The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 635: Working on Grizzly Bears

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Dusty Lasseter, Cory Calkins, Randall Williams, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: Catching 67 grizzlies in barrel traps; figuring out where to put grizzlies you’re relocating; being trap savvy; the death of 399; Steve spilling coffee all over his laptop; the “My Favorite Animal Act”; a sow’s home range size; how bears eat over 260 different plants and animals in the Yellowstone ecosystem; when a bear eats human meat; avoiding eye contact; false charging vs. actual charging; management decisions; delisting; how many grizzly die per year; Steve's promise to never put in for a grizzly tag; and more.   Outro song "1187" by Shad Peters  Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mead Eater Radio Live is the newest addition to the Mead Eater Podcast feed. Every Thursday at 11am Mountain Time, we'll be going live from Mead Eater HQ on the Mead Eater Podcast Network YouTube channel. This one-hour variety show will feature call-in guests, segments and live feedback from the Mead Eater audience. Then on Friday morning, the episode will be available in audio form on the meat eater podcast feed So come hang with me Steve Yanni Cal and the rest of the meat eater crew Every Thursday at 11 a.m. Mountain time on the meat eater podcast network YouTube channel and remember it's live

So anything can happen? Well almost anything. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. What? 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. Joined today by Dusty Lasseter, former Wyoming game and fish bear management specialist. The key word there being former. Yeah. I love the agency guys, but the problem with having agency guys on to talk about wildlife management is they got to worry about them getting in trouble. Yeah. I don't have to worry about getting in trouble anymore.

Can't fire me. Really? Just no trouble. Nothing they can do to you. Let the air out of your tires. Yeah. fire me. Really? Just no trouble? Nothing they can do to you? Let the air out of your tires? Yeah. Write me a ticket, I guess.

No, again, I have nothing but, you know, I have like a lot of respect and admiration for agency biologists and game wardens. Like, you know, I love it. So many of them are driven by passion and a desire to do good. But when talking about policy, it just gets tricky for him because you know they they get reprimanded yeah you get muzzled a little bit and you know you're trying to walk the party line a little bit no

department line no give everybody a run through of what you've done in your career around grizzly bears and wolves and oh man so I started in 2010 and I through of, um, what you've done in your career around grizzly bears and wolves. Oh man. So I started in 2010 and I was just supposed to be on for one, uh, fall and one spring. I got hired on because one of my coworkers was going back to college and, uh, that was

the busiest year that we'd ever had. We caught 67 grizzly bears in Wyoming, outside of Yellowstone national park in, in, uh, that year. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was all in barrel traps. Yeah.

We, we call them culvert traps, but they're really big square box traps now. Um, the Montana guys still use those culverts, but it's a pain in the butt to pull a bear in and out of them. Yeah remember that video of Callahan climbing in there, climbing one of them tubes that Barry's basically like laid out on it. Yeah yeah yeah so we I think we dealt with enough bears we came up with a better trap design honestly. What do you guys, man I

got so many questions, go on. Just remember that later I want to ask you about what kind of, how you like, what your favorite bait and stuff is, but keep going. Yeah. So you got on, you guys started just hammering bears. Yeah it was just call after call. I would try to go home just to take a nap and I would get flagged down on the road by somebody being like, I got a bear. Actually one of those guys was Jim Zumbo. He flagged me down on the road and he's like, yeah, I just got back from Alaska. I'd killed my 20th black bear and he was smoking some salmon and a grizzly bear came by and

smashed his salmon smoker. Oh, I got it. So, yeah, so I start- Jim Zumbo came home from Alaska, was smoking salmon that he brought home from Alaska, and a grizzly showed up and smashed Jim Zumbo's smoker. Yeah, exactly, yep, yep. So- Pretty legit. Kind of funny, yeah.

Soon I'm gonna one-upup with my George Bush story. Uh, we go, um, yeah. So that was just a really busy season and there was a need for more help. Uh, so they hired me on another season and cause you were a big game guide. Yeah, I was.

I, you know, I, I went to the university, Wyoming, got a finance degree, came home and just loved where I lived. And, uh, when I came home, I was working on the thoroughfare as a guide and, you know, just doing construction, trying to make ends meet, um, and home is Cody. Home is Cody.

That's where I grew up and, and I was just wrong place, wrong time, honestly, because there weren't a lot of people that went to college and came back and I had a lot of knowledge and skill about horses in the back country and, you know, my life was immersed in wildlife and bears growing up and my parents worked for outfitters

and you know, they were stopping in at the house and telling crazy stories and I was just sucked in. So that's why I came home and I wasn't intending to get into bear work and I just fell into it and the timing was right. And yeah, they hired me on and you know, that first year I saw 25 bears and then that next season I was in on another 25 grizzly captures and had 50 under my belt and a pretty

quick, you know, amount of time. So were you doing all the, were you doing all the relocations on those too? Like how many are euthanized and how many are relocated? So at the time my boss was a guy named Mark Bracino and we were really still in the recovery phase with these bears. And we probably only euthanized one out of five when I started and they were in really bad shape. You know, they, they'd been repeat offenders. Um, never, it's never the three strikes in your out.

People say that all the time and I get so sick of that. That's not true. No, that's not true. It's not California. So, um, but yeah, there were some bears that, you know, I had been in multiple livestock conflicts that we were removing. I caught a female that year that her back leg was broke and it was six inches shorter than her other back

leg. Okay. And I had the bone in my office and it's just a you know melded piece of calcium. How you think she broke her leg? You're not gonna rehabilitate it. No, it just wasn't gonna be successful relocating that kind of bear. Yeah. And she was emaciated and she actually had a yearling, that we didn't know about at the time. You know, she was, she was trying to orphan a, a yearling bear because she was not even producing milk. She was in such poor physical shape. Got it.

You say she was trying to orphan it? Yeah, I mean, it was, it was following her around, but it, I, she's not providing for it at all. And we ended up catching that bear too. And we relocated that bear, but she just wasn't a good candidate for relocation. Yeah. And when you relocate the grizzlies, how do you, how do you figure out where to try? Because you got to put them so far away from, you got to put them so far away, to

reduce the temptation, they're going to get in trouble again. And that's, and that's got to be like very time consuming. Yeah. It definitely takes some manpower, but you're trying to take it as far away from the conflict as possible. And there's really about six relocation sites in Wyoming that we use. You know, and that kind of had changed over the time that I'd been at the department. We started doing some relocations that weren't as far. Use helicopters to dump them off? Uh, we don't, we, we had one bear trap that you could take off the, the wheels

and haul with the helicopter, but in the time that I was there, the 11 years I was there, we never did that. Yeah. Now tell me how you catch one. So most of the time you're using a culvert trap and, and you want to get that thing as low to the ground as possible. You want to set it as close to the conflict as possible. And, um, you just put a piece of bait in the front of that thing.

Usually a roadkill deer with a string that goes up, up the front wall, around the top, and then it's sitting on a pair of vice grips and the door is sitting on those vice grips. So bear comes in, pulls that bait. Springs the vice grip. Springs the vice grip and the door shuts and there's a pin that shoots.

Um, a lot of times we use, beaver caster is always my favorite thing to. So you use a little lure. Yeah, a lot of times we use beaver caster is always my favorite thing to. So you use a little lure. Yeah, a little bit of lure in there. If it's a keyed in on fruit, we'd use apples and watermelon, things like that. Stick that back in the trap. Yeah.

Even like a trail into it a lot of times. A lot of times you make a drag and they'll follow a drag for a long, long ways. Like drag a roadkill deer. Right. Yep. How far might you drag that deer to make a scent trail? I mean, my old boss had done it a couple miles and caught bears running a couple

miles on them. Yep. And they're finding now with these GPS collars that a bear can smell a carcass 10 to 15 miles away and we'll just start bee lining it for a carcass. Yeah, I followed a grizzly bear track and the bob once 9 miles to a, I don't know how far he started but I followed the tracks for 9 miles in front of me to a moose carcass. Yeah, that was impressive.

Yeah. They got a pretty good sniffer. Yeah, I've told the story to anyone that'll listen to it, but we were one time camped up on the Arctic slope, you know, off the North Slope of the Brooks Range. And we were camped where a creek came into a bigger river. And one morning we got up and walked three miles up that tributary and killed a caribou. Spent the day up there, carried it down that tributary to our camp. That night we're sitting in our camp and here comes a grizzly down the gravel bar, digging roots. You see

him move and dig and move and dig and he gets to the mouth of that tributary. It's kind of like a slight little canyon. He gets in the mouth, that tributary and stands up like someone shocked him. Waves his nose in the air and took off at a full run. So I can't tell you for sure. You know what I mean? But it was like, there was no discussing it. It was like, that son of a bitch smells that caribou. Yeah. I'm sure that's exactly what happened. Coming down that creek. And that's only three miles. And you're talking about how far? GPS collars, they're saying 10 to 15. What do you what do you see on a GPS collar that suggests to you that a grizzly is on to something? Well, it's meandering and then all of a sudden

it's a straight line. You know, it's like, just like you're talking about, there wasn't any second thoughts and that bears mind. Got it. And then he's just going then he's going. Yeah. There's a lot of there's a lot of brouhaha in the news right now. There's always been a bear, there's always been a very polarizing bear. Yeah. In the, a polarizing bear in the Yellowstone National Park area.

Yeah. Goes by the handle 399, which I always like, cause I like it when they, you know, when they give the animals like a name, like petals or something, then you know, it's trouble. So if it has its research number, there's some clinical detachment there. Yeah. A research number allows the citizens at large to stay a little, usually allows

citizens at large to stay a little chilled out about celebrity animals. But three nine nine, it was, it might as well have been named Cookie. Right. Right, it just got really famous. And the American public, particularly those who are very unfamiliar with wildlife, will have this view that they look at an individual animal and they see it with like like crystal and

clarity that one and they they cease to view it as in context of its like species at large meaning you could have 800 grizzlies in the area and it's kind of whatever but that one nothing better happened to right right they're not as sorry is there like it's not like they don't have an awareness of the population at Large they have an awareness of that one I'm not lecturing you. I'm just trying to update listeners. Yeah when making an analogy about it. I'll make the analogy of That someone like a hunter someone in the concert like someone the wildlife, hunter based wildlife conservation might view habitat as an apple tree. Um, and if this apple tree is taken care of, it will continuously produce apples and the apples are somewhat expendable.

