The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 796: Heart of the Jaguar

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Steven Rinella talks with James Campbell, Randall Williams, Brody Henderson, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: James' latest book, "Heart of The Jaguar"; how much Steve loves our newest true crime-in-the-woods podcast, Blood Trails by our colleague Jordan Sillars; the historic and preset-day ranges of jaguars; jaguar behavior, El Hefe; the latest jaguar sightings; reintroduction efforts; and more.  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.

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You can't predict that. brought to you by first light when i'm hunting i need gear that won't quit first light builds no compromise gear that keeps me in the field longer no shortcuts just gear that works check it out at first light dot com that's f i r s t l i tee dot com when's the play start phil A second week in December, I think Oh, you're going to miss it No, no, I got tickets to do it Yeah, we got tickets

We're doing date night Oh You're going with, Randall? It just came up in here It came up in here And we followed through Turn the machine on, Phil She's on, Steve, it always is

It's the Cratchett Report Here we go again The Cratchett Report with Phil the engineer How are you feeling, Phil? I'm feeling great By the time this airs We're a week or two away

from opening. I'm excited. I've got like 75% of my lines down. I know that that's an important stat for you. Just give me a line. Give me a line. I saw your script was open on your desk the other day. I was an embarrassing line. A shilling for a fathing. Ah, yeah.

Scrooge, he seems unaffected by the season, so even on Christmas Eve. Oh, that's your British accent? Hit me with it again? Oh, no. This is a bad time for you to be doing this to me. I'll hit me with it again? he sits by the fire after after working goes over the firm's accounts

hmm he's not bad right a little bit okay I'm not buying it you're not buying it because it doesn't sound like this he wants you to sound like a cab driver same as any other not I'd say he'd ever point at the hour

he'll bring it man he wants you to be a henchman from Braveheart more Harry Potter more Harry Potter what night are we going to be there Randall? It's the Sunday performance, I believe the 13th. So on the 3rd, I don't care

what you're doing, I'm not there. On the 13th, I want you to just come in hard. Okay, so scratch your previous notes about, how have any putting? About all American accents, American currency, you don't want that. You want full-blown. I did, but change my mind. I want you to bring it now, and I want you to sound like what I expect a old-timey

English guy to sound like. An unwell cockney man. Yeah. Yeah. Join today. The author, James Campbell, who's got a ton of books, man. Books that would be of high interest to listeners. James Campbell, he's a magazine writer for a long time, but he wrote The Final Frontiersman, which if you haven't read it, you've seen it around, I'm sure.

He wrote The Ghost Mountain Boys, which I just finished two nights ago. Here's the problem I run it. And I'm always honest with guests. Yeah. I didn't get to the Jaguar book yet, because I got sidetracked by Ghost Mountain Boys. Well, I'm not sure what I should think of that, but thank you. I'm getting there. It's like the stack, the stack, see, I got on to it, and Randall's been on one, too.

I got on to a whiskey, whiskey two book kit, yeah. It was spent a lot of time in the Pacific. Well, it was a two books. So I read the battle, the battle for Manila, the Battle of Manila, like an academic title that just came out. And that got me all fired up. About World War II and the South Pacific theater. My old man was European theater.

Oh, he was. So I know that well. Yeah. But then I got to. Then I just, it just kind of opened up this whole world of suffering. Yeah. Just like, it's like World War II. Yeah.

Yeah. With disintering. Yeah. It's just like the disease function. Yeah. Just stuff I wasn't like I was familiar with all his stories, you know, like people freezing their toes off and everything. And then, and I, of course, I was aware, you know, my, my, my, my wife's grandfather was a Marine on Iwo Jima, right? I was aware, but anyways, I got into the battle of Manila.

Then I got into this, and I never got to the damn Jaguar book. We're going to talk about, I'm like super interesting Jaguar. Sure. But what, it hasn't dissuaded you from continuing on to the Jaguar book? No, no, no. Yeah, the Ghost Mountain book is about it. Yeah, exactly. But the Ghost Mountain, the Ghost Mountain Boys, what year did this one come out?

2008. Okay. Yeah. The Ghost Mountain Boys tells the tale of the campaign in Papua New Guinea. Yeah. And a lot of them were from your country, from Southern Michigan. and most lots of the guys yeah company g company e yeah tombs them from my the county i came from sure and um the thing that uh there's a couple things that like

about it that really stuck me one just the disease factor like most your casualties are tropical diseases yeah which mccarthy never took into consideration when he sent those guys over the mountains you know they had they had dysentery they had jungle rot they had trench foot they had malaria hookworm hookworm and they he never considered that that would happen yeah how could he not after having been in the philippines yeah oh it's just yeah and then and in the end you realize they're taking these guys and i don't know if if listeners i'm sure you've been on malaria medication yeah like malaria litigation leads to like its own little form of psychosis like there's people that can't take it yeah that's right i mean it gives you like wild dreams it can send you into bowels to

depression especially the stuff they used to use larium they take these guys and like there's this one guy that you follow through the book who he's writing all these loving letters with his wife he's got kids waiting at home yeah then they go to treat him from malaria and they dose them so heavy with this drug they didn't understand the psychological effects yeah they start dosing them with this drug and he shoots himself in the head adabron psychosis it was called so he he was the division surgeon a guy named major simon warmanhoven and he he was an amazing guy so I'd finished the book completely ready to turn it into my publisher and Simon Warmanhoven's two daughters happened to find my number and they called me up and they said I want to send you the love letters that my dad sent to my mom from Papua New Guinea would you be willing to look at him and I said yeah I'd love to see him so I read all hundred love letters. And then I called my publisher and I said, stop the press. These are too beautiful. I have to completely rewrite the book and write in this character and write in his love letters because they're just so heart-wrenchy. And my publisher gave me an extra two months to their credit.

Oh, really? That's not much. So I wrote hurriedly. But can you imagine that, first of all, the courage of his daughters because obviously you know you there's a stigma attached to the you know to shooting yourself but it was adibrand psychosis and they had a lot of that yeah i mean i didn't know him but like you look at the transition and then he even says his last letter home and he's on the treatment his last letter home is like i try not to let it happen yeah but i have the blues that's why i haven't been writing yeah and he had to he had in he was in brisman at the just outside of brisman at the at the 32nd division hospital and he was caring for all these men you know who'd been wounded in battle and who had various diseases tropical diseases and i mean

he was just overwhelmed in addition to taking adibrand and having adibrand psychosis yeah it's just a just a horrible story you know nothing that that came out reading this and reading that man that book about the battle for manila and also just documentaries that I've been seeing and stuff is it seems like we're kind of running out of them now. It seems like as a lot of veterans from World War II got to a certain

age, they became more ready to discuss. I don't want to call them like what would what would be regarded as war crimes, but I don't even want to like condemn it. Yeah, right. But it became like later in life. Like I watched this series and I was watching these old guys being like

they're talking about the the concentration camps yeah and they're like anyone that worked at a concentration camp we just lined them up shot them uh-huh right you know right and guys in here they're like guys that are talking about stuff later whatever it just seems like for a long time a lot of that stuff was just not mentioned yeah they don't get their day in court yeah and now it seems like more people are like no man i mean yeah we didn't we didn't deal with prisoners yeah we don't like to deal with prisoners. Yeah, I mean, you're talking about the wounded Japanese. They would just stick them with their bayonets. And of course, they didn't talk about that until a lot later. But a lot of

those guys, I contacted, ultimately contacted about 80 guys that fought on the island in New Guinea. And I interviewed a lot of them. And a lot of them, I drove over to Michigan, you know, to interview these guys. And typical story, you know, they'd never told their stories about World War II. I think James Bradley, in flags of our father, said they came home. and they got on with living you know they didn't want to remember so they you know they deliberately just repress this stuff and I started talking to him and initially they'd tell funny stories you know and I go to their old timers division meeting and they'd tell jokes and listen to bad poke of music you know and play cards all night but slowly they started

to like reveal stuff and then it was like it was like this gusher of emotion you can imagine after, you know, 50 years is trapped inside. You know, they never talked about it. And sometimes their wives would call me up and say, you know, so-and-so, you got to, you can't interview him anymore. He's, he has nightmares. Oh, you can't me. It was bringing it back up. And it's haunting him. And I said, okay, that's the last thing in the world I want to do, you know, is put him through this again. But then they would call back. And they would say, no, man, I got to talk about this. This is the first time. I've ever talked about this in my life.

My kids don't even know these stories. I have to keep talking. So it was, yeah, it was pretty, it was pretty emotional. Yeah, it was. You know, I don't like, you know, I usually, I don't like any, no, not any. I think the only, yeah. I'm a Bob Service fan when it comes to poetry. Oh, yeah, yeah, sure.

I love Bob's service. He's a poet. Yeah, and Clayty Bailey. But where's this poem? Lady Bailey used to... Where's his poem this dude wrote? Yeah. Oh, at the end.

It's the first time we had read a poem. Quite possibly. Yeah. He reads books. Bob Hartman. Yeah, Bob Hartman. Right. This is a veteran.

Grand Rapid. Did he write this much after the war? Yeah, he did. He did. Okay. I laid him down by the bend in the stream and he erected across at his head. His funeral song was a cockatoo's scream. As if they knew my book.

buddy was dead i've evened the score yes a dozen a dozen times over but no matter the distance between my mind wanders yet and i'll never forget his grave by the bend in the stream yeah it's poignant yeah it's got a bob service quality too it does it does yeah it does have a bob service quality is these poets that don't even bother rhyming right it's just that bob um bob hartman is the same guy that said, if I own New Guinea and I owned hell, I would live in hell and rent out New Guinea. But you just got back from New Guinea. I just got back. So we're going to get, don't worry about this.

