The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 838: How To Translate Animal Language

Episode Date: February 23, 2026

Steven Rinella talks with naturalist, writer, and sculptor George Bumann, Brody Henderson, Phil Taylore, and Corinne Schneider.  Topics discussed: George's book, Eavesdropping On Animals; Animal vocalizations; subscribe to the new Bear Grease YouTube channel; laws on game retrieval; just how pungent skunk odor really is; stay tuned for MeatEater TV's new "12 in 26" hunt series, starting with Jani's Manitoba bear episode; how absurd it is that guys called better than turkeys themselves; what various raven calls mean; how the birds gossip about everything; wolf howling and squirrel chirping translations; all the animals are talking about and know you; silence as the most important alarm that exists; The 2026 Yellowstone Summit; 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.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, if you're in or around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and you live for hunting season, you need to swing by the meat eater store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall to wall with the gear we actually use in the field. First Light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the corners of Brookfield.

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That's f-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Today we're joined by, what do I say, joined? Joined by George Buman, who's a sculptor of bronze artist. He's a naturalist, but here's the main deal for our purposes here. He's an animal language and animal intelligence expert. teaches courses on the intelligence of animals. We'll go to, does things in Yellowstone National Park, leads seminars there of helping people understand what they're hearing,

what they're seeing about how animals do their business. He's got a new book called Eavesdropping on animals. What we can learn from wildlife conversations. We're going to dive in on all that, but just as a little tickler, hit me with. You don't even need to say a word. Okay, now listen, listen, this is George Buman. No Brody Verify.

Yeah. No diaphragm in his mouth. No, no animals in the studio. No animals in the studio. We have some bronze piece. We have a bronze piece. We have like the makings of a bronze piece in the studio. So that turkey right there, tap that turkey so people realize that's not.

Okay, that's not, that turkey is not making this noise. Okay, hit us with. Okay Hit us with Some turkey vocalizations No no this is just just flat out okay All right Okay hit us with some coyotes way off

You got a good wolf haul Oh yeah Let's hear a wolf Can you do a good elk way off Bugle? Yanni does a good bugle But his Yanni's bugle is miles away Yeah Yeah mine might be miles away

Hit me with a good mile way off elk that's a lot closer than yonnis yonis is like you can't even tell if you heard it or not right you're wondering you got any good magpie vocalizations

ravens anything ravens for sure yeah they've got a lot of range a lot of meaning there yeah I want to talk a bunch about those guys because man they make some crazy ass noises and it can't be just them making noises

for no reason oh no no no okay here's real challenging one just tell me if you can't do it I wish I could. Can you, like, this test your whistling skills. Can you hit a black, can you do a black cap chickadey? Not to my satisfaction.

Yeah, they're starting to do it now too. No good. That's a tough one. But you know how good it works, though? Yeah. Because people that can do it can bring them in like crazy. Oh, that's pretty good. Yep.

Damn. Yeah. All right. All right. We're going to get it off. And not of that, but, What like, here's the main thing I want, one of the main things I want to talk to you about when we get to. I got to do a couple of announcements is not just the noises, but like there's the what, like, what they're talking about.

Yeah, it means stuff. Oh, yeah, obviously. You can show you things you never, ever have found before. Yeah, they obviously mean stuff, but like, because they're not doing it for fun. No. I mean, it might be fun, but they're not, you know what I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

What it all means. One of the main, the first thing, just so you know what's going to come. One of the first things I'm going to ask you about is. is, you know, a pine squirrel's pissed off noise or whatever his noise is. Yeah. I can't do it real good, but there's a ton of meaning in that. Oh, yeah. A ton.

Yeah. You know, he's pissed at his body. He's pissed at you. You. Pist at the bobcat. Yeah. Okay. Real quick.

So there's a new YouTube. The Bear Grease YouTube channel is becoming its own thing. A little behind the scenes thinking here. Clay Clay started a YouTube channel a million years ago And it was like the Bear Journal Because when Clay on Bear hunting magazine He had a YouTube channel

So it's always been kind of lurking around there That YouTube channel is going to stay Like that's Clay's baby But Clay and Bear Nukum are going to build out The Bear Grease YouTube channel So all about them making them little bows out of sticks Hunting content Mule content

Cooking stuff okay and they're also launched in their own Instagram page around Bear Grease and I'll tell you we haven't gotten in I might be the first guy that ever mentioned this Clay's book that's coming out in a long time from now is exceptionally good it's good I mean I've only read the first five chapters

it's a book it's a book it's like a history of the black bear it is good including a large chapter on the circumpolar bear culture I don't know if I can I'm allowed to yeah why not Clay just he's turning his booking right now

the circumpolar bear culture is crazy because there's like a latitude band all around the continent so it touches North America Europe

Asia all around the northern hemisphere it's yeah it's a band of latitudes a northern northern latitudes yep all around the globe and if you think about

the human diaspora like how people spread around the world these are people that split there's people within this that split apart way long ago like meaning if you imagine like imagine it's humans colon like humans are kind of in the Middle East humans are in Africa you know humans are up in Spain wherever and eventually some of them come around and wind up in Siberia and some come around and wind up in Northern Europe now by this point they haven't been

been hanging out together for tens of thousands of years, right? But you look at their religious structures and sort of like spiritual understandings of bears and you have this circumpolar bear culture where people that wouldn't have no interaction with each other develop or no interaction with each other for thousands and thousands of years develop the same sort of religious understandings of bears and how bears fit into their culture and the shamanistic aspects and like motivations that are assigned to bears and you cannot explain it how some dude in siberia some dude in north america some dude in europe have the same concept yep of like how you treat a bear when you hunt for a bear what are your obligations to the bear that you definitely

don't want a bear to see you once it's dead. So if you kill a bear, you approach it from behind. Like these dudes are on the same trip all over the, do you know what I'm saying? Wild. No, it's so weird, man. I hope he's not pissed on bringing that up. Does he have no bear mother story in there? That one that goes all over, northern hemisphere.