Some get eaten, some die in rot, take care of the tree in perpetuity. It'll put apples out. Animal rights people and preservation minded, preservationist minded people aren't that interested in the apple tree. But now and then there's an apple that really catches their eye. And they are very concerned about what happens to that apple. Yeah. It's a good analogy, I guess.

This bear became that apple. Yeah. Bear 399. It's usually an apple that photographs well. It's pretty dependable. Doesn't rot. It's an apple that shows up again and again. Yeah. You know. Or it'd be like a moose. That's piebald.

So, cause moose, you know, generally people aren't able to distinguish one from the other. Then you'll get a moose in some neighborhood that has a white splotch on it. And then people are able to put individuality to it. And then someone gets that moose and it causes a whole shitshow. 399 the bear, it's been had books written about it, it just got hit by a car. Yeah. In our little preamble chat I brought up to you that it's that bear now is getting its final, it's being put to rest with with much fanfare and consternation. I mentioned it to you and you had a comment

about your view on this particular bear. You didn't deal with it professionally, correct? No, I know her type though. Yeah, tell me about that bear. You mentioned a thing about management. Yeah, I think that's poor wildlife management and We learned this lesson early on with a bear named 104. So before 399 there was a bear named The number was 104. It was a celebrity bear celebrity bear another shiny apple. No, if you will and

My predecessors tried to relocate that bear mover. She got so, not trap shy, but trap savvy. Not savvy, like she enjoyed traps. You could drive down the road with the door open and she'd come running down the road and jump in the trap and you would catch her. You know, she was that kind of freak. Like, like just associated it with food. Yeah. Because there were so many positive experiences jumping in traps and just eat the whole

damn deer and then some guy lets you out. Yeah, exactly. And you walk back home. Yeah, I get it. I get it. Yeah. So, um, we just learned early on that those habituated bears aren't successful.

And she also got hit by a vehicle 104 and you know I always thought that was gonna happen to 399 it took longer than I would have guessed. You pictured her getting struck by a car. Yeah and one of her cubs got hit by a car you know and really the Park Service could talk about more they probably know all the individual cubs that she had, but as far as I'm aware, there's only one of her cubs that's still alive and existing because they just get so habituated to people. They don't learn normal, uh, bear manners is what I call it. So, you know, one of her cubs got shot by a guy who he was hunting and he's in his camper

and this bear's walking right at him. Like it's coming to eat him, you know, but that bear's used to getting its picture taken. And that guy's scared for his life because he thinks this bear's gonna hurt him. And you don't think it was? It was so used to people. It was smiling the whole way. was coming in I'm sure you know So I just don't think it sets bears up for success and 399 was really polarizing I mean some people loved her some people hated her. I think people forget that she mauled a guy

years ago hmm, so I mean she was still a grizzly bear. When you say people hated that bear, do you mean they hated that bear because what it because it was a symbol for something? I think so. I think people would make comments that I would see and it would really ruffle feathers where you know they would say things like if they del with grizzly bears and I can hunt, I'm gonna shoot that bear. And that just, that really affected people negatively. So, um. Well, that Shane, Shane who got scratched up by the bear, he sat right in his chair. you're sitting there. And he had good reason to believe that it was 399. That's what he'd said.

How would they not know for certain? Sorry, that he was scratched up by 399? Yeah, that was one of the things that he said. Yeah, she was in the vicinity. She was in the vicinity, but it was like, if 399 was the one that did this to you, we don't wanna know about it it was that kind of a thing So it's I mean that was that was one of the things that he mentioned sort of offhandedly and he's like if it was

399 I don't think anybody would come out and declare to the world that 399 had done this needs to get destroyed because it would just Cause such an uproar. Yeah, so it was kind of like there were There's like a buffer zone built around this bear to protect it from the consequences of its bad behavior once people get so attached to it. Yeah, I got you. But he, he posts, I think when 399 died too, he posted something again to the effect of like,

there's a good chance that this was the bear that did it. Wow. Let me ask you another one. Yeah chance that this was the bear that did it. Hmm. Wow Let me ask you another one. Yeah, that was that was a hard question I'm sure people are gonna cry over that so 399 was just touched a lot of heartstrings rip Yep, rest in peace 399 was never gonna die You know in a warm bed with a roaring fire surrounded by loved ones, right? Like, I was sick. That's the craziest part is like getting whacked by cars.

Not the worst way to go. He made a wild animal. Cal went out, Cal did. There's a Cal in the field about this on YouTube type in Cal in the field grizzly bear. You'll see this one, but there's a Cal in the field where he goes out with some Idaho guys and they work and they they culvert trap a grizzly and work up the grizzly. So they culvert trap a

grizzly and it's got a lip tattoo. So they like an identifying marker. Right. They call in the lip tattoo and they're like, oh, we know that bear. They had had a collared female grizzly in the park. She found a carcass, she found a buffalo carcass and was on it and they get a mortality signal and they go there and there's their sow with the collar dead on top of the buffalo carcass and standing on top of the both of them is this male bear. Yeah. Right. But man you could explain that kind of stuff all day long like that the number one cause of death of Yellowstone wolves is wolves.

But you could explain that stuff all day long, but it is never gonna, it just doesn't resonate. You know, people will look at certain causes of death. Like if 399 had been killed by a male grizzly, I don't think people would be upset. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, people put- They're upset because it's, they're upset because it's human caused.

Mm-hmm. Yeah people put different values on different animals and and they even yeah even at the individual level put values on animals and yeah people just really valued that bear. So. MeatEater Radio Live is the newest addition to the Mead Eater Podcast feed. Every Thursday at 11am Mountain Time, we'll be going live from Mead Eater HQ on the Mead Eater Podcast Network YouTube channel. This one-hour variety show will feature call-in guests, segments and live feedback from the Mead Eater audience. Then, on Friday morning, the episode will be available in audio form on the Mead Eater Podcast feed.

So come hang with me, Steve, Yanni, Cal, and the rest of the MeadEater crew every Thursday at 11am Mountain Time on the MeadEater Podcast Network YouTube channel. And remember, it's live, so anything can happen. Well, almost anything. Let me hit you with another easier to answer one, but you'll get, this'll make other people mad. Good. Now you're gonna, now you're gonna,

we have, we know, we have a full spectrum of listeners. Sure. We got the horseshoe, we got, we got, we got left, we got righties, lefties, and then we got where the righties and the lefties meet, which is crazy redneck hippies. Sure, yeah. So no matter what you say, your eyes are gonna get someone's gonna get mad at you.

And this will be a thing where the right bottom of the horseshoe will get very irritated, no matter what you say. Bear spray or pistols. Like when you're out, knowing what you know, having dealt with as many grizzlies as you've dealt with, and been to as many conflict sites as you've been to, and touched as many of them as you've touched to, and talked to as many people who've been messed up by grizzlies as you've talked to, bear spray or pistol?

Without a doubt, bear spray. Really? Yeah. Tell me more. Now I'm mad. He's a gun grabber. The other day Yanni was talking about them needing to ban the Red Rider. I was like, no, you're a gun grabber. Trying to take away people's Red Riders. He's got some cockamamie theory that of teaching a kid to shoot on a red rider to get used to a heavy trigger pull. Yeah, he was bashing the trigger.

That's a fair point. Yeah, my little kid shooting red riders, I remember they used to shoot with two fingers because you cannot get that thing to go off. I thought it was going to be like he was anti BB gun fights. No, he thinks the red Riders teach us bad form. And I think that's a very un-American statement.

But let's return. That's how you shoot your eye out. Bear spray unequivocably. Yeah. I have one caveat to that. If you're really well experienced with handguns, then by all means carry a handgun. But a lot of people just aren't. And I investigated so many cases of self-defense, defensive life shootings, and people are just really bad shots with pistols.

And a lot of times they would even hit the bear, but they don't hit it lethally. And bear spray, the beauty of it is it makes a four-foot cloud so you don't have to be accurate. And how much do they hate that bear spray? I've never seen it not work. You know I read a statistic and I didn't really spend a lot of time on it. If you spray it on the ground they'll come sniff it though it becomes an attractant. Oh yeah I got I'll tell you a good one about that. But I read a statistic and I never really spent much time on it, but it seemed like it seemed significant that 25% of the time a pistol or sorry, 25% of the time when a firearm is discharged in a bear attack,

it hits a human. Yeah, that's the other reason. Have you heard that? No I haven't heard that statistic. That seems high there's a lot of shooters out there. Listen man like I know yeah I know a bunch of cases where that's happened and I haven't looked into it I just read it. You know there was a case on the Montana Idaho border it ended up being in Montana where a guy was getting mauled and his buddy tried to shoot the bear off him and actually killed his friend. Yeah, they had shot that bear. They were black bear hunting. They mistook it for a black bear. So they shot it and the bear runs into the brush. He thinks he hit a black bear, so he goes trailing in there after it and boom. I just remember it was so close on the border they didn't know who had jurisdiction.

Got it. Yeah, so that's why I carry bear spray and you know, ultimately it's up to people. I know there's gun lovers that want to carry guns, and that's fine, but a lot of people just don't practice shooting pistols enough. Yeah. Yeah, I think it does say a lot about your, the choice might say more about your mind frame than it does your, like, your sense of strategy. Right.

I remember being, like, up at Sportsis' warehouse in Anchorage and seeing people that just got off a plane and they were gonna buy a pistol for their Alaska vacation and then you know pawn it off or whatever at the end of the vacation. Like I think there's like a there's an assumption that if you if you believe in the handgun like you just go get one you get a box of ammo and you keep it near you. And like that's just a recipe for disaster. But I think there's a lot of overconfident. And I myself, I have no confidence in my handgun shooting ability and I shoot one pretty regularly. But I'll tell you my little my walk, I'll walk you through my irrational thoughts on it. Yeah. If there's slight risk of first off I condemn and yell at

and harass and tease anyone that carries bear spray where there's no grizzlies indefensible and it works online so what if it's just on your final harness then I'll tease you I'll tease you and harass you because I'm tease worthy and harass worthy because bear spray is not nice to get shot with. And they go off. I've been in two, I've been never mauled by a bear. Been charged by them, never mauled, but twice I've been hosed by people's bear spray. Mine doesn't come off my body.