We're going to get to the Jaguar situation. I love talking about New Guinea. But what were you doing there now? So two things. Can you help me understand something? Sure. What is the difference between saying Papa New Guinea and saying New Guinea? So the entire island is called New Guinea.

Papua New Guinea is a separate nation on the eastern half, formerly an Australian colony, German colony once upon it. It was called Kaiser Wilhelmsland way back when. And the other side is owned by, is part of Indonesia. And that's called West Papua. So the whole island is called New Guinea. Okay, no idea. Yeah.

Okay. So I've been going there since 1989. Um, my brother and I first went there on a, you know, you know, young men's adventure or misadventure, but somewhere in, I took my wife there for our honeymoon, by the way, and she got malaria. How romantic. Her parents wanted her to ditch me so fast. So fortunately, she did in three daughters later. Um, but, uh, I discovered for the first time. I didn't even know. The story. Your stay up close to your mic. Okay. I didn't even know the story of the war in Papua New Guinea.

But anyway, so in 2006, I repeated the track that the Ghost Mountain Boys did for the first time since World War II. And I became interested in the villages and just the World War II history. So on the most recent trip, we brought in people there in the villages, isolated villages, die skin infections. You know, they're dying of malaria. So we brought in $4,000 worth of medicines that the one health clinic can, you know, can give out to the people. You know, they have a little cut, you know, that they eventually lose their leg or lose their life. So, you know, it doesn't have to be dramatic stuff, but medicines to help them. And that, the Ghost Mountain Trail used

to be called the Kappa Kappa Trail because there was a village called Gaba Gaba. The soldiers couldn't pronounce it. It became Kappa Kappa. It was called the Kappa Kappa Trapa Trail. And we want that to be a national historic trail like the Kakota Trail. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of it. That's where the Australians fought the Japanese on the island in New Guinea on the Kakota Trail. And now 5,000 truckers come every summer to Papua New Guinea to trekking to trek the island.

Kokoda Trail where they're, you know, grandfathers or great-grandfathers or great-uncles fought the Japanese. So it's a big deal. So we want to try to bring Americans over to Papua New Guinea to walk this trail. It's 21 days. It's over the own Stanley Mountains. It's tough. Yonnie'll run that son of the bitch.

What's that? How many miles is it? 130 miles. But it is straight up and straight down. Straight up, you know, you go out to 9,000 feet. Are you a runner? A little bit. By a little bit, like 100 miles at a time.

30,000 feet of elevation at a time. What's the elevation when you say up and down? Well, the plane we tried to find on this trip was at about 10,000 feet. But the own Stan Lee's get up to about 12,000. But you're going through solid jungle. I mean, absolute solid jungle. I remember, I don't want to go astray here, but I was reporting in 2006 for National Public Radio. and I was doing, I was calling them and doing interviews with them from the jungle.

And my first interview, I was late for, so I grabbed the sat phone and I wandered out into the jungle. And I did my interview and then I thought, I don't know where the hell I am. I have no idea where I am. You lost your direction quick. Yeah, I lost my direction that fast. I was probably like 40 feet from. Like a picture. You're not being deliberate.

No, not being deliberate at all. And so I'm screaming at the top of my lungs. And fortunately, one of the villagers, or one of the carriers that was with us, happened to find me. Otherwise, who knows? When you say trail, you know, it can have a lot of different definitions. So at this point, what is it like? Could just a regular old hiker follow this for 21 days?

It's like a deer trail or a rabbit trail through the woods. And the people of New Guinea are the most, like, physically fit people you've ever seen. It's like the people of the Andes or something. They live in the mountains, so they're accustomed to it. They just walk straight up and straight down. No national park switchbacks. So, I mean, it's tough. But if you ever want to come in, I'd love to take you.

But you got to organize a big, you can't run it. So you need to organize, like, one of them races. Yeah, it would be... Call the malaria 130. Oh, I'm sure with the recent explosion in participation in these endurance races, you could very easily get a couple hundred people to go and fast hike, run that trail. We hadn't even considered it. But just to finish the story, we were, my partner, my co-partner in Australia found a plane called the Flying Dutchman. you know the ode to the michiganers at 10,000 feet he found it last year and it hadn't been seen

since i think like 1967 so we were taking a small group up into the mountains tied to to to identify the plane see the plane touch the plane and retell the story of the remains in there still no they're gone they've been taken they were taken out i think in night i can't remember the date but the plane it pain it plane has this really poignant story story about it crashed and I think six of the guys were killed. 15 of the guys were too injured to get out, but two parties tried to make it out. One party marched to the North Coast that took them about 30 days to get through the jungle. And another party marched a guy named Ed Holloman from just outside of Grand Rapids,

Michigan found safety after about 30 days and they tried to court martial him for leaving the plane and he did I mean he saved these guys lives and it was what happened to the guys went the other direction the other guy they they actually two of the guys drowned they tried to they tried to ride logs on the river to the north coast and uh two of the guys drowned the other two of the got the other two guys made it to safety tried to get a rescue party to come back to of the guys on the plane, the rescue party stopped one day short because they ran out of food and ultimately all the guys on the plane died. So, in fact, the chaplain died in the arms of the villagers who found the plane

on January 7, 1943. So, yeah, it's really, it's a terrible story. So what was the plane, what was it, what were they doing at the time? So you read about the ghost mountain boys who walked over the mountains. They'd found usable airfields on the north coast of Papua New Guinea near the battlefield of Boona, and they were trying to fly the guys over instead of having them walk. And they were probably trying to punch holes in the clouds because they hadn't really flown over the own Stanleys very much. They called it the hump, like in Verma.

They called it the hump. And that plane crashed up there at 10,000 feet. But they were, the intention was to full. climb over to the battlefield. Wow. Okay, by way of a transition into Jaguars, that's why you're here, right? Yeah, sure, but I love talking about Papua New Guinea and the Ghost Mountain Boys. It's going to be a gradual transition because two things.

So James's books are for reading, ours are for cooking. We got just letting people know here. So we took our two cookbooks, our Meteor Fish and Game cookbook and our outdoor cookbook, and made like a gift box. You get both of them right here in this sweet box. Two for one. Great gift item. We signed a whole mountain.

Yeah. Only place you can get the signed ones is on the meat eater website. Not true. Where else you get? In the stores. Oh, the two retail stores. Yeah, we just signed a whole mountain of them. And then, yeah.

It's a very economic way of getting both our books for summer for Christmas. I'm not even going to get into FD up old trucks, but look at this. Mm. And that make you want to? get a calendar. A hell of a calendar. Not getting into that. The other plug is this.

A while back on the show, we ran an episode of something we called Blood Trails. It was about that dude who was turkey hunting and got shot in the back while he was turkey hunting. And they've like interviewed all these guys. They've definitely interviewed whoever did it, but they have yet to, how many years has been? Like 17 years, 18 years. Yeah, something like that. So we got a whole series out now called Blood Trails, a podcast. and it's about hunting and fishing related like murders cold cases mysteries it's really good

jordan sillers has been doing a phenomenal job on it so check out and subscribe to the blood trails podcast feed um it turned out i'm very proud of it it turned out very very good uh it's it's well worth to listen he did a phenomenal job and rather like a lot of that kind of stuff it's like some dude will go read like a Wikipedia entry or read somebody else's book and then they'll make like a podcast where they basically like regurgitate some stuff they just read it's it's like interviews it's interviews with it's interviews with investigators it's interviews with victims families it's it's very well done like a ton of original reporting in it it's a great series all right jaguars is this stuff good here phil yep

jaguars are floating around in the world right now? Well, there's a big discrepancy between the numbers. One number is 63,000. The other number is 173,000. Most jaguar biologists think the lower number is the more accurate number. But about 80% of those jaguars, let's say 63,000, let's say 100,000, are in the Amazon or the Pontinal of Brazil. Okay. Outside that, so in the IUCN, the Jaguar is considered threatened or near threatened. But if you eliminate the Amazon and the Pontinal, they're considered endangered or critically endangered. Mm-hmm.

Which, hey folks, Steve Ronella here. It's that time again, the meat eater Black Friday sale from November 20 through December 1. You can save up to 50% across the entire meat eater family of brands. First Light, FHF gear, Dave Smith decoys, Phelps, and the Meat Eater store. Whether you're chasing elk, setting decoys, or just gearing up for camp, this is the time to upgrade the kit that carries you through the season. Visit your favorite brand site to find your deal, and don't miss the Meat Eater Black Friday sale.

It would be true of a lot of wildlife species. I mean, if you eliminate their core range... Yeah, good point. Then it looks grim. It looks grim, yeah. However, you know, with the corridor, there's a reinvestment of time and effort into the corridor. There's something called the 2030 roadmap that a lot of the environmental organizations have signed on to, including Panthera, WCS, lots of other IUCN. And by 2030, they want to solidify 30 Jaguar Conservation Units and connect 30 more potential Jaguar Unit.

So there's a big, across Latin America and South America, there's kind of this new appreciation of what the Jaguar represents. Yeah, like, explain their historic range a little bit. And while you're doing that, can you touch on, did court? believe coronado ran into jaguars like we up in kansas first of all yeah i do believe coronado ran into jaguars yeah i think that when was coronado what was the date late 15th late 1500s definitely yeah i think jaguars were pretty much spread across much of the united because he talks about he talks about leopards yeah right and he talks about lions yeah and you're like the lions mountain lions, but then people are like, what in the hell

is he talking about when he mentioned seeing leopards? Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I do think up until probably 1900, they were in, you know, Colorado, in California, and West Texas, Alabama, Louisiana. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think that?

Yeah, I do. Alabama and Louisiana, you think legit. I think it's legit. I mean, you look at their hat, look at the habitat. I mean, that's the, that's the ideal habitat for a jaguar. Until what year? Up until maybe 1900. Maybe, maybe mid-1800s.