If it's all over, it's in there. He's got every damn thing in there. Yeah. That's neat. No, it's a super cool book. available a long time from now. So the Bear Grays YouTube channel be run by Baron Clay Newcomb.

Yeah. Oh, February 11th. Two days before I turned 52. Very auspicious day. Corrections. Here's a great correction. We're going to start a thing where you win a prize for, you know, we're trying to like, in an age of disinformation.

Shady information. Yeah. We're trying to, we're going to have a weekly prize called Correction of the Week. But the biggest fib? So, no, rewarding people who catch us being wrong.

Ah, that's a good thing. Yeah, check this out. For instance, the Arda made a comment. And this was when me talking about stuff I didn't know well. He even has the 37-minute mark at episode 826.

What was that episode called? Skonk smells, are first? No, that wasn't it. How skunks can ruin a marriage. Okay. I said, oh, to my defense, this is still a correction. To my defense, I said,

I don't think that a human operating word here being, I said, I, on the subject of skunks and skunk essence, I said, I don't think that a human can make.

Then I didn't finish quite then I I said, I don't think that a human could make. I don't think in a lab you could make

as pugnacious or resilient of an odor in a laboratory. Guy wrote in. He's like, you're way wrong. They can't,

humans can and have. And he gets into some of these odors. While the skunk odor is due to theols mercaptains, sulfur-containing

compounds, he says, there are other compounds both synthesized and isolated in laboratories that smell much worse. I like this one. They have a lab-based odor called cadaverine, which is a lab-produced odor of decaying flesh. They have pyrodine, putrescine, and what he regards to be the worst smell of all time, thioacetone an odor so potent it causes nausea, vomiting, and unconsciousness.

There was a lab leak. There was a lab leak in Germany where they had a lab leak of thioacetone in Germany. And for a half-mile radius around the lab, people reported not

Howse of vomiting and unconsciousness from a leak powerful. And what do they use that for usually? I don't know why. I don't know how they justify their work. I don't know how they, that's a great question. This would be one of those things when you talk about ridiculous. Maybe when you're like hacking on science,

be like the dumb stuff. They spent money on making bad smells. Yeah. So I'm staying corrected. That's a good correction right there, man. I said this is the kind of correction. What would be the prize when you get correction? the week. It's got to be something good, but it's got to be like we have a lot of it.

We're going to, maybe we got to have 52 of them. Maybe this will excite people more. So we will have a segment sponsored by Toccova's. Ticovas is, they're going to do the they are they are sponsoring correction of the week and we will choose the winning correction of the week for we'll do this for about a month at first to see and the current. And the current. Correction of the week winner gets a pair of Tocovas. Oh. So we're going to start out. You get a pair of shit kickers.

And then we'll come up with something comparable every time. Sure. Yeah. That's phenomenal. So send in your corrections. This would be a great. This would be a great one. I say, and again, I said, think, I say, you can't make something worse than that in the lab.

Guys like, yeah, you can. Here's another correction. He calls it a correction by omission, but I'd like, to correct him. It's not a correction by omission. It's just a correction. So I don't think he'd win. Because like he's saying, hey, here's a correction by omission.

And then when I tell you the correction, you realize it's not a correction. It's just a correction. He's just trying to soup it up. I said, we were talking about retrieval laws. We're talking about that in different states, you have these different governing laws about whether you can go and get retrieve game. So picture that you're sitting there

you're sitting there and you shoot a duck. You know, ducks flying overhead and you shoot a duck and all of a sudden he like sails off and plump lands over on the neighbor's place. States clarify.

All states have clarified like what are you allowed to do? Some states, you can just flat out, go get it. There's a state. where you can leave your gun behind and go fetch it. And there are states, like the one I'm sitting in right now, you have no right or authority to go fetch it. You'd have to go take it up with the landowner.

And be like, listen, man, I sailed a duck over around your place. Can I go grab it? And as terrible as it sounds, I mean, I'm totally fine with that rule. Right. But I would like to think that most landowners would want to approached facilitate the recovery. I understand. I'm not condemning the rule because I understand that there are situations where someone could

set up in a way or they just basically know that that's going to be the outcome. Yeah. I mean, it could be abused for sure, especially with big game, I feel like. Yeah. Where you're hunting in a spot where you're just, if you're sitting there going like, well, yeah, I know it's going to run on in the neighbor's place, but I'm allowed to go get it so that doesn't matter. Like that, that's probably, that could be. potentially problematic. He points

out, so I say in South Dakota how it's legal to retrieve upland game such as pheasants without landowner permission. Okay. But you gotta be unarmed. We clarified that. Meaning you hit a pheasant. You hit a pheasant. He sails off on the neighbor's place. In

South Dakota, you lean your shotgun, whatever, set your shotgun down. You run over and fetch it. He pointed out, and he says that it was correction by omission. He points out, you can't do that with big game. Isn't that weird? Strange.

But I think it might, because South Dakota has that rule where you can hunt in the ditch alongside roads. It's like a right-away. So I think a lot of those birds that get shot end up 10 yards on to, you know, where you're not permitted to go.

Yeah. They're doing it because of the rule that you can ditch hunt. Yeah. I, that's, I think. But you can't, yeah. So just you can't, you can't, you can't chase a pheasant, but you can't chase a deer.

But if a buck sprung up out of that ditch. And you are allowed to have your dog run over and fetch it. But check this out. Let's say your dog runs over to fetch it. Flush as a pheasant. This is what this guy's saying. If he's wrong, sending a correction, he'll have to give you a prize for correcting him. If your dog runs over.

onto a, let's say you're hunting, your ditch hunting. And your dog runs on to some dude's place and flushes a bird off that dude's place. And that bird then flies over you on the right-of-way. You can't shoot the bird. Because your dog can go retrieve, but he can't go hunt.

And that's basically like having a dog with a shotgun. Here's another skunk story. That was a bad segue. This guy says this. This last week, I had been skinning a skunk that caught in a coyote trap. I wasn't really paying attention when I accidentally poked a hole in its scent gland. After realizing the terrible crime, well, we're done with corrections not right.