That's the gift that keeps giving. So I should start. Are you replacing it every two years? Yes. Trust me. It's like, it happens. Those are not those the plastic nozzles on those cans are not invulnerable. One time on look just standing around a car unloading backpacks someone stepped on the plastic nozzle Everything and one time I got pickpocketed in the thick in a like a willow choked hell hole and also I was like what is that noise going?

All your shits done all your gear is gone you cannot get it out wait is it bad to keep your bear spray In your car. Yeah, yeah, I'm keeping fluctuating temperature it'll total your car You don't want to know I know people whose car has been told your car when that goes off in Your car it will total your car I had a friend who did that and he's still driving his vehicle Giving yeah, it's just all the time put get a small ammo can there's one right outside the door of the other studio get a small ammo can and

Put it in the ammo can and then when you're using it carry it when you're done using get a small ammo can and put it in the ammo can. And then when you're using it, carry it when you're done using it, put an ammo can. I was gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you my irrational logic. Let me tell you my funny story. We had the Ronella family. We had, we went into the summer with two bear sprays and we have like a little camping spot where there's grizzlies. So when we get there, before I get a sense of what's going on, I like tell my kids like, take the spray if you're going to go fish or take the spray and bring the dog. And then once we kind of get a sense of what's up, everybody relaxes about it. But at first it's thick, you know, at first I'll take the bear spray. So the end of the summer, we only have now there's one bear spray. And of course, no one knows what happened to the other bear spray. Well me and my wife are up shutting our little camping area down and

Here right outside of our little composting outhouse toilet. Yeah right outside the door is The can of bear spray empty with four holes in it It got ate by a bear got yeah got eaten by a bear. Got eaten by a bear. Seen that before. Here's my irrational logic. Slight risk of grizzlies, I use spray. High risk of grizzlies, I bring my 10mm pistol. Ultra high risk of grizzlies, I bring my sawed off pump 12 gauge of slugs in it. Yeah.

I've got no choice. Spray and pray. And I always look at it and I always look at all three of them. I'm like, Hey man, like, what are you thinking here? That's a, that's a myth I can dispel too is people, uh, people take shotguns and they, they alternate buckshot slugs. Oh yeah. Cause you know, I know that. No, I think it's supposed to, Brody told me you're supposed to run two bird shots. Yeah. Then you start going,

then you start going slug buckshot. Cause it's like you warn it, boom. You warn it, boom. Then like it's getting closer. Now you hit it with a slug, boom. Then it's so close and everything's so chaotic. Then you start going buckshot. And most bears are aware of this choreography,

this elaborate choreography before they, all the time in the world to reload. There's the warning shot. There's the warning shot. He tells his buddy, listen, when you're coming in, he's gonna hit you two bird shots. Then you gotta dodge the slug, watch out for the buckshot. Yeah.

A zig and then a zag. Here's my scenario that I find myself in all the time. As most hunters, we don't get to pick our weather, but we do get to pick which direction we walk when we're out hunting. And most of the time the wind's in my face and a lot of times the wind's honking. I don't trust bear spray when the wind's blowing. Okay. So I've had that question a bunch over the years and I had a really good friend who was

horn hunting in the spring, it was super windy out. A sow with cubs, real little cubs, charges him and you know, the wind's in his face, he sprays bear spray, half of it goes in her face, half of it gets in his face. They both ran off crying, so propellant still gets out there but not as far as it normally would I'd love to practice in the wind but I don't want to get a case of those inert cans yeah I think that'd be interesting yeah I should get a case

those inert can I just like shoot each other around like laser tag around the office That would be fun. I tried to shoot a sow and cubs with a can of bear spray out of a window and When I was working They were coming in and tearing up our cat when I was working up in Alaska They'd come in and tear up stuff on the porch or you're trying to give a bad Yeah And like they would come in they'd get into the fish shack they'd get in the tool shed they'd eat rubber boots to do all this

stuff and like so I was I stayed in the main lodge that they kept coming into and opened the window and they were walking past and I sprayed it and it might have been just outside of the range but all that bear spray went along the building and they like went 10 feet back and stood up and then kind of circled around and came right back in. I would laugh and come in there and it killed you. They're licking the cabin. I shut the window real quick and then actually we sat around I was with this kid we just like we're sitting in the cabin like later on like 45 minutes later and we were both kinda like, does it smell weird?

And then we started getting, like, licking your cheeks and your lips and stuff, and we'd gotten a trace amount inside, and it had been swirling and swirling, and we spent the rest of the night just kinda licking our lips and rubbing our noses and stuff. But yeah, that was my one experience actually discharging a can.

Can I tell you a story? Yep. Please. I'm jelous. I was impressed that Randall got to shoot at one with a spray. But go on. I have video of it somewhere. I actually never did get a spray a bear with one, but I was deer hunting one fall and I was going in some really heavy dark timber and my dad always taught me to load around in my gun. So I'm going through the timber and I walk under this tree and there's a magpie sitting in the tree and he's just staring at me. He's just looking right down at me and I'm looking up at him and I'm thinking, boy, that's weird. You know, that that magpie. Why is he hanging out here?

Yeah, why is he hanging out here? We're just staring at each other. And I go another, I don't know, 30 yards and I hear something and I turn around and there's this boar coming down the hill at me. He's coming right at me. How many yards away? Maybe 20?

I mean, he's coming for me. And I was thinking to myself, I got one shot with this rifle, you know. I got one chance to kill this thing, and it's gonna be on top of me. And I realized what my dad was trying to teach me was just to be prepared, you know. And I would have been way better off

with a can of bear spray in my hand, just walking through the woods And as a guide I do that sometimes, you know, if it's real tight quarters, I don't have a problem walking around with a can of bear spray Yep, you spray yourself. You're gonna live to talk about it. So what happened he Yeah, I Sprayed him and he didn't care Yeah, I sprayed him and he didn't care. I started yelling at him and he was coming down the hill at me and he just kind of did a quarter pass, which is like a classic bear move, you know, it was a bluff, but I thought it was the real deal.

And I just remember thinking like, I got to wait until this thing is right on top of me before I shoot, because I only got one chance. So what is after all those bears you worked up, what is a big bear in the Rockies? A big bear is 500 pounds. The biggest bear ever caught was 624 in the spring. Would have been a true 700 pound bear in the fall. When people come in the office, that's a huge bear. Cause every bear is like thousands of pounds. I just cut people's number in half immediately. Whatever it is, I cut it in half.

You mean when they tell you how big the bear was? Yeah. Yep. And you know, all those bears I worked up, the sows are almost always right around 300 pounds, 275, 325. Hmm. Okay. They stopped growing when they're about seven to eight years old, where the males just keep putting on weight and keep getting bigger. So a 500 pound adult male is a huge bear in the Yellowstone ecosystem.

That's a huge bear. Yeah. And what's a more typical male, like, like what is like a four or five year old male? 250, you know, I don't know. 300. God, they seem so much bigger and badder. Yeah, they're bad, but they seem so much bigger. Yeah, and people overestimate wolves too. And really, you know, lions are way bigger than wolves, but people, because of the hair, especially in the fall, bears and wolves, but bears especially,

they get that winter coat on and people just think they're way bigger than they are. They're like, it's a sow with two full-grown cubs, and it's like, no, that thing weighs 150 pounds, but it's got so much hair, it looks like as big as her. Yeah. You were with the agency when the delisting looked like it was gonna go through.

Yeah. Okay. It did go through. Well, sorry, when it looked like they were, no, well, it did and then it undid. They were delisted. Yeah, multiple times. Yeah. Okay. So help me with the timeline here just to give people a rough sense.

What'll happen is, well, first off, let me say this is not, this is surprisingly not a partisan, like Democrat versus Republican issue generally. Grizzly bears. well, hear me out, because I'm gonna talk about the delistings, okay? Yeah. So you can give that, because there's definitely a tendency in a tendency, but I just think that people have the opinion,

they have their roaniest idea that somehow, like a governor or whatever can just declare, right? Right. That something would happen, right? Right. That something would happen, right? That you'd... Right. That it's, that it's a simple, that doing this is a simple process. It just takes the right political figure to do it. It's, I'm gonna explain how it's a little bit more complicated than that. Right. In 74, 70, 1974, 1975, grizzly bears in the lower 48 were listed as an endangered, they're listed as a threatened species under the endangered species act.

So they were given federal endangered species act species act protection under the ESA in 74, 75 Richard Nixon, Dick Nixon. Don't remember him. Heard of him. Okay. Republican. Signed in the ESA. Signed in. NEPA.

NEPA. Signed in. Then he established the EPA. That's NEPA. The National Environmental Protection Act. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were talking about the native Nilc- No, sorry.

Oh yeah. Nevermind. Richard Nixon creates the Endangered Species Act and one of the first like marquee species to get protection under that is grizzly bears and lower 48. All kinds of years go by and wildlife managers kind of look and say, well, the saying the lower 48 is not a great way of looking at this. For instance, Golden Gate Park in San Francisco once upon a time had grizzly bears.

And I don't, we don't view that Golden Gate Park is going to recover that San Francisco is going to recover its grizzly bear population. Right. Just never going to work. So over time they establish, um, they, they take a look and they go like, where really could we have grizzly bears? Like where are, as the right food resources, low enough human population, proper habitat where you could feasibly have a population of grizzly bears and they come up with six. One is in the northern cask, what they call the northern cascade ecosystem, so one is

like basically the northern cascades in Washington where you're kind of rolling into BC. Zero bears. Sometimes one. Sometimes one. Depends on what side of the- He's Canadian. Yeah, it depends on what side of the border. If you're from Wyoming, it looks a lot like zero bears. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, if they have a bear, it's because one walked over there for a minute.

Right. Moving eastward, you have the Bitterroot Selkirk. So, Selway. None. Well, Selkirk's have bears, the Bitterroot doesn't. The Bitterroot side. That's one, oh, I forgot they gave a name to these things. Did I already say the name?

They call them distinct population segments. So they say, okay, we're gonna say that there's a grizzly bear population or the possibility of a grizzly bear population in northern Cascades. There's another one in cabinet. Yaks. That's right. Cabinet Yak has bears.

