The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 518: Trapping Lynx on the Home Range

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Carmen Vanbianchi, Brooklyn Stevens, Jen Lewis, Brody Henderson, Randall Williams, and Phil Taylor.  Topics discussed: Starting your euro mount business at 17 because you like saving other peoples’ memories; babysitting the skull and and using dental picks; get your skull cleaned by Brooklyn at 406.boneworks; when the crazy driver who passes you on the road is Cal hauling a trailer; the Apex Belt system and the best duffle bag ever made by FHF; coining the term “bob kitten”; culling barred owls; are you invasive if you move somewhere on your own?; how lynx can end up in weird places; how old man faces and baby faces are the same; tail differences; the hurt on the lynx population; critters escaping fire; looking for tracks at high speed; when the community comes together to help you get road kill deer to lure lynx; the strong smell of gusto; males vs. females going into traps; how getting a mortality signal from a collar makes your heart sink; minimizing stress; K-holes; how a fisher can whoop a lynx; Steve’s list of gripes; how to play Home Range's Trap-a-Cat fundraiser game; and more.  Outro music: "The Ballad of Steven Rinella" by Jon Theis.    Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee 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. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com. Carmen's apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at FirstLight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. All right, we got more women in here than normal. By a lot. Normally it's just Corinne.

What? Everybody knows how lame that is. Today we're joined by, probably for the millionth time, Carmen Van Bianchi. How many times have you been on the show? Maybe this is number five. Oh, okay. She's our resident wildlife biologist. We've tracked Carmen all through her career.

Now she's a Lynx researcher from Home Range. You guys founded Home Range. Wildlife research, yep. We've participated in all kinds of projects. Trying to raise awareness for your project. We did that thing trying to raise up money for snowmobiles. Yep. And now you're back to give us a report.

Yep. On what's going on. Yep. Now we've been doing a little trapping, but different. Yeah. You got some beavers. Today we caught a raccoon the likes of which man has never seen. I don't know what he's doing out in that cold weather too. You got some beavers? Today we caught a raccoon, the likes of which man has never seen.

I don't know what he's doing out in that cold weather, too. I don't know. He's just, yeah, typically he'd be in a den tree somewhere, but he was out and about last night. There was a spot by, there's a spot by this rancher's place and there's a hole in the fence where coyotes are coming through and that raccoon coming through there. Uh, hang tight a minute guys. I'm gonna tell you something before I introduce all of our other women. Uh, this rancher is telling us how,

so we get down there by the river, by his place down the river bottom and there's dead sheep carcasses. You can't tell what's going on. It's just dead sheep. Get to talking to him. And he had, they had in the fall, they had a black bear and it's kind of unusual spot for black they had black bear come in killed killed he kept saying the bear killed five bucks okay i was like how do you know how many bucks

the bear i thought he meant like deer then i realized he's talking about buck sheep these things are 1500 bucks a piece killed five buck sheep killed a goat killed a goose he calls fish again they're like if you catch the bear go and shoot it so he tells us if we see the bear to shoot it and you can see his track in the ice like he'd been walking on the a slew since it froze up. Then he says, there's this dude he knows that looks for,

that tries to build stuff out of driftwood. And that guy is sniffing around this big driftwood pile down on the bank. And he finds the bear hiding in the driftwood pile the other day. So he tells me and Seth to go in there and look in that driftwood pile. And we haven't gone and looked yet. And he said, he said, he told me I'm scared to go look in there, but if you guys go look in there, then I'll call a fishing game and you can get the bear. And I'm like, I think I'm going to have to personally speak with fishing. I'm going to have to have a personal conversation with fishing game before I follow through with this plan.

Looking through this. But we looked at that log jam jam today talked about having to look down in there yeah and we haven't gone down there and looked yet oh we're 100 yards from it when you say hidden in there you mean like dead up in there yeah it's dented up in that log jam he's sleeping i know and how do you know what bears what that's what i'm saying it's like we're not going to get into that vigilante justice but i am going to go look into that log jam. I can't believe you didn't get curious enough to go look in there. I'm going to look. I'm looking tomorrow. We wouldn't be here right now if we got to look in there.

Yeah, we were already a half hour late. If we had looked in there, you might not have ever heard from us again. We were crunched for time. I couldn't decide if I was going to put a thermal in there, but I don't think that's going to work. I'm just going to shine a light in there and see if he's in there. Because I guess it scared the hell out of this driftwood guy. I can imagine. It was awake in there.

Yeah, so I'm going to see. If he is, well, it's kind of a weird little spot. I don't know how much I believe it. It could all be myth. Seth's here. Dr. Randall's here. Jen Lewis from FHF is here. Dr. Randall's here. Jen Lewis from FHF is here. And Jen Lewis's daughter, Brooklyn Stevens, is here.

And Brody Henderson. Now, Brooklyn's here for a very special reason, because you have recently got yourself into the skull cleaning business. Yep. How many skulls did you clean this year? Probably around 20 or 30. Are you serious? You did that many? Yeah.

Nice. All right. Huh. You got interested in taxidermy? How old are you, first off? 17. 17. What got you interested in taxidermy?

Oh, when I saw my first deer, I walked into the taxidermy shop and it just felt like home. I like creating or like saving other people's memories so i thought it'd be fun oh wow uh and what'd you have done with your first deer just a european mount oh and then you got it back and thought i could do that better yep what are your your how are you cleaning them i just boil them and then bleach them. Okay. Yep. And then, but you didn't, but here's why it was such a careful job you did, because the sinuses are still good.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. I usually wind up taking a drill bit and just like, I get a little burned out on the whole thing and eventually I wind up running a drill up in there to get all that garbage out of there. Can I see that again? The job you did? So Brooklyn's holding a buck that I brought to her this year.

Old warrior. A little warrior. He broke his beam off. So how'd you get that so clean boiling it? What'd you do to eventually get it out of there? I sit with it for hours and hours and i just pick on it with dental picks that's what you're using yep do you do any pressure washing uh every now and then yeah i try and pick off all the meat though really it's nicer yep what grade you in uh senior in

high school you're senior in high school what are you gonna do when you finish high school taxidermy you want to you want to go into taxidermy? Yep. How much are you charging for a skull like that? $120 for deer and $160 for elk. Looks amazing. Thank you. That's a good price. See, you're going to think I'm lying if I told you I've never seen a boiled skull turn out like that. Really?

Never. Brody? It's good. It's great. I'm bringing Brody in this because Brody boils up some. Yeah, I was gonna. I'm bringing Brody in this because Brody boils up some skulls, but that's a work of art, Brody. Yeah, it's, it's really white.

Looks great. Thank you. Um, yeah, I did like 16 this year and that I, I went four or five past my limit of patience. No. Brody, you're not an aspiring skull cleaner. No.

You're not an aspiring taxidermist. Do you, do you pressure wash yours? I, I have man, but I've seen that blow them apart. Yeah. Especially after they've been, if you really got to boil them for a while. So you pick all the meat too. Yeah, but I mean, like she was saying,

it's really just the nooks and crannies. You do it the right way. I have currently two deer skulls sitting in my garage. One that my wife killed, one that I killed. And it's like gotten to the point where all the shit is like dried on there. It'll never look right. Yeah. Brooklyn, are people bringing you these with the hide on them or are they skinning them?

That's what I was going to ask. Do you think, do you think the ones that you think they turn out better when they're unskinned or they've been skinned? It depends. The ones that are unskinned do come out a little bit better. I think they clean up better. But the ones that are skinned, I can get to look good too. She just did a big ram, a big deadhead ram. Are you serious?

Yeah. From where? I don't know. The lady bought it from the FWP auction. Oh, she bought it at the auction? Yep. Yeah. Huh.

And brought it to you. Yeah. What condition was it in? Turkey. Really all dried out? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so you'll mess around with dried out stuff.

That's not ideal. Do you charge more if they don't skin it? You're in luck. No, because it takes me no time to skin something. See, I always think I'm doing people a favor when I skin it and pluck the eyes out. It's nice, but I don't mind skinning. So they'll bring you a hair on head, lower jaw there, eyes there, all desiccated, dried out, and you charge them the same amount of money. Yeah.

Do you have a page set up for your business? No, I just have instagram and the gmail yeah um how do people find you to bring you some business so so folks that are uh listening um jen lewis and paul lewis paul lewis has been on the podcast a number of times from fhf and this is their youngster so how do people people find your business? Either on Instagram or word of mouth. No, but what do they type up? 406 Boneworks. 406 Boneworks?

You ever think about getting a beetle room? No, I don't want to mess with beetles. That's a smelly business right there. That's what I want to get into. You'd have to get your own house probably if you're going to get into the beetle business because, man, that is a smelly business. I looked into it.

You can order those beetles from Amazon. Yeah, I looked into that. You can find them on the roadside. I didn't know that Amazon sold them, but you can find them on the roadside. So you're going to stay with boiling. Yeah. But you're going to go to taxidermy school. I don't know.

I like YouTube. Oh, you like doing it that way? Okay. YouTube University. Are you going to get into like shoulder mounts? Yeah. Nice. Yep.

So you're going all in. Yeah. So 406 Boneworks. Yep. And you'll clean people's skulls and do that immaculate. Did you do that nice job because you knew you were going to use it as a piece of sales? No. And then normally you just brutalize them?

No. That's how they all turn out. They all turn out that nice? Yep. All right. That's impressive. That is impressive. 120 bucks.

Yep. That's a deal. Have you done any elk? Yeah. What do you get for an elk? 160. Only $40 more. Yeah.

Three times as big. Sort of. I don't like to think so, though. How did you come up with your pricing strategy just what propane costs and the amount of bleach and then my time you met how much are you making any money after all that a little bit did you ever calculate what you make per hour no do you want to or do you not even want to know i don't really want to know that's pretty good school now listen i had a guy you know what i paid this year i hesitate to tell Do you want to, or do you not even want to know? I don't really want to know.

That was a pretty good skull. Now listen, I had a guy, you know what I paid this year? I hesitate to tell you. You know what I paid this year to get a moose cleaned? What's that? Take a guess. Probably $225. Higher.

That would have been nice. $325. Higher. $425. Higher. Oh my God. $975. Lower. higher 425 higher oh my god 975 lower listen i had someone do a moose moose goal this year 600 kylie dropped it off and i come back and there's an invoice for 600 bucks on my desk i'm like i think they well i dropped it off oh you dropped it off yeah i talked to your text

i told you i talked to your text everybody might dude, you're third the way to his shoulder mount. Yeah. I saw the invoice when I dropped it off because he gave it to me and I was like, ew. Never seen anything like that. That was a big moose. Yeah. I was like, I'm assuming Steve knows.

Not cleaning the antlers. I think I saw you that day. Yeah. Because you were at the shop and he had a shell shocked look about him. Yeah. I just assumed you knew what it was going to cost. No. How much would you have done that for?

The problem with those is the way they're shaped. You can't dip them in a tank real good. Yeah. It's a whole different process. Probably 300. You could have done it for three. I could have got two done. Yeah.

What's it called again? 406 Boneworks? Yep. 406 Boneworks to get your skulls cleaned You gonna do it next year too? Yep Alright Thanks for coming out and plugging the biz

Yeah You're supposed to be in school right now I am You're gonna hang tight though? Yeah Alright She's a lynx researcher Maybe you can fill out

When your taxidermy is slow You can go chase lynx on a snowmobile for these guys. Sounds good. Yep. Oh, you know what we were talking about today? Me and Seth had to drive on icy roads and I was remembering this story. I was telling them is, we're talking about when it's real icy and you go to pass somebody, how you're endangering everybody. I remember when I was a kid, I remember so vividly when I was a kid, we're driving down the road and this dude comes by in one of those wood paneled station wagons with a cowboy hat on.

It kind of like blows past us in the way that made my dad irate, you know. And we come around a few bends and there's this dude's car wrecked and he's standing out in the snow staring at his wrecked car. And Seth was saying he had a guy blow past him and later found him up front and crashed. We did the same thing going up to a snowball. These kids in the car behind us passed and I just gripping the steering wheel and clenching my teeth for five minutes after that. We get up to the top and they're in the ditch.

I have, I have two, two separate occasions while I was heading to a hunting spot. One this year and one couple of years ago. I've had Ryan Callahan pass me on shitty roads. It's the same situation, but I haven't found him in a ditch. But I've had him pass me on bad roads. Wait until you do. It's all worth it then.

Especially if you're heading to the same trailhead. One was this year in the dark. He passed me on just a normal road hauling a trailer. Kale. Yeah. I called him. I called him.

I said you're going to end up in the ditch. He doesn't seem like a reckless person. He's just confident on snowy roads I guess. So Jen Lewis you just handed me

I'm not going to tell anybody what you just handed me but you handed me a new backpack. I did. That you're working on. I'm not working on it. That y'all. Paul's definitely working on it. paul's working on you guys invented the world's greatest

duffel bag which is not available you like that what's that called the pit duffel dude that is the best like i'm sort of a duffel bag connoisseur that is the i used to think the best duffel bag ever made patagonia had one called the shuttle duffel i have made. Patagonia had one called the Shuttle Duffel. I have one. After they quit making it a million years ago, I used to go now and then on eBay trying to find a used one is how much I liked it. Yeah. This is the new best duffel bag. It's pretty sweet.

I think you got the new one with the new fabric. Yeah. Sailcloth, which is. Is that what that's called? Yeah. It's the same fabric that they make sailboat sails out of oh really yeah so highly durable yeah paul was messing around with different ones all the time he gave me one and the the baggage handlers would ruin them yeah i think that's the whole reason i'd send it back to him and be like no baggage handlers ruined it yeah

he finally got a fabric that the baggage handlers can't ruin. Yeah, it should be like nearly indestructible. Yeah, because some of the material he was using was great and real waterproof, but it would get, when it gets, when things get stuck in the baggage carousel, it would abrade it. Yeah. Because it was kind of catchy. Yeah, and I think we're going to do a few

sizes of that. Well, I hope so because that needs to be medium. Right? I'll let him know. Well, he knows. Okay. Well, I mean, I told him that's what I think. I think it should be medium and there should be small and large.

I think that's the direction we're going. Because that one's a little, for carry-on, it's a little, it's a little sketchy. Too big? Too small? No, no. You could carry it on, but it'd be like, if you stuffed it to the gills, you're not going to be able to use it as a carry-on bag, I'm afraid. Yeah.

Because the smaller one and then, and then a big giant mambo-jambo bag. Because we had a different bag kind of in the works that I think you had, but I think this is replacing that. And so there will be a larger size. Oh, okay. Good, good. Big enough. I mean, the guy stuck me in it, so. Oh, that big?

It's big. Wow. I haven't seen that. I have a cooler that two people can fit in. Yeah? I don't know. How would you know that. I have a cooler that two people can fit in. Yeah. I don't know. How would you know that? It's a funny story.

I had a buddy of mine who's kind of a lawyer. He's like a lawyer, but he doesn't do any law dogging. So what's he do? You know, that's a great question. I needed some paperwork drawn up for like a thing i own with some other like our cabin i need this paperwork drawn up he's like i'll do it because you just gotta get me a cooler for my boat and he tells me what's that cooler i got sitting outside any racer britney got in at one time we were able to close i don't know what side they i mean for those blue water boats that

we'd have to look it up. It takes two people to move it. It's like a four. 600 maybe? I don't know. I don't know. Two people can lay down lengthwise in it and shut the door. My buddy says, I'll do the legal work if you get me a cooler for my boat.

And I'm like, that's fine. So he says, this is the cooler I want. And it's a giant, the biggest Yeti cooler ever made. I'm like, that's not going to fit on your boat. Oh yeah, it'll fit. I get the cooler delivered to my house. He comes over. That's not going to fit on my boat.

So I still have that thing. I use it to store like bird seed and stuff in it and like charcoal. Just what it was designed for. Just what it was designed for. Just what it was designed for. What else is coming up? So when will that duffel bag be for sale? June. I think it'll be June.