Yeah. This is, yeah, this is just a story. This is a story. Okay. After realizing the terrible crime I had just committed, I put the skunk outside to let things air out. So he was skinning the inside. An hour later, the cop showed up. Well, the local police showed up in my house.

to inform me that there was a terrible smell coming from my house to the point that the local middle school had to go into lockdown because they thought kids were smoking massive amounts of weed he used the word marijuana they even had the fire department come to the school to test the air for toxins now my whole town has been talking about me and referring to me as skunk boy

I don't think the smell was that bad, but I'm not sure what to do because I make a homemade skunk-based lure that I use to catch all my predators. Do I, oh, here it goes into a question. This becomes like a advice. Advice, this is becoming an advice column. Do I stop making it and risk being less successful? He's leading the witness. He asks, he asks, do I stop making it in risk being less successful? successful on the trap line or do I keep making it in secret and hope there isn't another

incident I think that there is a middle ground hunter Gregory see here's evidence the name your kid hunter doesn't backfire yeah his name's hunter didn't backfire no one names her kid fisherman angler angler yeah they probably don't know I've never heard it No names are kids sports person Outdoors person His name's Hunter It didn't backfire Obviously he's obviously he's like neck deep in the disciplines

He's from I'm not going to give his last name I think you got to take this whole operation elsewhere If it depends You have the right Well What's that machine we want to get the founder of this machine on Oh the nasal raider

Right nasal radon We're calling it Raider, but the nasal. There's a machine that they use that quantifies bad smells. You know about this? No. Called the nasal radar. I would say nasal raider, but I was misreading it. That's a correction.

The nasal radar. It's like when you get a, oh, nasal ranger. Okay, nasal ranger. When you get a smell complaint, like some dude's skin and skunks, it's so subjective. Yeah. Right? It's like, well. Why not bother you at all?

Yeah, like the lady over there thinks it smells too bad. The guy over here, he doesn't think it smells that bad. So does it smell that bad? The nasal ranger is a machine that you put on your nose. It looks like an elk bugle with contraptions coming off it. Can you pull this up, Phil, just so people can see? If Corinne sends it to me, I can. You don't have a little computer over there?

And what does it do it? I do, but I don't have a picture. I guess I could just Google it. It tells you how bad you think it should smell? No, no, no. The nasal ranger. I watch this whole video. This looks insane.

Okay, yeah. Okay. Like, let's say someone's like, dude, the hog farm next to my place is killing me. It smells so bad. And it winds up being like, well, according to who? The nasal ranger, you, you, it looks like an elk bugle that hooks to your nose. There's a little nose cup. But it's got filters and shit coming off.

Okay. You go out there and there's a meter that shows like what it, it, okay, right there. it looks like if a cop was yeah clocking you nasal radar

you would think that if you saw this you would think a cop is smelling how fast your car is going okay there's a whole article in the New York Times

from a few years I'm like obsessed with these things but what is it like I'm getting to that but I want to tell you I want one so bad

because I want to be able to use it in arguments of my wife yeah be like see it's not so bad she sends me one of her like twice a year i can't live like this okay oh yeah we can we can invest in one just like we did the warner bratsler sheer force they're less expensive scientific oh way that's good like we bought that and i don't know maybe we spent too much money on that thing for how much we needed it we're gonna keep trying

to get our money's worth i'm dylan play fair and i'm tallers smith we're putting loneliness in the penalty box by talking to some of our favorite athletes about the importance of friendship. This is bromance. Bromance is brought to you by Charm Diamond Centers, proudly Canadian-owned and operator. Charm has been part of your love stories and bromances for over 50 years. And you can find Bromance on the IHeart Radio Network or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, if you're in or around, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and you live for hunting season, you need to swing by the meat eater's store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall to wall with the gear we actually use in the field.

First Light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the corners of Brookfield. Whether you're gearing up for the season, dialing in a setup, or just want to talk shop with people who love to hunt, this is your place. That's the Meat Eater Store, Milwaukee, at the corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it. Okay, here's here's my, here's my, here's my wife.

My wife has this to say to me. She's going to have a lot more to say to you after you put this in a podcast. My wife says this. I think it's $2,000. By the way. There's $2,000. Yeah. A little background on my wife.

My wife has always worked. She worked all through having babies. She's taking time off of work. And then now she's like, now that she doesn't have babies, she's not working. She doesn't know what people do with themselves. So it's great. She started to try. She's like,

I'm going to try to learn how to play tennis. Totally great. Started baking. Mm-hmm. I am at tennis and can't figure out why my ankles are so itchy. I have small itchy bumps on both ankles. If you brought fleas into our house because of the things you trapped, you need to figure that out now. Like before work, I am not going to live like this.

I love you, Katie. Right, I get these all the time A lot of times they have to do with offensive orders And if I had a nasal ranger I would be able to Be like, well, let's check You could avoid confrontation I would be like, let's see, is it offensive or not?

Let's take the subjectivity out of it We'd need to make content out of it Well, let's measure I'm going to talk to our CFO about getting The subjectivity is the hard part man That's what the nasal ranger comes I think it's going on her Backfire right

So you can You can put any kind of Ranger on that you want. I'll be like, well, you know what? It's actually not offensive because I hit it with the nasal Ranger. And it's right in, it's with acceptable limits. So now the nasal Ranger, you hook it to your nose. And so let's say someone's like, comes to you with a, they're complaining about how something smells. And they go, just smell.

Yep. Well, people don't breathe that way. Right. That's not fair. You don't, no one comes around going. not just last week I was uh I had already boiled this coyote skull I afraid um but it needed a little touch up there was some things that were still hanging on there mm-hmm and my wife left I was like I'm just gonna do it on the stove

sure 100% I didn't smell a thing but when she got back she smelled it yeah and I was just like it smells a little like boiling meat that's all exactly did you ever do cold Water maceration to clean up skulls. We'd clean out the whole university building that way. That is its own kind of, that is a crazy odor. The nasal ranger, you put it up to your nose, and there's a little meter that shows that you're inhaling normally. So you can't go in and not breathe. Right.