But their range, their range is now 5,000 latitude and no miles from southern Arizona. Right now, there's one jaguar roaming the mountains of southern Arizona. Yeah, the U.S. is usually good for like one. Yeah, one or two. Right. His name is Cochise, and he was discovered in, I think, late 2023. But so it all the way down to the Iberra in northern Argentina. But of course, one.

Is that how you say that word? Yeah, the Ibera. No, I've been there. Oh, have you? I thought it was the Iibera. No, I fished down there. Oh, really? No.

The Iberra wetlands. Well, maybe it is, I've called it Iberra. Well, we'll ask a Spanish expert, I suppose. but so in where they're actually doing a reintroduction of jaguars now but that's like near the that's where like that that deadly triangle paraguay uruguay that's exactly that all come together it's like kind of a little bit of a lawless what kind of fishing were you doing down there golden draughton piranha yeah so once upon a time yeah they i mean they migrated obviously over the bering land bridge like a million years ago and then they saw a bunch of ice in front of them so they

They stayed for many generations in kind of the Yukon, Yukon territories. And then as that ice began to melt during the Pleistocene warmups, I mean, what were there, like 20 or something like that, the Jaguar started moving south, moved into Canada, then into Montana, you know, the grasslands of North and South Dakota and Kansas, and then continued to move down to, you know, almost the tip of South America. So they didn't evolve as like a warm weather. tropical species no they're they're they're complete generalists you know they can they can live anywhere just like a mountain line kind of like a mountain lion or so i was down in southern bolivia in the grand chaco um the grand chaco is like parched country brittle parched country and the the jaguars thrive there oh really yeah yeah it's amazing they thrive in the sierra madres of mexico they thrive in the in the madrean sky islands of of arizona they're they're really they're

remarkable creatures yeah i know there's a picture i have this book called candid critters oh yeah and it's like it's like influential trail cam photos yeah um and there is i think at the time it was maybe the only known photo right taken in arizona of a jaguar standing in the snow in the wachuka mountains i think okay yeah right you're saying that was not that's a great photo that's not a problem for the jaguar well i don't i don't know about snow snow might be pushing it yeah but um he was obviously or not she but likely he was obviously in the wachuka mountains you know you get snow there and you know in late april so but i i'm familiar with that photo yeah yeah i uh i've seen a bunch of tracks jaguar tracks not in the u.s uh-huh one time we were

um can't remember where we were we were it was in guiana and we were there's this big sandbar where the turtles were oh yeah nesting so we went there with native people to dig turtle eggs yeah and you could see where the the jaguars were digging the turtle eggs out and probably also hunting um the turtles when they come out of the water yeah right we go back to our camp and And then a couple of guys went back to the sandbar to take a bath. And there's tracks all over. I was dying to see one. I was dying to see one.

Yeah. There's tracks all over. They turn around and go right back to take a bath. And they're like, as soon as we got there, there's Jaguar standing on the gravel bar. I'm not kidding. I missed them by like, I'm not kidding. I missed it by 20 minutes. Yeah.

Just because you didn't want to take a bath. Yeah, yeah, whatever. But I've never laid eyes on one, man. Yeah. They're incredible. You've no doubt laid eyes on. Yeah. What was the first time you saw one?

In the pontonal. Okay. So the pontonel. is kind of like Kruger National Park of Brazil. So the Jaguars there have become habituated to people. And this was during COVID, so there were almost no other tourists. But we were on the Kuiaba River and motoring down the river into one of the tributaries. And all, you know, we're all looking at the banks of the river.

And all of a sudden, I spotted one. you know, kind of lounging in the sand underneath the tree. And just then the guide, you know, the boat captain and guide also saw that Jaguar. And I'll never forget, he was like barely whispered. He said, Onza. And Onsa, you know, Panthera, Onsa is, you know, the name for the jaguar. What is that word? So Panthera is the genus and then Osa.

I mean, Onsa is the, is it, would it be the family name? I'm not sure. No, genus V.C. But, man, what does that word mean? Jaguar. So he just said, he just said, jaguar. And all he had to do was whisper it. And man, my whole body was tingling.

And this hue, we anchored the boat just outside, just outside the bank, the river bank. And all of a sudden, this jaguar rose. Just this absolutely enormous jaguar, absolutely beautiful, and came to the river to drink. And he was just unperturbed, you know. It wasn't like he moved quickly. I think in the book I describe it something like music. I mean, like every part of his body just operated so beautifully. And he stood there drinking, then he looked up at us.

And then he walked kind of broadside to us. down the river, and it was just, I mean, it was magnificent. Yeah, it is just like a, like having not seen one, I'm just fascinated by them. And it is just a different critter, man. Even people who've seen a lot of them. How do they compare to a mountain lion? Yeah. Kick his ass.

What are their sizes? A burlier, right? So I think the biggest, there, I was with this, this Brazilian trapper. he he he traps and you know collars jaguars the biggest one he's i think trapped in collared a hundred his name is joe r s may and he's famous and he's trapped about 300 you know maybe 120 jaguars the biggest one he's ever trapped was 300 pounds wow you know like a you know like a lioness in africa and but in the in the pontonol they grow them big in the amazon they grow them big but you know if you get one in northern mexico or say one in arizona they're going to be

maybe 130 or 140 pounds like a lion yeah like yeah exactly like a lion so they're much much smaller same species but just much much smaller um and i don't know if it has to do with habitat or food i mean jaguars eat like 85 different species everything from frogs to skunks you know to have alinas but um i think teddy roosevelt he he hunted jaguars in the pontonale with his with his son kermit and i think um there's one account he said uh kermit shot a jaguar with a 405 winchester and it was as big as a small male you know african lion so i imagine that was 300 pounds or maybe even more do they have um like uh leopards and and tigers in India, say, do they have a reputation for attacking people or not really?

That's the thing. Just almost no accounts of unprovoked attacks. And Alan Rabinowitz, the guy I wrote about, called them the reluctant warrior. He said they were much, much more comfortable kind of eluding man. And there's a biologist down in Brazil who said, man was never. part of their prey template for one thing and also there's something called the tigriadas which was the jaguar craze which jackie onassis um um set off when she stepped out of a limousine in um a knee length double breasted somali leopard coat and she started this this fashion craze for

spotted cat um accessories um so you're making me like camille So, so what happened during the Tigriadas, maybe is like what happened during to Grizzlies in the United States. What is the word? It's TIG, Tigri yadas. The tiger, yeah, the tiger craves. Yeah. And that set off a market hunting campaign.

Huge. In the 60s. In the 60s to 1975 when CITES finally stepped in and tried to eliminate. the trafficking. But in, in, from 1962 to 1975, 180,000 jaguars were killed in Brazil alone for, for the fashion, maybe not all for the fashion industry, but for part, part of the fashion industry, more jaguars than we have now. It were in total. During what years? 1963 to 1975. They were not running a quota program. They were not running. No, everybody was out trying to kill Jaguars. Alan Rabinowitz said they had the dollar sign on the back right

next to the bullseye. What was a, at that time, what kind of money was a Jaguar hiding? Like, it must have been extraordinary to drive that level of commitment. Because it's not like they're like hanging out in alfalfa. Yeah, yeah, right. You may be $200, but $200 for, you know, I hate to say lowly, but $200 for someone living in a village in Bolivia or Jag or or or Brazil is a lot of money and they they killed them like snakes that's what that's what george shaller said they just killed them like snakes even but mostly all black market all black market yeah they until cites stepped in in 1975 to try to shut down the the the traffic which they did to a certain extent yeah there was a there was a lively black market in in jaguar pelts

If you look over your left shoulder, you see that? That's a bobcat right there, okay? Right. Now, here's an interesting thing about sighties and spotted cats. So that's from Texas. Uh-huh. Okay. Yeah.

In Texas, there's no close season on Bobcats. Bobcats are non-game. No close season on Bobcats, no bag limit on Bobcats. Wow. Part of it is because Texas Bobcats aren't valuable. Mm-hmm. Okay, like a bobcat up here. Oh, yeah.

I mean, a bobcat up here could be like five, six, seven hundred bucks, right? A bobcat from certain areas, like high desert country could be $1,000. Right. But those cats are effectively valueless. So there's not like a huge push on it. But what's interesting is you have it in Texas, here's an animal that's non-game, no close season, no bag limit. But you can't move that cat out of Texas without a CITES tag. Oh.

And you'd be like, well, why? The state doesn't even manage them. And it's because, because, like, spotted cats. In general. Yeah. Oh. So any spotted cat is going to have regulatory pressure on it because it's so easy to be like, oh, no, that's not that.

Uh-huh. Do you follow what I'm saying? So it's like, like, they're trying to regulate the movement of spotted cats because there's so many imperiled spotted cats. They just want to be that if it's a spotted cat, it's a pain in the ass. Even if it's worthless. Yeah. If it's got spotted cats.

We just don't know what it is. Is it like, is it that or is it a snow leopard? Yeah. You know, or whatever, right? Yeah. Well, you've had Dan Floreson. You know, in, you know, his book American Serengetti, he talks about, you know, what they did to predators, you know, in colonial America and jaguars were one of the things they just, you know, they just shot. Would they put, would they poison jaguars too?

Yeah, they, I think they poison all predators, you know, wolves. bear coyotes in in brazil in you know south america sure they used to poison them poison them all the time you mentioned um colonial america are are do you think black jaguars in colonial america are responsible for the continued sightings of black like claim sightings of black panthers yeah wherever in southern the southern united oh that's interesting there There's the black jaguars only come from one place. Is that right? Tell me more.