We've got just a couple of launches this year. So Much New Year came out last year. And the spring, the rest of our Apex Belt System hydration pack, that'll come out in February. And then the Pit Duffel and a couple other small items will be coming out in June that I can't talk about yet. Yeah, that's no problem.

I hunted turkeys all spring in the apex belt. Did you like it? Yeah, I love it. It's kind of a game changer. Yeah, no, it's great. So the apex belt is like, what they, like Paul calls it, like he hesitates to use the term, but it's similar to a battle belt. So that's kind of like. Different words. I don't know what the hell the word is. Yeah, like a term, but it's similar to a battle belt. So that's kind of like. Different words.

I don't know what the hell the word is. Yeah, like a tactical, like load bearing belt or a battle belt. Obviously years of SWAT team, he had, you know, a similar belt. It's kind of actually what got him sewing is he had to buy a battle belt and he was too cheap. So he said, I bet I could make one.

And that's what got him sewing. Oh, is that really? Yeah. So, so that's how he got into sewing, but ended up making belts for a few different guys. Obviously, we've come a long way. This is a three-piece belt, so different than what you would typically find,

and it's a structured belt. So the other colorways of that product will be launching with some accessories like box call pouch a few other turkey stuff so yeah you put well like everything at fhf always fits together so you put the belt on there will be a hydration bladder that goes on it that functions as a backpack there's a fanny pack thing there's pockets for pot calls there's what I call the morel bag. Yeah, the dump pouch.

There's this dump pouch bag that rolls up to the size of like, if you make the okay symbol, you can't really do that for a long time. People thought you were making a. You remember this? This was real bad to do. That's still a thing. No, listen. I don't want to name names. Let me tell you something. The turkey call incident to name names. Let me tell you something.

The turkey call incident? You can tell that story? This is the best story I've ever heard. I witnessed it. In the height of all the paranoia, okay, about don't say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, we're down in South Carolina and we're turkey hunting. And we're on a dirt road that crosses

a railroad track. Okay. There's a stop sign because it's a railroad track. I stopped and I see a dude stopped coming my way in South Carolina on dirt roads. I see that he's got his hand draped over his wheel, holding a Turkey diaphragm call to the point where i comment on it to my fellow passengers and it's blaze orange and i'm even trying to wonder whose call it is and i'm like oh that guy's hunting turkeys too he's holding it between his hold it his thumb and his in the okay symbol point pointer finger he's got it the turkey call in his thumb and pointer finger, his palm rested on the wheel. Some of our camera guys are behind us.

I drive past, he waves, they drive past, apparently he waves too. Later they get all excited that he had given them the white supremacist symbol. Excited because it was an awful fun thing to witness?

I hope. I was like, that gentleman, fellas, was holding a turkey call between his thumb and forefinger and that is why

he had to wave that way. During the height of that excitement too, a dude won three, a dude won three like, uh,

Jeopardy's. Mm-hmm. And so they're announcing that he won three Jeopardy's. And instead of going like, when I want to do three, I do like, I guess thumb to pinky. How do you do three? Yeah. Yeah. It's the whole plot point in Inglourious Bastards.

Yeah. The three or the. Three or three. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah. So he throws a three like he's doing an okay. So they're announcing his name, third time champion, and he does this.

Next day in the news, white supremacist. He's like, no, I think I won three times. So what was I getting at? Why was I talking about that? There was. The pouch. The pouch. The pouch. Oh.

Yeah, that has nothing to do with that story. Yeah, you're talking about the size of the pouch. Oh. The size of the pouch. Yeah, this is the size of the pouch. It's so small that if you make what was formerly known as an OK symbol, you know, they still use this in diving some diving some is thumbs up some is okay so all day long and you're like there's no

white supremacy white supremacy so you make the okay symbol and this pouch would fit like through the okay symbol but it rolls out to be like uh I don't know the size of an algin bottle so when you find morels which is what i did i undid it and it's the perfect morel pouch hanging off your belt it's really comfortable and then it's got a seat too for turkey hunting yeah like i've always been i've always been a reluctant user of turkey vests this thing is far far far better than any turkey vest i've ever done and when you sit down and you open the call pouch out, what's the call pouch called again? The echelon pouch.

The echelon pouch. You open that out, it kind of opens up. So your strikers and your pots are sitting right there, your scratch pads sitting right there, then you zip back up. You don't be leaving everything laying out in the woods, which is my problem. Oh man, I've left calls laying on the ground

so many times. I remember calling Doug D durin being like hey man you know that one tree way at the back like can you go look under there can you go over there and look for my stuff uh so that's a good deal and some of that's out now and some's coming out it'll kind of roll out right yep most of it's out now just in a couple of colors and then the rest of it will launch in february we've got a box call pouch that's launching the dump pouch that you just talked about and then a couple other small accessories like suspenders if you really want to load it up you can buy suspenders but the nice thing you can use everything independently oh yeah you can tie it into your bino harness if you want yeah absolutely no it's a sweet system

you know i use a lot for too? Fishing in the summer. Yeah. Wade and creeks. That's definitely what I use it for. So we spent a lot of time this fall. We went down to Sedona and did fly fishing and I worked the whole time and it was great. You did fly fishing.

Yep. Went fly fishing. I went fly fishing. Did it. Did that. Anything else we should know about? Lots of exciting stuff coming in 25 so we'll probably start leaking some of that out in the next six months oh i don't want to show this let's say i like this when would that be available that'll be out in 25 oh really way in the future

yeah all right thank you for letting me try one out. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Do we want to get into this now, Corinne? Does this take too long to get into? I mean, you can feel free to skip any of the things. I'm going to talk about this. Because we've spent a bunch of time on this talking about it already. We got in a big old argument. You can put a bow on it.

Yeah, this will be the end. We're going to have to bring back that song, Corinne. We done beat this horse to death. Are you going to bring up Cal's email while you're at it? Cal's email. Remember he got all mad that we were spending time on this? So we got a little bit of a fight here in the studio one day about the Ornithological Society's decision to rename 60 birds, which I felt was obsessive in a media grab. Nowadays, it's like you, just to give a quick recap, nowadays, it's bad form.

Have you ever named a species or been involved in naming a species, Carmen? No, no. Well, but it's not like you think. I know people that have got to name them because you know they split so much in taxonomy if you worked with invertebrates or catfish or something you get to be involved in all kinds of species naming because everybody's like you know you go down to south america and everybody's like oh you know that little brown catfish then one day you go to another river and you realize that whatever yeah yeah this one has a lot of rays on its tail, but next river over, it's got nine rays on its tail. Then you get to name it something new.

So those guys get like, if you were in Beatles, you'd be naming something every day. Oh yeah. Or worms. Yeah. Something like that. Naming worms in South America. You probably could name one every day. But in your business of the cat business, you probably don't stumble across a whole

hell of a lot of new cats. Uh, so. You probably don't stumble across a whole hell of a lot of new cats. So it used to be that you'd name stuff your last name. And then the sample we always use is Stellar. So Stellar has the Stellar sea lion, Stellar's jay, Stellar's eagle. He just ran around naming everything after himself. Turns out I didn't know this. He was a hell of a nice guy. And also is very...

Randall's laughing. I don't know if he's a hell of a nice guy. He's got a... Randall, will you not laugh if I say he's got a hell of a resume? No, keep a straight face. Hell of a resume. And also, really, here's the I say he's got a hell of a resume? No, keep a straight face. Hell of a resume. And also, really, here's the click.

Here's the kicker. At a time when people weren't very interested in this, Stella really went out of his way to study, understand, and record the life ways of native Arctic peoples. Did you know that? I read the same doc. Randall's on fire today, huh? You know, if you just, if you smile, you know,

these people won't know. Listening. Yeah, that's true. Hmm. Um, normally Randall used to be a good guest. Remember that? Oh, I thought, I thought i was just doing well there no no this is about remember who was a real good guest that we didn't realize was max you

should maybe get rid of randall and bring max in more often that's a hell of a guest right there you ever been in a room with max some maxes i don't know which max max barda oh yeah he's a great guest reminds me of you when you were back when i was back a month ago so it used to be common to name things after oneself that that has fallen out of favor so what these guys at the ornithological society are doing is they're saying to hell that they want to rename 60 somesome birds to eliminate anything offensive and eliminate anyone's last name. So the Stellar's J would become that one purple J. Just get rid of it.

And this guy wrote in who's actually involved in naming a species, and this guy's like, listen, none of this matters. Different than Cal. He's interested in it as an intellectual exercise. But he's a researcher. What's he work on? an intellectual exercise, but he's a researcher. What's he work on? He's a taxonomist. Bees.

And he works on native bees. Now let me ask you guys if true or false. The honeybee is not native. False. Isn't that wild? He works on native bees and deals in which means he deals in the nomenclature of native bees and he says i want to start off by saying that the push to not name new species after people even ones who aren't well known like stellar etc etc is one that's very strongly felt

in the scientific community at the moment. And I've been questioned a couple times on some of my species names by people who didn't like the fact I was naming them after folks. Presumably not himself. I had a friend that got to name some catfish species in South America

and she named them all after the indigenous tribes in that area. Which is good politics. He points this out. He says, but it's important to note that the changing of names after the fact is unheard of. There remains to this day,

a species of beetle named after everyone's least favorite Austrian painter. And how would you pronounce that, Carmen? Oh, God, you're asking me? Oh, yeah, you're probably really good on Latin. Well, they teach you in school. What would you say? I would say Hitler. No, no, no, no, no.

The first word. Oh. Anophthalmos. Anophthalmos. Hitler. I. Hitler. I. Yeah.

So here we are. He's got a beetle named after him. And he says, which stands as a testament that scientifically we don't change names for any reason, no matter how offensive. It's worth noting. this is him still talking, it's worth noting, however, with this whole situation, that the Ornithological Society is, in Trumpian N-O-T, all capital,

is not the authoritative body on nomenclatural acts of animals. That is solely the domain of the board of the ICZN, the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. They are not changing the actual names of these birds, but they're changing their own, meaning the Ornithological Society, they're not changing the actual names of these birds. They're changing their own suggestions for common names, which is, as the person writing in then editorializes and says, which is fundamentally meaningless. It would be the equivalent of pheasants forever deciding that they're going to call the bird

the American ring-necked pheasant so okay right now if you look up a pheasant right now you know do you know what the pheasant is called chinese ring-necked its official name is the chinese ring-necked pheasant he's saying that pheasants forever could one day say from now on it's the american ring-necked pheasant like oh you'll you'll find this interesting, Brooklyn. I got sick of people calling skulls European mounts because I just didn't see what's so European about it. Like Native Americans used cleaned up skulls

in the Sundance ceremony. Did they call it a Euro mount? Couldn't tell you. They didn't. So I started calling them freedom mounts in memory of when we had to re-ban French fries during the Iraq invasion. Okay.

Because the French thought that that was not a good idea. Stupid that was. How dumb they were. And so in retaliation, they proposed that French fries become freedom fries. And then I think promptly went back to French fry after that debacle. Uh, so he says, if the,

if the pheasants forever, all of a sudden came out and said, Hey, you know what? We're going to call it the American ring neck pheasant. The rest of the world would be like, call it what you want, buddy.

At the end of the day, it's still phaseyianus colchicus he says this is essential especially true for birds like steve's favorite stellars j the ornithological society can change the name to the anti-stellars j all they want the species name will still be cyanotica stellari which means that stellar's j remains the technically correct name and if i've been paying attention to trivia it seems being technically correct is steve's favorite kind of correct he goes on overall this move by the ornithological society seems strange to me as someone whose literal job is to assign and assess He goes on. certainly don't prevent people from entering the scientific fields associated with those names. So the suggestion that some birders may feel excluded by the fact that a jay is named after

stellar holds about as much water as changing its common name does. Durkin also, our beloved friend Pat Durkin, also wrote an article about that covers on the changing of bird names and also gets into, mainly focuses in on a movement. This is going to sound like a joke, but it's not. A movement to coin the term bob kitten for a bobcat kitten. There's even a, there's even like a change.org petition. And, and he tracks how the media has picked up on Bob kitten,

which really, I guess, irritates the hell out of Bobcat researchers. So watch out for the word Bob kitten. You ever throw that around? No. You ever heard it? No.

Pat might be trying to make up. Pat might be doing that thing they do on Fox a lot where they take a thing that isn't really a thing but make it like it's a big thing to be worried about. I read the article.

It seemed legit. You don't think Pat's doing that? No. He had a lot of cases of people trying to say Bob kitten. Pat does not like that one bit. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we

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if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. This is up in your neck of the woods, Carmen. You ready for this news item?

Yeah. U.S. government wants 500,000 barred owls cold. Cal told me this, and I thought, that cannot be true. But I didn't know that barred owls aren't native to the Pacific Northwest. No, no. Those dudes are everywhere now. Yep, yep. They're kind of like white tails.

They can just creep on in and they're, they, um, they do better and can out-compete spotted owls. It's unbelievable. And so they're kind of moving in. Yeah. Remember the ones at the fish shack?

Yeah. I never, ever at our fish shack in Southeast Alaska. Yeah. Never heard them. They were up there ripping all spring up there. And they make some freaky noises. Oh, Seth will show you. Do it, Seth. They were up there ripping all spring up there. And they make some freaky noises. Oh, Seth will show you.

Do it, Seth. They do their. Yeah. Well, do the main one. There's a screechy screaming one too. Seth can rip it. They sound like a pack of monkeys sometimes, like up in the trees. I had no idea they weren't from around.

I mean, I feel like, just anecdotally, if you just said to me, do you hear more barred owls than you used to? I would have said, like, definitely. Yeah. But I never, ever knew that they weren't from there. Yeah, yeah. They're creepers. So this is the news article.

This was covered in Newsweek. I'm not sure where else it was covered. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants more than a half million barred owls to be shot dead. news article from this was covered in newsweek i'm not sure where else was covered the u.s fish and wildlife service wants more than a half million barred owls to be shot dead lively language not just shot by gunfire not just not just shot not just shot and wounded shot dead in a coal to help protect other native species barred owls are an invative an invasive species in the pacific northwest from the east coast that's where i have a question though if something makes its way there naturally it's not invasive it's not like we dumped them there yeah

this brings up a really interesting language thing and we've talked about this a million times that'd be because if you move somewhere on your own are you invasive because you would never say like like uh possums used to not extend outside of the Mason Dixon line but they do now but no one says possums are invasive they just moved right javelinas have gradually moved northward but they're not invasive in the northern end of their range in texas yeah you would never say that humans who move themselves uh out of africa all around the entire planet you would never say humans are invasive some people would but i get yeah you're right i think the the spirit of it, is that these are species that have moved into places because of changes in the habitat and the ecology that humans have brought around. Yeah, that's a good point.

Indirectly. Indirect to human. Yeah. Meaning if a monkey hopped on a plane, two monkeys who were in love, hopped on a plane and started a new population somewhere you wouldn't go well they move themselves around by hopping on the plane you they would be very readily labeled invasive

species yeah so I guess if you're paving the way from them exactly like how white tailed like how mule deer coming into Alaska they're coming along the highway corridor yeah that's a good point okay i'm back to being mad at barred i was mad at him now i'm back to being mad at him this is um so in areas where barred owls are present in higher numbers northern spotted owl populations are declining

rapidly they are now listed as a threat as threatened under the Endangered Species Act with populations having declined by between 35% and 80% over the past 20 years due to barred owls. Carmen, you don't happen to know, Carmen's not an owl biologist. What's going on? How are they all competing? Is it for nesting cavities or what are they arguing about? I don't know the exact mechanism, but when you get barred owls out of there, if the habitat's suitable, you're getting spotted owls back. Um, and this is, yeah, this isn't a new controlling barred owls isn't a completely new thing. I've got a wonderful friend and colleague and, um, she's a great biologist, total badass. And she, uh, her job for a long time was going out

hunting barred owls at night. That's the question. Shooting to kill. Yep. That's the question I had about this whole thing because their plan to kill half a million barred owls. Over, we should point out here. Yeah.