And say, like, I don't smell nothing because you're not breathing. And you can't go in an over smell. It makes it that you're hitting like a baseline normal breathing. And it's got these contraptions on it that are sucking in the air. And it's throwing out a calibrated offensive measurement. So you can apply a number to when something reeks. I love it. So let's say someone in the summer,

some guy hits deer and it's out by your house or whatever and it's crawling maggots. And someone's like, my God, that smells. Imagine if you could just go, yeah, it's a five. Yep. And apply a number to a thing that is just entirely subjective. I have a feeling that with 50 years of a life lived, you know, breaking down animals, smelling everything there is to smell, I have a feeling that the nasal ranger will skew towards the gen pop. And probably, I think everything you are completely deadened to will read as offensive to most people. Yeah.

That's why I need a nasal ranger. I'm saying the You can tweak the settings a little bit So it comes out in your favor Oh yeah You like hack into the software or whatever To make it like not Because yeah because what if it backfires

And your wife's like No dude This is as high as it goes It's an 11 Yep It's an 11 You're like that's not Anyway so this guy making this lure

And I understand But I don't know why in the world You're making that next to the school It's like I feel like you have a right to do it, but take the operation elsewhere. Yeah, I mean, he did puncture the gland, which I'm sure made it 100 times worse. Yeah, so he probably knows if he's making this lure, he knows that you go down to Murdox

and you go into the veterinarian care aisle and you get one of them large gauge hypodermic needles. I mean, the kind of needle you can look through the son of a bitch, you know what I mean? You get one of those heavy gauge veterinarian needles that they use, in generaline needles that they use, that cattle with, put that into there and suck that smell out elsewhere. Yep. Not at home. Then you mix it in with your Vaseline or your petroleum jelly or whatever you're putting in there, so you've got a skunk-based paste elsewhere.

Out in the woods. Here's another tip he might want to know about, and I was turned on to this one that works very well. Get yourself a big sack of kitty litter. Get yourself one of those small action packers. Whatever you want to use, I don't care. This is a tub. Five-gallon bucket, whatever.

Fill it with kitty litter. Once you make your lure, deep six it in that cat litter. Deep six, the lure in there. Store it in case. I got it. Store it in a container deep down in kitty litter

for your offensive odors. That won't escape that. No. And when I get a nasal range, I'll prove it. I'll prove it. we'll take a draw off some skunk, then we'll put it down in a bottle and kiddie lure and take a draw off it and you won't,

that nays range is not going to pick it up. Another guy wrote in about skunks. He's in the nuisance wildlife removal business. They deal with a lot of skunks in the spring and summer. You can picture this. Skunk gets in your house, living under your porch. Someone gets upset. They,

they catch them in covered cage traps. And they kill them. them in a CO2 chamber for euthanasia. Do you guys remember we were taught earlier, do you remember during the pandemic when they had to like in Northern Europe, they had to kill all those hundreds of thousands of mink?

Yep. Which they pelted, you know, they pelted those all out. They did. Yeah. I thought that it would like make mink prices skyrocket because they killed all the ranching or whatever, but someone's like that all went to market. Anyhow, what I didn't realize, they got these little gas-powered rigs they drive around in on those mink farms.

And there's a box on the rig, and it's harvesting its own CO2. So, like, you're driving this little golf cart around, and it's harvesting its own emissions to youth. Oh, I got you. Yeah, yeah. The whole thing sounds just, like, not a good line of work. Yeah. Like a tough business to be in. That's how they do that.

They're killing them like that. So this dude is saying when they get, like, a problem. skunk, they euthanize it with CO2. Well anyways, and then they throw them in a freezer, which I don't get. But they had a guy in there and he says, I'll put it delicately and say he lacked attention to detail.

He pulls a skunk out of the CO2 chamber too early and places it into a freezer. A half hour later, a different guy comes along and opens the freezer and there's a skunk. Bam. Fine. No.

Oh. Shuts the freezer real quick. I got you. Makes a plan on how he's going to deal with this, but then the skunk is waiting for him. The next time he opens the freezer, flop, yep. Nailed him.

He says you can't get that smell out of that freezer. Oh, yeah, that doesn't surprise me. Lastly, oh, so you do want to say this. You're back to wanting to say this? Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. One more launch.

We've got a thing coming out called 12 and 26. So that means in 2000. 26 we're going to release 12 outdoor films. Each episode showcases a hunt from a different meat eater crew member. The first episode features Yanni's archery black bear hunt in

Manitoba, which is out now. So stay tuned for more and check out these hunt episodes of 12 and 26 series. All right. George, hit me with, I want to get into the animal communication stuff here.

And I don't want to talk about brown sculptures, but I want to dive into the animal communication stuff here. If you could think about from your career and in your study of animals, what, and let's keep to what lives around here. What animal do you think lives around here has the, or doesn't need to be around here? What American animal that people would be familiar with?

Who in your mind has the greatest vocabulary? Land critters. You know, probably the one that's been studied, that way most and that's probably because it's only

because that's the one that's been studied that detail is prairie dogs they have an incredible vocabulary that goes down to the level of

there's a guy walking through the colony with a green shirt on and he's tall no yep he's walking fast he's walking slow

it's another guy he's got a red shirt on or a yellow shirt shirt. There's a badger. There's a hawk. Hawks flying fast. On and on and on. Yeah, this guy called... Oh, what? Yeah. Yeah, they went down to the level of saying, you know, it, at a certain level, they needed to analyze it with computers, because you just can't hear prairie dog at that level. Okay. So they slow it down. You can see all the bumps and blips in the spectrogram on the computer. and these differences are parsing out with their experimental design here.