Yep. Bitterroot Selkirk. Bitterroot Selway. Selway. Sorry. Selkirks are in B.C. Bitterroot Selway. Northern Continental Divide, which is Bob Marshall, Glacier National Park, and some other areas up there, all the way out to the Front Range.

Then the GYE. Did I do them all? Am I missing any? No, you got them all. I think that's it. Did I do them all? Am I missing any? I think that's it. Yeah. And they go like, so let's stop talking about the lower 48 writ large and let's talk about, let's get real. Okay. Right.

And talk about where could we actually have these bears? And then they looked at like, okay, so instead of saying that we're going to recover them across their range in the lower 48, which basically was the hundredth meridian westward, range in the lower 48, which basically was the 100th meridian westward, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, into northern old Mexico, coastal California, right? Like let's just look at this. And so they say, let's say that we're going to try to recover and manage these as distinct population segments. And they look and say, if we're going to do that there's two places the northern continental divide ecosystem in

the greater Yellowstone ecosystem which is a chunk of ground about the size of Indiana and they're like those are recovered the rest of the lower 48 not but these areas are recovered and so let's move those out of the EF. Let's move those out of endangered species act protection. The U S fish and wildlife service has management, has management authority. The U S fish and wildlife service has to come forward and they do this. The U S this has happened with, with Democrats in the white house. This is happening with Republicans in the white house. They'll come forward and say, the US Fish and Wildlife Service says, we propose that we delist the grizzly. Then you have preservationists, or like 399 type people, preservationist organizations

will go like, well Jesus, that could mean that 399 could get hunted. So then they will sue in federal court to block the delisting. So they'll delist and then there's a lawsuit and they'll never sue on basis, they don't sue on how many bears there are. They sue on, well, we don't think the DPS thing was fair. Yeah, right. Because you can't treat them as distinct because the bear could move from one to the other.

So we're gonna attack the logic of the DPS. Or they'll say, well, have you considered white bark pine blister rust and how there's a fungus that's killing white bark p pines and grizzlies like to eat whitebark pines. And since we don't know what will really happen in the long term to whitebark pines, we're suing to block the listing. Or what if cutthroat trout don't do that well in the future and 10% of bears might eat a cutthroat trout at some point in their life.

So we're going to sue to block the delisting because we don't really know how well cutthroats are doing. The risks on the population. Because the Fish and Wildlife Service is required as part of that review process to consider all factors and they kind of have an impossible job, right? I mean, like they're supposed, they basically are saying, we did a comprehensive review, our conclusions are X, Y, and Z and the litigators are saying, well, it's not that comprehensive. You missed this, you missed that.

And they're kind of poking holes in the bigger picture. Yeah, and it will be, it will come from anti-hunting organizations like Center for Biological Diversity, H, Humane Society United States. Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Greater Yellowstone Coalition. Who else is a common player here? Center for Biological Diversity.

Western Watershed. Okay. And they'll do these delistings. Or they'll sue to block the delistings. Last one was the Crow. The Crow Tribe. Crow Tribe. I didn't know that. What was the argument there? That we shouldn't be delisting, you know. That's interesting. That was a long preamble to my question. Yeah. You were around for all this. Yes. Yeah. Now,

both of them. Okay. What I remember being really interesting about this is the three states that have chunks of ground and what we call the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a name that I resent because it should call, they should call it the Greater Cody Ecosystem. Yeah, they should call Wyoming bears. Yeah, they should call it the Greater Cody Ecosystem. Most of them are in Wyoming. Yeah, the Wyoming Ecosystem. Yeah. There's three states, the bulk of it's in Wyoming, but the three states take an attitude where they're like, okay if D listing goes through and we take what that means is the states now manage it as a wildlife under their jurisdiction. Idaho says, this is 2020, this is when this 17 yeah yeah Idaho says we're gonna give out one

grizzly tag yeah Montana chicken shits out right and they say not gonna play this game we're not doing any grizzly tags Montana actually had to give part of their quota to Idaho so that I do have one. Oh is that right? Yeah. Wyoming just lays all on the table. And they're going to give out 24 tags. Guys like me who really want, who really think that the grizzly should be delisted, and I think that state management, and I'm very open and enthusiastic about a very limited grizzly bear hunting season, guys like me, as part of our rhetoric,

if we were being unscrupulous, we would say that by opening up a hunting season, it'll reduce conflict because bears will learn to be scared of people. Not true. That's why I stopped saying it because it was intellectually dishonest. Yeah. Talk about that.

That was, I just spent like an hour setting up the question, but give me your feelings on all of this, all of this whole deal. All of this hunt, don't hunt. The bears need to learn to be scared and respect humans and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I don't know where you even start. You opened up so many holes there. I opened up so many holes there. I opened up a bait shop. Not just a can of worms. It's the whole bait shop. Do you think grizzlies would be nervous of people if we started hunting them again? I personally don't. If Idaho got one.

If Idaho got one. Did you hear about bear 422? I mean, maybe at some level, I don't know personally because I haven't been there, but they talk about bears on Kodiak Island being like really weary of human scent because they're heavily hunted. And always have been. And always have been, and same with Sweden.

So maybe at some level, but the reality is, you know, you have black bear populations all over America that are hunted and there's still black bear conflicts. So you're still going to have conflicts with bears. Um, bears do learn on experience with, with

humans, if they have a negative encounter, then they're more likely to, um, run away from a human. But I just don't think you'll hunt them at a level that would be, that would change their behavior. Yeah. So, you know, they delisted in 2007 and that delisting went from 2007 to 2009 when a judge put them back on the list because.

It's always the same judge in Missoula. Well, this was a different judge. Oh it was? Oh. Yeah, there was Malloy and then Dana Christensen and we knew we were in Malloy and then Dana Christensen. And we knew we were in trouble when Dana Christensen had said, my spirit animal is a wolverine.

Any judge with that. That's cultural appropriation anyways. Yeah, I don't know. Any judge with a spirit animal. Yeah, taking it personal. They should have gotten him, they should have attacked him from the woke spectrum and said that that's cultural appropriation

and you should be fired. That was before wokeness I believe. Man my computer was freaking out. I just dumped a huge coffee, it just died. Put some more coffee on that. For anyone listening, Steve spilled a large cup of coffee on his computer moments before we began recording. Phil do you have the technical capabilities to plug that clip in? Which clip? Well no because I was kind of talking about this. Oh absolutely yeah we can do a little rewind. Cut out me saying that bad stuff about that actor though. He's one of those dudes that doesn't really inspire... Oh shit. He's one of those dudes that doesn't really inspire like... IT guy.

Real fandom. No. I was observing that there's an actor that's in a lot of movies, but no one cares about him. And I don't want that to get out. I feel like that's the definition of a great character actor. No one cares about him, but you're happy to see him, right? I am. I don't know.

He always brings it. So yeah, so back to this. And pardon me for not knowing what I'm talking about. I thought it was the same judge both times, but anyways. No, you're right that they do go judge shopping. That's part of this whole thing. But yeah, 2007, 2009, Wyoming didn't have a hunting season. Even though the population was recovered, we could have used hunting as management tool. And when they got relisted, I think the state's opinion was the next time they get delisted, we're gonna hunt these things.

And it's not to control the population, it's to create a social pattern of hunting. That's what, see, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah. That's what I that's that's a good way of putting it. Yeah, that's what I Want the states to do it because I want them to quickly exercise the management authority and Montana chickening out chickening out was a Bad move in my opinion because you're setting a precedent that mm-hmm that you're not hunting them Yeah, and I remember they were gonna chicken out for five years or something like that. Yeah

I think that's true this this time around too They've said that Recently in recent history. Yeah, I don't know that they would make that choice now But at the time they were they had a plan to like formally chicken out for five years. Yeah You know what's interesting about that? Like when I say like the even the Idaho play as weird as it was to do one, the Idaho play of the social maneuver of doing the hunt. Right. Um, I remember I was talking to these guys that were really involved in the elk reintroduction in Kentucky

and, uh, they were nervous about this. So they, ever since when, when they start working on the elk reintroduction, which was state agency Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, it was like, because of hunting and we'll hunt them and we'll hunt them even though it's years in the future. They baked it into every conversation to not then down the road. the road go like, oh, hey, now that we got all these elk, how about we have a hunting season? It was like they were, they were deliberate about setting an expectation that that's where this would go. And you see, when you see signs around any, anywhere you go around in this area, you'll see signs, delisting means hunting. And it's, it's meant to be a delisting means hunting. And it's meant to be like an anti-D listing. They're coming right out and saying,

we're not looking to argue about how many bears there are, because no one's gonna argue that bears are stable. They're looking to be like, they're using the ESA, they're using the Endangered Species Act, not as a management tool, they're using it as a way that they can prevent something from happening that they don't want to happen Right. It's like it's the my favorite animal protection act It is not the endangered species act and they even know it and their rhetoric mirrors it

But when I look and I see that sign D listing means hunting I always think I sure hope they're right. Yeah Yeah, you're rooting for that and they'll always show us out with cubs the one they use around here sure they show us out with cubs with a crosshair yeah I'm like but you can't shoot cells with cubs yeah that wouldn't be legal anyway so there's a poacher you should arrest that person yeah we actually had like I remember having fights talking about how many bears we were going to harvest and a game warden in a district that has a lot of bears thought that 24 was like not nearly enough. And so right and was upset about it and it's like we're not trying

to manage the population totally through hunting. We're trying to create a social standard for hunting. You know, I say we but that was past. Years when we first started this podcast million years ago, in an office where me and my wife, me and my wife had dinner, not a great one either. Cross the road from our original old office last night on our little date night. Anyways, in that office upstairs, we and one of our early, early podcasts, when we first launched a podcast, we had a guy from the USGS, Frank McMahon? Van Manon. Van, what is his name? Van Manon. Van Manon. We had him on talk about he yeah he does demographics on grizzly bears sure so the USGS is a it's a

federal organization and the USGS doesn't do policy the USGS doesn't manage land okay like the US Forest Service USDA manages land US Fish and Wildlife Service manages refuges the National Park Service manages parks you have a bunch of land management federal agencies the USGS doesn't do land management, they don't do policy, their mandate is information. Sure. They provide

information. Right. So this guest we had, it's a great podcast, if you want to go back and listen, a lot of it's still relevant today, this guest we had explained, we got to talk about demographics, grizzly bear demographics, and there's the number at that time, I don't know what the number is now, the number at that time was something like it was like fixed, it was like carved in stone, 700. 740. It's okay. Yeah. And it was, and he explained, I was like where does that number come from? What they had looked at is at a time they looked at okay in this ecosystem how much space does a breeding age female use? 30 square kilometers was the

estimate. And they would draw what's that little shape you draw on a map? Octagon or polygon? It was actually a grid. Okay. But yeah, and that was called the chow two model. Yeah. Explain. Yeah. Okay. So you know about this shit. Yeah. Explain how the number was arrived at.