It's over 30 years. Right. Because it's like, you're not going to go out and shoot a couple hundred of them a night. They're like, what I read is like, they call them, they use, you know, whatever Thermor night. Oh, me and Clay could have got four or five in Florida calling.

Right. Yeah. But four or five a night, two dudes, like it's going to take a while. I'm not that good at math, but I don't know if we'd get to 500,000. It just, yeah. Do you know who's going to do it?

They're going to do it themselves? The government? Yeah, probably. Or they're going to enlist like citizen shooters. I have no idea. I have no idea. I mean, you want to trust somebody that they're good at their owl ID. Right.

At night, they're about the same he's got some greyhorns he's got a few northern spotted yeah he's like every owl i saw yeah no it's a it's a careful operation uh long time ago we were having uh um we were covering this thing in the news it was that this this involves dirirk and has to do with like whether you could ever give someone, you could ever say to someone killed barred owls, but don't kill all the other owls. But think about what you're saying though.

We're laughing about their inability to do it. How come you can say, uh, okay, you can get seven Drake mallards, two hen mallards, one hen Northern pintail no scop but uh on and on some canvas backs but no scops redheads okay right like people are capable of some pretty specific identification we were covering this push

where they're trying to get in wisconsin northern pike spearing legalized i had no idea until this happened that you couldn't spear a pike in wisconsin and they were like well anglers won't be able to tell the difference between a northern and a muskie dirk and wrote in and be like well how can you be trusted to tell the difference between you know a sharp-tailed grouse and a greater sage grouse and a hen pheasant and the male you know on and on and on or all the ducks up here trusted to tell the difference but you can't trust to tell the difference between these two fish and someone wrote in to say you don't know how drunk these people are and talking about the ice fishermen in wisconsin um so we'll see what happens there

yeah i think that i'm looking at you like you got something to tell me i mean i i got i have lots of thoughts about invasive species control and all that and i think it's a i'm not an invasive species manager but i can appreciate what a difficult job that is because on the one hand, crowdsourcing this or using the community to help out, that's an obvious way to get more shit done. but you're weighing all these other things. You're weighing, okay, what are the consequences of a government-sanctioned hunt where we've got people out at night who are not just telling two birds apart, but trying to tell an invasive species at night from a spotted owl, which would be a big bummer

to accidentally shoot. About how big is a spotted owl? Same size? About the same size. Yeah. I mean, they're not wildly different creatures. You know, it's, it's a, that's a higher risk. And when you've got a population of owls that is, is really low, like spotted owls, you want to make sure people are getting it right. Got it.

Yeah. You're pro big government. I'm pro careful management. Here's a good segue. What's the most ready way? You being a Lynx researcher, you have to have a lot of people who tell you they saw a Lynx. Yes. And it's a bobcat.

Yeah. I was dogging on camera. My own sister. I was dogging on camera guys a minute ago about that dude holding the turkey call, so I don't want to dog on him again. So I'll tell you that I can't remember what type of person this happened to there's a one of these types of people i can't tell you what type swear always swears me up and down about the links he saw and i'm and just by where it was i'm like no you just didn't it had tufts on its ears i'm like it did yeah but not that kind i the way i handle that is i i hate bursting people's bubbles and so i try to do it pretty gentle plus links go weird places and when

there's invasions of links or one has gotten kicked out of its its own home range because it's an old links or whatever they end up in strange spots oh they do oh yeah so maybe this guy's right it's there's always a chance and so i will usually say something like if he i know you're out there if you took offense i'd take it back i i would say something like for where that was i would be very surprised but lynx go weird places you never know so that's pretty cool that's what i usually say oh that's what you'll say yeah you'll throw you'll throw him a little bone. Yeah.

Yeah. And because I don't know. To keep the dream alive. Exactly. Yes. I don't want to be a dream smasher. I've laid my eyes on one lynx. I know it was a lynx.

Okay. Because it was in the Arctic. Yes. That's pretty solid. It was just on the south slope of the Brooks Range. It stepped out into the pipeline road and 20 feet off the bumper. And it was like looking into another planet. It was the first links I saw.

I'm convinced I was the first person it saw. It looked at me with like uttered like disinterest, but also no sort of preconceived notion of it. What that I might be trouble as I opened the door and he just walked off. Never laid eyes on another one. That's pretty special. Not many people. I'm glad for the one. Yeah.

I don't know if I'll get to see another one, but it was the one I saw. And it was like, they have a face. Like it's like they have a human baby face. That's funny. I always say they have an old man face. Well,

it's the same thing, man. It kind of is, huh? You know, Phil lost it. It was one they have an old man face. Well, it's the same thing, man. It kind of is, huh? You know, Phil lost it. It was one of my favorite things I owned. Phil lost it. Not claiming responsibility for it.

I used to have this quote. It was framed in our old studio. You might have read it. It was a guy talking about on seeing his children born. It was an Irish writer talking about seeing his children born. That when they come out out how ancient they are and he said like egyptian pharaohs like with their features smoothed by time traveled across this immense journey to be here and he goes and then in an instant they become young so meaning it can be an old man and a little baby.

Like a human baby. Yeah. Yeah. So we're on the same page about that. Human babies come out. They look like crazy old men for a couple seconds. Yeah. What else are you looking at when you're looking?

Just to verify. When someone says, oh my God, a lynx. The feet. They got kind of a jacked up back end. Meaning that their butts are a little higher than their shoulders now you say that's a good point yeah and then their their tails so bobcats the the tip of the of a bobcat tail is black on top and the sides and then white underneath whereas a bobcat it's like their tail was back up back up or sorry a lynx is dipped in ink like it's black all the way around on the tip

okay bobcat white on the bottom lynx the end of their tail completely black all the way around no white on the bottom oh you mean if you turned his tail up yeah or if you can you can see it from the side even on a bobcat that's that's one of the under so the underside of a lynx's tail okay yeah if you're thinking about a lynx's tail and there's the tip of it yeah and the top of it and sides are are black there but on the bottom is white on a lynx nope bobcat you'll get it you'll get it no i'll get there okay let's start with a bobcat tell me about a bobcat's tail bobcat's tail and people know just so you know people this is helpful for people that send us in photos wondering what they're looking at. Yeah, this is a good one for photos.

Bobcat, it means it's a cat with a bobbed tail. Yes, which Lynx also has a short tail. Also has a bobbed tail. So a bobcat's tail looks like this. Looks like this. Black. Okay, we're talking about the end of the tail, the tip of the tail. It's black on top,

white on the bottom. I wouldn't have been able to tell you. I mean, I've handled them and I wouldn't be able to tell you that's true. I believe you. I just never looked that carefully. And so, even from the side, so if you're looking at trail camera pictures and you can see the tail, this is really, really helpful because you'll see some white.

On a bobcat's tail. Yeah, even from the side. You can see that the bottom is white, whereas a lynx, the entire end see the tail, this is really, really helpful because you'll see some white. On a bobcat's tail. Yeah, even from the side. You can see that the bottom is white, whereas a lynx, the entire end of the tail looks like it was dipped into black ink. No kidding. Uh-huh. Yeah. You know what's funny about lynx is,

I want you to talk about the range of lynx. Mm-hmm. But are you familiar with the comedian Jerry Clower? He's dead. No. He was a storyteller. He used to get up at the Grand Ole Opry between musical acts and tell hunting stories different time um he has a story about a guy that

uh he has a story about some of his characters are out raccoon hunting at night in mississippi okay and there's a guy they're hunting with who won't let anyone shoot. He thinks it's disrespectful to shoot a raccoon out of a tree. He thinks the only respectable way to do it is you got to climb up into that tree. And Clower talks about how they, their dogs tree a raccoon in the quote, biggest sweet gum tree of all of Amet County and this dude john newbanks they're like i bet you can't climb up that tree john because he'll climb them up and knock them out with a stick and then let the dogs fight him he says you got to give a coon a sporting chance so he clower talks about how he takes off his brogan shoes and digs his toenails into the bark of that sweet gum tree. He likes to trim those.

And is able to climb into the sweet gum tree. And then all hell breaks loose and Clower says that it was a lynx up in that tree in Mississippi. Okay, I'm going to say no. But here's the thing. That always bothered me because everything with Clower is so precise. I think he meant to say a mountain lion. You know what? I bet you he wasn't because in Durkin's article, he lists a bunch of common names, like semi-common names for bobcats.

And there was a couple different versions of lynx. But Clower says this, but it wasn't no coon. This is a quote, but it wasn't no coon. It was a lynx, a souped up wild cat i'm just telling you they had like some southern maybe man yeah it was like vernacular kind of names for bobcats that's oh god now i'm back this puts all my faith back in the clower yeah you can have that back uh because that's one of the difficult things about figuring out the historic range of lynx in the lower 48. Okay.

We're relying on trapping records and people were not consistent with calling bobcats bobcats and lynx lynx. There'd be lynx cat and, you know, yeah. Got it. You'll sometimes look at furbearer market reports and I'll see lynx cat. Yeah. That means a bobcat or lynx? I'm not sure. It's this common name thing, right?

People can call them whatever they want, kind of. What's the most southern lynx that's confirmed that you're aware of? Now? Yeah. Colorado, maybe down into Utah every once in a while. But as a resident population, Colorado. Let's say European contact. Huh? Let's say European contact. Huh?

Let's say a good stab at where. Oh. Yeah. Like give me a good stab. Okay. Yeah. So the distribution isn't changed remarkably. Right.

Yeah. We don't think the distribution has changed much. It's just how many animals are in those spots. The density has changed. Yeah. Got it. So they'll follow the Rockies down into Colorado, maybe Utah. By the time you get into, how far into Canada are they across the whole top of Canada?

Not much further north than the border. Oh, across all of Canada? Yeah. You got to get way up or? No, you don't have to. Well, wherever there's boreal forest, that's where they are. So, you know, in, in places like Alberta where there's, there's more, um, prairie and stuff like that, they're not going to be down in that,

but they get pretty ubiquitous. In boreal forest. As soon as there's boreal forest. Yep. I've read that the boreal forest is the largest biome on earth. Yep. It's a cool, cool space.

Yeah. Uh, lay out the work you work work lay out where and what work you're doing right now currently okay um with just the links project okay so let's see we're starting on year two of of our field effort uh for our links and wildfire project. So in the lower 48, we were just talking about their distribution. There's five resident populations of Lynx. There's Washington, there's Idaho, Montana, there's Minnesota and Maine and then Colorado.

Hold on, Minnesota has Lynx? Yeah. You know that Brody? I did not It's the WNBA team Isn't it? The Minnesota Lynx? Yeah but Michigan Wolverines dude But it makes, I mean you think about that North Country stuff

Yeah they got Fishers and Martin A lot of Spruce Forest They got Lynx there Yeah so You know that Seth? In Minnesota? Don't lie. No. Dr. Randall?

I didn't even know Maine had them. Yeah, Maine's got a good population. They're doing pretty well. Maine had caribou up until the 1920s. There's the, I think the furthest north city or town in Maine is called caribou. I could be wrong. Anyway. Didn't know that. I could be wrong. Anyway. Didn't know that.

Good job, Carl. You want to hear some common Bobcat names? Bobcat or lynx names? Bobcat. Well, like vernacular names. Lynx Rufus. Well, lynx Rufus is a scientific name. Include bay lynx, barred bobcat, catamount, Cat of the Mountain, Lynx Cat, Pallid Bobcat,

Red Lynx, Wild Cat, and Shot Sauvage. When they get into those lists, I feel like they're starting to throw in stuff that some dude said once. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just saying. Clower was. Yeah.

No, I'm back to loving Clower. Yeah. Anyone interested in Jerry Clower, besides listening to Jerry Clower, you could go listen to the bear grease episodes about jerry clower um he's one of my favorite people my kids like jerry clower a lot you never heard jerry clower go type up you promised me something sure type up jerry clower a coon hunting story all right that's the one that has the lynx cat in it all right brooklyn you tracking all this yeah how would you gate how would you if you had a one on a one to ten how interesting this is what that's the one that has the lynx cat in it Brooklyn you tracking all this? how would you if you had a 1 to 10

how interesting this is what would you give it? like 6 see that's a reliable that's what you need around someone that gets it to you straight clinical you can see her being like oh yeah 9 and being in your head like yeah right she might have been like three but i can't say that no it's encouraging there's room for improvement but we're not as bad as it could be

yeah right um okay i didn't know that i mean it's like like do you have rough ideas oh you were doing the five so washington yeah now why is it not Washington, Oregon? Oregon's too far down? Too far south. Okay. So in Washington, our lynx range is interesting because we've got the North Cascades. Yeah. And they quickly start to transition into more southerly forest types.

Lynx rely on snowshoe hares. They're a specialist predator. 85 to 90% of their diet is snowshoe hares. That's what they're built for. That's what makes them different from bobcats and big parrots. You sent me the coolest photo of brand new snowshoe hare tracks. Oh, yeah. Brand new lynx tracks, both of them running,

laying over top of each other. That was cool. That is their thing. They rely on Snowshoe Hares. And Snowshoe Hares, obviously, because of their name, we all know that they've got those big feet, and that makes them able to get around in these deep snow environments.

Links, same thing. It's like the arms war thing. They've evolved with big, giant Muppet feet, and they're really light framed, and they can just walk on the snow the same way. So they're built to pursue snowshoe hares and live in these deep snow environments, boreal, sub-boreal forests. So in Washington, we're in this cool place where this boreal forest is starting to transition into more southerly forests. And so we're right on the range edge of lynx because their habitat's about to just peter out. So we've got a naturally small population because of that, because their habitat's just sort of marginal. Now we're getting megafires, which are fires that are over 100,000 acres,

warmer, drier, windier summers. We're snowpacking in the winter. We're just having more frequent, bigger, hotter, high severity fires. And that is not good for lynx because snowshoe hares rely on a forest that's got a bunch of branches down low, a lot of horizontal cover. So like stuff that you wouldn't maybe want to bushwhack through. That's what snowshoe hares love because they eat those branches and everybody wants to eat a snowshoe hare so so those branches and that that understory uh gives them some protection from predators so because snowshoe hares need that kind of forest that's where lynx are when a huge high severity fire and high severity means like it's killing almost all of the trees in that patch. When a big fire comes through like that, there's pretty much no trees left.

It's matchsticks. And there goes the snowshoe hares. There goes the snowshoe hares. There goes the lynx. And so Washington is in this unique place where we are just getting hammered by these fires, partially because of our changing climate, but also because we just have kind of a unique, and I don't know why this is, but we get a ton of lightning strikes. And so from starting in the year 2000,

we just started getting hit, boom, boom, boom, by these giant fires to the point where now you look at a map of lynx habitat and it looks like it's mostly burned recently and so this has put a big hurt on our lynx population you think so oh absolutely how many lynx are in washington they're i mean no one knows but yeah nobody in the thousands oh no, no, no, no, no. Um, around 60 maybe. What? Yeah.

It's bad. It's really, really bad. 60 in the state. 60 in the state. And then I know we're a little out of secret, but I want to revisit something. Washington. And you said Idaho, Montana. Okay.

And that, that's what? Not thousands? Uh, hundreds. Okay. Maybe hundreds. Yeah. And Minnesota? I don't, I don't know about Minnesota. Maine is hundreds as well. Hundreds. Okay. Maybe hundreds, yeah. And Minnesota? I don't know about Minnesota.

Maine is hundreds as well. Hundreds. But all of these- But the population you're toying with is sub 100. Yes, it's- How certain are you that it's sub 100? On a scale of one to five? Four and a half, but I like to be optimistic. Maybe we've got a hundred.