And they even went to the level of, let's put something in there they've never seen. So what they did is they basically put a cardboard cutout, or maybe he's plywood, painted it black, put it on wire and strung it through, moved it through, pulled it through the colony. They came up with a new word, something they'd never heard him say before. they put it away instead of an oval like the first one they put out a square they say something different they pull it back out a little while

later they use the same word for the oval same word yeah yeah and that's probably it's all like permutations of that what we would just when we hear it's just an alarm call it's just like like all right I'm not getting much out of that

but when you start listening with a lot of this stuff you're like oh there is a little difference there and if you could listen with the ears of a ground squirrel or a pocket gopher or any of these things you might hear it too but some of those they can like the researchers it was so funny they were so accurate that they had different vocalization for dog versus coyote no really so they're sitting there and the researchers can hear this difference and they're hanging out and this this prairie dog says there's a coyote coming and clearly the researchers can see it's a dog and they're like ha they messed up this time

it's like one example and it gets closer and it's a coyote they're like what the heck hold on say that to me again now so they identified this thing right is a coyote they gave the coyote alarm but the researchers

not knowing their language real well well they knew the language enough to say, hey, they're alarming for coyote. Through their eyes, they're seeing what they think is a dog. Oh, so the research is like, oh, it's a domestic dog. It's a domestic dog. It looks like a coyote. They just messed up. And it gets closer and like, it's not a gun. It's a coyote. So that stuff is actually everywhere. But prairie dogs have been best studied that way. Their vocabulary, they even say that they have these sound bites that are like phonemes. They're basically like like, b, duh, a,

to, you know, sound fragments that we recombine into making words and sentences, paragraphs, they have sounds that functioned the same way. So they can recombine these sounds to say, dog, coyote, hawk, badger, guy, guy, short guy, tall guy,

coming through the colony. I was reading this thing long ago. It's like one of the dirtiest tricks I've ever heard in science. I don't know where they were doing it I don't know where where's the vervet monkey live a verbit monkey Vervets are African It's an African yeah

They were looking at the vocabulary Verbit monkeys And they were getting this idea that they had And it might be more nuanced than this But they're like there's a thing that says Threat from above Okay, and it'd be like certain avian predators Yeah

And they had a noise that they realized it meant threat on the ground and they thought specifically it was about leopards that's what it was leopards so they would record

these verbit monkeys making these vocalizations and you could play it and get the response meaning if there's a threat on the ground everyone goes into a tree if there's a threat from the air the troop all seeks overhead protection

Yeah. Then they recorded a monkey. They recorded his threat call. And they would play it. And everyone would respond. But they eventually burned the guy out where he became the boy who cries wolf. Poor guy.

And they burned him out where they're like, he always does that. And he's wrong. To the point where if he did vocalize, they would ignore it because they're like, that dude makes that noise all the time because they have been playing it to everybody and they burn the dude out on it.

Yeah. Yeah. But this is like, what you're talking about is way more, I mean, like way more than hey, on the ground, hey in the air.

Yeah, that's like at deer camp with the kids. Like when you and I walk through the prairie dog town, those things are like, eh. But when they see Jimmy, they're like, holy kid!

Yeah, they probably do. And he's got a gun! He's got a gun again! Is that one kid? Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's... I think you're referring to that. Cheney and Safar did a lot of that work in Ambe Selle, National Park, where they're looking at those vervets.

And yeah, they had a different call for something in the air. Those Marshall Eagles, I think they were. They had different one for leopards, and they had a different one for snakes. Okay. I remember that now. Yeah. And, yeah, and there's... That's a tuffy with these animal vocalizations, like, high.

do you know? You don't speak that language. So they have these really clunky, sometimes really, you know, mean ways of figuring out, all right, at least it's this level. This is what they're meaning. But in between, like, for me, I listen to a ton of Ravens. I just fascinated by Ravens. And the stuff they say just blows me away. They've got accents. They've got dialects. They've got stuff you can't even imagine. At what point did you first start getting interested in the just like the vocalizations of animals? Well, I grew up like you guys did. I hunted and fished and trapped for, you know, a lot of my youth because that was, you know, the culture I grew up in. So I grew up learning call turkeys and ducks and gear. But like it wasn't enough for me. Just me being me. I was like, I want to know more.

You know, what are they doing outside of hunting season? What do they say when this happens? What are they doing when nobody else is watching? And you didn't watch birds. Like nobody, I didn't know anybody that watched birds until I went to college. And they're like, oh, yeah, we're going to birding. Really? Yeah, my old man, he had an interesting bird taxonomy, like, as a hunter, you know.

It was like, there's this huge chunk of birds that were Tweety birds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What basically meant like the ones like, like outside of my, there's intensely, interested in game birds. There's a handful of other birds that catch my interest, but then there are the Tweedy birds. Yeah.

Yeah, our friend has a system. He has, it's arts and narts for hawks. Arts are a redtail. Oh, yeah. Narts are not a red tail. I was like, Jason, not, you know, it takes red tails to get a couple of years under their belt before they get a red tail. He's like, God damn it. So it throws a whole damn system off.

I was reading it. I think it was in Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams where I think it was in that book where he's talking about Inuit's map drawing This is early Like he was relating of early

Like early contact with certain Inuit hunter groups And they would draw maps And they wouldn't do the The maps would be to the scale of Interest So if they're mapping an island And there's a bay where they hunt

Ducks when you draw the map, the island gets really small because they don't do, it doesn't matter. And the bay is the map. Yeah. And it's kind of like,

here's the part on something. Here's the part of interest. And then I'll just kind of rough in something to suggest the rest of it. Right? And I feel like with a lot of wildlife stuff, it's like elk, right? The bugle.

You know? because it's useful in hunting. And you can probably hunt alcohol life and never be like, what really is going on with that thing? That's the kind of stuff that. Yeah. Right.

You know, like, it works or don't work? Yeah. But it's kind of, you sort of have a, like, we'll map it from a hunter's perspective, we'll map its vocalization pattern, and it'll only go as far as what I need to know to satisfy my, like, base

plan. You're not really interested in what you might be saying to them. Right? It works or don't work? Yeah. Yeah. Right.

And that's to human nature. Like we're, we're simplifying machines. That's what our brains are designed for is after sensory stuff, like problem solving, figuring out what those patterns are. You know,

what does that mean? And I'd only pay attention to the stuff that affects me. But when you start paying attention to what affects them, then the world opens up. What was the first, what was the first animal? Was it turkeys? Like, what was the first animal you kind of dove into and started realizing you were finding out things that maybe other people didn't know?