And then I'm going to share with you something. He told me about the number that I was like, we spent an hour talking about. Yeah. Cause he would say, at least I'd go, how many? At least 7 about. Yeah, because he would say at least. I'd go, how many? At least 740. Well, how many? At least 740.

Yeah. Well, how many? At least 740. Yeah. So that model's been updated twice since then. OK, but explain how it's like it's really fascinating how you make a model like this. OK, so bears are really hard to count because they're solitary in nature. They're not territorial. their home ranges overlap. So just say solitary

but not territorial? Right. They like to be individualistic but they don't have territories. Not like a mountain lion, solitary nature has a territory, it's keeping other cats out of there. So if there's food availability their home ranges overlap. Oh I never even thought about that term. That's a great term. Solitary but not territorial. Right. And that's what happened with the model. That's what makes them really difficult to count. So the early research showed that a grizzly bear sow's home range was 30 square kilometers. So when they were counting, if you're counting bears and there's, you break the system, the ecosystem up into a grid and there's a

sow with cubs and one of those squares, you cross off that grid because you don't want to, um, you want to lean conservative, you don't want to overestimate the population. Okay. The problem with that model is as the population gets higher in density, your model gets more and more biased because of those

home ranges overlapping. Yep. So that model maxed out at 740, like I can't remember, 750 maybe. You couldn't get it it you couldn't shove any more grizzly bears into the ecosystem in that model they went back and they looked at color data and they found out that

sows home range is more like 14 square kilometers you know that I got a this is great I want to add in a thing here yeah that he'd explained is be that when they make the model, you're just, you're trying to count breeding age females. And then you look at what's with cubs of the year. Okay. Then you look at what you know about the demographics, meaning that you could go into a, let's say you could go into a country perhaps and count how many females with children are in this country. And then probably go like, okay, so we know human males and human females are born at a

one-to-one ratio. We know that like a female is most active reproductively between 24 and 38, and that they have on average 2.2 kids. And so we can just look at how many moms there are and make a guess at what the human population is in that country. And that's kind of what you're doing with grizzies, right? You're like, we know that you got males, you got cubs, but if we can know this one number,

we can extrapolate outward to get a sense of how many are there, rather than mechanically counting them. Yeah, you know that they're the driver of the population, but what you're describing is actually more like a census, and that's closer to what the model is now. Okay. It's an integrated population model, but you know, yeah, the, the ratio of bears in the ecosystem, you know, you have however many adult males, you have however many sub-adult bears and females with cubs are driving your population. So it's just a multiplier. Understood. Essentially. So it got changed to 14 square kilometers and

that made the estimate more like 1200 bears. Okay. And then what you just described is now what they're doing is an integrated population model and it's more of a census and you can plug in other factors. I got it. So what's the number now? 10, uh, 1,030.

How good do you think that number is? I think that's pretty accurate. I think there's definitely parts of the ecosystem where there's higher densities than other parts and growing up in Cody, I just assumed everywhere had really high densities. And you go to other parts and they're just not. And this new modeling system is going to incorporate some of that and show you where,

where there's more density of bears. Um, and that's only in the demographic monitoring monitoring area. So there's bears that live outside where they're even looking for bears. So that is a minimum because they're not counting bears that aren't in suitable habitat. Oh really?

Yeah, they might be living year round. They're not counting bears that don't count. Yeah. Yeah. So if a bear moves out into like, if a bear moves out of like if a bear moves out of It moves out into like Fort Benton out of the show dough area. It just keeps going east He leaves the counting area if he's there year-round if he's outside of their their demographic monitoring area And I don't know about the in in CDE, but that's how they did it with the GYE Got it. Yeah, you got to be in a bear place to be a bear

You know pretty straight. I don't count outliers. So there's about so tell me the number again. You think 1030 yeah, and it was as high as 1200 was the estimate a couple years ago before they changed to this other model, but It has a lot more factors. It's a lot more accurate. God is my understanding. That's good No, I still thought it was that old 7 40. Yeah. I didn't know that anyone moved beyond that number. That was laughable. People in my hometown never believe that. Why do they, why do they, um,

seem to congregate in these little micro areas so much? There's just some like valleys that are like like such hot spots and then you go to another valley and you can go to another valley and hang out there over the years, 10 years and never lay eyes on one but then there's like, it just doesn't, you can't really tell the difference from looking at them. It's just food availability, food sources and some of it's learned behavior and my part of the woods we have what

we're called moth sites and there's these bears on moth sites and you know I've done flights where I've counted 40 bears on moth sites so there's a high concentration of food and that's one of the highest caloric value foods in the ecosystem. Can you explain what that means? Caloric value? No, what a moth. I know about that. I know a little bit, but just tell people what that is. So there's these army cutworm moths that migrate from the Midwest and they come up in the mountains and at night pollinate flowers and then in the daytime they get in these talus slopes and they use that as

a heat refugia and bears come along and they flip over those rocks and eat those bugs and they're probably eating 20 to 40,000 of those moths a day. Licking them up. Licking them up. Yep. And it's just a really rich food source for bears in the ecosystem. But what I was going to say is there's places in the ecosystem where there's moss sites and there's not bears utilizing them. So they think it's a learned behavior. Like they know about it. Right. Yep. Huh.

Like if you took all the bears out and put new ones back in they might not find those moths. Maybe not for a while. Or they'd use different ones. Or they could use different ones, yeah. Yeah. Huh. What are some of the other main foods? Like we all, everybody likes to think of them just, you know, eating elk calves, but when you had a list like their main grub sources, what do you think it is? Uh, vegetation, you know, bears eat a lot of different roots and tubers and

corns and that that's a big one in the spring. Elk calves is a big food source. I mean that's kind of undeniable. These moth sites, there are a few places in the ecosystem where they eat those cutthroat trout that are spawning. Whitebark pine. whitebark pine, but they did a food synthesis analysis on bears and found that they eat over 260 different plants and animals. No kidding. Yeah, in the Yellowstone ecosystem. They have the most diverse diet.

260 species. Yep. That bear that I caught that was 624, I figured that he was probably eating meat year round. You know, that bear was going from winter kill carcasses to elk calves, to moths, to killing cattle in the fall, because we'd caught him before killing cattle to eating gut piles, you know, he was eating probably nothing but meat. How old was that bear? Mmm, I don't remember

I caught another bear that was 520 pounds in the spring same exact location and I Caught him eight years later and he was 28 years old Wow Holy cow, man. Yeah, that other bear could be 30. Oh I think, I think, well when he was 28 that bear was past his prime. Okay. Maybe went down. So this other bear was probably between 15 and 20. Got you. Yeah. Man, that's a 28. Zach Turnbull caught one that was 32 in the upper green. And that's got to be getting close to Max. That's the oldest bear they've caught in the ecosystem. Yeah, yeah. In your mind what is the most common sort of way things play out when people get

scratched up by a bear? What do you mean? Like how did they report it? No, no, no, no, I'm sorry. If you were going to look at from all the things you've heard and seen when someone gets mauled by a bear, what is the normal scenario? Surprise encounter, probably. Like you're spooking it. Yeah. And probably sows with cubs more than anything else. You know, I see a big adult male track. I'm not nervous. I see a little tiny cub track. I'm like looking around. Yeah. So it's that you like jump at that close range. Yeah, that's the majority of them.

You know, there's a lot of cases every year where guys get elk down and there's bears coming into those dead elk or they're going back to retrieve a bear or excuse me, an elk carcass and, and they jump a bear. That's pretty common too. I mean, it's, it's food, cubs and, and personal space. And a lot of times you're getting cubs and personal space at the same time. Got it. And That's trouble. Yeah. Do you believe, you know, there's like a thing, I don't know if it's a, if it's a,

what's the opposite of urban legend, rural legend? Rural myth. Okay. Like my brother Danny, Or redneck talk. My brother Danny, he now and then goes and hunts Kodiak but after you know he hunts in the winter for black-tailed deer right and he'll swear when the bears are down he'll swear to red fox no a gunshot hmm there's a lot of red fox there he's like you shoot a deer and they're just there yeah and he's like

you know they're smelling it whatever but it's so fast you can't help but wonder like are they like oh they're like and like oh yeah go that way you hear people say this about grizzlies yeah all the time do you think that's true no not at all you don't think they come to a gunshot no I'll tell you why because I have friends that are really poor shots. I've guided hunters that are really poor shots. You sit there for 15, 20 minutes and no bear shows, shows that we have a shooting range outside of Cody.

It's not full of bears. It's not full of bears. Even though I've caught bears adjacent to it, but they're not running to that thing. You know, you got it. So it's really, when you get an animal down, that blood, that room and smell, that guts, as soon as that hits the air, you got a clock on you.

And, um, what I like to do as a guide is start a fire, you know, as long as there's not a fire band, if I'm in a good location, you know, and start it up wind, because that kind of masks that scent and fire. The real reason is it calms your hunter down because as soon as they kill something, they're like super bear scared. Yeah, we do that fire thing, cutting up moose in Alaska, especially when it's real thick. I'll get a fire going. I don't know if it's like my own. I just have it. I don't know. I like to have the idea that it somehow broadcast the human presence more might be total horseshit

Yeah, I think so. I don't think bears want to come into a fire. So Mm-hmm. That's just something I've learned since after the game and fish, you know Have you handled bears that had killed people? No, I've handled bears that have mauled people. Yeah. After the mauling? Yeah. Can you tell me that story about how the first thing came on?

Yeah, one of my first conflicts that I came on, I wasn't even hired on full time yet. I came in the office, I was just volunteering on my days off. And my boss was on the phone and he said, I remember him saying, three, maybe four people mauled, I'm on the way to the hospital. And he got off the phone and he said, hey, can you help us for a couple days? And I said, yeah. And there was a mauling by Cook City, a campground called Soda Butte. Yeah, I know this one.