But you don't have 300. We don't have 300. No, no. And if you go back 25 years, how many are you talking about? What's the rate of decline? Now it starts to get really sketchy on estimates. It's not a lot. It's maybe, I know i've read this number somewhere maybe

maybe between 150 and 200 sure so um when a fire happens in one of like the snowshoe hare population just gets nuked is it like an immediate precipitous decline for the bobcat i mean for the lynx or like are they such specialists they can't like adjust and be like i'm gonna go after squirrels or i'm gonna go after birds or whatever yeah um so it the the i think the answer is it kind of depends right so when a fire burns so for example 2006 was our first big burn it was called the tripod burn and it burned most of what was considered the best lynx habitat that we had in washington and that let's see the the winter following that burn um we started or a lynx project started and we got collars out on cats that were living right adjacent to that burn.

And what we found was that it's just a habitat. It's a bunch of habitat lost. And so, you know, we don't know exactly what happened to those lynx that were living right there. Maybe they dispersed, which that's, you know, that's a dangerous thing to do because you might not find another home range. Maybe they went up to Canada and found something. Who knows? But that becomes largely unusable habitat.

Presumably a lot of them just burn up, right? I think less animals burn up than we think. Really? I mean, yeah. I mean, yeah. But like take something like pine squirrels. There's no way pine squirrels are getting away from a fire. I think they've got some time. I have found burned up pine squirrels there's no way pine squirrels are getting away from a fire i think they've got some time i have found burned up pine squirrels though yeah but i think a lot of animals but you think

like lynx are just moving ahead of it and staying yeah i think so i think they'd have to get cornered or trapped um that's interesting yeah i did have a friend find a how he described it was barbecued cougar after a big fire that we had it got trapped in a little canyon got it um but i i don't think they're burning up i think they're getting out of there got it they've they've evolved with fire have you found like other things lynx have killed like deer or do they feed on they cannibalize themselves or like have you found anything that was surprising that you know a lynx right i haven't found anything surprising they'll eat so let's see let me back up they rely on snowshoe hares to the point where there's this sort of um classic ecology lesson that

in the northern part of their their range where there's lots of snowshoe hares and lots of lynx, there's a cycle where lynx slightly lagging behind snowshoe hares population numbers will increase as snowshoe hares increase. And then as snowshoe hares start to decrease, lynx start decreasing. And so it's this cycle. It's more than just lynx driving that cycle. There's a whole suite of predators. Like I said, everybody wants to eat a snowshoe hare. That's just like, it's a great snack. Friends in Alaska have told me,

who trap lynx, have told me that it's almost immediate. The boom, bust that goes along with snow. Because down here, we don't have the snowshoe hare cycles. Right. They're, they're either, you know, just we're kind of at a constant low or just really dampened amplitude.

We don't have those like the insane swings. Right. Right. Have you ever seen that stuff where they went through Hudson Bay company links records and they're able to see a seven year swing on how many lynx pelts the hudson bay company was dealing with like in the 1700s 1800s whatever and they're able to kind of correlate that to the to the cascading population yep yep and so that's those fur records are where

started you know people started to notice oh this isn't like a steady, perfectly balanced ecology here. You know, things fluctuate. Yeah. And so, yeah, the cycle's about every 10-ish years, booms and busts. And so, anyway, that's just to illustrate how reliant on snowshoe hares lynx are. And they're chasing them in the summer when there's no snow. Yeah. They still eat the same thing.

Yeah, exactly. When there's a low, they will rely more on red squirrels. And so there is some of that, but it's rarely a significant part of their diet. I've seen that. It was a fairly viral video of lynx killing a caribou. It's wild. Oh. It's cool. I haven't seen that. I think it might have been in Europe, though. of lynx killing a caribou. It's wild. Oh. It's cool.

I haven't seen that. I think it might have been in Europe, though. Their lynx are bigger. Well, I've heard there's a record of one killing a, there's a record of a lynx killing a doll sheep. Oh, really? Yeah. A witness. In North America.

Yeah. In Alaska. It was in a book by a biologist from, who's at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. Huh. There's a book, and there's a person watched it happen. Oh, that's cool. There's, I've never seen it, but there are records of, you know, big lynx, which when I say big, I mean like 30, 31 pounds taking down a deer if it's, you know, mired in snow

or something like that, held back by the snow. But really it's snowshoe hares are where it's at for them. Yeah. Like everybody knows like bears eat honey. 90% of their diet. Now and then they eat something besides honey. Now and then they'll eat your buck sheep. But mostly they like honey.

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onxmaps.com meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. So back to the fires. Links are listed as threatened all across the lower 48. In Washington, they're listed by the state as endangered and that's in large part because of this blow up of fires that we've had and so what we're trying to do um because it's really it's it's a whole paradigm shift of what we think we know about their habitat here in Washington. All the, or many of the habitat studies that were done earlier on were on a landscape that

was largely unaffected by wildfires because it was the suppression era when the Forest Service was doing a really good job of putting out starts. Now we're to the point where climate conditions are such and our our fuels out there are so loaded and contiguous because we were excluding those small fires that would naturally happen and sort of break up the fuel bed now they just blow up and they're often beyond our firefighting capabilities so we can't we can't rely on um suppression and and nor should we if we want to try to get our landscape back to a place where it's it can have somewhat of its own negative feedback loop with fire where little fires are sort of

dampening the effects of future fires. So anyway what we know about habitat was largely based on that really fire unaffected landscape. Now we've, we've flip-flopped. Now most of our landscape is affected by fires and not just fires, but really big fires that burned with a high severity. So killing a lot of the trees. And so we need to get in there and figure out how lynx are using this new novel landscape.

They've got a whole new menu. I mean, all the regrowth the regrowth the different um let's see when we talk about boreal forest yeah there's forest but if you really think about that can you describe boreal forest people so it's more ubiquitous up in canada and alaska it's that that spruce and fir lodgepole pine forest that's um you know in mountains it's sort of that that sub alpine right before you get out of at a tree line um yeah it's it's that ecosystem that spruce fir like you'd see up in alaska or canada got it yeah here and there you'll see aspens which doesn't

rule out sure yeah doesn't rule out it being boreal forest right right right um where was i going with that oh boreal forest we think about okay a forest we can picture a forest but with um we can think a little more thoughtfully about that and realize that there's all different structure types within that so what I mean by that is there's little short regenerating forests. There's older growth forests. There's 40-year-old forests that's, you know, sometimes when you come across a patch of lodgepole pine, and it's maybe, you know, the trunks are the size of dinner plates, and it's just the canopy is so thick that the understory is totally parked out,

and you could just stroll through there no problem. So there's that type of structure. There's all these different structures. And again, for snowshoe hares, it's about that understory. It's about that dense structure. And so for lynx, it's about that dense structure. And so while we've still got boreal forest out there, there's all different structures of it. There's just freshly burned.

There's regenerating. There's that parked out understory when they're sort of middle-aged, and there's old growth. There's different shapes and sizes of those patches of forest after a burn that are left. And so we need to figure out what are those structures and shapes that lynx are using, because that's what we need to be focusing on now, because that's what we've got, and these megafires are not stopping. And so that's our future. to be focusing on now, because that's what we've got. And these megafires are not stopping. And so that's a future. What does focused on mean?

We just need to learn the basics of this new habitat that they're using. And so that's what we're trying to learn about and focus on is burned habitat. So we're working in that burn I was talking about, that tripod tripod burn that burned in 2006. And we're going in there. We're getting Lynx callers on Lynx. And we're backtracking. And we're using a whole bunch of cameras to figure out how they're making that burn work because they are making it work. We, this is something that's really hopeful and cool that's happened in the last seven years is it's gone from, we'd go out there looking for lynx tracks and see nothing, not even very many snowshoe hare tracks to all of a sudden we're starting to see lynx tracks and Over the course of seven years.

Yeah. Not very much time. To now, one of the. So in your time out there, you've seen a difference. Oh yeah. Big time. As it recovers. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. much time um to now one of the so in your time out there you've seen a difference oh yeah big time as it recovers yeah yeah um one of the cool things we're seeing now is right after the burn when we had those gps collars on cats back in 2006 7 8 um there were there were cats that were living right next to the burn and if there were nice places in that burn that had

skipped fire skips so places where the burn went around for whatever reason they'd jaunt in there and use those for hunting and so we we learned from from that study that if there is some structure there will be snowshoe hares and the lynx will make the most of that they'll find those spots they'll find those spots but those spots in the immediate aftermath of a fire were places like fire skips and they'd preferentially use lighter area burns, you know, where there was still some live tree, just a little bit of cover to get to those spots. I mean, you've probably tracked. They like to have overhead cover.

They like to have something. If you've ever followed any kind of cat tracks, they are so meticulous about hugging cover. They like to have something. If you've ever followed any kind of cat tracks, they are so meticulous about hugging cover. They'd really rather not be out in the open. I think that's, I mean, I don't know what a cat's thinking. I'm not a lynx, but I think that's probably a mixture of just protection, but also

if there's any little bit of cover, there's a little chance there's some food, and they're just, they're always looking for food. Sure, yeah. And so you'll see them do things like preferentially, you know, walk between two trees, um, rather than just, you know, going alongside them. They're just, they're cool like that. They're really using that cover. How big is their home range? That really varies.

On the, probably on the, like how much food is around. Exactly. So in Washington, from our previous collaring, we had home ranges that were as small as seven square miles all the way up to 90 or 100 square miles. They can be bigger. No kidding. Is that a male-female thing largely? Or is it just personality too? Males tend to have larger because i want to overlap several females but it's also what how much space how much habitat do i need to make a living so the you know the

theory is if the habitat is less productive you're going to need more of it you're going to have to cover more ground so one of the snowshoe hare paradise he doesn't need to go right it could be a really small home range. Did you see that study years ago, maybe five or six years ago? I don't know if you call it a study, but this observation from some years ago where there was guys looking at, these researchers used to wonder about rivers and how lynx related to rivers, thinking that big rivers like the Tanana, right, in Alaska, that the Tanana would be an obvious barrier for lynx.

But they'll swim back and forth across that thing. There's not much that will stop a lynx. They had some up in those areas, dudes, and it'd be so weird to think you'd be coming down a river and having a lynx swim across something like the Tanana. They would just go. Yeah. Those things scoot.

They will go long distances. They'll disperse long distances. And no one ever sees them. Well, now that we've got collars on though. No, I'm saying, but it's like when you see that,

like how could you never see, you know what I mean? Oh, oh, I think of them always hold up with some little thicket. Cause you just go your whole life and don't lay eyes on them. Sure. Sure.

Yeah. I mean, they, when they, in my experience, unless you, you, you know, sort of come up right on them and you jump them, they'll just stand there and kind of look at you and hunker down and it's, it's really easy to miss them.

So you, you've approached them wearing the collar. You've approached your collared cats. Um, not the ones that we have collared right now, but just being out there so much, I've come across a lot of lynx. Oh, you have? I mean, a a lot for for seeing a link so you okay this is outside of ones that you've caught and outside the ones that you were guided to because you knew where they were because they have a collar on you bumped into links yeah how many times i don't know a handful of times really yeah i bumped into collared links not using the telemetry not trying to but bumped into them um i summer before last um i had a cool sighting where i was i was hiking into the wilderness to to scout for deer season and i got to our camp and looked up and there was a lynx that sort of jumped away. Yeah, it was very cool.

And it was extra special. You're kidding me, really? No, no. It was extra special too, because this was in, I was in a new burn area, but I was in a fire skip and. Scouting for deer and there you saw one.

Nothing to do with your research. No, no. Yeah. Yep. Sure it wasn't a bobcat? That was my question. I'm positive. I'm positive.

I got the rear view and I saw that tail. Gosh, so you knew what you were looking at. Yeah. In an area where they got plenty of food, like what's a good lifespan? Like if they don't have some unfortunate thing happen. Yeah, maybe seven years, seven or eight years. Yeah. How are you guys trapping them?

This is good. Yeah. So this is, this is what I love. Oh, can you put in whether Mercer Lawing ever told you anything helpful? We've been talking a lot. Yeah. He gets excited about catching cats.

Oh yeah. No. Yeah. It's fun to talk with him cause we both do. Yeah. All right. Lay it out. How you catch one.

Okay. Um, let's see. Both do. Yeah. All right. Lay it out. How you catch one. Okay. Let's see. So like I said, there are maybe 60 in Washington. Our study area is, I don't know, maybe a hundred thousand acres. So that's a lot of space. How many are in that study area? If you had to take a ballpark. If I had to take a ballpark if i had to take a ballpark i mean last year this

time when i was on the podcast we hadn't started trapping and i i would have been hopeful that there were maybe four or five in a hundred thousand acres yeah um now that we've got some links on air and spent you know i've spent three months tracking them out in that landscape. We know our collared links are contrary to what we thought might be happening, making their entire home range, their entire living within the burn, which that's really cool because that says to us, there's something about the configuration of this burn where there are fire skips where there aren't, or maybe it's that there's places that are regenerating enough that that's actually at this point, really rich habitat,

whatever it is, which is what we're going to find out is making it so that links are living entirely within the burn. Got it. Instead of just ducking in there now and then. Exactly. So a hundred thousand acres. Yeah. And you're going to take a, you're going to take a, like you do, you can do this too.

You can be, I surprise, I'd be surprised if it was more than what? Okay. I'd be surprised if it was more than 16, but I'd be surprised if it was less than nine. Cause you guys trapped your asses off and caught one, didn't you? We caught four in two months. And then we got a bonus cat this fall, which was super exciting. How does one get a bonus cat? Well, okay.

So I'll explain how we normally trap. So this is what we're doing to our official season. And this was how I was taught to trap links and how I've always done it. It's snowmobiling every single day. We're out there. We're riding around 100 miles a day. We're covering ground and we're looking for tracks. You get really good at snowmobiling and tracking at high speed.

We're looking for tracks. You know what you want to see. Exactly. And you start getting, you know, an idea of, all right, I see tracks here regularly. Or I see, and they're crossing, you know, a saddle here or crossing down a drainage here, crossing the road here. Or they're just using this road as a corridor. Or maybe this is good habitat and you can see where they're hunting along. They like to use roads and then they'll sort of pop over to the edge of the road here, or they're just using this road as a corridor, or maybe this is good habitat and you can see where they're hunting along. They like to use roads and then they'll, they'll sort of pop over to the edge of the road. You'll see where they put their little butt down

and sit. And then, you know, they're, they're, they're looking for snowshoe hares and they'll do that along the road. So, you know, where they're hunting too. Once you find a little honey holes that you think are going to be good, then we set a trap. And our traps, they're box traps. We made them ourselves. They're made out of, this was not our invention, but it's just a cheap-er, cheap-ish way to do this. But it's a PVC pipe frame, and then we wrap it with chicken wire. I had a local welder weld us up some just thin metal frame doors

and that goes into a PVC pipe frame. It slides up and down. So it's a guillotine type door. Here's where it gets a little wacky. It sounds like a Rube Goldberg, but it works.

It works really well. We've got in the back of the trap a little fishing line trip line. So it's in the back back of the trap a little fishing line trip line. So it's in the back quarter of the trap. That fishing line spans the, let's see, it's such that when an animal goes in there

and reaches for the bait that's behind it, they're going to hit it. Now that goes up to the top of the trap, that fishing line where there's a mouse trap wired onto the trap. It's getting very Rube Goldberg. Very. Yeah. Tied mouse traps with a little fake cheese.

That's the brand you like. That's the, yes. Well, you tie the fishing line to the fake cheese. The door has paracord that is holding it up. That paracord goes back to the mousetrap. It's got a loop in the end. You got a razor blade glued to the mousetrap bail.

It's not quite that bad. This is like the game mousetrap. The loop goes over the arm of the mousetrap so that when you set the trap, it doesn't make it go off. The door is being held up by the rope that is being held in place by the set trap. And when a lynx or a bird or anything hits that trip line, it pulls the cheese down, trap goes off, releases the door and it drops. Is that door weighted? So it drops quick? Uh, it weighs enough just because it's got

that metal frame. Oh, okay. Yeah. Everything in the design of our trap is also geared towards really making sure our animals are safe. So we don't want a super heavy door that should it go off early.

