation between humans and other animals than we previously believed. I'm not saying that humans and other animals have the exact same personality and the same emotions. There's so many animals. A worm is different than a beetle is different

than a bird and every bird species is different. I'm just saying that we have this huge separation. Humans are way over here and all the other animals are there. It can't be possible that with the little differences in DNA that there are between humans and chimps, it can't be possible that all of these traits that we think only belong to humans and that chimps just simply eat and sleep and defecate and have sex. I mean, it's just not possible. Some of the things that we believe are only human traits, those have to accrue to other animals as well. Because our DNA, I mean, we're all related as Darwin has told us. And if you guys haven't read Darwin yet, there's a lot of plugs for him in my book. And I do try to explain as it fits in and very gently because the book's not encyclopedic and it's not like lecturing. It's a story. But I do have to mention Darwin once in a while because I have been trained in biology and I think Darwin's work is amazing. One way to describe your book would be you'd say like, oh, it's about a woman's relationship with a fox.

Okay. Okay. to describe your book would be you'd say like oh it's about a woman's relationship with a fox okay okay what um what do you like what did you want to accomplish with it what would be like the deeper explanation of what the book is it's really about how humans should fit into nature how it's part of us and we're part of it and we should stop using that old-fashioned term mother nature as though it's some authoritarian figure. You don't like mother nature? No. You don't like the term? Nature's a community. It's not an individual that we should revere and be afraid of and honor. We

are part of nature. We fit into it. And if we fit into it as a community, of course we have responsibilities, but it's not something that we should revere and hold up over ourselves. It's our birthright. We're animals and we should fit ourselves. Let me run this by, I'm working on a new tagline for, you know, just my general brand and what I do. And it goes like this, Mother Nature is my co-pilot. Ooh, that's a good little bumper sticker. Do you like that, or is that still too much reverence for Mother Nature?

So how about God isn't my co-pilot, he's the pilot? That's what our pilot at Voyagers, when I worked at voyagers national park that was uh that was on the airplane that we we had to take ships everywhere because we had voyagers and apostle islands and isle royals so of course that's how you got around yeah um i had something not mother nature are you seriously thinking about doing that it's okay i just i think Mother Nature kind of scares people.

I mean, so your mother's probably some sweet little old lady, right? But Mother Nature does make it seem like. Keep in mind, Giannis is pagan. Yeah, they, on the solstices, they drag logs around their house and whatnot. What's your business? Light them on fire. A tagline for what? Oh, just my brand here within the meat eater brand.

Yanni brand. My personal brand. Oh, but you're totally within meat eater. Yes, ma'am. Oh, so, but. Oh, yeah. He like. Yeah.

He like. Mother nature. He's like. He makes materials. He's like. Content producer. Yeah. He like produces ideas and materials.

You guys use that word mother Nature a lot, huh? No. Okay. In the book I'm currently writing, which explores children and nature and how they relate, I spent a lot of time talking about the perils of looking down at nature. No. And I talk a lot about the perils of looking up at it. Oh, good. I forgot about that.

And I try to explore, and I'm not a master at this, but I try to explore ways of how to encourage your children to see it like on an eye-to-eye level. And that's so right. That's the book. I mean, that's a more important part of the book or equally important part. I mean, obviously, friendship is really important. Friendship in general and then interspecies friendship. But yeah, I want people to feel like they fit in with nature, that it's not. I forgot about the fact that some people look down on nature and that. I don't know very many people that do, but I understand that. So really, that comes from something in the Bible too. I don't know that it's, when I describe looking down at it, I think that it would be – it manifests more as very willing to be dismissive of it. Right.

And that we're the most important species in the world and we're in charge of everything and we have dominion over everything. You don't find many people who would say like, I hate nature. No, but you think – But in action, an outside observer might look at certain actions and be like, man, that guy is not like nature. Well, sure. All the development that's going on around Bozeman and in the valley and all over Montana. Some people, if you say, can we have a little bit of regulation here so that we keep a little bit of open space so that we don't kill every living thing that's not human or dog or cat. And then people would say, would accuse you of not putting humans first. And so I understand that. I mean, there are people

who- Oh, and you'd argue, oh, no, no, I am. I'm thinking about humans right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what you're trying to teach your kids. So that makes, is it a kid's book? No, it's for grownups. Yeah, but that's right. It's for grownups who have kids in their lives. Yeah, yeah. And my book is for grownups who are kids. Not necessarily, it doesn't need to be your kids,

but like kids in your lives. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. That would be perfect. I mean, that's, that sounds a lot like what I'm, what I thought I did with Fox.

Exactly. Helping people to realize we're part of it and don't look down. Don't, and definitely don't look up at it either because I mean, I have to revere it. We are it. Okay. Give people the big plug,

uh, how to find it, how to find more about you if you don't do you want to be found out about i know you're i know from from cindy your publisher i know you're very private yeah so you don't even like to do this kind of stuff i have right this might be my first pod i think i've done some pods but this is my first big studio thing, though. I have a website, but it doesn't have a – but it won't help you. I mean, like, I paid for the domain name, and it just sits there. So no point in me giving you that. But you can buy the book at Barnes & Noble.