And there was a human fatality there. And ran up there with a trap. And that was obviously in Montana, but we assisted Montana in trying to catch those bears. And they set the traps. They caught those bears. I set traps, but we didn't catch anything. And then I was shuttling samples to our vet lab in Laramie.

What kind of samples? Well, tissue samples from the bear to make sure that it was a match. Okay. But she had mauled three people and the first tent was a young kid and his girlfriend and a dog. And she tried to, sorry, she didn't maul, but she, she tried to attack three different people. She tried to come into that tent and the dog started barking and she left it.

And that kid got so afraid. I call him a kid. He was probably like 18, 19. He packed up all of his stuff and left and that sow went further down the campground and there was a couple who slept in separate tents because the, the husband snored. And.

Sure they weren't in a fight. Maybe, maybe they're in a fight. And that sow ripped into a tent and tried to grab that woman and she fought it off and It actually broke a tooth out of The bear's head in her arm. Wow. Yeah, it's weird like all the shit He bit in his life that would break his tooth off. It was it was a sow, but she was so malnourished that she was Desperate and that was, those are predatory

attacks obviously, which is different than your defensive aggressive attacks. So then she, yeah, she went further down the campground and she got in another tent and she killed and ate a guy and there was three other yearling bears with her through those attacks. So, I didn't work up that bear personally, but yeah, I've worked up other bears of them, all people.

Mm-hmm. Does that give you a creepy feeling? Mm, yeah. I mean, I will never forget the look in that bear's eyes. It's so debute. I mean, she was so demoralized and... Oh, is that right? Yeah, I'll just never forget the way she had her head on her paws and just looked completely demoralized and... Oh, is that right? Yeah, I'll just never forget the way she had her head on her paws and just looked completely demoralized. Like, what do you mean demoralized?

Mm, just, there was like a sadness in her eyes, I don't know how else to say. Is that right? Yeah. And you catch a lot of bears and see a lot of bears in traps and they avoid eye contact, that's really normal but but there was just like a feeling about it I don't know how else to describe it. Huh. When they're avoiding eye contact what do you think that is? In the bear world you know that's aggressive posturing when I was

teaching. Eye contact is aggressive. Yeah when I was teaching kids I'd say you know especially middle school girls, you know, when you see somebody in the hallways and you kind of stare them down, you know, that's aggressive posturing. You know, you're being mean, right? And they all understand that. And that's the same with bears,

is they pretty much avoid eye contact until they're ready to rumble, ready to fight. Hmm. Hmm. So they'll look away from one another. Yeah. Yep.

Those big adult males, when you see them fight, they'll circle each other and they'll be avoiding eye contact. And when they finally get the nerve to lock eyes, that's when they're, you know, trying to fight each other. Do you think there's a tell if a bear is going to false charge or charge charge? Do you think there's a physical tell yep head posture okay if they're really intent on hurting you their head is as low to the ground as possible they're trying to get there and you see that with self-defense shootings a lot of times guys aim

center mass center mass is the hump you know and it doesn't kill them when they when they're shooting bears. If it's a bluff charge, a lot of times their head is high, you know, they're kind of high on their front legs and they're not coming as fast as they could. Head down. Head down. Yep.

Aim low. Aim low. With your spray. Yeah. With your bird shot. Yeah. With your bird. Yeah. What, at what, let's say one's coming and you got a bear spray at what distance for you personally, like at what distance are you touching that spray off? Oh, 30 yards. Yeah. And you just let it rip. Let it rip. Don't be like, try to,

you know, don't try to conserve. I would, I'd hold it down for a second and spray and, you know, if it kept coming, I'm going to keep spraying, but about a second is all it takes. What do you think about the Wolverine situation, the Wolverine delisting? Or sorry, the Wolverine listing. Do you think the Wolverine listing is warranted? Do you think the Wolverine listing is warranted? I think we're living in a time and age where a lot wildlife habitats just getting chopped up and

Wolverines need a really big home range. And there were links in Wyoming and they just kind of blinked out and nobody ever noticed. Got it. So, um, I don't know a ton about wolverines, but I think you probably got to do everything you can to protect their habitat at this point. You think so? Yeah, and I...

You know, they just have such a huge home range, and this was probably furthest south extent of their habitat anyways. Yeah. Right. Well, down into Colorado. Yeah.

Historically, they're probably far down. Yeah. I think that they're using two, they use 250 square miles. 500. 500 square miles. It's more than I used. Just double that number.

But same thing with links, you know, they, they went really far south and I had a friend that was a trapper and he'd always say It's not like the Canadians are excited every time a bobcat crosses into Canada That's a good point. Just we have a different mentality because they're coming south. Yeah, that's a good point What do you think about Wolverines? Man? Yeah, that's a good point. What do you think about wolverines? Man, I think that they, I think that we lack any kind of historic reference. So when someone goes and looks and they think that there's a lower number of Wolverines, that no one's ever looked at it in a sophisticated sense before.

One way you could look at the research they did is you'd say, man, there's Wolverines all over the place, right? Cause they go out and do the, they hang the carcasses and do the trail cam stuff and catch hares. Yeah, I actually did that one. Oh, did you? Yeah. And so you'd look and be like, wow,

like one interpretation would be like, wow, like one interpretation. It'd be like, huh, that's cool. There's a lot of Wolverines out there because no one knew. But instead you take that you, you realize there aren't many, but you don't know how many there ever were. Right. And then you point to an area, you know, you point to an area in Canada that had seen a decline, but it's not the same kind of area. You're on the Southern edge and you just go like, there aren't many, therefore they must be endangered. I feel like without being able to have a demonstration, like a demonstrated decline over time.

I'm a little suspect and I also am a little suspect because I think that they are a I think that it's a little bit of a red herring. I think that they're being used that they're being used as a tool to get at something that to get at something different. Sure, that's probably saving habitat. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, it's like we want to save habitat, which I totally understand. We want to save habitat. We want to slow certain development. The way to do that is to do the Wolverine and get the Wolverine listed.

But then the Wolverine will get listed and it'll wind up being that you'll see that you can't go in snowmobile in certain areas And you can't trap in certain areas and you'd be like but but running a snowmobile and trapping aren't habit Don't do habitat destruction if this is all about habitat destruction. Why do we got do it this way? Well, this is very personal Yeah Steve's still collecting his thoughts on this subject, you know back to the point I made earlier about links linking out in Wyoming, there's, um, a chance that part of that was because of snowmobiles.

And, and what that does is creates a path for coyotes to go kill snowshoe hares, which obviously links are dependent on. Got it. And so, you know, it doesn't seem like snowmobiling has an impact, but it may. obviously links are dependent on got it and so you know it doesn't seem like snowmobiling has an impact but it may you know one of the weirdest ones of those god I don't want to be like a not making you come making me sound very green here that's great listen that that's that's that's great for me I mean

you know I like it's a it's good things to be curious about. Yeah. Think about this one time. We spent a lot of time years ago on when there were still some caribou that were living in the Idaho Panhandle. Yeah. And the efforts to try to save those caribou

in the Selkirk range, and they would come into Idaho Panhandle. Sure. And right now there's no caribou in the lower 48. Yeah, super sad. When they looked at that, an interesting thing was that they were seeing so much wolf predation on caribou. And it was like, why wasn't there, like, that's nothing new.

You've had wolves on the landscape, right? In BC, the caribou there. Why wasn't it? It was like whitetail deer numbers like like certain certain timber harvest practices, right created a lot of whitetail deer and An elk and moose habitat. Yeah as you brought up that number of ungulates This is a theory obviously as you brought up that number of ungulates, this is a theory obviously,

as you brought up that number of ungulates, at the edge of caribou habitat, it created an incentive for wolves to hunt in the area. And once wolves had taken a habit of hunting in that area, because they're killing deer, they're killing moose, they're getting some caribou. Historically, there hadn't been enough like biomass on the landscape to warrant them hunting the area. And there would just be elsewhere. It's a theory, but it's interesting. And you think of like, like you do this and coyotes now push up on snowmobile trails and hunt,

and they got a way to get from spot to spot. And it right it's a human cause it's a human cause very like step by step kind of hard to track yeah I think the course of events the correlations probably when snowmobiles got souped up I'd be curious if that was like the years when when those animals behavior started to change. Got it. When high marking became a thing. Yeah because when I was growing up you know you were about a foot off the ground and that thing didn't go very fast. Yeah. But now you can you can go anywhere with a snowmobile. Yeah. I picked up a Wolverine on a trail camera last year.

Yeah. And um, that's cool. I felt like I was, I felt like um, I was real excited. I sent it to everybody. It was like trapping. Yeah. Yeah. It was like trapping to get one. Yeah. On a camera. No. We've had some game fish guys get some on cameras, but it's really rare. And when they were doing that population estimate, you know, it was, I want to say, not more than five in the whole state. And they put a lot of effort into trying to identify wolverines. Something that was really cool though, is they had a wolverine

that had a white arm with a black spot. So it was really cool though is they had a Wolverine that had a white arm with a black spot. So really unique. And she had actually been caught in the northern part of Yellowstone and had a number and I think for a while had a transmitter in her. I'm not sure if that's true, but she was 14 years old, I want to say. Wow. Really? Yep. Because she's so identifiable. They knew about how many in Wyoming

Well through all the I think you know I think the population estimates probably 20 Is it that low that low? Yeah Really cat I might be misspeaking 20 to 50 hundred No more than no 740 740 we got a lot better to have to have though here. Yeah in the northwest part of the state. So how far away was she? She said she was she had been caught in the northern part of Yellowstone Do you know where she was then re-identified how far away fishhawk is probably?

Hmm 80 miles away in 21 and 22 Wyoming Game and Fish set approximately 24 Wolverines. Look at this guy. It's been a while since I thought about that. Man, it makes my camera seem even cooler. You know who Osborne Russell is? Sure man. He calls him Common. Yeah, and he talks about them in, by Salt Lake. Mm-hmm. So. Yeah, there's a lot of...