It could. Yeah. What, what, what, uh, what are you baiting and luring with? Oh, we're using all kinds of different lures, but I like to have, um, well, let's see, we're using roadkill deer. And the reason we're using roadkill deer is that

it's usually readily available. Right now we're hurting for bait. We are desperate. Why not beaver meat? I've used that in the past and I love using that because it's got a nice smell. But our state vet advises not to just in case of disease transfer. And so we're using. Because they're going to get in there and eat that bait.

Exactly. And so, yeah. So I've used that for deer meat. So we're constantly on the lookout for roadkill. We've got a whole routine. I think everybody in our community. You got to hunt your own roadkill? Oh yeah.

Well, we've got, our whole community is looking out for us because we posted it everywhere. We're desperate because like here in Bozeman, we haven't gotten a ton of snow. So the deer haven't all pushed down to the valley bottom. You ever find anyone who's a little too good at getting deer meat? Carmen's like, I don't know it's just another one jumped out in front of my truck no i've we're getting so desperate that i'm like good people they need to drive faster or something um yeah so we get calls right now and right now we're doing we're desperate we're going at any time of the day because it is cut throat right

now really we've had roadkill competition oh my? We've had calls. Roadkill competition. Oh my God. We've had calls where somebody is like, fresh roadkill, corner of blah, blah, blah, this creek. We zoom down there and it's gone. People are salvaging for the meat. And so there's so few roadkills. It's not other researchers out there again.

Well, there are some other researchers that we're competing with. They're a Wolverine project. We've got to compromise though. They can have the head because that's not super meaty, but they like that for the wolverines because they can't, just a little more of a puzzle and they have to work harder to get at

that so it lasts longer. I was going to ask that, like what other predators are in the area that might be attracted to those traps? Like wolverines, wolves, lions. Yeah, bycatch for sure, but let her finish the bait and lure it, and I want to get to bycatch. Right.

You're using flagging? Oh, yeah. CDs, wings, what do you use? Let's see. So we always do a little eye catch. I've used CDs. I like, what we usually use now just because it's super easy is that flashing bird tape

for like you'd put up in an orchard. You just hang a little of that. It flutters in the breeze really nice. You know what someone told me recently drives him crazy? Bobcat's crazy. He takes peacock feathers. This guy lives in a state where you can't use game bird parts. He takes peacock feathers and sticks them oh just in because it's got that

iridescence and the way they blow he says like a magnet that thing you picture that little eye that eye shape on a peacock feather just flickering in the breeze he says it's like irresistible they gotta come one day wonder what that thing is yeah well we got new this year um some little i think they're they must be christmas decorations or something but it's shaped like an You gotta come one day Wonder what that thing is Yeah Well we got new this year Some little I think they're They must be Christmas decorations Or something But it's shaped like an icicle

But it spins Can you picture that So it's flashy and it spins We're gonna try those It just gets easy Can I turn you on to a new product You might like Oh please do

Are you aware Tom Miranda and someone else They make this thing You're not They're not legal here It's a mouse emitter A mouse noise Oh noise squeaker have you tried squeakers we got squakers you guys are high tech when you've got nine maybe ten links on ten

thousand acres that you're trying to catch you throw on the works oh yeah big time you ever worry that gets a little too busy around your set yeah yeah i Oh. Yeah, I do. And then I freak out. And are you using a commercial lure too? Yep, we buy lures. So the, because we. What do you like to use for lure? We've got all kinds of stuff because, but I always like to have, cause we're using deer, I like to have some caster in there.

And then to appeal to, you know, territory ality or breeding, we've got, you know, squeeze bottles of Lynx pee. Oh. Catnip-y stuff. Dude, you guys got it. So Mercer's cage breeding. We've got, you know, squeeze bottles of Lynx pee. Oh. Cat nippy stuff. Dude, you guys got it. You guys got everything.

Oh, we've got a whole drawer. It's, I'm a huge. Labeled attractants. Well, we had to move, so the long distance lures

would like something skunky. We'll put that up over the trap. Got it. And, you know, like a lot of people, Gusto is a great brand of that but it is

potent me and seth are messing a little gusto oh yeah oh hell yeah i've used that on i mean universally that stuff is great but um huh it can be you're all you're like you're like all checked out oh my god there's nothing there's you know all the like all the i just hear all like i'll talk to cat trap bobcat trappers and this is all stuff they bring up. So it's funny that you're like onto all these. Oh yeah. A little, a little skunk is good, but we, um, that you can just, you can order all of these things online and it's usually not a problem, but the gusto you can smell. And I did have the post office once be like, hmm, next time you order that, it'll be on the back porch.

You're going to have to go around for that. If you want, I have it here in the parking lot, and I'll happily give it to you. I have a bottle of skunk essence and beaver caster blend. Ooh, mixed together. Did you fly or drive? I flew. Oh.

That might be a little iffy. Yeah, we get so used to the smell that we don't smell it. Oh, you know what? Can I tell you something real quick that I didn't mention? How did I miss this, Corinne? We were recently telling a story about the world's greatest TSA agent who, instead of stealing people's knives, we couldn't tell what state this happens in. Instead of stealing people's knives, she instructs them to put them in the drop ceiling of the bathroom. And someone went up there to get their knife back, and there was several other knives up in the drop ceiling

this guy was talking about moving from australia and he gets in he's moving from australia to the u.s so he's trying to bring guns and ammo i don't know why i didn't buy new ammo when he got here or new guns when he got here but he's trying to move guns and ammo from australia and in australia they somehow tell him to put the ammo in a carry-on and he's like that can't be right to the customs people like no you have to put it to carry on so he gets in the australian version of tsa has to confiscate it from to be destroyed he later gets to the u.s and one of his is missing. One of his bags didn't make it. So he

files for a lost bag and then when the bag turns up, it has all of his ammo in it. Someone had taken pity on him, pulled his bag, put his ammo back in it and sent it along its way on a later flight rather than destroying the guy's ammo.

Very civilized. Yeah, it's like, you know, on a later flight rather than destroying the guy's ammo. Wow. Very civilized. You know on Christmas you do happy stories in the news? Good news? It's a heart warmer. Where I buy gas, they have a thing, the pump plays you happy news stories. Cheddar news. You find yourself just standing around watching those

for a while? Just filling your cup on good news. I'm annoyed. There used to be this person called like ava menendez or something i should tell you how to make like that's on the you know like you get like a jar and put some marbles in there for decoration or whatever and then um or how to not be so stressed out but today it was some dude telling happy news it was called good news i've just never noticed that there was a i've never paid enough attention to notice that it's all good news it's called good news i've just never noticed that there was a i've never paid enough attention to notice that it's all good news it's called good news i've just never paid enough attention

well we scooped him because this would be good news about the guy's ammo that's all yeah this remind me of that sure you're taking my skunk scent home yeah it could be problematic remind me of that you don. You taking my skunk scent home. Yeah, could be problematic. Remind me of that. You don't want to do that. Well, I mean. You know that thing that happened on that Alaska Airlines flight the other night? I heard about that as I was boarding a plane. Imagine if your skunk essence blew up on a plane. They'd have to ground all them planes.

Yeah. We have an official office now right in downtown Winthrop, which is the town we live in. And we were told we needed to put the gusto outside because you walk in and it smells like straight up a hot box. How do you get Lynx urine? F&T or Minnesota. They got it there? Oh, yeah. So it must be trappers up in the far north selling it.

Yeah, I guess so. We got all kinds. Is a bottle of Lynx urine really expensive? It's not. trappers up in the far north selling it. Yeah, I guess so. We got all kinds. What do you guys pay? Is a bottle of Lynx urine really expensive? It's not. Well, in the amounts that we're using it, it adds up. It seems like it's got to be like a really limited supply. I don't know how limited it is. Yeah, I don't know.

So you buy it, it comes in a bottle. Comes in a bottle. Got to make sure it's, they often don't have good lids. And so we, everything usually smells like Lynx pee. You like the Lynx pee's here. Uh-huh. And yeah, so we've usually smells like lynx you like the lynx piece here uh-huh and um yeah so we've got squirt bottles of that mix in a little glycerin so it doesn't freeze

you need to do that yeah that's good i got some glycerin on my counter keeps freezing yeah it does it keeps it from freezing yeah yeah like let's say you got you know how they sell that your pee comes in those bottles like, yay. I don't know, 10 ounces. How much glycerin you put in there? I don't know. A good amount? Someone else does it?

No, no. You just buy it and you can mix it up. I'm saying how much glycerin do you shoot in there? Oh, I would just. No, more than that. Okay. I don't. Yeah.

Just depend. You just. Yeah. I don't know. The other. So you go to a trapper's supply house and buy glycerin too? You can you can order it i i have a bottle i'm just curious how you guys do oh yeah we just order it do they ever wonder what you guys are doing when you're ordering all this equipment no but i we order enough that they they write us nice notes and give us free hats and stuff and

they're never like why are you do you know you're not do they never let you know like you know you're not allowed to trap links where you're at like there's no they don you know you're not, do they never let you know, like, you know, you're not allowed to trap lynx where you're at? Like there's no sort of. They don't know we're trapping lynx. I mean, they, you know. Who do you use? FNT or Minnesota Trap Line. Yeah.

Yeah. Huh. Yeah. We just go on there and try new things. And all those, I'm such a sucker. All those descriptions, you're like, this is the magic bullet. They make them sound so good. You'll read those lure descriptions?

Oh yeah. And they all feel like this is the one. I a total sucker so we got all kinds of tripled with yeah exactly i'm like great that's what i need so we've got all of our lures and we try to change those up but yeah always a caster some um p or-huh. Are you using cameras on your traps too? We, uh, sometimes, not very often. We're just beating cheeks and running and gunning so much out there that we, it just often doesn't feel like we have time.

You don't want to fill the camera too. Yeah. And you probably don't have cell service anyway, so you can't get cellular cameras. No, no. And do you get links that work the set but just never come in? Oh, that's the norm.

Really? Oh my God. What do they want lynx that work the set but just never come in? Oh, that's the norm. Really? Oh my God. What do they want to do? Not go in the cage. They'll circle downwind or they'll even come up to the door or what? Like what's the hang up for them? Various things. I mean, they'll, let's see.

For example, we had a cat last year that we could not catch. We tried everything. We threw all sorts of things at him. We, you know, just different variations in our sets. And he would often twice a day, so we'd come on the line in the morning, there'd be fresh tracks of him walking by the traps. You could tell he was spending enough time around there

that he was checking them. He was checking out the scene. He certainly was not going in and poking his head in or anything like that would he get on it close no okay so he knew that that thing was bad news yeah and i i like to so when we we put our our trap in the snow we sort of you know we pack snow around it i like to make sure there's plenty of snow on the bottom so they're not feeling that chicken wire or anything funky and then we put bows along the side just to give it that sort of tunnel look, kind

of, you know, like a cat likes a paper bag or something. That's going to be sort of exciting, but it also just keeps snow from blowing in and piling up in your trap, gives them a little thermal protection if they're in there. And then on the top, we've got a piece of clear plastic and that's again to protect the cat in case there's a thaw and it gets wet. We don't want them getting wet um and then we pile bows on that and i like to make it so it would be unattractive for a cat to jump on top because that would set off the trap yeah and worst case

scenario would be say there's a mom and kitten and mom's going in the trap and then a kitten jumps on it and the door you know closes and spooks her. And then, then you're, you're 10 steps behind where you were. Yeah. So yeah, I try to, to make it unattractive for them to, to jump on top of the trap. Um, but this, this cat would just sort of check it out. Mosey on, we got, you know, camera footage of him just walking right past, just breezing on by. We.

Like not even stopping. He just comes through, but then takes off. Yeah. Like he's just walking by, He just comes through, but then takes off. Yeah. He's just walking by, maybe looks at it, but keeps going. Yeah. And he was driving us nuts. I got a little obsessed.

And he would then, we'd go out to the rest of our line, be out all day, be coming back, and there'd be fresh tracks. In the daytime. Oh, yeah. A couple of our trappers saw him just sauntering down the road right by one of our traps. Never could get him. 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.

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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. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. That brings me to our bonus cat this fall.

We had maybe a little bit of a vendetta and we we were like Moby Dick. He was our white whale. So we decided to do just a little bonus trapping and so this fall before the snow even flew i went out there and i i wanted to condition him to the traps and this is a technique that is used in cougar trapping and bobcat trapping for research, but I'd never used it for length. And so I, I took, um, a full quarter. So a nice big chunk of meat, I drilled a hole in the bone, cabled it and staked it down. So nothing could come. Wolves couldn't come and take it. Cable it through the bone. Yeah. I didn't want, cause bears were still out. I didn't want somebody dragging it off.

So I staked that sucker down. then i set a trap maybe six feet away not it the door was tight open it was just there and ready to go so the idea was a lynx could come start nibbling on that bait get a little taste for what we've got and get used to the trap being there and we had a camera on it so i I set four of those stations in this area where I knew this, this lynx went a lot. Three nights later, I checked the camera and he'd come and started eating that bait. And so.

What else showed up on that bait? Um, gray jays, nothing else. Got it. So I moved it closer to the trap. So the part, it was partly in the door. Waited. He didn't, he came back, ate some of that. I was like, oh buddy.

Yeah. It's on. And within a week, we probably could have done it faster, but we were, it just worked out that within like a week and a half, he was eating bait that was in the middle of the trap. And then once I saw that, that night I put at all the bait stations, meat in the back of the trap and he came that night and we caught him just the first night that the traps were

actually set. Mature cat? Oh, beautiful. Big old cat. Biggest cat we've caught in Washington. He was 31 pounds. You pelted him out. No, he was a beautiful just really nice cat i mean just holding how old do you think he was he wasn't that old

maybe three to five it's really hard we age them just based on how much uh where they have on their teeth but it's it's rough it's really hard to tell but he wasn't an old grandpa by any means you fitted him with a collar put a collar on him and he's out and about. Did he just get the hell out of town when you let him go? No, no. Really? He, um, so we, we let him go. He jumped out of the trap and then just stopped and then just sauntered off.

But his ass is never going back in a trap now. Well, here's the thing. The first, lynx will, and other animals too, will get trap happy. Where they realize. Oh, they're like, that wasn't that bad. Yeah, they're like, hmm, okay. I can go. Got a good meal out of it.

Yeah, exactly. I can go in that trap, get a pound or two of free meat. They'll come and let me go in the morning. So we had the first. It doesn't just burn them out. I've done worse for a good meal. No, they, I mean, I mean, it makes sense. The first cat that we caught.

Imagine how scary it's got to be when a person shows up. It's worth it, apparently. I mean, that's a lot of meat. And it's there every night. And if you let them out early, they can go to another trap for that afternoon. We've had that happen. Trap. That's great.

That cat was real hard to catch catch is there other cats you've just caught over and over again right so the first time you had one you can't keep away right right the first links that we caught last winter he was like that he he was his personality was such that he was just not as cautious and he went right in trap. I think probably the first time he saw one of our traps, he went in, he ate the bait. We came the next morning, we processed him,

we let him go. And I don't remember how long later, but he figured it out. And then from then on, it was almost every morning he'd be in a trap and we'd have to let him go. He's getting all fat. He's going to start balling you home. He probably does.

He's got like rolls of fat on his forehead. Yeah, no, he hears our snowmobile come and he's like, oh, there's a new trap over there. I got to check that out. So we,

we had to just start ripping traps out of his home range as fast as we could. Seriously? Yeah, because it was. You might, something might happen to him eventually, right?