So like the colonist would not have seen that. I hope Taylor Sledge and Clay's dad are listening. In the entire state of Mississippi, I hope it was listening right now. I don't know if you know, but they have on their hands right now a black jaguar. Who does? He's just roaming or it's a cat. It's a house cat. There was just a picture that our buddy in Mississippi sent us and he's like, it's a black jaguar.

He's like the whole state's panties are on fire. And you kind of look and you're like, maybe it's like a house cat. It's like a guy has a picture of a cat standing on the side of the road. But it's also people like black mountain lions. Oh, yeah, sure. But everybody knows there's no such. Now that words out, there is no, never has been. There's no such thing as a black panther.

A black panther is a wet panther. So then the black, the black panther crowd hit on the thing that there is melanism and jaguers. So as Taylor Sledge was saying, he even had a veterinarian tell him, it's got to be a melanistic jaguar. In Mississippi. Yes. They're terrorizing Mississippi as we speak. Yeah, well, maybe that's the second Jaguar. We got Cochise in Arizona and whatever the black jaguar is named in Mississippi.

But there's a place in Brazil called the Sahado. It's C-E-R-A-D-O, but they pronounce the double R like Hado. Okay. In the Sahado, and that's the only place that black Jaguars are. So there's like a melanistic jaguar. Is he like flat out black? Or is he got like dark spots? No, I have a...

I pulled up a picture. Oh, yeah. Pull this up, Phil. Of your friend in Mississippi or of... Yeah, sorry, I can't read your mind. Send me a picture. I'll put it up there. Like, they show...

If Phil ever gets more serious about theater, you know, quits? Yeah. I'm going to get a guy that's just pummeling pictures on that screen, man. They show pictures of, like, jet black ones, but also, like, spots show the rosettes. Oh, really? Barely, like, yeah. So it's like, uh, it's, it's like those black bears, you know, like the, the spirit bears or whatever in Canada. It's like a very localized expression of some sort of gene.

Yeah, that must be. Yeah, I don't know that. I expect that's what it is. Yeah. So you can see the. Phil, I take that back. I don't think you should do that. No, okay.

Because some places I've been on, they do it, and it gets a little annoying. Like, every damn thing you talk about is up on the screen. I'm glad you've had a complete 180 in the last 17 seconds. Your original instincts were correct, Phil. Don't put it up. What was the, what was the, give me some of the, like, of the, let's say, let's take Mesoamerica. Yeah. Okay, just because I'm familiar, like, like Mayan culture, different Mesoamerican cultures, pre-context, so pre-Columbian cultures.

Yeah. What was there, is there a way to generalize about like, what was their understanding of the animal? Like, like the Amerindian, indigenous understanding of the animal. Was it like a prize thing to get? Was it like what, you know, if you had to sort of typify the relationship? They worshipped it. I mean, metaphysically, there was like, no. more important animal made it was it represented to those people what say the grizzly bear represented

to um you know northern native american tribes um it was part of their religion part of their um art part of their architecture part of their iconography they absolutely worshipped it the mayans believe that the jaguar escorted the sun from day to night and back today um the olmex would would would mutilate their heads so they resembled jaguar heads and um but at the same time they did kill jaguars because they valued their pelts they valued their teeth you know etc but they had i mean it was you know it was their totem it was something you know that was important to every aspect of their lives but they didn't regard it as like as one of their predators um you you mean it has something to be feared yeah like when you went out you know

like let's you talk about the northern plains right and the northern plains um you knew people everyone would have known people that were killed by grizzlies yeah right and so but there wasn't like an element of that like a thing that was you were afraid of no no i i from all the reading i've done and you know the traveling i did i never got i never got i never got that impression. Yeah. I mean, it was, you know, they, they were worshipped. So what, at what point did you go from being like kind of interested in Jaguars to being that you're going to do a whole book? Like I'm familiar with that little transition. Yeah, right, right. Well, let's see. I read, I was living just above Boulder, Colorado in a little mining town

called Jamestown, and I was going to grad school at CU, and I read Jaguar for the first time in like 1990. It came out in 1986 or something like that, and I was bold over. What is that book? I'm not familiar. That's Alan Rabinowitz's first book. He wrote Jaguar. It was about his experience in Belize when he was there for a year and a half, and he radio collared the first Jaguar in the but he dedicated himself to this this coxome basin in belize he dedicated himself to the jaguars of belize and i read that book and i was like man this guy's my hero he's incredible he's like fierce and fearless he'll go anywhere he'll do anything and uh he brought his weights he was like

he was a he was a martial artist and he was a weightlifter brought his weights to this little tiny little Mayan village down in Belize and he would do his weights and he had green eyes and a hairy chest and the Maya the people the Maya people didn't know they were they feared him initially and they thought he had the eyes of a jaguar but anyway I would go around and you know I would I would hike around the mountains fish or hunt or backpack and I would pretend like I was looking for jaguar tracks and then like fast forward to two 2000, I don't know, one or two. I did an interview with Alan Rabinowitz for, I think it was outside magazine. And I talked to him at length. What year was this been? Like 2001 or two.

I was writing there then. Oh, you were. I started writing there in 2000. Oh, well, then. I'm sure I read it. Huh. Were you in Santa Fe at the time? No, no, no. No. I was just a like a what they call it at time contributing editor. Contributing editor? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was never under contract, but I did cover stories and, yeah. Sad what's become of the outside. Yeah, well, it's different now. Too bad. But not sending you over to the Philippines for a month.

No, they got no budgets. Oh, no. Hey, folks, Steve Ronella here. It's that time again, the Meat Eater Black Friday sale from November 20 through December 1, you can save up to 50% across the entire meat eater family of brands. First Light, FHF Gear, Dave Smith, D, Phelps and the Meat Eater store. Whether you're chasing elk,

setting decoys, or just gearing up for camp, this is the time to upgrade the kit that carries you through the season. Visit your favorite brand site to find your deal and don't miss the Meat Eater Black Friday sale. So anyway, I interviewed him at length and I proposed writing a biography at that time of him. And he kind of entertained the notion And about six months later, after we had long, long conversations about his life, he'd just been diagnosed with chronic lymphatic leukemia, which the doctors told him would eventually kill him.

And they told him not to get like amoebic dysentery or malaria or whatever because it would, you know, it would set him back. But of course, he didn't, you know, he didn't listen to him. And where was this guy from? He was from New York. He grew up in Queens, New York. But there was nowhere he wouldn't go. and nothing he wouldn't do he I mean he studied tigers in Burma

and Thailand he studied clouded leopards on the island of Formosa like a big you cat guy oh big big cat the most you know they called him the Indiana Jones of wildlife ecology he was super fit he's super courageous

would do anything but anyway I gotta tell you something is nuts man that I feel like lines up with this yeah so in it would have been around 90 or 91 no like 91 or 92. Yeah.

I went to a National Trappers Association convention. Okay? Yeah. Might have been in Iowa. And I go to a lecture by a prominent trapper. His last name was Brown. I feel like his name was Jerry Brown, but that's like the old governor in California, California. There's probably a million Jerry Browns.

He's a predator trapper, like a coyote trapper, cat trapper. Yeah. He was giving a lecture. I'm not shitting you. He's giving a lecture. He had been contracted and had been contracted and had. been down in South America with researchers trying to figure out how to get collars on jaguars using foot snares yeah and other things and because he's like he's like a big cat

trapper yeah and he was like talking about his experiences like that dude had to have somehow been lined up with the guy you're talking about because the timing is right i'm sure he was was was his name Darren Simpson definitely not that definitely not that okay no he was like he was just a consultant on a guy that knew his way around cat trapping and I remember him talking about they were developing because he's trying to hook him

and he just gave this lecture about and I remember at that time you were thinking like that was badass because those professional trappers are always trying to find ways to round out their income and that was what he was doing and I wonder if he like lines up

in some way they first started trapping jaguars in the Pontinal in the early late 70s or early 80s. But then it, but it wasn't prominent. It wasn't a, you know, common practice. And how did it catch them? They, well, cable snares. On the foot. On the foot. Yeah. Like a loaded snare. Like a loaded snare, right. No, no bait. No bait. Blind sets. Blind sets.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the way. You got to be good, man. You got to be really good. So this Joe Ars May, he's a veterinarian and a big cat trapper that I spent, you know, considerable amount of time with in Brazil. The guy's amazing. He's like, my cousin hymo trapping wolverines you know up in the arctic national wildlife refuge i mean he's he's trapped he traps oslet he traps main wolves he traps jaguars over a hundred and it's really pretty simple but you and trail sets tray yeah yeah and he and it's it's it's amazing i don't know i don't like how he goes about like what is he doing so you have the so he sets the he sets a piece of um you know the base plate, he uses rebar, and he anchors it like two feet down. Then he has,

then he has swivels in springs, and then he attaches that to the thrower. And then there's the cable snare. So, and then there's the pressure plate just outside, you know, the cable snare, which is just a sponge with dirt on top. And, um, and then he makes this little lane. And that's the trigger is the weight on the pressure. Exactly. That's the, that's the trigger is the weight on that. And then he makes this little trail. It's amazing. I don't know how he, and they don't worry about scent, human scent, which, you know. They don't give it. They don't care. That's kind of true of like cat trapping in general. Oh, is it? Yeah. They're not like canines. They're not like, yeah, because I remember watching my, my cousin hymo trapped wolves. I mean, you know,

cats like bare hands. You don't, you don't even, a lot of guys don't cover the pan. Yeah, exactly. So, um, so then he made this kind of trail, um, of leaves, uh, to the, to the snare. And then he got out all the, all the stuff in the middle of the trail because jaguars like to walk side, jaguars like to walk silently. They can't even be a leaf. There can't you're offering him a quiet place to put his foot. Exactly. Offer him a quiet place to put his foot. Huh. And then, um, and then they have a little. like fishing line attached to the cable snare, which runs up a pole, which attaches to a magnet in a transmitter.