Well, I was obsessed with turkeys. Okay. Like I was, like my career was going to be making turkey calls going around calling, calling contests and all that stuff upstate New York. Okay. And they just recolonize that area. So I was taking every spare minute. You could only hunt till noon, but I was going out before school every day during the season. And this is a funny one, the disciplinarian principal, the vice principal when my folks were in that school had retired by this point. And I called well enough that he's like, can you come with me? You know, skip school. Come with me out on Monday and Tuesday.

My mom's like, hell no. Frank Donnell wants you to skip. Does vice principal want you to skip school? So you can go turkey call for him. Like, you're like, that's legit right. Hell no. Were you mouth calling back? Like no call or were you using calls?

I was doing, I was building wingbone calls. I was building slate calls, box calls, using my voice. I was doing all of it, you know? And, but it was interesting because sort of like we're talking about in that hunting scene, you know, there was a, there's a core pallet of sounds that you use. Yeah. And they do the job.

But I hit a certain point. And it was actually, when I went to my first calling contest, I'm like, wait a minute. this is what the guy, there's a guy behind that curtain over there. And he's like, tell me if I sound like a turkey. There's no turkeys in this contest. And there's certainly no turkeys behind the curtain saying,

yeah, that sounds like a turkey. You know, so I was like, hmm, hmm, what, you know,

and there was even, I found an article when I was working on the book, this guy who was a judge, he said, you know, if you hear a lot of, um, really bad call.

You know, it's a wild turkey. A lot of really good calling. It's a guy. You know, turkeys make a lot of mistakes. And I'm like, wait a minute. Mistakes? I think it costs them. It costs them.

You make a sound. The predator has got a beat on you, right? You make a sound. It costs energy to make the sound. Like, they're not doing it for no reason. Just because we don't know the reason doesn't mean it doesn't have one. But there's the, I get the point. There's, no, no, like, the point would be this.

There's, there's a, there's a, there's a YouTube video I love. And it's a hen, like a wild ass hen in the woods. And she has the most raucous, bad, uh, box call yelp, which she stands there and does 27 times in a row. Mm-hmm. 27 times in a row. if you heard that, there's no way you'd be like,

that's a hen. You'd be like, that is some 12-ass year old kid with his dad's box call and he's just going to stand on that ridge and do that. I would 100% say that that's what that was. I'd be like,

some kid up there. It's a hen stander 27 times in a row. Yeah. So like, if you could interview her, you're like, Homa, are you doing this on accident?

Is this all a mistake? She would probably tell you, no, no. What I'm doing is I'm... You should have seen the last time I did this. Yeah. You know what happened? Yeah, but like, I don't know. Like, what is she doing?

You know, what is she doing? Yeah, how much variability is in there that's acceptable for purpose X? Like, you're doing a lost call. It does go on. 20 plus notes. But like within there, how much stuff's coded in there beyond

I'm lost or where the heck are you? That's what they're fine with some of these new studies on songbirds and stuff because they hear differently than us. They're hearing into these sounds stuff that,

hey, either happens way too fast or than frequency ranges that we don't register real well. So it's like it almost seems in some cases like the size of the animal and their metabolism, their pace of life is coded to

their communication. So like there was a study where they actually took sperm whale cliques. I don't understand what that means. Let me explain. So like sperm whales, huge animal. Yeah. Communicating these clicks, travel real well underwater. And somebody had the broad idea. You know, they're trying to figure out what the heck these things mean. You know, when are they using this and this? And they've since found out a whole bunch. But somebody, had the bright idea to go in and delete all the spaces in between the clicks. And lo and behold, it sounds like a songbird.

Like you hear all the rising and falling of this. You know, we're used to listening to humans. Birds, they're communicating so fast, but maybe those smaller animals, their pace of life, their metabolism, whatever it is that makes them them, they're able to, in essence, from our perspective, slow down that sound of the winter rent or a, the Magnolia Warbler and hear into little tweaks of individual notes, let's say, and get more information out of that. I'm Dylan Clayfair.

And I'm Tyler Smith. We're putting loneliness in the penalty box by talking to some of our favorite athletes about the importance of friendship. This is Bromance. Bromance is brought to you by Charm Diamond Centers, proudly Canadian-owned and operator. Charm has been part of your love stories and bromances for over 50 years. And you can find Bromance on the IHeart Radio Network,

or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, if you're in or around Milwaukee, Wisconsin and you live for hunting season, you need to swing by the meat eater store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall to wall with the gear we actually use in the field. First Light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the corners of Brookfield. Whether you're gearing up for the season,

dialing in a setup, or just want to talk shop with people who love to hunt, this is your place that's the meat eater store Milwaukee at the corners of Brookfield stop in get dialed and get after it

I remember some I was reading somewhere or some guys saying when you go to like you're gonna see a fly and you're just gonna smack them you know what I mean that

to the fly he might be like in a minute I'm gonna move because there's this thing coming toward me do you know like his trip his like trip through life is just the perception is so different than what we think yeah so we think we're going wham you know and he's like no it's going totally yeah it might be like when a bird is just going ape shit crazy yeah like what yeah something else might be like oh he's saying

all kinds of. Yeah. Yeah. It just, there was a great essay written in the 1930s, I think, 30s, early 40s about

the title is what it's like to be a bat. And the clue, even if we could take the best AI and all these models and figure out their language and speak the same language,

we still wouldn't have a clue what they're talking about. You know this when you go to a different country or even if they're speaking English, there's culture. There's that culture

behind and underneath all of that. that language that when you make a joke among friends, you're like everybody knows in that group, what the hell you're talking about. But even if we could know that language for a bat, for a bird, it takes being able to hear like a bat. Yeah.

Breathe like a bat. You know, all these things that contribute to them being what they are that factors into how they interpret what they hear and say. Yeah. Like we've long, I mean, like forever have known that there are decibels,

the animals communicate in that we flat out don't hear. So it's like sort of you start with that like 100. There's things we don't hear that we know we don't hear. Yeah. There's research about the way birds proceed. You know, there's so much iridescence and birds. There's probably something in their eye. When they see iridescence, it just reads fundamentally different than what we see when we see iridescence.