Well, I guess there could be some risk of that, but we're really careful. But he was, I i mean he was just bunging up our trap line and because he's collecting data now and so he was his he was ruining his data we have to throw that out his data was he like your dear baby yeah if we run an analysis it'd be like well links like trap lines and traps yeah Yeah. So, yeah. So we try not to let it come to that, but he's kind of putting a wrench in our game

this year because there's a female that he overlaps with that we've gotten on camera that we'd love to trap, but it's kind of a no-go zone because we know he's just going to be. Oh, he'll just plug it all up. Yeah, exactly. Have you ever, okay, there's by, there's bycatch. So I want you to do bycatch. Okay. I want you to do bycatch. Okay.

I want you to do what the differences you see in how these things move and what they're doing once you get a collar on them. There's another thing I wanted to ask about. I want to know what they got to worry about, like as far as what's killing them. Yeah, that's a good one. So bycatch, how they're acting, and then when you get a collar on, they die. What are they dying from? Yeah. And how many do you have collared?

Right now we have three on air. Okay. Yeah. On air. Collared. Collared. Collars are functioning. They're giving us data.

Yeah. Yeah. So I already forget the first one. Sorry. Bycatch. Bycatch. Bycatch. Who all turns up in your traps?

We get a lot of gray jays. They get in there? They get in there. I guess they'll walk in there, yeah. Ohcatch. Bycatch. Who all turns up in your traps? We get a lot of gray jays. They get in there? They get in there. I guess they'll walk in there, yeah. Oh, yeah. And then once they find a trap, they can be kind of a pest. But that is one of the drawbacks of our trigger system, that mousetrap system, is that it's so sensitive that a gray jay goes in there and they're setting the trap off. Weasels go in there, certainly, but they can get out.

There's enough they can just squeeze out. But're setting the trap off. Weasels go in there certainly, but they can get out. There's enough, you know, they can just squeeze out. But they throw the door first. Sometimes. They're also so short, they often go under. Got it. Under the trip line. We get snowshoe hares. I've had.

What are they after? Just whatever. Well, they'll eat the boughs off of our traps, but they also just, it's a little hiding spot. So they'll go in there. I've caught a snowshoe hare in a trap and then it was just being circled by a lynx trying to get at that snowshoe hare. What?

Really? Yeah. So that is, that kind of makes you want to vomit. That's a rough night, man. Yeah. So did you add him to the bait pile or did you let him go?

We let him go. You did? Yeah. Let's see. But more exciting bycatch, we caught a bobcat last year, which I was surprised it didn't break out of that trap. That was what Mercer was saying because he's used to bobcats. I remember when I first connected you guys, he was saying that he was worried that that wouldn't hold them. And you were saying, well, lynx are chill compared.

They don't fight the trap. Right, right. Yeah. And I, so bobcats and lynx are pretty, have pretty different personalities for lack of a better word, where bobcats are just, I call them flying demons because especially in like a foothold, they are just going nuts. Their stress response is the fight or flight. And in a box trap, you know, they're all over the place. And they'll, I've had them bust out of, you know, manufactured all metal traps.

Okay. Did you put a collar on the bobcat you caught? No. So no one wanted that? No. Okay. Lynx tend to go into freeze as their stress response. They'll, they'll test the walls of the trap a little bit, but they're not, they're not

working hard on getting out. And so they'll tend to just sort of hunker down a little bit more in the trap. So that's why we can use these traps. I would not use them for any other type of cat. Yeah. Wolverine's going to be out of there in a heartbeat. Oh, in a second. Yeah. A fisher would be out of there in a heartbeat. Oh, in a second. Yeah.

A fisher would be out of there in a second. Have you caught those? We actually did. So we, you know. Or almost caught one or whatever? Well, I've caught them a lot, lynx trapping in other areas in Maine. Here, very surprising because we don't have

technically on the east slope of the Cascades in our area of a population of fisher but we did catch one luckily it wasn't in one of our chicken wire traps we were borrowing some some manufactured traps and it was in one of those so that was pretty exciting to have him in the bait pile definitely not what about martin um i have caught lots of martin either we're not catching mart Martin in our traps or they're getting out. I think we're not catching them because again, we're in a burned area. So there's not a ton of Martin.

Got you. Yeah. Yeah. Um, let's see other by catch. That's. No red foxes. Nope. We also barely, if any, have those.

And no coyotes. No. A canid is going to be, they're not, they do not want to go into a box trap. They're way too wary. They'll, they might pass through, but they're not going to put their head in there. Yeah.

Yeah. I've had now bobcat trapping. I've had, I've had cougars go into the traps, but they're so big that the door just falls on their butt. Oh, they back out. Yeah. And they just back out, but they can be, they

can be a problem. And you're doing most of your trapping after the bears have dinned up. So they're not trashing your traps. Yeah, that's a big part of why we trap in winter. So we're not having to deal with that. Now this fall, I was willing to sacrifice a

trap or two if, if we were going to catch this, meant we were going to catch this lynx. Yeah. So what are you seeing on, surprising and how far they're going? Or like you let them go and they kind of hang out in the immediate vicinity or they go to the next state or what do they do? I mean, what's been surprising to me is, like I said, that they're not moving that far, that they're making home ranges entirely within this burn. And so far, I mean, we only have three cats on air, but so far they are not giant home ranges, which could indicate that it's decent habitat. They're not having to go super far.

This burn is big enough that as we sort of move our trap line north, maybe the conditions are different up there and maybe it won't be the same story but at least the links we have on air right now are making a pretty tight home range when when do they rot when what's their breeding season uh march february and then they they have kittens may june have you um maybe probably doesn't work if you had a female and then at that time you knew where they were it might be plausible that there'd be like more like more males in that area or is that not that's not something that really factors in oh like if we saw she's like a judas she winds up being like a judas animal right like that with her you know that in her zone, there's going to be cats coming through. Yeah. I mean, they all move so much.

If I knew where a female was, I'd certainly be setting traps there anyway, because we want to get female cats on air. You want to have males and females. Is it all males on air right now? Yeah. Oh, because you don't have any females. Males are more apt to go in a trap in general. In general. So have you had any cats get a mortality signal?

Have you had any cats die while, while collared? Yeah. And that was a bummer because it was the one female that we caught last year. So we caught a female and it was a really cool handling. It was just, you know how some times when you're hunting, there's, there's a deer you get that just feels special because of everything around it, the scenery, the day, the whatever. Um, this was kind of one of those, those moments with this cat. We, um, we caught this female lynx and she had a kitten with her and this was in March. And so this kitten is, you know, pretty, almost full grown.

It's almost a year. And the kitten's outside of the trap. It's outside of the trap. And the female's in. Yep. And so, um, I was riding my snowmobile, checking the line, checking the line, and I'm looking up at the next trap and I just see it wiggle a little bit and I just jam on the brakes and I go up there and, and there's this female lynx in the trap. And I can see kitten footprints around it where he's been, you know, trying to be close to her. And as I was waiting for the rest of the team to meet me to do the handling and collaring, I heard and saw that that kitten was kind of checking in with her. And he was just sitting up on a hill above her. Plus it was just this- Making what noise?

It's like a little sort of bird, little- Like make the noise. It's kind of what we do around here. I'll do it till I get it right. Okay. No, more like, more like, Got it. Now they make some real ugly noises. No, more like, more like.

Got it. Now they make some real ugly noises. This was probably one of the cuter noises they make, but in general, no, in general, they sound like they're throwing up or something. They kind of make this yowling demon noise. When you got them cornered. Nope. Just talking to each other. Oh, you'll hear it.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, so. Hit me with'll hear it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, anyway, so. Hit me with the demon noise. It's like. Oh, is that right? Like that, that weird. It's weird.

It's not, it's not a cute cat noise. Like someone wouldn't be like, that must be a lynx. No, you'd be like, what was that? I got you. Um, there's some, some cool YouTube where you can hear them. Oh, okay. I see. Yeah.

Uh, anyway, so I'm sitting there. I'm alone with this cat. I'm at a distance. We like to try and keep them as calm as we can because it's a better experience for them. The drugs works better. Everything just goes better if they're calm. So I'm a distance away, but it's this cold, beautiful, snowy, high mountain day, this sort of meadow with a creek in it. And then these, you know, trees and burnt trees along the side of it.

It's snowing. It was, it was just one of those moments. And then we, you know, the crew arrived, we processed this cat. And when we left. Can you, just for the audience, can you go like quick rundown of what processing is? Sure. Blood samples. Flash it and stretch it.

Flash it and stretch it, baby. So when we're handling any wildlife species, it's our professional responsibility and our ethics to do it in the most humane way possible. Yeah. And you're dealing with a, you're dealing with a federally threatened species too, right? Exactly. And so we baseline whenever, no matter what species we're trapping, we have a really high bar for how we do things and how we try to minimize stress and obviously minimize risk and all of that because this is kind of up to you yeah a friend of mine was doing duck banding and i don't want to tell you who said this but he was doing duck banding and his boss told him if you're not killing birds you ain't working hard enough that's dark no one's gonna tell you that in your links area

it was just a funny thing that he remembers being told because he's like very they're doing those nets and everything is very dainty and the guy's like listen we gotta get some birds banded here like there's gonna be some yeah i mean i think i get the the gist of what he was saying but i i think there's a little bit of a tide change i'm not giving you professional advice. I was just observing that. I'm just remarking on that. Okay.

Yeah. And standing up for the wildlife profession. I think that we're getting a little as, we're getting more thoughtful. Yeah. About these things and refining techniques. So anyway, we have a really high bar of how we do things and animal safety and all this. So everything we do is geared around minimizing stress. So when we do a handling, it's all whispering.

It's all reading the cat's body language, using our body language to seem as minimally aggressive and threatening. And so when we've got a cat in the trap, first thing we do is we put a big sheet over the trap. That just helps calm the cat. It just cuts down on visual stimulation. Obviously, we have to drug the cat or we can't handle it. So the way we're doing that is we've got, um, it's called a syringe pole. It's a, it's a pole.

And on the end of it is a plunger and you, you put your, your drugs in a syringe, but the pole is now the plunger, if that makes sense. So that when you. Oh, yeah. So that when you. You push on it a little bit. Yep. You, you, you wait until the cat's in the right position.

You want to get it ideally in its butt, right in its haunch and that meat there. And you just, you slowly bring it in the trap and you just poke it in the butt and just push a little bit and that's it. And what's that drug? We are using a mix of ketamine and metatomidine. And so what that does is the. Puts them in the K-hole. Puts them in the K-hole. But you don't want to use just straight ketamine because it makes them really rigid.

There's risk of seizure and different side effects. It's a very safe drug, but we can do a little bit better and give them a more relaxed sedation. And are they out or just groggy? They are out, out. You want them out, out. I mean, think about if you were going to get an ear tag and be handled by this alien species, you'd want to be out, out. No memory. Yeah, you want to be out.

So we drug them and they are unresponsive. You could do surgery on them if that's what you were doing. Obviously, we're not. You drug them. You bring them out of the trap once they're ready. know do surgery on them if that's what you were doing obviously we're not you drug them you bring them out of the trap once they're ready um again it's always just minimizing that stress and so we put an eye mask on them and we're minimizing even like touching it because that's just more stimulation and if if they are more stimulated the drugs don't work as well they've got to burn

through more stress and so the last thing you want is your cat waking up before you're ready. And so we're doing everything to just make that a smooth, calm ride for the cat. And so the handling, what we're doing is the primary goal is to get this GPS collar on them. They're little collars that will take a GPS point on collection days every 30 minutes. And that shoots up to space and then shoots down to my computer. And so every couple of days I'll get an update of what that cat's been doing. So that's our primary goal. And that thing eventually falls off or what? Yeah.

They have a little release mechanism that you can program that does a tiny, tiny little like explosion, but on a micro scale. Yeah. And it just parts the piece that's holding it together and it'll drop off really yeah so february you could go grab it if you want exactly yeah so february 2nd hopefully that's what we'll be doing that's when our our collars will drop off really coming right up coming right up yeah um so it's getting the collar on but you're also you're you're you've got this cat that needs, you know, it doesn't, the drugs can depress their respiration and temperature and things like this.

And so you're having to regulate and make sure that the cat's safe. And so the other- Is that collar valuable? You need to go get it because it's valuable or you just go get it because of- We will theoretically have had all the data on it, but it's just another way to get it. You can have them refurbished. It doesn't save you that much money. But yeah, they are expensive.

But going and getting it doesn't, it's not like a financial reason to go get it. Not really. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, so during the handling, a really important job is to be monitoring temperature, respiration, heart rate, you know, these sorts of things so that if things start to drift out of, you know, the correct zone of temperature, heart rate and respiration, we can correct that. And you have a drug that helps with that? Like, let's say you OD'd it on accident. That's really unlikely. The drugs we use have a, they have a huge safety margin.

I see. We're not going to OD it od it yeah but there are drugs um and you know there's there's different things that could happen for example i had a bear and this is more common in bears for whatever reason with some drugs where the the breathing got a little too shallow and interrupted for my comfort i had a drug with that just gave it a little bit of that boom started breathing well so So we, we, we have tools for, um, these common things that might go wrong. We've got drugs for if they have a seizure, things like that. Or, I mean, if it's

temperature, it's, it's putting snow in its armpits or if it's getting. Also to get too hot. Yeah. If it gets too hot, if it gets too cold, we've got, we've got, um, we always have them in blankets on a, on a foam pad. If they get really cold, we have socks, and we can put little hand warmers in there and put socks on all of its feet. So we're prepared for a lot.

But these things, hopefully, by keeping that stress level down, that's one really good way to make sure things are just smooth and steady. Are you also taking samples for like DNA, genetics, disease, stuff like that? We're not taking blood. We're not looking at disease. If we had a cat that something seemed wrong, we'd certainly take a lot of notes about that. If it had an unusual parasite load, we'd probably collect that.

And you just know that from scat analysis? Like how would you know if it had a parasite load? Well, if you see them. They sometimes have tapeworms or if they had an exorbitant amount of ticks or fleas or lice or something like that, we'd probably collect that. Got it. We do collect DNA.

So when we give them a ear tag, we first, rather than just jamming the ear tag through, you take a little biopsy punch and it makes a little hole and then we've got that little tissue sample. So collar, a couple of DNA samples. No tattoos. No tattoos.

No need for that. We're not pit tagging. What's the ear tag for? The ear tag is so that if it, if it shows up up on a camera you might be able to read that number it's also got my phone number on it so if somebody finds its carcass they could call us and we'd know what was going on years down the road you know if it's callers come off and we retrap it we we know who it is i know you never finished what you were saying the female oh yeah you don't have on it's no longer on air.

Right, right. So, right, yeah. So I was describing what a cool handling that was. And we let her go. And there was this just incredible moment of getting to watch her and her kitten reunite and, you know, go off. And we're ecstatic about this because now we've got a female lynx using the burned area and and to know what habitat of a female lynx is using is really that's just gold because they're the ones reproducing and so if if if there are things we can learn about how how to support a female lynx all the better so we're really excited about that

we're really hopeful that maybe we'll see where she's denning and be able to learn about that type of habitat. Anyway, a month later, these callers, if they stop moving for eight hours, will give a mortality signal. And that pushes an email to me. So I wake up Sunday morning, check my email, and there's a mortality email. What's the subject line? It might've been the number and mortality or something. It comes in an email. Yep. Comes in an email and just makes your stomach turn.

We regret to inform you. Such a weird email, right? Yeah. It's not when you want. I mean, mortalities are fascinating. No, I got you by just the delivery mechanism of an email. Yeah. Yeah. They don't, they don't sugarcoat it or try to pad that. No one knocks at the door. No, no.

So I, um, I shoot out there. Our season has ended, but there's still a ton of snow. And I, I went out there with a biologist colleague and friend, and it was just kind of a harrowing adventure to get to this spot um but once we got there we um we were a little bit hamstringed because her collar was not transmitting a vhf which that's the little radio beep beep that you can hone in on it wasn't it's not worth explaining but it wasn't on that day so we we get to the area where we know she is ish and how big how big is this um maybe a 200 meter radius but if there's snow on top of her or if she's in a hole or something those gps points points that she was spitting could be pretty off. Plus it has just snowed that night into the morning.