So when the cat trips that, you know, you have a receiver, you know that that, that, that, yeah, you know that that trap has been tripped. And it's, and you got like a tape here or a white-lit peckerie or a jaguar. Exactly. You don't know what's in there. Sometimes you got a taper, right. Is there some urgency? to get there so they don't hurt them. Yeah, you know, they, they have a catch in the catch

circle. You clear everything out of the catch circle. Otherwise, they will tear the thing up, like a Wolverine or something. And it hurt himself. And hurt himself. Yeah. In fact, in the book, Alan Rabinowitz, one of the, the first jaguar he traps is IPUK, which is the Mayan god of death. tears tears off his canine in one of the in one of the traps in the

so yeah so it does it does happen is he using trail cameras to zero in on specific jaguars or just like keep they use lots of

lots of trail cams to zero in on jaguars yeah yeah and then you know they they start establishing the big cats routine and then they'll put, you know, then they'll put the... Oh, so they're like targeting a cat.

They're targeting a cat, yeah. They're targeting a specific cat. How many countries you've been to in your life? Oh, my God, in my life? Yeah. Like a hundred? No, probably not. No.

I don't know. For the book, I traveled, you know, all over South America and Central America. You know, my friends joke that I only write books when I... What? So I can travel to those places. Yeah, hell yeah. So I guess there's an element of truth to that. But, yeah, I'd have to get, I'd have to think about it. You know, been to Africa, been to, you know, all over Southeast Asia, now South America and Central America.

Probably not as many places as you. I bet more. I don't know. I've repeatedly gone back to New Guinea. So you keep burning up opportunities at the same place. Right, yeah, yeah. So when we got off on a couple. not tangents because they're very relevant you were warming up to you were warming up to your subject

yeah and he got sick oh sorry yeah sorry yeah so he got he got sick but ultimately he said um you know what this has been great we remain friends but i'm going to write my own books he by that time he'd already written jaguar chasing the dragon's tale about um um trying to find the formosan The mythical, Formosa and Clouded Leopard, which he never found. Well, I don't know what that is. A clouded leopard is a little, is a little, you know, small little leopard. Out of where? Very elusive.

Thailand, Formosa, you know. And it's not an actual thing, or it is? No, it is. It is. But they, I say mythical because they thought it existed, but, you know, it probably died 100 years before. Oh, like he thought maybe it was like a Lazarus species. Yeah, yeah, right.

I got you. Right. And then he wrote a book about, two books about Burma, one called Life and the Valley of Death and one called Beyond the Last Village. So he's a great writer. And I mined all his books, you know, and did lots of interviews with friends and his wife to write the book. But ultimately, he decided he, you know, he didn't need me to write a book. But we remain friends. We remained friends for a long time.

And then, you know, as some of these friendships do, you know, you. You know, we just, we stopped talking for no other reason. Then we just got busy. And in 2018, I went to New Guinea, and we'd been in touch. And I'm talking again about doing a documentary about him or a book about him. And we've been talking and, you know, back in touch. And I was elated because, you know, he's an amazing guy. I got back from, I got back from New Guinea.

And one of the people at Panthera, the communications director, called me and told me he died. So, um, so, you know, he died way before his time, you know, of leukemia of actually leukemia together with, with a skin cancer. Okay. Yeah. So I, you know, that was what year? That was in 2018. I think he was 60, 63 at the time.

Mm. But, you know, he was just, he was fearsome and, you know, fearless. He was someone to be admired. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So eventually you decided to, I mean, obviously, I'm looking at it right now. Yeah. You picked up the project.

Yeah, so I picked up the project and, you know, got in touch with Panthera, the organization. He kind of helped establish. And there was this other guy named Howard Quigley, who was a famous Jaguar biologist and also Tiger biologist. He was one of the first people to collar Amir Tigers in Siberia, amazing guy too. So he helped me, you know, kind of find places along the Jaguar corridor, you know, along that. 5,000 miles to visit, you know, people, people that wanted to talk, people that were doing amazing things, and also people, places where I might have a chance of seeing Jaguars. Along that quarter, I imagine the Darien Gap's got to be a real bitch, huh?

Like, that's got to be like the problem, right? That is, yeah, exactly. I feel like the Darying Gap only gets brought up in the context of it being a problem. Yeah. For various reasons. Well, and then, and then at the height, like, at the height of the Biden administration, when there was so much illegal immigration. Yeah.

It, like, brought in tons of people into the, into the Darien Gap. And then the, the Dary and Gap kind of became, like, almost like a conflict zone. Yeah, exactly. I mean, wasn't there a New York Times reporter who went down there and walked the Darian Gap with the people? I mean, can you imagine, like, four-year-old children going through the Dary and Gap? And people in there praying on them. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And it, like, this, this sonic very isolated place became, well, something like a very very visited place. Yeah, right. And a lot of, a lot of violence coming out of that. A lot of violence. Yeah, a lot of trafficking. Yeah. But for, yeah, for the Jaguar, that's like a pinch point. And when they were first establishing the Jaguar corridor, that was something they really worried about, is the Darien Gets. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I guess, I guess through that context, let's talk about this corridor. Like, the objective, presumably, is to get Jaguars back into the northern, their northern range, right? Back into Mesoamerica. Yeah.

I mean, that's part of it. But the, the, the, the major point is that because jaguars are the only wide-ranging predators without a subspecies, that's to preserve, that's to preserve the DNA. Okay. You know, there are no taxonomic differences between jaguars. You know, when, when, when that was discovered in 1999, Alan Rabinowitz was, elated. He's like, you know, we can treat jaguars as a single ecological unit as one species. So that was the idea, you know, is the genetic flow, genetic freedom, make sure that jaguars could move

throughout the corridor, you know, and spread their genes. What is the, what are the, the, the, the, corridor, what are the, what's the northern terminus and the southern terminus? Like, like, what is the corridor? So the corridor is this kind of loosely connected, they call them Jaguar Conservation Units the kind of the avenues or the trails or whatever you want to call

them the passageways by which they connect the Jaguar Conservation Units which are just areas that produce a lot of Jaguars that are just good habitat for Jaguars but it goes from

again the Ibira or Iberra all the way up to essentially the Sierra Madres of of Mexico or to southern Arizona. Essentially, everything below Highway 10 in Southern Arizona. That's the corridor. So it's a huge corridor.

It's one of the biggest corridors of any animal on earth, except the leopards may be a little bit bigger. Just for, like, as far as their range, like of an individual animal and their social lives, Is it fair, like what we'd expect, like males roam and they're fairly solitary creatures? I mean, is there anything unique in terms of jaguars and how they move around the landscape and relate to one another? Yeah, well, I mean, they're, first of all, they're solitary. You know, they get together to mate, and that's pretty much it. Jim, stay up close to your mic, man. Oh, yeah, sorry.

And the females, they have what they call range fidelity, so they don't move that far. But the males, particularly a male in what they call natal dispersal, a male that has not mated, like Cochise or like this famous Jaguar El Hefe, you know, they'll come out of, they'll come out of the Sierra Madres of northern Mexico, the Northern Jaguar Reserve, which. which is like 125 miles south of the border, and they'll roam all the way into, you know, the Santa Rita Mountains of southern Arizona. So they have huge ranges, particularly. So that's where those Arizona cats are coming from. Yeah. I didn't know that that was that close to the border.

Yeah, 125 miles south of the border. And that's, you know, kind of like the, a waning, well, I wouldn't say waning, but the last population, the farthest north, a breeding population of jaguars. And are we talking like 10? Are we talking hundreds? No, you're probably talking like 30 or 40. Okay. In the Sierra Madre?

In the Sierra Madres, yeah. Eating Coos deer. Eating Coos deer. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I know you've had Jim. Jim Hefflefinger. I know you've had Jim Hefflefinger on it.

I talked with him at length. He's a great guy. We've discovered that we grew up like 10 miles from each other. Yeah. Yeah. So I was just, I wasn't going to bring up Hefflefinger by name, but let's talk a little bit about wildlife politics in Arizona. Yeah, sure. Well, you can't avoid it. All right. So the, like, there's a sort of, I don't know, man, there's a sort of battle.

Okay. There's a, there's a management battle where in Arizona, there are, there are forces. There are powers that be that want to just kind of wash their hands of this whole Jaguar thing. Yeah. And they want to say, sure, like maybe now and then, a male would wander up into Arizona, but you can't call this core habitat. Because once someone says, no, bro, this is core habitat, then they're going to be like, it'd be like the same thing. Like Colorado, them saying, you know what, we have a mandate, we're going to, we're going to

reintroduce wolves in Colorado. The fear is that someone down the road says. And this is not my fear. I think it's a great idea. The fear is that someone down the road, someone says, hey, this is historic Jaguar range. This is core habitat for Jaguars. We have a legal responsibility to restore Jaguars in Arizona, which I think is a phenomenal idea.

I'd like it even more if I live there. Yeah. That's a cool cat. You want to see one because you didn't see what. I just like all that. I like all that like. Yeah. I like looking over my shoulder.

Yeah. You know, and even though they're passive and all that, I just like the whole thing about them. And you're never going to have, it's not going to have like enough Jaguars where you're having like, it's not going to have like a, it's not going to be that all of a sudden predation goes up. Yeah. Because what it's going to come, it's going to come at the expense of mountain lions. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.