He calls them common. There's a lot of Carcadue references in the Mountain Man journals. Yeah. That oral history stuff does, because I would not call them common. Right. So there's got to be more than there is now. Yeah. Osborne Russell, we covered this very... we're working on a thing called the mountain men. Yeah, sure. Part of our American history series. And the other thing that you just wouldn't believe

is the number of big horns. Oh yeah. In the early 1800s. Yeah. Like not elk. Right. Big horns, hundreds, like hundreds of big horns. I've talked to living on big horns.

Yeah. Big horns and deer. I've talked to Larry Todd about this and there's only two Indian camps in Wyoming that have elk parts in them. So what I don't understand is there's a really big elk migration that comes from Yellowstone and it goes to South Dakota and I imagine it's been going on for thousands of years, but you think maybe there weren't that many elk back then or there's more buffalo than elk.

Yeah. Osborne Russell would run into people who were sheep specialists. Sheep eaters. Yeah, Osborne Russell would run into people who were like sheep specialists. Sheep eaters. Yeah, sheep hunters. Yeah, we have a bunch of artifacts around us that were sheep eater artifacts. They're part of the Shoshone tribe. Shoshone. Shoshone.

We just learned that. That's why it's correct. I actually asked a Shoshone person. Yeah, well I've never known that. He was open to either, but strongly preferred Shoshone. Yeah, what's the river that flows through asked a Shoshone person. Yeah, that's it. Well, I've never known that. He was open to either, but strongly preferred Shoshone. Yeah. What's the river that flows through Cody? Shoshone.

Well, that's, yeah. That's, I know that's what got, yeah. So it's funny. And there's a town. He's sitting right, see, you're sitting in. Okay. Well, he would know. Shoshone, Idaho, the rivers and the places go by Shoshone, but the people go by Shoshone is sort of.

Oh no, but he was, he was a Rappahoe. Yeah, but he lives with, yeah. Lives on, yeah, lives with Shoshone but the people go by Shoshone is sort of what. Oh no, but he was a Rappahoe. Yeah, but he lives with. Yeah. Lives on, yeah, lives with the Shoshone. But that's sort of the conclusion we collectively arrived at. Have you ever seen the bows that those sheep eaters make? No, but I read Osborne Russell's description of the bows.

Yeah, they're pretty cool. There's a guy named Bob Lucas that there's a video of him making one. But they take a bighorn sheep horn and they're pretty cool. There's a guy named Bob Lucas that there's a video of him making one. But they take a bighorn sheep horn and they reverse the curl and then they glue it and tie it together and it's basically a recurve bow. They steam it and reverse it, right? Yep.

Osborne Russell figures very heavily into the thing we're working on. Because he did such a good job of… Documenting stuff. Yeah. Such a phenomenal job of making a journal. Tell me about your guiding business. Who do you guide for?

I've guided for a bunch of different outfitters, to be honest, and I took this season pretty much off because I just had a kid But I've worked for Yellowstone country outfitters 307 outfitters Ran crick outfitters Livingston outfitters So I've got to see a lot of country and your specialty is horseback trips. Yeah Everything's horseback horseback and mule. Mm-hmm saw bucks or deckers Yeah, everything's horseback horseback and mule. Mm-hmm saw bucks or deckers

Sawbuck guy. Yeah, I've never understood that the Montana guys. Yeah, I can't take a toothbrush if they don't man yet Yeah, that's what I've always thought the same thing Yeah, we always laugh at saw bucks. Yeah, I'm Decker. You'll have to teach me some. All right. Yeah trade seems pretty easy So there's two style of pack saddles ones what you call saw buck, which is seems self-explanatory Yeah, you just hang your hang bags on hang panniers and then you have a lash rope where you tie a hitch keep everything pinned down and Montana guys run what's called Decker pack saddles and they have ropes hanging off the bars on their packs and then they tie a hitch usually with something that's manned up so they pack all their camping stuff in a canvas mani and fold it up real nice.

Like a mani-pedi. Yeah, mani-pedi, that's right, sort of. You're tracking, you're tracking. Help me out here. I know that's accurate. I don't know what you guys do. My theory is, like when you lash down a decker saddle, say with Yeti coolers, and then you can crow's

foot it to really lash it down, you can bump into a lot more trees and have it stay set compared to sawbuck saddles might move around a little bit more or get loose. I don't know. I've never packed a sawbuck. I run some pretty steep country. Well, steep maybe. Come check it out. How thick is it? It's pretty thick.

Oh, well, hey. Sounds like it's thick and steep to each their own I guess whatever style floats your boat I know that you can pack real awkward loads with deckers they're a lot more versatile yeah we would pack raft frames 16 foot raft frames yeah on them on the uphill side okay, we just don't take that stuff. So yeah, very awkward Are you mostly deer mostly elk? I've done it all sheep mountain goat deer elk Not grizzly bear but everything else black bears No, never have guided black bears actually kind of got burned out on the bear thing So I'll mess them with bears like a person gets a job at an ice cream shop, then you don't like ice cream no more exactly guided black bears actually kind of got to doing something that benefits wildlife. I don't want the best thing that I've done for wildlife

to be catching and killing bears. So. What drove you to, do you mind saying, why did you leave the state agency in Wyoming? Fish and game. I was just really personally conflicted with some of the management decisions that were being made. So there were a lot of reasons.

I was super burnout. If I had to give one more bear safety talk I was gonna suck start up 44 What or bear spray what would be a what would be an area of management like what would be like an area of management That you would find conflict. You don't need to tell me the exact conflict. But when you say that, what do you mean? What do you mean? What do you mean? Like do you mean the way they set harvest? need to tell me the exact conflict but relocation and removal decisions were really consistent so got oh on the bear question yeah it's like how you're handling individual bears yeah yeah you know I'd had a certain standard with my old boss and I just felt like it wasn't the same

do you is my last question for you do you you, give me your personal take, I like like came in so hot and heavy on delisting, what's your personal take on delisting? I think it's the best thing to keep states and to managing bears, which is probably the best thing for the people on the landscape. And I also think hunting is a positive because it creates advocates for wildlife, it creates advocates for bears. People right now say, there's too many bears on the landscape, but as soon as you start hunting them, they'll be like,

I don't know where all the big bears have gone. These guys are hunting too many. It's a non-residence. Yeah. It'll just be some other boogie man. Yeah. That's a good point, man. So, um, but they continue to expand and, and a big issue that the courts see is that genetic connectivity between the GYE and the NCDE and right now they're

only 36 miles apart and And I think that whether you delist or not, I think they eventually make that connectivity. But there was a bear that showed up in the bighorns two years ago, actually. And, you know, that bear was removed, euthanized right away. and I think they're going to continue to expand whether you try to contain them or not. Oh, was that a containment decision? Social acceptance, you know, but we've caught and killed a lot of bears over the years and you're just trying to contain them into the absorcos. This year they'll hit 70 bears that have died in the Elstown ecosystem.

And probably 40 of those will be management removals. And you got everything from bears getting killed in irrigation canals. There were bears electrocuted. There's bears that get hit by vehicles like 399, obviously. So. 71 calendar year? Yeah, I think it'll be a record year this year. Montana's at 28 right now.

Wow. I don't think it's over yet. There's still bears out. Hmm. One of the arguments I heard from when I talked about, I was joking, I have joked about Montana chickening out on the bear hunt, but one of the things they brought up is they had no, they felt that their quota would get hit by non-hunting purposes.

And if they did a hunt, this is kind of like the logic, right? Yeah. If they did a hunt and killed a couple bears, they would burn up their quota and then they wouldn't be able to do bear management on problem bears. Cause they would already hit their human cause quota. bear management on problem bears because they would already hit their human cause quota. Doesn't sound unreasonable. Feels more like across that bridge when you come to it. I think again it's what you what the number you believe is in the ecosystem and the reason Wyoming was gonna be so high is

because 12 of those bears were going to be outside the demographic monitoring area. So they weren't even counted towards the population. Got it. You know, and the DMA is about 20,000 square miles and bear distribution right now is about 50,000 square miles. Oh, is a grizzly coming to a neighborhood near you? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

There's a grizzly coming to a neighborhood near you. Yeah. So everywhere I would go, people go, there's kids in the neighborhood. You got to get this bear out of here. You know, and then one lady called me and she goes, there's old people in this neighborhood. You got to get this bear out of here. I'm like, oh, there's no appropriate age to live with a bear. There's two things that are going to happen. I like to joke about golfers and Montana is uniquely situated a golfer.

Gophers? No. I believe that someday Montana will have a golfer get mauled while golfing. Oh. And whitefish. Yeah, probably at Meadow Lake Resort, Columbia Falls. Like Big Scott. They caught one on a golf course down the bitter root. Yeah, we will have it'll be like a, it'll be, I hope he doesn't get it bad. If he gets a bad, I'll feel bad, but I, uh, it'll be an interesting day when we have a

golf or get mom digging through the rough looking for his title. I always, it's probably not going to be a good golfer because he's gonna be yeah sticking to the fairways and yeah He's gonna be down to the did he's gonna be down the creek bomb looking for his golf ball another good reason to work on Your backswing. Yeah, we're gonna have a golfer get mauled and that's gonna change public opinion And then for whatever reason like we have a little mountain range right here in town Bridgers, you know not right here. I mean, it's way bigger than that, but it toes off like this, you know, toes off into town and, um, man, there's grizzlies right across the highway. I know 36 miles and it's like, at some point in time, this is, we have this real popular hiking trail called the M yeah. It's not out of the, it's not out

of, you know, it's like a reasonable thing that someone's going to get scratched up on the M Hill. I feel like that'll impact public opinion. When a golfer gets it. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's in Missoula, the rattlesnake wilderness right there. You know, you can take a city bus to it. And they had a sow and cubs that set up in one of the first cultures there. That's like a really popular mountain biking area. But I remember going to an event and there's a bear biologist there talking about grizzlies coming into the Missoula area. And he's like, you know, they're in Gold Creek, they're down on the golf courses in the Bitter Root, they're in the Rattlesnake.

And he said, I would be surprised if in five years there aren't sort of resident known bear families, you know, population groups here and there in the city, or around the city I should say. I don't want people to think I'm bringing that up, like a golfer getting scratched. I'm not bringing this up as a thing that I'm worried about, and I don't think it's a negative. I mean, I'm not the golfer getting scratched. I'm not saying I want, I don't want,'s a negative. I mean, I'm not the golf to get scratched. I'm not saying I don't want, I think I'd love it if we had bears. I'd like if there's grizzlies all over town.