And so we get to this spot. We'd had to hike a bunch on the snowmobile trail. She's not very far from the snowmobile trail, but she's down in a little meadow with a creek in this burned area. And like I i said there's a fresh blanket of snow and that right there is is devastating for mortality site investigation because so much of the of what you're learning is from track and sign that you're seeing around we're not going to have that we start hiking down this this creek and and there was a coyote that

had gone through and it had must've been sometime that morning. Cause there wasn't much snow in its tracks. Those are the only tracks where we're seeing. And we sort of note that, um, we get to the area where we think she is ish. And, and it's just, there's zero sign of anything. I put my bag down sort of rummaging around and the guy I'm with is thinking about those coyote tracks and he's starting to circle and he sees those coyote tracks, he cuts them and he thinks, I should just

follow those tracks. And within very, very quickly he saw where those tracks had gone up to where a big log had fallen but picture feet and feet and snow of snow and there's snow on the log and sort of draping over the log and so it's the snow cave with a little crack of space along the side of it and then the front of it you could see down into the snow cave the coyote had come and stuck its head down in that little cave opening.

And so that prompted him to also look in that cave opening. And that's where she was. So he saw, what he saw was the lynx, I wouldn't say curled up, but sort of flopped over a bit. Dead. Dead. Yeah, dead. And it looked as though she had intentionally gone under there to die um and so we we pulled her out and she was completely frozen um and we did an examination

there there was a slight abrasion on her face that was all we saw and so we and and like i said there were no other track in sight we couldn't backtrack to see you know the coyote just looked in there just looked in there and moved on that was it so we thought nothing obvious here this isn't a predation event um you know we're not there we have no clues other than she seemed to intentionally go under that log and that always makes you think disease when they, they, you know,

have sort of curled up in an intentional spot and just died. So we put her in my backpack, hiked her out. And then I shipped her to a lab to do a necropsy because they can do all the pathology and, you know, test for different diseases. Turns out they didn't have to do that.

They, they skinned her out and then their examination found that cause of death was you know, test for different diseases. Turns out they didn't have to do that. They skinned her out, and then their examination found that cause of death was blunt force trauma. And so she had some broken ribs and some bleeding internally. And that's all we know. And we can speculate about how that may have happened, but we don't know. One idea is that because this was only about, you know, 400 yards from the snowmobile trail, she could have been hit. Um, they're not,

that has happened before in other States that we know of, they get hit by cars, people, you know, rip around up there. Um, so that's one idea one idea or you know you can come up with any number of other sort of freak accidents that could have done like what not got hit by not bit they feel like there were no puncture wounds no puncture wounds um i don't know a snow corn is broke that it was standing on and it fell on a rock or, um, I don't know, kicked by a moose, which seems really unlikely to me,

but that's been floated. Um, that's not that wild. Some people, well, I don't know. I don't know. I just,

you know, one time we, uh, killed a mule deer and its whole underside was totally infected and it was full of porcupine quills. Oh yeah. Oof. Like what is the scenario? It was jump. It walked over a porcup was full of porcupine quills oh yeah like what is the scenario it was jump it walked over a porcupine the porcupine yeah probably so just weird you know i mean yeah weird stuff only being that like who knows man yeah you know i mean i've seen some

weird stuff out there so yeah you don't it could have been anything but um anyway that's all we'll know so she that's it so we got a month of data from her and that was it unfortunately i'm hoping um let's see later that season we we caught a lynx kitten and when i say kitten you know it was almost a year old but it was is too small to call her so we gave it an ear tag and sent it on its way i don't know for. We don't have the DNA yet, but it was in her zone. That may have been her kitten. And so it will be interesting to see if he shows up this winter, if he made it through his, you know, the rest of his, his year, um, having prematurely lost his mom.

Um, yeah, we'll see. Man, I could see that having a female and finding out what she does around denning season would be cool as hell. Yeah. Dens are, lynx dens are, are really cool. And that's. What are they like rock, like cracks and rocks or. They will use a lot of different things. They often are in mature forests where there's lots of down logs, just total jack straw. And they'll find a gnarly spot in there because

that's going to protect them from cougar or probably not cougars, but wolves. And so they'll find a gnarly spot in these just giant piles of logs and go into there. I've seen them in hollowed out stump, rock crevices, slash piles, uh, in cut areas, upturned root wads. They just, they need a nice bit of cover.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be really cool to have that. Yeah. How much do they got to worry about cougars and wolves? They have to worry about cougars.

Yeah. They have to worry about cougars, places where there's lots of fishers. That's been, um. Fishers will kill them? Oh yeah. The mature ones? I've been to several.

A fisher can out duke a. They can, I mean, come on. It's a weasel. Yeah, they're weasels, man. Losing a lot of respect for lynx here. A fisher can whoop a lynx. Yeah. Hmm.

Yeah. I've been to several lynx mortalities where it was a fisher. And one I can remember in particular. They can whoop a porcupine. Yep. So can a lynx or a bobcat. The lynx will be able to do it? Yeah.

That's not a normal prey item, but they can. But they can do it. Yeah. I've seen where a lynx was curled up in the snow and then you see the fisher tracks come

and it basically just jumped it in its bed. Huh. They are, when you see them and they. It's bad. It's more than lickers.

Lynx look big. A lot of that's just lankiness and they're they're so fuzzy especially in the summer their average weight is the same as a bobcat pretty much they're just lankier there's lankier um and fuzzier they look like something if it got a little bit of blunt force trauma it's not gonna live yeah you when you because just like they're like they're just so spread out and slender and yeah they're they're not meant to take a hit yeah when you pick one up it's like whoa this is like a little bird i mean they're meant to float on the snow yeah they're not climbers like they don't go into trees much right don't go into trees but it's not like

a daily thing by any means yeah yeah they're more they'll just bed right in the snow and some cover yeah and they don't throw it they bed right in the snow and some cover yeah and they don't throw it they don't throw any claw mark on a track right just like a regular cougar bobcat like their claws are retracted um well i mean like any felid yeah their claws retract and so often most often probably you're not going to see their their claws register but if they're in slippery substrate um and they need a little extra grip, they'll pull. Oh, you'll see it come out?

Oh, yeah, yeah. In fact, that track, that picture you were talking about earlier where there was a snowshoe hair tracks and the links going after it, it was going up a steep bank and you can see its claws came out. Oh, really?

So you chained up. Yeah, they'll click them out. Yeah, it's like that guy in his toenails climbing up the tree. John Newbanks. Yeah. You use them when you need them. Hey, folks.

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So tell me where Home Range Wildlife is right now. So you have a nonprofit. Yeah. And this is all done as a nonprofit. The nonprofit has employees. You're one of the employees at the nonprofit. Yeah. We've kind of followed you through your career a little bit.

Yeah. Are you guys like in we're going to make it? Is it you don't know what you're going to be doing in five years? We know what we want to be doing in five years. We've got all sorts of plans.

Is Home Range Wildlife viable? We are, according to the little like you're starting a non-profit take this quiz with your board to see where you're at according to that so you're starting a non-profit yeah um we are still in the struggle phase which basically means we are i mean it's hard work we are having to hustle big time for money yeah oh yeah. So we're, it's not like we're just cruising financially. We're in the hustle phase,

but that is not stopping us. How many employees you got? So right now there's three of us that are full time. So co-founder and I, and a super badass woman who, who started on the links project and we've just, we've kept her on. And then we've got seasonal techs. So we've got some seasonal techs. We wrap community scientists into our work. So we've got community scientists that will go out and help with the backtracking

portion. So we, part of the study is not just collaring, it's also going out and tracking Lynx and recording their exact really fine scale habitat use. Yeah, you explain that backtracking because you don't want to bump them. Exactly. Backtracking ain't as fun as forward tracking. Well, you're less likely to see the animal. But man, it is still

fun. No, I can picture it, but you know, you kind of want to be like, well, let's just go after it and see if we can see it. Yeah, well, but then we're messing up the data, right? Sure, yeah. And then you spook see if we can see it, right? Yeah. Well, but then we're messing up the data, right? And then you spook it. Exactly. Or it starts evading you. Right.

And so part of what we're looking at also is from reading the tracks, what they're doing behaviorally. Because that can help us figure out, okay, of the habitats that they'll use for various things, where are they hunting? Where are they trying to hunt? Where are they actually making kills? Where they're hunting and they're successful, that is like the best habitat. When they kill a snowshoe, do they mop that whole thing up or do they leave something behind? They will usually mop it up except maybe a foot or two,

the guts, and for whatever reason, a patch of the hide from the back, and that'll often have like hemorrhaging in it. You'll see where it was bit. Oh, I see. Sometimes, usually they'll eat it, especially if there's not a lot of snowshoe hares around. They may cache it to save some for later,

but usually they're just eating it. When you find a lynx scat in the winter, is it white because of the snowshoe hare hair? Yeah, it has white hair in it, but it's not like overall white. It's still dark. Yeah, that meat, the meat makes a really dark scat. Especially the organs. But on the tufts, you'll see that it's white.

Yeah, if you picked it up and looked at it, you'd see it was white hair. The white hair inside there. Yeah. Little chunks of bone. Little chunks of bone. Yeah. Little toenails and stuff. Yeah.

So explain again where you guys are at on long-term viability. You're struggling. The struggle phase. We're in the struggle phase. The results kick out struggle phase. But I would say it's clear that we've got a lot of momentum and a lot of support from agencies, our community. We're partnering with a university on the project.

So we've got a master's student on the project. But it's just, it's hard to raise money for a nonprofit. And we're not like the normal, this isn't the normal path. Usually wildlife research is done by universities or the agencies yeah and so this is there there are other organizations that do it but this is somewhat unique um and so we're really lucky that we are partnering with agencies um and the universities but a large part of our money also comes from fundraising um and so that's that's kind of a whole new ball

who's using that all the data you're collecting are you turning it over to the u.s fish and wildlife service or yeah so that's a huge part of our our mission is to be doing research that is um addressing what we see as really urgent conservation issues in our area. And so this whole project is geared towards having results that can inform land management and lynx conservation. Because for lynx, a large part of lynx conservation is habitat conservation. But can Home Range Wildlife exist as just a lynx research org? Or at some point you're going to have to jump into something else.

I would love to make this a really long-term project because there's a lot of value in those long-term data sets. that is really boots on the ground and have our research in biology be really based in the naturalist skills that we have. This is not universally true, but there's a trend towards a lot more modeling and this sort of office-based research, which is really valuable, but it can't be at the expense

of people who are out there on the landscape and who are good naturalists and who are there long-term. Well, the model, but with, without your work, the model, the modelers don't have anything to do. I mean, your work is what's going to tell them is the home range of a female. It complements, right. It complements, but there's also. They have to have something to do i mean your work is what's going to tell them is the home range of a female it complements right it complements but there's also like they have to have something to plug in they have to have something to plug in but there's a lot out there they can plug plug in and there's a lot out there like right now like i was saying this is sort of this whole new habitat habitat

paradigm with all the burns and so it is so important that we're not only building models based on what we think we already know, but we're going back to the drawing board and learning from the landscape and the links. And again, long term, that's, that's, I think, something that's also being somewhat lost in wildlife is there's so much turnover, and people are hopping around that sort of through line for an area where you've got bios that have been there for decades and have seen changes and been noting things, we're losing that somewhat. And we do not want to see that happen in the met how. We're sort of the generation of biologists that have been there for decades and know that landscape intimately

and have seen it change and are just good naturalists that like to be out there and um they're the ones that are going to notice i'm not hearing as many xyz bird or you know we're not they're just noticing those changes and that takes being out there and being there long term and so that's what we want home range to be because we're we're losing some of these these long-term bios they're retiring yeah and so we want to make sure that there's somebody always watching there in the value you know what i could use some help with i was telling my gripe before we started recording they have everything south of us they have as this lynx recovery area okay and there's all these separate trapping regulations in the lynx recovery area now and there's all these separate trapping regulations in the

lynx recovery area now i've had furbearer biologists tell me that most of the stuff in the lynx recovery area has never had a lynx and never will have a lynx it's completely wrong habitat i have are you talking about like yellowstone that that area that well no it's everything around that it's huge yeah yeah i mean it's everything south of town okay everything okay okay a friend of mine in the forest service who's doing a lot of lynx work he even said you know our understanding of what lynx habitat is has gotten very refined since that went into effect he pictures sometimes down the road that could be eased up because it's just not representative of lynx habitat he said if they go to do that that'll

get the hell litigated out of it when they come out and say you know what we were wrong this is lynx habitat that's not lynx habitat it'll get litigated because people will want to keep like restrictions in place the debate will get weaponized. I would love if you guys came in, collared a couple links so people could see where they hang out and where they don't. Because they're not down in the juniper and rock piles. Yeah. You agree or don't? I mean, let me explain that with a little more nuance.

So links. Well, can I give you one more tidbit? Let's get it. I have a friend who's a lion hunter. He's been hunting lions here 20 years. Hunts all over the state. In 20 years, he's yet to cut a lynx track in this area. Now, lest you think he

doesn't think there's any lynx. When he goes to region one, he sees more lynx tracks than bobcats and mountain lions combined. So this is not a guy that doesn't say there's no lynx tracks he's like the lynx recovery area ain't got lynx yeah so so i was talking earlier that there's there's five populations there's six um areas that have been designated as by fish and wildlife service as critical habitat and that one is not there's not a known population there now there have been intermittent sightings you not there's not a known population there now there have been intermittent

sightings you know there's not a known breeding population there it's possible that in the future there could be there's it's possible the other thing is that um while lynx are fairly specialized in their habitat, meaning boreal forest, they move so much that they'll use just about anything to move through. So, I mean, I'm not a land manager down there. I don't know the area and all that, so I can't say too much about it. But I could say this. I could say, hey, you shouldn't be able to set certain kind of traps because little children generally aren't lost. But a little child could get lost anywhere.

And you shouldn't have that set because how can we say that a little child wouldn't get lost and get caught in that set? I don't know. Maybe. Sure. I've heard of little children getting lost. Yeah. I don't know. You'll have to take it up with Fish and Wildlife.

No, I'm taking it up with you because you got to go collar some links and even though there aren't any there maybe cut one loose and see what it does right i'll try trapping anywhere thank you so that's all okay good this is i have a huge list of gripes that i'd like to get addressed. This is like low. You know, my first one is universal hunters, orange policy, just a hat. Okay. Somewhere below that is this links recovery unit issue, but someday I'm going to get to all this.

All right. I'm going to take it up. Fish and wildlife should look for your letter. Dear fish and wildlife service. I have a problem. I think I know where that letter is going to wind up.

Where's the recycling bin? How do people find you and support your organization? I love what you guys do. I mean, it really resonates with listeners who love it that people are out on the land, studying wildlife, right? Everybody's got their myths about stuff and what lives where and what don't live where. And to have someone come and say, here's what lives there. Here's how many, here's what they do. It's valuable. Yeah. I mean, it's information, right?

Yeah. Like real information. is research. And so that I think sometimes is hard for the broader public to connect with because it doesn't feel like I'm directly, this organization is directly helping that animal. We're doing the research. That's one step, but a really important step in knowing how to manage and conserve species. And that's slightly more abstract.

But I feel like in my short experience running a non-profit that and after last year's experience with um doing the trap a cat fundraiser with you i feel like i just have so much um gratitude for the hunting and fishing community because I feel like you guys get it. And that fundraiser was such a success because people really put out and saved us. You guys really saved us last year from having just our old ass sleds just completely die. And that would just shut us down. That's such crux, uh,

equipment. And so the fact that, um, this audience just gets that research and learning about wildlife populations and managing the populations is really valuable. Not just saving an individual animal, um, is, I, that just gives me a lot of hope that there's, there's this audience that really understands that.