So I think it's a phenomenal idea. I'm just throwing that out there. But that's like the wildlife politics end. Oh, man. And so these guys came up with this great map. Yeah. it's every known and in the so it's in the you in the united states of america it's this map of like every known instance and they track down stuff even like photos and bars yeah like some old

photo of barers like a dude with a dead jaguar like what is that all about they're like oh yeah my grandpa he shot it yeah does anyone know no no it's just like a picture in the bar but then they get to interview people are like legitimately at some point in time like it seems like this dude's grandpa no joke shot a jaguar and so on the map and people argue about the map and on the map is also jaguars that dudes trucked up there yeah to turn loose for jaguar hunts right and so the map is like a contentious map where there there there's people going like not legit not legit, not legit. And other people are going like, no, these are all legit sightings. Yeah. And it boils down to is someone someday going to say, we're going to do a release

of Jaguars? Well, you seem to not like this subject. Well, I'm telling you, you called it controversial. Man, that's it in the nail on the head. And it's been going on for a long time since pretty much 1996 when one rancher Warner Glenn guy straight out I was going to ask you if you ran into Warner Glenn he caught that one

yeah yeah straight out of Central casting you know saw someone in 1996 and this other guy named he and his wife Jack Childs and he was a he was a you know he ran lions with his with his dogs and yeah we've had like

our colleague Clay has done a lot with him oh oh jack video no with warner not with warner yeah he well with warner yeah yeah well they're both they're amazing amazing guys and probably pretty middle the middle of the road guys as far as jaguars are concerned if you go into like even in those years like back then not a little bit later than that no as much as in 2000s yeah uh there's a guy that knew those guys that me and yani are friends with floyd green and you went into his optic shop and there's a picture sure that jaguar. Yeah.

And I was like, what's up with that jaguar? It was like the Warner Glen Jaguar. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he talked about the shiny green eyes. You're thinking Leopold. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah.

In Leopold, Leopold, Leopold ultimately loved Jaguars. He wrote a lot about Jaguars, but I won't, we won't go that far straight. But so, I mean, this is really, really complicated,

and I won't give you too much history. But there is, there was an effort called Canra, the central Arizona, New Mexico recovery area. And this group that this group that you were talking about wanted to set aside 20 million acres from the Aldo Leopold Wilderness and the Gila all the way up to the southern rim of the Grand Canyon along the Muggeon Rim as Jaguar. Historically, it was probably Jaguar Habitat.

So they wanted to do a reintroduction of Jaguars, 90 to 120 Jaguars, in that area, which was shot down by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Secretary of the Interior. Dude, you want to talk about people's panties getting on fire, man. I'm sure. You can imagine the Cattlemen's Association, et cetera. But, you know, and the hunters, too. I mean, I hunt, so, you know, it's a tough thing. But Jaguars don't. And I wasn't like, here's.

a deal yeah i feel and i'm not a cat expert yeah i feel this is just my me ballpark or like crystal ball in it i don't think you'd see because this is all mountain lion country yeah i don't think you'd probably see an increase in predation i think you'd see it shift from what to what i think the mountain lions would would pay the price oh yeah like if you if you introduce the Like the second species, you don't all of a sudden double your big cat population. Yeah. Like when you put, so if you put wolves in with mountain lions, you get like additive predation has been very demonstrated.

I just have a hard time picturing throwing another cat in the mix. Uh-huh. Maybe I'm wrong. Throwing another cat in the mix. I still think you're going to see X number of dead deer killed by cats. Yeah. Not double or triple. No, I don't think so.

Yeah. Well, what do I know? I don't know. Yeah. Makes sense, though. I can see it both ways, to be honest. It makes complete sense. Well, first of all, um, jaguars live in really low, low densities.

Um, second of all, they, they, they eat 85 species. You know, they're not going to, they're not going to just eat coos deer and elk. They're going to eat frogs. They're going to eat skunks. They're going to eat armadillos. They like turtles. Yeah, they love turtles. You know turtles in areas.

Yeah. But yeah, I mean, they're real generalists, you know, so they're not going to concentrate, um, You know, on the deer or on the elk. And I think Jim Heffelfinger has said that, you know, I don't think that predation would be increased that much. Oh. Right? I don't want to drag him into this. Yeah.

Matter of fact, I can't remember what his take on this whole thing is. Well, I think he, I think his take on, I think his take on critical habitat and reintroduction is very, is negative. I mean, he's like, it's a, it's a powder. keg and also why waste endangered species money on a cat that may or may not want to live because they got spots because they got spots yeah they're bad and they got jowl muscles yeah i mean you see one of these cats i mean they are so magnificent i mean their heads are like that and they're so powerful i mean they and they live in trees they swim you know they swim rivers with came in in their mouths for a mile.

I mean, they are like, they're like the most, they're like the most athletic cat there is, athletic beast there is. When I get attacked by a lion or a grizzly, I usually can't pull their upper and lower jaw part so they can't clamp down on me. Like, I don't know what the jag, man. 150,000, I don't know that that move is going to work. 500 pounds of pressure per square inch. Yeah, I'm going to start working out so I can hold them.

They, they say, build up some calluses, too. Yeah. I've never seen a Jaguar, but I think it was at a Denver zoo. They had some sort of tigers. I don't know if they were the Bengal tiger or what tiger, but I remember having that this sense of awe that you're describing. Oh, man. And it was only, you know, there's a paint of glass between me and this giant cat.

But when you look at it, it's just, it gives you a weird feeling. Well, it's just. What you said earlier is like when they move, every part of their body is actually. activated. They're not like my lab or they're kind of walking and there's like, like there's shaking and jiggling. Like when a cat moves, it's like, it's almost like a snake. It's like the whole thing is. Yeah, they're like a runway model, dude. We're like just the whole thing. There's not a muscle out of place. Yeah. That's exactly. That's exactly right. You see one of those things. It's something to behold. People by out, jaguar biologists who've seen like, you know, dozens in their lives still think it's like a dream. to see a jaguar. And yeah, they are, they are just incredibly beautiful. And they're such magnificent athletes. You know, they're just, you know, I mean, you know, they jump 20 feet, you know,

a standing jump into a tree. And then they can live in trees in certain parts of the Amazon. When it floods, they live in trees for months. It's crazy. Hey, folks, Steve Ronella here. It's that time again, the Meat Eater Black Friday sale. From November 20 through December 1, you can save up to 50% across the entire meat eater family of brands. First Light, FHF gear, Dave Smith decoys, Phelps, and the Meat Eater store.

Whether you're chasing elk, setting decoys, or just gearing up for camp, this is the time to upgrade the kit that carries you through the season. Visit your favorite brand site to find your deal, and don't miss the Meat Eater Black Friday sale. So with the, with the CITES protections, with more awareness, with the corridors, are we, like, has the decline in Jaguars been reversed? Or is it, are they still a species in decline? And is there, is their territory still shrinking? Yeah. That's, that's a good question. I think Jaguar biologists have hope. You know, they have to have hope. You know, it's in, you know, conservation, you know, hope. can be hard to come by. But, yeah, I think that people are hopeful that the Jaguar will persist, that they can kind of lock down these Jaguar conservation areas, and they can defend the corridor.

So I think they're, yeah, I think, I don't know what's happening to the population in general, but I do think that they have hoped that the Jaguars will continue to persist, if not thrive. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So you didn't have, like in your book, you didn't have a, through all that reporting, you didn't come up with like a strong personal opinion about what's going to happen with the animal? It just seems like it's like a legitimate question.

Well, yeah, I'm, it's, it's, it's tough. I mean, it's tough. I hate to be, you know, there were times when I was pessimistic and there were times when I was optimistic. You know, you go to the pontinol and you're filled with optimism. optimism because you see a lot of jaguars and there, you know, there, there are a lot of jaguars there. But the Amazon, you know, the, the, the, the Amazon is imperiled, you know, and that's where the bulk of jaguars, maybe 70 to 80 percent of jaguars live. And the Amazon, I could see, you know, when I was in Brazil, when, when, when, when, I don't mean to be

political, but when Donald Trump slapped tariffs on Chinese goods, Chinese, you know, reciprocated or retaliated, slapped tariffs on soybeans. So, you know, our soybean farmers couldn't send soybeans to China. So what did they Chinese do? They went to Bolivia and they went to the, they went to, they went to Brazil and to invest in soybeans. Yeah, and they just raised forest for, you know, 30, 40 miles. You see nothing but bean fields. And that's where they, that's where they got their beans so um and jaguars cannot live you know in a bean field but you don't need to apologize for being political because what's not political yeah particularly these you know i mean like like well no i mean like wildlife is political yeah it is it's like you can't there's no world in which you can talk

about wildlife and have it not intersect with politics it just it's like it is political yeah and alan rabbinowitz worked in burma shortly after the generals crushed the pro democracy movement and he worked there, and he was criticized. He was criticized by fellow biologists. He was criticized in the newspapers. He said, you know, since when do, you know, tigers get a vote? He said, I'm going to go save tigers. Well, they expected him to withdraw from Burma. Yeah, they expected him to withdraw from Burma, and he wouldn't. And, you know, in some cases, he was dealing with generals, you know, who were, you know, pretty unscrupulous people. But his commitment was to, you know, was to the Jaguar. or they're the tiger i mean to the tiger yeah yeah thanks yeah yeah do you focus mostly on his

work with jaguars or do you get into his work with other cats i get into his work a little bit with tigers in in burma but mostly i focus you know on the jaguar just because it was so kind of you know revolutionary the notion of the jaguar corridor you know that swath of land you know five 5,000, 5,000 miles, just hadn't been attempted before for one species. And then how much did he live through, by the time he died, was it clear that his vision was going to carry, was going to be effective? Yeah, definitely. He inspired, I mean, the Jaguar Corridor was essentially his idea in the Jaguar Corridor

lives on today. and there are countless biologists and countless environmental organizations who are dedicated to it. So, yeah, it lives on, and I think that he was aware before he died, you know, that there was a commitment to maintaining the Jaguar corridor. Do you think he's looking down and he's pissed that you want it right in the book after all? After he told you not to him? I hope he'd be thankful. He's like, son of a bitch, I asked him 10 times.