Go to Anchorage. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I like them. I'm not an anti-bear guy whatsoever. I love the bears. I like seeing them.

I get excited when I see them. I never meet anybody who's bummed out that they saw a grizzly. I love them. As soon as you get them all, people's attitude changes. I love them. I just want it to go. I want it to be that there's a bunch of bears and I want it to be that there's a state managed and there's a tag draw. That's what I want. Yeah. Everybody thinks about their self-interest, right? Especially me. Yeah.

I think it's the story that you portray into the future here. It's how people paint bears. So 399 is a great example. You could paint her as a bear that mauled people or you could paint her as the biggest advocate for bears in the mm-hmm in the world so no future bears is up to the public really No, and my you know you mentioned like everybody wants what their own self-interest is I should clarify that uh

I'm not gonna draw a grizzly bear tag. I live in a state that one Had they done. I don't know'd even put in for the tag. Yeah. Okay. We didn't do it. If we did one, you're not gonna draw it. I mean, what are the odds you're gonna draw it? You know, it's like, I've been applying for a bighorn sheep tag for decades.

Haven't drawn one yet. Do you think a lot of people would? A lot of that? No, not like, yeah, you get people, you're not gonna draw it. Like the draws are gonna be slim. So it's not like, it's not like I feel that this is my pathway.

Yeah. I mean, I hunt Alaska every year. This isn't my like, I'm not pursuing this as cause it's my personal pathway to getting a grizzly. It's like, it's not gonna happen. I'm not gonna get a grizzly in Montana. I'm not gonna get a grizzly in Idaho. I'm not gonna get a grizzly in Wyoming.

This isn't all me You know with some like Machiavellian plan by which I'll be able to hunt grizzlies. You're just being a realist in my neighborhood It's like just as an advocate for hunters and as an advocate for state management and as an advocate for responsible use of renewable resources Here's an animal that that peep animal that was historically a game animal, that has people, that there's people that hunt them in other places, there's a desire to hunt them. Hunting them is not incompatible with having a stable population as we've demonstrated with mountain lions, black bears, white-tailed deer, mule deer,ose big horn sheep mountain goats. I could go on and on right It's not incompatible. I don't know why this should be any different

This guy's put in You know what I'll do right now, you know I'm gonna do right now No, I'm gonna tell you something right now. I'm gonna tell you something right now Just because you said that I promise I won't put in okay ever I won't put it I won't put in it's true advocate and you go scroll the records and see if you ever see me put in I won't put in I got friends I'll call I said one time before like you talk about in drilling an Anwar yeah and people like oh yeah just cuz you hunt up there all the time I'm like okay if I

could sign a contract that said they won't drill Anwar but I can't ever go there I would sign the contract right me too it's like I'm not going there yeah it's like okay fine I need to go there just whatever that's fine and if I had to sign a contract we'll delist and turn over to state management and create a hunting season tomorrow but you have to agree that you'll never apply for a tag I'll be like okay cool it's like it's not that's not what it is for me I think the real question here is can you get bears off the list can you have state management without people continuing to sue and tear down the ESA?

Or do you have to change the ESA in order to get animals delisted? And I think that would be horrible. If, if you don't get bears off the list, you know. That's why my advice to people who support the ESA is to stop effing around with the ESA. Or weaponizing it. Because you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna do you're gonna do to the ESA what they did to the spotted owl. Like the spotted owl used to be an owl. Yeah. And then it became a symbol of overreach, right? You're gonna

now create you're gonna be like, you have, here you sit, like let's say you were like Joey ESA, right? You're like the die-hard defender of the ESA. My advice to you, stop weaponizing the ESA then. Delist that bear, which hit recovery objectives 25 years ago. Yeah, but. And move on to what's next. The reason I brought up that bear in the big horns is that's in the DPS and that's unoccupied habitat. So, you know, in theory,

the ESA calls for bears moving into that suitable habitat. But they mapped out when they listed them, they mapped out recovery objectives and they hit recovery objectives 20-some years ago. Yeah that's true. Yeah. Okay so why bother, why bother having an endangered species act, why bother making recovery objectives if it's just bullshit? Yeah. If you don't mean it. Yeah. It erodes public trust. No doubt about it. 2% of the things that go on the ESA come off because of recovery.

Okay. Things will come off because they realize it wasn't warranted. Things will come off because they'll go extinct. 2% of the things that go on the ESA come off because recovery. Here you have a recovered thing. Why is it not celebrated? Right. They didn't bitch. like Eagles came off no problem paragon fault but this one they just got a hold it tight to their chest yeah because it's not about the ESA it's a moneymaker is what it is yeah so forget me saying I'm coming at it from a perspective of a hunter I'm coming at it from a perspective of someone that wants to get on with, uh, to, to like salvage the ESA and not make it that it just as a thing of, of derision. Glad I bolstered your argument.

No, thank you. Cut all that out, Phil. So I can just start saying that like I thought of it. Well, man, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. It's good to meet you guys. Is there anything that I anything that you wish you got to talk about that I didn't ask about? I meant to talk about snaring bears. That's something I didn't talk about.

Tell me about that. So another way we catch them is with foot snares. And you use what's called an Aldridge spring and you put the spring in a snare loop and you dig a hole and then you recreate the surfaces though, it's just ground. And you try to get a bear to step in that and that's a fun part of trapping, so. How do you give them a step in there, hanging a bait?

A lot of times you have a cubby set and you're trying to direct them into your set, but you're putting sticks and bears don't like to step on sticks and hurt their feet so you can kind of control their foot movement with those. When you're doing that so he actually thinks he's putting his foot on the ground and his foot breaks through the ground. Yeah and it hits this this trap. Yeah. It's a pit trap. It hits this trigger and that trigger flings a spring and that pulls that snare

cable tight and the snare cable just has a little bracket that only slides one way, you know, and you caught a pair. And can you is, is he too messed up or can you release them? Oh yeah. No, you, you release those bears. He's got to be pissed. Do you get them on video? Yeah. Do that. I got some. Sounds like a fun visual. Got some pictures somewhere I think but. He's pissed. A lot of times they're trying to run off and and they hit the end of that snare cable and they roll over and sometimes they are pissed and they try to charge

you. Yep and in regular trapping you you call that blocking. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. A bobcat trapper was explaining one time that people would use blocking for bobcats, but they don't realize that bobcats want to stand on little things. So they'd put little rocks to block or put a log to block, but he wants to be on that. So this guy, you know the sycamore, you know a sycamore ball? They don't live around here, but it's like that little little pokey little it's like a pokey little seed pod There's this trap or two. He doesn't live in that area, but he gets big things of those sycamore

Things because it's real spiky and the cat don't want to put his foot on it mmm So then you can actually control his foot placement, but you put a stick there and that cats like oh sweet. Thanks And misses the pan because he's standing on your blocking, you know, the stuff that's supposed to keep him from wanting to do it. So you want stuff that looks like uncomfortable for his foot. Interesting. Yeah, keep that in mind.

I might just go trap bears on my own just for fun. Just catch and release bear trap. Yeah. Whose ear tag is this? Well, dude, thanks for coming coming out man. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. And good luck on your job hunt. Thanks, appreciate that. Name what line of work you want because maybe someone will call you and give you a job. Land conservation I think could be up my alley. I think that would be beneficial

to wildlife. So should I throw out my email? Can I do that? Hell yeah man. You can throw out your email if you want a bajillion people messaging you. Or they can email us. Yeah, that's fine. Or they can also email us at jobhours. Let them dig through their own job offers. Go ahead. Yep, that's true. My email is just dusty.lasseter, L-A-S-S-E-T-E-R-10 at Gmail. Looking for work. Looking for work. I got a great job. I have a great boss but I still want to do something that benefits wildlife. I got a

construction project I might lay out in front of you too. I can handle it. It's in grizzly country. I'm a mediocre carpenter. That's what that's kind of looking for it. Yeah. Perfect. More of a painter. Just kidding. All right, man, thanks so much. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. The fingers and toes so cold that they burn We stand in the creek in our rubber knee high

Just long enough for me to warm up And then back to the brush chasing cottontail hides I was just 10 but I got to join in Carol protested, grandpa was subverting I've had him shootingin' since he was knee-high This is the day that he earned Then Annie broke loose with the ballcolored Stevens put two on the ground The morning turned hot, and Annie was singing Game vouchers filled as the shot shells all flew All flew, headed toward home And I couldn't help grinning My fingers all numb and my lips turning blue

Every year at the end of November The memories all wash over me, bittersweet Dawn is the early morning cotton tail hunting And afternoon targets and skeet Dinner feast For forty-odd people With cousins and uncles who I've half forgot Grandma all all hair-eaten

Rarely so happy House full of bird-stin And meat in the pot That was a way of it Back in my youth I watched it all change through the years As time will roll, both bedrock and bone And old age will seem in the most fierce

Grandpa, we lost in the cold of December Carol, a few turns before I bought the farm when they couldn't remember, nothing's the same anymore The barn got lean, the old home lost its it's changed You can hear the wind whistle a tune She creaks and she moans and it's all overgrown But we'll get her lookin' brand new Every year at the end of November The memories all wash over me, bittersweet

Dawn is an early morn, cotton tail huntin' And afternoon targets and schemes Dinner feast for forty-odd people Cousins and uncles who I've half forgot Grandmawl all harried, rarely so happy Their house full of birch tin and meat in the pot I swear I'll raise up a few kids up my home Maybe one day a grandson or two I'll walk in the same hills with a hand on each shoulder Hoping maybe we'd kick up a few Praying, Lord, that they feel this way too Every year at the end of November Memories all wash over me, bittersweet

Dawn is an early-mourning, cottontail-hunting Afternoon targets and skeet And dinner feast For forty-odd people Cousins and uncles who I've half forgot Grandma all harried Rarely so happy Her household are burstin' and meat in the pot Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Meat Eater Radio Live is the newest addition to the Meet Eater Podcast feed.

Every Thursday at 11am Mountain Time, we'll be going live from Meet Eater HQ on the Meet Eater Podcast Network YouTube channel. This one-hour variety show will feature call-in guests, segments and live feedback from the Meet Eater audience. Then, on Friday morning, the episode will be available in audio form on the MeadEater Podcast feed.