Can I tell you something? My brother, who's a, he's a fisheries researcher in Alaska told me, he was one time describing to me the difference between Alaska and the lower 48. As he said, in the lower 48, you're kind of, you're in conservation phase, preservation phase, right? He said, one of the things that makes being a researcher in Alaska different is we're still in discovery phase in a lot of ways. Like, where are salmon? You know, like, where are salmon? How many salmon are there? What are these things doing?

Yeah. And what's cool is you're in a case of you're facilitating discovery. Right. It's like there's this thing, there's this cat that lives here. How many? I don't know. Where do they live? I don't know.

How do they use the landscape? I don't know. It's like discovery science. Yeah. Right. It's not sort of, you know, it's not specifically like saving something. It's just trying to like understand our world, you know? But I would, I mean, I would say, especially in this case, it is how do we save the species?

Yeah. It leads to that. Yeah. It leads to that. Granted, I'm not trying to belittle it, but I'm saying it's like you're discovering things about, right. You're discovering about how animals relate to their environment. Yeah, that's true.

It is. It's this, yeah. Things have changed out there in the last 20 years. And so we're trying to catch up and learn that. As far as saving them goes, if you had to make a prediction, like state of the links in the lower 48 and whatever, like 20 years or 50 years, like what would you be comfortable saying? Like they needed to burn more stuff in 2006. Like are they going to, are they doing well? Is it bad news?

Is it good news? It all depends on what we do. Yeah. If we do nothing, it's not looking great, especially for Washington. It is not looking great. Yeah. Because of these, I mean, these just sweeping fires are just, the worry is that they burn enough in a short enough time frame, then that's skewing the landscape towards that recently burned, there that burn here, then you've always got some of something out there and you've got enough of that structure, that forest structure that lynx and hares need that you're supporting the population. But you've got enough burning going on that you are reinstilling some resilience onto that landscape because all those those little burns are acting

like little speed bumps for subsequent fires and so if we can figure out ways to if we understand how lynx use burned habitat then we know how much of that they need and and how much we can spare for reinstilling that resilience to fire because Yeah, because it feels like opposing objectives when you talk about conserving lynx habitat because they need that thick forest. That's a lot of fuels. And so when you're trying to save lynx habitat short term while simultaneously slow fires just for the ecology of the area to bring that that that fire resiliency back and to save lynx habitat over the long term it feels like you're in a rock and a hard place but if we can find that sweet spot where we've got enough habitat for lynx now and we've got

enough fire break and and resiliency out there to save it long term well then that's going to be progress for lynx. Yeah. Back to how people can find out information and be supportive. Yeah. I know we got the traffic cap thing. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Well, so if you want to find out more just about home range in general, and like I said, we've got this research,

but we also want to help address the issue in wildlife research where young you know new biologists are sort of a lot of the culture of this field is that you just sort of get thrown out there and you're having to learn on the job and that does a couple things it's often not safe it's often costing a project equipment because you're out there snowmobiling and trying to keep up with with the rest of the crew and you've never done it and you're just more likely to wreck things like that so that's safety and equipment and it means if you're trying to learn just how to do the basic skills then you're you're not maximizing how much data you're getting and it's not going to be as quality so we're trying to offer or we are offering field skills courses um and so those are offered in the summer and they're they're really cool um

they're mammals focused right now but for example you can sign up for a course where you're doing everything from how to set cameras to um mammal or any animal track and sign that's such an important skill just being able to read animal sign and the tracks, um, and knowing your scat, things like that. We should send dirt to that. Oh,

it's. Yeah. Yeah. I, I love tracking. Can you teach one of our guys a visual identification? Of tracks? No,

any, just animals. Animals. We're starting there. Okay. That's doable. Um, and then that, that session culminates with um we get roadkill deer and we mock up mortality sites from different predators because a lot of mammals there's a lot of work and research that involves being able to go to a

mortality site or kill site and know what happened who killed it all that sort of stuff you guys do snowmobile recovery and stuff like that too we've done a winter skills course that had snowmobiling, trailering, avalanche awareness, that sort of thing. Oh, really? And then we're doing a trapping course coupled with a chemical immobilization. So all that drugging stuff that we were talking about. Yeah. Yeah.

Small classes, I'm guessing. Yeah. Yeah. About 10 to 20 people. So those are a way that people can learn those skills before they're on the job. Have you had agencies send out students ever? Yeah. Oh, really?

Yeah. Yeah, we've had everything from- You guys probably got a lot to teach when it comes to wintertime. Like wintertime trapping, wintertime snowmobiling, wintertime survival. Yeah. It's like an arena of consequence in the mountains in the winter. Yeah, it really is. Yeah.

Yeah. Stuff can go bad. Oh, yeah. Quick. Yep. Real quick. So anyway, so there's that sort of education part. And then we've also got our community science angle, which is sort of built around the knowledge that we can do all this research,

but if we're not communicating it to the public, especially the communities that are going to be impacted by any possible management outcomes, if people don't understand and support it, then that's going to really decrease what you can do out there as far as management and conservation. So we want people to understand what we're doing and sort of help facilitate that.

We've got like a bear coexistence program and some research going on that community scientists are helping with. So we've got kind of those three different prongs. All that is to say, if you want to learn more about that, you can go to homerange.org. All right. And we have an Instagram, which is homerangewildlife.

Or is there a dot? I don't know. I don't know. Home range wildlife. You'll find it. Yeah. And then are you, explain for the last thing, explain Trap-A-Cat and what's happened with Trap-A-Cat. So I alluded it because I'm, it was, it saved our asses last year and I am so grateful that

community gets it. So we've got a fundraiser and we're doing it again, A, because it's super fun and B, because we find ourselves again with some desperate needs. People who hunt and fish know how important equipment is and how fast it can break down when you're using it hard. And we use our equipment really hard. Just as an example, we, because of traffic cap, bought two new snowmobiles last year. That meant we weren't riding 20-year-old held together with baling twine and duct tape snowmobiles, and we were using two new snowmobiles. And that just,

that is everything, being able to get out there in the winter. We had those for one month and they each have, um, 2000 miles on them. So they're, they're getting a lot of use. So we're, we're thinking ahead about just our fleet management and that this, this year alone, those sleds are going to get another 6,000 miles on them. Um, but we've also expanded our crew. And so some of our crew is back to using the old sleds. And I'm just sort of crossing my fingers every day that nothing happens there. And so we desperately need a new sled so that it's the backtracking crew, that we've got a separate crew that's in charge of the tracking. So that they're not 50 miles out and having a snowmobile issue. Not only would that be a bad day, but then that part of the study just kind of shuts down.

That's how important these are. We also find ourselves happily in need of more callers. So last year going into this, we thought maybe we'll catch one lynx this season. Maybe we'll catch one lynx this season maybe we'll catch two well now we've deployed all four of those callers and we know that there are more lynx that we had hoped living in our study area and so we need more callers because more callers more information it just makes the study that much more confident and what we can say we just we, we, every one of these callers, we learned so freaking much from. So we need to get more callers.

Our trailer is a sad story. That thing's falling apart. I mean, it's just, it's just this basic equipment that allows us to do what we can do and gets us the information that we need that we find ourselves needing to fundraise again. And so we're, we're redoing Trap-A-Cat. The, um, the game here is that over the next three months of our trapping season, so we'll be trapping, um, starting, well, today they're out there checking our first bait, um, through

March, um, we'll be trapping. We're, we're, if you, let's see, for every hundred dollars that you donate to Trap-A-Cat, you get a trap set in your name and we'll keep track of all that. You get that trap set and then throughout our season, you'll be getting like behind the scenes content. And so every week we'll be sending out videos and stuff of just what it's like on the trap line. Um, any cool camera footage that we get, stuff like that.

And that's super fun. Then if you're set, catches the links, you win, um, fame and glory. We're going to have, um,

$250, uh, first light gift certificate and Steven Rinella will announce winners on his social media. We'll announce it. That's where you'll get your fame. And so it's pretty cool.

Oh, and... I'll send you a video. It'll be like, what's that service that they have where you send videos? You buy them? Cameo. You know that dude that got, what's his name from New York? Yeah. Congressman? Santos got voted out, and the next day he turns up on Cameo.

It's a good grift if you can get it. I'm not on Cameo, but I'll send them a video. I'll be like, hey, thanks. Something like that. Okay, there you go, folks. How cool is that? Seth will record it. Perfect. folks how cool is that seth will record it perfect the other cool thing we've got um this year we've

got little um ink pads that we can make a paw print from the from the oh really yeah that you catch yeah yep that's great man which is mostly just gonna look like a fuzzy mitten but spencer can get that tattooed on him then there we go he's like looking for something to get tattooed yeah get a lynx paw print um yeah so winning's fun it makes a really cool gift we had a lot of people getting it for their kids um and it just it it means so much for our project and um it's yeah, we rely heavily on this fundraiser. And so, yeah, we just appreciate everybody. So people that want to get involved in Trap Cat go where?

Same, Home Range? Yep, go to homerange.org and there's a banner up on the top of the website. You just click that and it'll give you a little more information and you can donate there. And you'll get put into the Trap Cat system and start getting videos and stuff like that. Excellent. Yeah. It's pretty fun. All right.

This is the fifth time you've been on. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Better have some adventures for the sixth time when you come back. Oh yeah. Okay. When you come back next year.

Yeah. Let's do it. And then we'll start talking about my little problem south here, which might not be a problem. If you go and find that there's all, you know, it's all habitat, I'll be like, cool, I understand. I'm all for it.

But if it winds up being that it was a little willy-nilly, a little reflexive, then that's an annoyance to me. And in the meantime, we'll work on that letter. Maybe, I think willy-nilly is probably not it. Maybe.

Over ambitious? Over, or just overly more cautious than you would do. Not sure. Yeah, I like that. Not willy-nilly though. You don't like? I don't think they're willy-nilly. Okay.

No. I appreciate it. I appreciate the sentiment. Yeah. You are, you love them lynx. Yeah. I mean, I do. I do.

I just, sometimes for, you know, for women in wildlife, the stereotype is, oh, they love wolves. They're obsessed with wolves or they love lynx and you know is that a stereotype yeah i think so um like that you're not able to look at it like a cold meanness um i guess a little bit not not that anybody wants to be looking them with a cold meanness meanness but i think for women sometimes that is seen as the inspiration behind it. Like they're your little pets. Yeah, I've had it. I've sort of experienced that myself where somebody, they hear, oh, you're working with wolves.

Oh, you know they're picturing you as a little girl drawing wolves on your binder at school and stuff. I would say that lynx are a cool animal. It's also, they're a hard animal to study and that's intriguing to me i love the mountains that's where i have to be um i love the boreal forest ecosystem and i'm fascinated by the problem of how we can um conserve them in the face of increasing megafires. And I love wildfire, wildlife ecology. So it's not, yeah, I just like to be clear that it's not just that I love lynx or something. Well, thank you for coming in. Thanks for having me.

Home range. I really appreciate it. Wildlife. That'll work. Trap a cat program. Yep. Get into it. We're going to do big announcements about who wins the trap a cat. Wildlife. Trap a cat program. Yep. Get into it. We're going to do

big announcements about who wins the trap a cat. Okay. Will you still do a video if it's my kids? Oh yeah. I'll probably just tell them.

I'll just tell them at first. They'll be like, what? Really? You really got to send me a video? Brooklyn, thanks for coming down.

You still going to make it back to school or did you get some bagger for the day now? I think I'll make it back. Yeah. What class you got? Early grad English. Early what? Early grad English. What's that mean?

It's like my other English classes. I'm graduating early. Why are you graduating early? Because I don't like school. Oh, they're letting you, they're cutting you loose early. How early? I get out in five days. For good?

Yep. Really? Whoa. That's sweet. Thank you. Oh, that's cool. Then you go right into taxidermy. Full time.

So you need these skulls. Kind of, yeah. You should have put that into your pitch. Oh, okay. That's cool. So you're going to enter the workforce. Yep. Congratulations. Good. Thank you. All right. Oh, okay. That's cool. So you're going to enter the workforce. Yep. Congratulations.

Good. Thank you. All right. Well, thanks for coming down. Yeah, thank you for having me. 406 Boneworks. Yep. All right.

Thanks. Good luck. Keep us posted on what's going on. Will do. I got another skull hanging in a cherry tree in my yard. Okay. You'll see it by the front door if you get by there. It needs a good cleaning. I skin it unfortunately it's okay i look good because i'm not here's a question before we leave we do

any skull like coyotes beavers yeah pine martins links yeah links i'm joking i want when carmen was on before i was talking about how bad i wanted a link skull and someone from Canada sent me a link skull. I'm trying to give it to Carmen. Yeah. For her collection. Cool. Cool. Um,

I don't want to, uh, you, you would take a very trained astute observer to tell that from a Bobcat. Yeah. Yep. Like you could just say it's whatever. Yeah.

Uh, I sent, my buddy has, he's a science teacher in Michigan. I sent him a huge box of skulls and um he had his kids do the what do you call it you know like the there's a the id yeah but there's like a thing you uh what's the term man you key it or something oh yeah like using a key to to figure out which skull was which yeah and then we did where the the ones that got it right

got a prize they They were. Fun. Oh, they were phenomenal. He had like 20 some students and like, I don't remember what it was. Tons of them got it right. Nice.

Like a whole box of skulls by using the key. Like I would just look and be like, I don't know. It looks like a. Well, if it's a good key,

it'll walk you through it. Yeah, no, I was impressed, man. Yeah. I'm going to, so I'm going to keep supplying

little skulls over to his students so they can check them out. Cool. All right. So you'll do any kind of skull? Yep. All right. Okay.

Thank you very much for coming down. Thank you. Good luck with your business. I'm going to keep sending you business. Okay. I'm not using Brody services anymore. Nothing, not hacking on Brody. I just want to support, I want to support the business over here.

I might start sending them to her too. But I think you should raise your prices just a little bit also. I like that price right there. $125. How do you invoice? You know what you could do that's really convenient?

I bought something the other day from someone that sends you a little scan code and then that scan code pulls up Venmo have you tried something like that no I use Venmo you need to get this whatever the hell he's got I don't know what it is it made it so easy I think she's waiting for her business manager to yeah yeah it was just like man I don't have Venmo but I grabbed my wife's phone and opened that code up and was able to

just hit a couple things and payment over. Super easy, super convenient. I don't know what it is, but trust me, there's a thing out there that makes payment a breeze. It's probably Venmo. No, it is. I don't know. Yeah, it is, but I don't know how they did this thing. It was great. I don't have Venmo. Much to my wife's annoyance, I do not

have Venmo. Alright, thanks everybody. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. written for Field and Stream and all the other magazines. He cares more about truth than common belief. You might already know this, but he has trichinosis from eating the meat of an uncooked bear.

You might already know, then you can find him in Bozeman or hunting some mountain somewhere. That's the Rinella, he's a fine fella, spreading the love like a shaggy man's lamella, he's not afraid to sing a cappella

his life it reads like an old time novella he's got some good folks under the meat eater umbrella he's a fine fellow that we know He's written half a dozen books He's a pretty good cook Married to a French that won't seem to moan

Loves his home state hails from twin lake michigan where they picked up those quote alaska on a skiff or with doug in the driftless with his main man yannis putellis on a mountain trying to score in a double with Remy Warren or old cows saying lady bears smell us. That's Stephen Miller. He's a fine fellow. He's ridden to love like a shaggy manes the mellow. He's not afraid to sing acapella. His life it reads like an old time novella. He's got some good folks under the meteor umbrella. Thank you. If you want to talk dip, it'll get him to stop fast

Hell, that's half the content of the Meat Eater podcast Glass in from a knob, trying to clear out his head Knowing from the meat tree he could have been dead But that's a story for another day That's Stephen Miller He's a fine fella Spreading little love like a Shaggy Mane's the mellow

He's not afraid to sing a cappella His life it reads like an old time novella He's got some good folks under the media umbrella He's a fine fella that hella He's a fine fella that hella Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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