His wife was really, really helpful. And it was, I think it was still a painful experience for her because she still hadn't taken all his journals out of his closet. He was a, he was a protege of George Schaller. And George Schaller said, your job is at the end of every, first of all, take field notes. And at the end of the day, revisit those notes. and write about the sights and sounds and smells. You know, he said, I think his quote was the pen is your is the weapon against oblivion. So Alan Rabinowitz followed that.

And he was a, he was a, he was a very careful and dedicated note taker. So his, his wife, you know, it was pretty brave to allow me to, to, you know, to dive into someone. Yeah, exactly. Cren, when we were in Africa, wasn't it, wasn't those guys from Pantara that we were talking, the lion guys? Yep, yep, exactly. Yeah, we were with some dudes that were, uh, we just shared a camp with them. Huh. And they were coming in to set up a, they were coming in to set up a huge camera trap array.

Yeah. We call them trail cams in our circle. Sure. They were coming in to set up a huge, uh, trail cam array around lions, leopards. I think mainly I think mainly those two yeah oh wow yeah yeah I used to call him trail

cams too but I've been around jaguar biologists for so long I call them camera traps all my hunting buddies would be pissed yeah yeah you had to assimilate yeah exactly like I got a thing like like coyote

yeah you know yeah there's very like you don't meet many people who you don't meet trappers and stuff who call coyote Oh, it's a coyote. You got a code switch. Yeah, trail cams. You kind of know where they're coming from, camera traps.

You kind of know where they're coming from. You don't call mountain line, mountain line. You call them cats, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, so it's funny. You could tell someone's background there. But it's been, what an amazing tool, though. And my understanding, too, is with leopards and also with jaguars, the rosettes are identifiable.

Completely. So it gives you the ability to, um, um to to name them and know them yeah yeah exactly that's how that's how they jack childs identified a jaguar in 2005 he caught him on his trail cams and in 2005 and he looked at the rosettes and said these are the same rosettes that i saw on the jaguar that we photographed in 1996 and that what year was it 2005 okay so so he He recognized there was one that resembled Pinocchio, and one resembled a cartoon character called Betty Boop. I don't know.

I'm not familiar. But that's how we identified that cat. So that cat had been living in Arizona from 1996 through 2005. Huh. So, yeah, so that is the, no, no. That lived in Arizona that long without getting in trouble. Yeah, without getting in trouble. Yeah.

Yeah. Pretty amazing. Man. One thing, their grout, their, jaguars have this modified hyod bone in their throats so they can roar, unlike any other cat in the United States. And so every jaguars roar is different too. That's kind of their auditory signature. No, no roar is the same. Huh, really?

Yeah. Do you know the story? This was another controversial one. In the book, do you tell the story of the jaguar that gets killed by researchers in Arizona? Tell that story real quick. Oh, man. That's a, that's a, that's a sore one right there. That's a complicated one.

So that, that's called, that's Macho B. That, um, so in 2008, oh man, this is going to be tough. In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security set aside or made it known they had $50 million to give to agencies who were studying, who wanted to study the effects, of the border wall on endangered species. And there was a group called the Jaguar Borderland Detection Group, and they set up trail cams all over Southern Arizona from the Chiracawa Mountains or the Onomass Mountains

in New Mexico all the way to the Babakivaries, you know, in southwest of of of of Tucson and um I've kind of lost my thought for a moment oh we're talking about that cat that turned up got killed yeah so so they they what what the Arizona game and fish department wanted they wanted to they wanted to capture and collar a jaguar now there was a group called the Jaguar Conservation Group, which was made up of guys in the government, conservationists, ranchers, etc. And the environmentalists in that group said, if you're not going to set aside critical habitat and refuse to, why do we have to collar a Jaguar? Because that's essentially what you want to know. You want to figure out what his range is and where he's...

But then you're not going to do anything with the info. But you're not going to do anything. You're not going to do anything with the info. So the, so the so there was a surreptitious plan to capture

a cat, this macho bee in an area where they were also trying to trap mountain lions and bears. So

in February 18th, 2009 Macho B was captured. And he was captured in a snare which they baited with

the scat of a female Jaguar in heat. This is a long this is going to be a longster. No, I don't know. There's like some little ring. No, go. You're doing phenomenal. When you pulled that date out, dude, I was impressed. Yeah. It's still a sore point.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's get into it. And so there was this guy named Amel McCain, who was worked, had studied in Brazil with, with learning, and was an amazing tracker. Well, he had set up this snare with these two other biologists from the Arizona Game and Fish Department. And he said everything had been cleared. Everything was above board.

Well, it turns out it wasn't above board. This jaguar, macho B, was snared in February 18th of 2009. Two biologists said he was extremely frail at the time. And so they collared him, and then they waited six hours for the telazole to drift out of his body, and then the jaguar stumbled off. But he already was in bad condition. And then about two weeks later, they weren't getting a signal from Macho B from the collar. So about two weeks later, some Arizona Game and Fish people went to check on Macho B,

and they said he was extremely frail and stumbling around. Check on him how, if they're not getting a signal from the collar. They went back to that site, the snare site, and essentially he hadn't moved. the jaguar hadn't moved so then like a couple days later so they're not getting a move they're not getting movement they're not getting any movement off the collar i'm with you so then um on like march second 2009 a whistleblower came out this woman named jane brun who was working with the borderland detection group said that she had placed the female scat at the snare site to lure macho beat so right there the arizona game and fish essentially rationale went out the window

because it was deliberate yeah because their deal was that it just inadvertently got hooked in a lion's set. It was an incidental in it for a new thing. Yeah. But they had baited it. But they had baited it. For jaguar. For jaguars.

And I'd like to know what it takes to get, um, female jaguar in heat, scat. That's a great. I have no idea. It's a great question. I have no idea. That should be asked. Um, but then a day later. Um, so what, how was that a whistleboard?

That seems more like an admission. well because the the the game and fish department was trying to cover up the that it was you know an incidental inadvertent oh and so she was like hey it wasn't in fact i did it and then she wrote eventually wrote a book called um cloak and jaguar oh come on really it was actually a pretty good book yeah come on i mean it sounds like a podcast yeah right right so anyway back we had good titles so anyway on let's see march 3rd another party went out to check on macho b and captured him because they could tell that he you know he was hurt he was hurting and hurting bad so they brought him to the phoenix zoo and they did the bunch of tests and they were like

this this jaguar's going to die so they thought about They thought about putting... And what did the tests reveal? That he'd been drugged bad or he was starving? He was starving. He had already starving. Yeah, already starving physically and bad condition and his kidneys were shot. Hmm.

Well... Old? Old animal? So he would... Kidneys were shot from the drugs? No. Kidneys were shot from dehydration. Okay.

When they found him the first time, he was hypothermic. I think he, his core pressure. was blood his core temperature was like 90 degrees or something like that so so yeah i mean this if i want so i'm trying to give you some kind of broad brushstrokes but ultimately they had to put the jaguar down and when they put had to put the jaguar down um on march third all the paper you know papers across the country covered the death of macho b and then the whole the whole kind of I hate to say guys, but the whole thing just blew up. Sure.

And two reporters for the Arizona Daily Star, a guy named Tim Stellar, and I think Tom Davis, waited into this for months, waiting into all the, all the literature, and ultimately decided that what had happened was that the Arizona Game and Fish Department did not have. have an incidental take permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for Jaguars. They had no Jaguar protocol, handling protocol. So they just, you know, because ultimately there was another reporter who reported on this and said it was driven by greed, driven by environmental politics, and driven by a desire to get some of that homeland security money. that for that they had set aside for endangered species any jim can get closer to your

mic yes sure they they they they thought if they could capture macho b they would be able to get you know some of that homeland security money does that all make sense it's yeah yeah but here's the one part here's the one part doesn't make sense yeah not nothing no no criticize your storyteller if this jag there seems me like a little bit like what was the result of and what was before if this jaguar is on death's door right how much does he give a shit about a female dropping

oh you mean does he have to know I'm saying he's out doing jaguar stuff uh huh okay he got himself like he gets himself to the snare location yeah right yeah and they might have had a great set a great trail but he's there

he's enough to be interested he's got curiosity he gets hooked but then all of a sudden it's like oh no he was half dead already it's like are you sure because he showed up there but never left never left so you caught him at the moment at the his last gasp was stepping on that plate yeah he's like I'm good for one more step it's just I feel like there's a little you know like you could say like oh no he was all but he was in rough shape he was all beat up it was like could have been that bad a shape dude you caught him yeah right if he's a bad shape he's laying in a thicket right

well i should on the second printing of my book i will interview me i will incorporate and i'll be like having not been there and having no real idea of a brief consideration of the facts in the case no so that that was a real that for me that was a real conundrum about do i include that story do i dredge up all that old crap well you have to yeah but because you got you're trying you got to yeah because it's a new story yeah that's right but there were a lot of people you know who who were kind of injured by by the story and jack child said it put put um jaguar biology in arizona back into the stone age so i really really fought long and hard or thought long and hard about whether whether i wanted to tell that story and ultimately i decided to because

I mean, that pretty much has set the course for jaguar conservation in the southwest. In what way? It just, it just, it's a stain. It's a stain that, you know, that nobody, nobody wants to dredge up and right now nobody really wants to touch. The, Jim Helfelfilfinger that the Arizona Game and Fish Department may be a little more receptive to jaguars in. Arizona had this not happen but they just they just don't like talking about it anymore rightfully so you look skeptical well no I'm just picturing the email that's what I was thinking I was literally thinking of I was literally thinking we will get email yeah I'm not saying

who but there will be email yeah there will be emails it's it I mean it's it's a it's a complicated unfortunate tawdry story you know it just it just I think there were a lot of people who meant well and things just went bad but but i mean just just to talk shop a little bit sure not even about jaguar it's just to talk shop a little bit the the the the the as a writer whatever yeah podcast or writer researcher the um why do you got to go bringing this up thing right i understand it but it's like the answer's kind of like cause Cause, right. So I should apologize. You know what I'm saying? It's like, cause. It mattered. It mattered. Yeah. Matters. It matters. It matters. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a big, big deal. And a lot of jaguar biologists were like, I didn't give a shit about a geriatric old jaguar that died in Arizona. But because, you know, but it's also the cover up was the only one in the reality. Yeah. And it was the only one in the country at that time.