Right. They take it in. Right. And the idea that there are, like you're saying, that when you're at a turkey calling contest, what we're going to, When we're saying, man, that sounds a lot like a turkey, could be tons of gibberish to a turkey. Yeah, a great example is like when I, when I do a hen yelp, I found over years I wouldn't get the same responses if I used a box call or a slate. And I, the only thing I could come to is that it sounded good to me, but there was things in my call. maybe it's missing frequencies or something that made it sound plastic or fake or something

just that didn't get the same response. I literally just go to a box call, you know, you got incident response. Like, what's up with that? Yeah. You know?

Is it, you know, certain frequencies, like high frequency drops off real fast. So over distance, you know, whether it's an elk call or what have you, you're generally picking up the low.

frequency sounds that travel better. But when you're right up close to something like, holy cow, you hear that elk bugle right next to the car if you're in Yellowstone or something, you're like, whoa, I'm missing a ton of stuff. There's a lot more going on in there than. What, you know, what are they hearing? You know, they, you know, like a lot of the canines, wolves, coyotes, they can hear, you know, Dave Meach found that in open terrain, uh, wolves can hear up to 10 miles, an open train. And max, I think, for me, unless wind conditions and other things are going on the max is about three miles for me so this is where often with students and stuff i'm like look you can't ever hear that you won't

ever smell that not even with the nose ranger or whatever like you just can't do this but if you start watching these animals closer you're like hey wait all of a sudden they're starting to up, they're facing one direction, and then they howl. Mm. Instantly, you know, okay, I'm looking at half of this story. The other half of the book is, I've had this happen, you know, friends with radios. They're six miles away. Yeah.

Yeah, we got the, uh, I got wolf pack, they're howling to the east, you know? Yeah, I'm watching the druids. Yeah, they're listening to the West. And they're going back and forth having a conversation for hour, two hours. we can't hear anything but the individual's standing in front of us. So there's so many animals doing stuff like this that we're like getting these fragments

thinking that we know what's going on and when they're having conversations over space and terrain that we don't even know what are happening. You know, we'll move away from turkeys in a minute, but you've obviously been super close to hens. like all the like I don't know what I can't think of like

at what distance you become aware of it but they're always making noises yeah those little noises you wouldn't hear from 100 yards away but in 10 yards you can hear right you know yeah what let's let's I'm taking it in the wrong direction let's not talk about the ones people aren't familiar with

let's just take like let me ask something real simple do you feel that a gobble is just a gobble or do you feel that there are there are different gobbles that mean different things yeah

I think there are different gobbles and I I thought for years that gobbles just a gobble and a young Tom makes not as good a gobble that yeah that's the idea right

he sucks at it he just sucks he hasn't learned how to do it because he aspires to one day be like exactly just blow your hair back But in fact, he's working on it.

It was in grad school. I was talking with a friend who's, you know, he's really sharp on bird behavior and, and all things, you know, research wise and, and scientific question answering kind of wise. And, um, he, he turned my mind on it. And I thought for years, you know, a young Tom,

you know, full on gobbler, you know, it's like a big full long. And then you hear a Jake, you know, it's like, it just chunked up and and sound right. He's like, no, you got to understand they're gobbling in context to who's around them. And then I started noticing, son of a gun, he's right. If it was just that Jake had many times, or that Jake would actually give a full-on gobble because he was by himself. He didn't know the big guy was over that ridge and Holland ass over to kick his butt. So he could

say whatever he wanted to. And of course, he wants to sound like the big guy in campus, right? And I'm like, son of a gun. Then I started seeing it in the field. I'm like, a gobble isn't a gobble, maybe. It's like a subservient gobble. I'd love to, you know, correct me and add to it. If listeners have listened for this kind of stuff more, I'd love to learn more about that.

Because I, you know, my turkey days are a little further back than some other stuff. But it's fascinating with just to think of that. If you could read into a gobble and be. like, oh, that gobble, he's like, I'm coming now. That gobble, he's like, eh, I heard you maybe come over later later. Yeah, you get the double gobble. You're like, oh, he's really liking that call. You know, triple gobble. You're like, he's come. He's got to be coming. Do you think he's loving the call when he hears a double gobble? That always, to me, seemed like a good barometer to how excited they were. Yeah, they gobble off the roost,

and they hit the ground and gobble, you know, and kind of gobble along. But once you get them fired up, man, they're double, triple gobbling. repeatedly and you're like get ready get ready get ready you're there come you know so you know if you look at it the more i started looking at it from the turkey's perspective the more i started understanding from my human perspective yeah uh you say you think about uh do you spend more time on crows or on ravens we just have more ravens around home so i spend more time listening to them okay The other day, it wasn't too long ago. I was watching one.

And he just seems to be. Like, from my perspective, he seems to be just wasting energy. He's flying along, just raising hell. Like, just making racket. Yeah. Right. Yeah. At a high way up.

Mm-hmm. And I'm like, he's not with anybody. He's just like making racket. Like, what, give me some insight into what, like, what they're capable of conveying. Sure. Yeah. And there's got to be something like, I found something to eat. Like that's pretty clear.

Yeah, there's stuff that it'll blow your doors off. And I, you know, I've only scratched the surface. I've found stuff that researchers haven't found. I've corroborated for myself, things that they've found that, yeah, that that holds here too. And it's, to me, it's always about starting into these conversations listening to what's most common. You know, pick the most common thing close to you and pick the most common thing it says. Okay. So it's like, I don't only have pigeons around.

Great. Awesome. Use pigeons. Because the lessons you learn through the pigeons actually are going to apply to the red squirrel, the raven, the coyote, all those kind of other things because you start sensitizing your own nervous system to it. And so when we were living in the park, I purposely, I'd finished my graduate work. I was like done with academia. I did not want to read another scientific paper. And in that case, I just wanted the ravens to teach me. It took longer, but I learned a lot more.