If you're in Bozeman, Country Bookshelf. And if you're not one of those people that wants jeff bezos to stay in space you can get it from amazon and i think um i do want to say one more thing you can be really diplomatic no i want to say one more thing there's a way you go you say um anywhere books are sold anywhere books are sold i wanted to say one more thing though you can if you just want to listen to it you can get that audio it's called you can get an audio book and I just found out

yesterday you can did you do your own read no but I listened to the gal who did the read and I listened to they had someone else do the read they did but I I do it in the

future few of them you know winding when you don't let that happen are the same words yeah I know I listened to her she got windy and windy mixed up don't let a spell to the same words. Yeah, I know. I listened to her. She got Wendy and Windy mixed up. They're spelled the same.

Don't let some person... You know, I don't know who... I don't... Your publisher's a dear friend of mine, and I owe a lot of my career and life to her. If it was her decision, I'll fight with her about it. They should not have allowed that.

You should... That should not have happened. You should read your own damn book. You need a professional studio though. I thought that was the deal. And so it was the time of COVID. That was the problem. It was taped during COVID. I mean,

I don't think that was the only problem. I think they never considered having me meet it, but we did have to hire a gal with it who, who had a studio. You might've needed to practice for a long time. And had a studio. Yeah. No, I know you have to practice cause a long time. And had a studio. Yeah. No, I know you have to practice because I make videos for my students and you have to

keep going over, getting, repeating everything over and over because you noticed you said something wrong or there was too much of a pause there and whatever. So it takes a long time. I'm bringing too much personal stuff into this. No, wait, one more thing. Audio and the download onto the little machines that you can read from. You can do that. I just found that out yesterday.

So anywhere books are sold, anywhere books are sold. Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble. Hell, even Amazon. Even Amazon. And so that's right.

No, thanks everybody who buys it for sure. Yeah, I think it's great. And reads it more so. You're becoming, all of this is making you become less of a hermit. Well. Do you think you're going to go back into hiding?

Not you're hiding. Do you think you're going to become, do you imagine now being more lasting effects of social interactions? I just have to put in a plug about hermits and such. And you'll read this in my book also. People who live away from other people, we're not trying to hide from people. We don't dislike people. We're not trying to get away from people. We just love the things that people get rid of.

That's why I want to live in a place where I can sit outside and watch the badgers and the skunks and the eagles and the foxes and where it's quiet and I can hear what I want to hear, like the wind. And I don't have to see trucks coming by all day long. It's not because I don't like humans. It's because I love the things that humans get rid of. And if I was really misanthropic, I would live in a city because if you really dislike humans, then you want to live where there's a lot of humans so that you can torture them and whatever the hell you do. Oh yeah, you can manipulate them. Misanthropes live around people. Lie to them.

Yeah. So the bad guys who don't like people are the ones that live where there's people, right? The people that are really don't like people, they live in cities, not in the country. Yeah, that's a seed.

I figured that out. It needs work, but that's a good seed of an idea. I like that. Thanks, I figured that out. There's your tagline, Yanni. You put that on a bumper sticker. But I've been working on that idea.

No, I like it. There's something there, man. I think there is, for sure. Don't you that idea. I think there's something there, man. I think there is for sure. Don't you? Yeah. It's a compelling point. I'm going to, I'm going to like lay in bed and unpack that one. Good.

That's a good one. I've never thought about humans getting rid of silence, but it's true. Getting rid of silence. It's one of my favorite things about where we live is the silence. And, uh, There's like a death metal band that covers Sound of Silence? No. The Sound of Silence.

Oh, it's so good. It's disturbed. It's the name of the band. It's so good. All right, Kathy Raven, the title of the book, easy to remember. Fox and I. Fox and I. And then Carmen Van Bianchi, third appearance on the podcast.

Her new company will, not a company, her new nonprofit will be called? Home Reign Wildlife Research. Yeah. Do you want people going and looking you up on social media and stuff, or do you hate that kind of stuff? I don't have any of that. Good for you. Good. Less competition for my account.

Do you care to have people find you? Well, we do have a website, homerange.org. And that's the way to go? Yeah. You don't want them emailing you and stuff like that? Oh, they can email me. But not so badly that you want to give out your email address. I wouldn't do that.

Yeah, probably not. There's got to be a contact us at homerange.org. That's true. Yes, I have a Home Range email. Oh, there you go. So got to be a contact us at homerange.org. That's true, yes. I have a Home Range email. Oh, there you go. So you got something to get, and you check it. So if someone wants to reach out to you and say, hey, I got a study idea for you. Yeah, or I'm a budding young biologist, I need a job. Yep.

I got a wolf story to tell you about. Or I got a gajillion dollars, and I'm looking to put it in a non-profit. Especially those, yep. Yes, homerange.org. Yep. Okay. Fox and I, homerange.org yep okay fox and i homerange.org two very different things but both worthwhile checking out thank you everybody Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada.

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