So trust me, if they had hooked a mountain lion and it died, we wouldn't be talking about it. We wouldn't. No. Yeah. But it's like, the only one. Yeah. There's just, I mean, you can't, well, like, bad stuff happens. I have a dear friend who's, I'm not going to name his name because what he said to me.

In private, he said this one time. He was doing a mark and recapture project. I'm not going to tell you what kind of, because people put it together. He's doing a mark and recapture project. project with with wildlife yeah he said his advisor once said to him if you're not killing shit you're not working hard wow yeah because he initially was like so afraid of and he's supposed to be getting collars yeah on right right and he was so afraid that it was crippling yeah and eventually someone said that if you're not if you're not killing stuff you're not doing it

it's hands on work yeah it's like you got there's a there's an inherent meaning there's like an inherent risk yeah that becomes very different one there's one there's one it's a different conversation well the protocol for capturing jaguars in for instance brazil is like super complicated sure yeah and if you're going to do if you're going to do a capture and collaring program which i was part of um you taught you were talking about seeing this magnificent jaguar you know just behind the glass and what it how it made you feel you know we had prepared night after night after night for the chance of capturing a jaguar and when it finally happened no one had ever told me about what an emotional experience it would be when they presented that

jaguar and laid him on the back, you know, of the truck and said, okay, now you can touch that jaguar. Oh, my God. I mean, I still, I still like, I still get a little shaky thinking about it. It was just like, you know, as the jaguar is breathing, like touching, you know, touching the belly and just moving my hand, you know, moving my hand along the jaguar on the tail. Trying to get one of those teeth out. Yeah, I would look.

Yeah. That anyone knows. Everybody would love a jaguar tooth to hang from their neck. But it was really... And you're like, the thing of it is? He's still alive. He's right. Right.

Yeah. So, I mean, but that was pretty overwhelming. That was pretty amazing. You laid a hand on one. Layed a hand on one. Yeah. Yeah, it was pretty... And that's got to feel just like muscle, man.

Oh, just complete muscle. Yeah, like the hindquarters. You know, that's... Oh, man. Yeah, just solid muscle. Huh. solid muscle that's cool that he's breathing you know yeah yeah yeah it was pretty pretty special experience what's jaguar smell like just nothing no in fact in that jaguar oddly didn't

smell but there's this guy named edwardo carillo in in costa rica who said he was talking about how elusive jaguars are you know cryptic and he could he said he could be crawling through the jungle and he knew that jaguar was close because his trans he because his his receiver he was getting beeps and he said what he does is he said you know jaguar could be three feet away from you and you wouldn't see him he'd listen for the monkeys or he'd use his nose oh you're kidding me no he said jaguars reek so he would use his nose and smell him out huh yeah he got to do that with lions Oh, you did. With collared lions and Yadde was saying, it's amazing, man.

Tell him, like, you get close to that sucker and you don't know he's there. Oh, that, yeah, I thought you were talking about the part where we had him drugged and then we were handling them. Oh, no, the part where you're like, how did he let me get this close? Yeah, but no, we, he was doing a study where he was basically seeing if repeated hazing would cause, like, would be a deterrent for Mount Lions proximity to humans, right? Oh, yeah. If that makes sense in one broad brushstroke. And so to do that, they were collaring them, and then walk, once they had them collared,

walking towards known locations of Lions, coincidentally playing the Meteor podcast at 80 decibels on a speaker. Yeah. And then he's watching the GPS as he walks towards it. And he's like, okay, we're at 50 meters. We're at 30 meters. And the closest one we got to, I think, was 12. And I'm like, are we going to keep going?

And he's like, no, at this point, we stop. Like, it's right there. Please stop. And what was amazing is that it's literally right there. And he says, it's in that copse of trees. And he goes, oh, now it's moving. And you're looking right there. And you never see it.

You never see the cat. Yeah. Right. So amazing. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. So amazing.

Are you going to retire now? Oh, man. No. You know, I'm a writer. I can't retire. There's no plan for that, is there? I'll be retire when I'm pushing up dates. I'm not sure. You know, that's a good question. Usually I should have a book,

you know, another book project ready to go, but I don't. And looking for that plane is just for the hell of it? Looking for that plane is about, you know, a passion project. Yeah. Should say the hell of it. It was not a book. I assumed it was a book project. Yeah, well, you know, it could be, you know, it could be like a long form story or something like that, but I'm not sure if it's a book project. I'd love to write about New Guinea again. Maybe next book will take me back to Alaska. I don't know. I got a few ideas, but this book, this book, because, well, for a lot of reasons, because

of COVID, eventually the guy who became the new Alan Rabinowitz, who was a great friend of Alan Rabinowitz, a guy named Howard Quigley, he died in the middle of my research. And it just, you know, this. Of what? he did um um cancer too oh yeah yeah and so this project took me way longer than it should have and it became ultimately it became a passion project you know not a not a not a not a pain project yeah yeah yeah and some you know not unnecessarily but necessarily but um like yeah like the the economics didn't make sense yeah yeah which you know a lot of writers will tell you

these days it's hard hard to make for the economics to make sense but uh you know i got a couple ideas but you know we'll we'll see just hit me a one i'll tell you if it's good one or not i was thinking i'd save you tons of time right now yeah yeah yeah okay i was thinking i'd tell but don't give it away and if you should it's someone else is doing it's a good idea i'll cut it out of the podcast you know what you're right i better not talk i better not say words give me a hint It's a good idea. About as vague as, yeah. The collapse of the Yukon salmon collapse.

Yeah, that's it. That's it. That's it. That's a great story. Oh, I got it. Well, that is, no, but that's a great story. Someone should do a book on that. Yeah, somebody should. That's, you know, I know a lot of guys who ran fish wheels on, on the Yukon and they're, you know. You know what the answer is that they're leaning toward?

Yeah. Hatcheries. Oh, is that right? Really? In Alaska. that's the answer of all places that's the political that's the that's what they're coming in with is like oh that's easy hatcheries wow yeah fix that no problem that's a different world that's the fix not the not the problem not the reason right it's it's it's it's like because it's the whole

thing of it's it's it's just like what's the problem everything hmm you're right hammering fishing the sea like hammering fishing the sea intercept fisheries water temperatures it's like it's just big and too it's it's it's you can't unravel it everybody's got it's this it's that there's a real problem and it seems to be that there's a real problem with like intercept fisheries like hitting those fish hitting hitting those fish before they're in the in the in the fresh wow yeah so you know and they got like even like subsistence people like subsistence people living along the river native alaskan subsistence fishermen aren't able to put their wheels out it's bad and um i guess like the way that they're you know as people at high levels in the state look at they're

like what's easy fishery i mean etcheries yeah yeah well lasca yeah right i mean the public lands issue up there is pretty dire now too right now it is yeah right now it is yeah yeah yeah that's good book. Come back out and you finish it. Tell us what you find out. How I save the Sam. I think we just nailed the back cover copy. Yeah, we can get it.

We can get on this right now. I'll blur it right now. Hell of a book. You guys are amazing. Hell of a book. Author up. well james campbell thanks for coming on yeah i appreciate it thank you i got one more for you what's your favorite book that you wrote like one where you had the height of your powers

at the height of my at the height of my powers um i'd say i'd say this one because it's for sale right now well that's true i mean they thank you apparently i'm a really we have an in-house marketing firm as well yeah my publisher's gonna kill me yeah I mean, this was a real passion project. There's no question about it. But, you know, I love, you know, I love writing all my books. I got another one about my daughter and I doing a bunch of stuff in Alaska, including building a cabin with my cousin, Heimokorth and, you know, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

That was a particularly personal one. But, yeah, all of them, you know, you know how it is. I mean, you're a writer. It's all, you know, it's all really meaningful stuff. All of them. You love them all like little babies. You love them. You do. Yeah.

And then when you're done, you're like, kick him out of the house. You're like, oh, I'm tired of that book. Yeah. I can't say that yet. The latest is, uh, heart of the Jaguar, the extraordinary conservation effort to save the America's legendary cat. And then, um, if you're into whiskey, whiskey too, I highly recommend Ghost Mountain. Thank you. Yeah.

Ghost Mountain boys, right? I can't see the cover. Yeah, that's the proper title. Ghost Mountain Boy. Oh, there it is right here. Ghost Mountain Boys about the, you know, the Pacific Theater during World War II, particularly the Battle for New Guinea. Yeah.

Oh, that rips your heart out there. That sure does. Still rips my heart out. Yeah. A lot of suffering, a lot of heroism, a lot of sacrifice. Thanks for coming on. My pleasure. I really enjoyed it.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, James. Thank you. Hey, Hey, folks, Steve Ronella here. It's that time again, the meat eater Black Friday sale from November 20 through, December 1, you can save up to 50% across the entire meat eater family of brands. First Light, FHF gear, Dave Smith decoys, Phelps, and the Meat Eater store.

Whether you're chasing elk, setting decoys, or just gearing up for camp, this is the time to upgrade the kit that carries you through the season. Visit your favorite brand site to find your deal, and don't miss the Meat Eater Black Friday sale. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human