So the most common thing they were saying was, Yep. They like saying that. Yeah, like on a loop, you're like to a human, it means I'm a raven. Well, it took me the longest time to realize the ones that were doing that were the ones that were right next to our cabin. Okay.

And it was two. It was the resident pair. I'm like, oh, this is. their song. This is their territorial call that they use to keep the riffraff out. Their largest songbird in the world, even though it's not melodic,

that's their no trespassing sign. They're the largest songbird in the world? Yeah. Yeah, common ravens. And so, I was like, cool. The least melodic? Yeah, right. The largest songbird. But they're coding a bunch.

But you could like, so that's funny because I never thought about that classification. They'd be classification. as the songbird. They are. Yeah, they're in the Pasarine order, which is all the perching birds. Corvade family, which is J's, Crows, Jack Dawes,

magpies, stuff. But that gave me a hook. I was like, okay, I think I know what that three-note thing is now. And then the key, and I always stress this, the folks, is start listening for where it varies.

Okay. So there's one day I was out, and, you know, the Ravens are out there. Hit me with the hymns sitting on a post. being like, this is where I hang out. This is my song.

Yeah, this is my turf. Just tell me the, give me the noise. Okay. Right. And in this kind of group, you know, your listeners like making animal sounds is cool. Like in pop culture, like, you meet somebody at a dinner party and they're speaking to one person in Korean and one person in Italian and another person in French. And you're like, dude, who is this guy? You know, we see that as sophistication.

You know, it's like, you must have all this, you know, worldly experience, but you make an. animal sound and they're like, ah, ha, ha, you know, like, you know, so I was trying to preface it. I'm like, no, that betrays our bias against animals as stupid and under us. You need to start seeing them as those creatures that look into the ultraviolet, as those creatures that hear in ultrasonic and subsonic sounds, and those creatures that smell at parts per trillion,

like they best us in so many ways. So listen from that perspective. when I make animal noises because it's a crowd pleaser but the value in there is starting to get people to listen beyond okay that common call

just counting there's more notes and it's faster and I discovered that's a simple thing alone was happening when the tourists pulled out on the pullout in the road right below the corral fence

and popped out the bag of Cheetos those. Like they see food, they know it's in their territory. I'm going to get it if anybody is, and you sure as hell better not come in here and think you're going to steal it from me. So like that extra energy and repeated notes was almost like a more emphatic, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. Hmm, right? You know, we'd walk into an area, you know, as a group to go sit down and listen and watch and just us being there, those ravens would jump off their perches and start flying over doing that. But they're not talking to you.

They're talking to other ravens. Like whatever's going on here is in our turf. We're on it. If food comes out of this. That's what it seems like. I got a question for you. So that was a situation where there's people involved and they recognize that that's potential food source.

Would you hear that, did you ever hear that same noise like when they were like out in the back country when there was a carcass around or something? That's an awesome question, Brody, because that, I've seen that. So it's corroborated. Same kind of. Mine, mine, mine, mine. Like, the one I think of most is there was a spot in Slew Creek. Big flats.

This bison had died. It had been dead for a long time, pretty much eaten up. But the resident ravens, every time another raven came within like half a mile, they were up in the car count. Yeah. And if not flying over toward them to perch and give them another cussing. Yep. From within the turf.

So it's both. Yeah. Yeah. What is they like what are they doing vocally around like we we know all these sounds Like go back turkeys for a minute We know all these sounds that in our human understanding We've kind of got it like these are sounds of courtship

Okay The same way we might look at it out of people And be like that's a sound of courtship What like When you hear a raven you're just hearing like raven You're just hearing like raven noise you don't understand What is a What are they doing in the breeding season?

Like what kind of things is a raven want to communicate in the breathing season? What would be the equivalent of how we, at least how we perceive to be a gobbler going through the woods goblin, you know, trying to draw hens in? Yeah, I think it's different for reasons because they're just socially different. Okay. You know, turkeys are flock creatures, you know, tombs are hanging out together, but the hens and the poults are hanging out together. They mix and mingle in places. Ravens are very much territorial with, you know, kind of a slew. of travelers and non-residents filtering in and around through there, except times when somebody

kills a bison out our way or an elk. And those big food sources become big attractions. We know now from the research in the park that some of these birds are coming from Bozeman, flying to my house and Gardner and Yellowstone to feed on carcasses during the bison heart. Because word spreads down the valley. Somehow, yes. That's wild. You know what, man, you know what, like, we were hunting an area with my kids. We were hunting an area this year where, like, there's a lot. There's a big cow elk harvest in a certain area pretty annually. I was even commenting to my kids, like, I'm like, these things know what goes on here.

And they're like in town for it. I didn't know they were in town from far away. I meant I thought they were in town from like the other side of the valley or something. That's what I used to think. No way in hell. These suckers are traveling 20 to 30 miles in the morning. So you think of a Yellowstone bird. You're like, oh, that's a big wilderness bird.

They just hang out in the park. No, they come up, they're either feeding at the dump in Gardner or West Yellowstone or out Cody, flying back at midday. They're commuting, literally commuting in the morning off the food source, flying back in the day to maintain their territory. For potentially 30 miles away. Yeah. And that's daily. You know, say nothing to these seasonal things. They somewhere have their own place they would regard as their hangout, their house.

Absolutely. So to get back to that, the call that I learned next in sequence with Ravens was this. And before I even saw them, I knew that they were moving, right? That's the sound they make when somebody's violated the no-fly zone in their turf. So they have to be back there on their territory to hold that space for, them so when the tourist season rolls back around and everybody's got frozen pizza and baloney sandwiches like they don't have to do any fighting in border control they're good to go because everybody knows that's their turf but we're at the close the loop on the mating season stuff like i think a lot

of these big food source locations end up being like the bar the dating scene for ravens and so you'll see them displaying they aren't vocalizing as much much that we can hear. If you're close and you hang out at the dump for the ravens like I do sometimes and not for the trash, you hear all these crazy soft sounds that probably, I don't know if we'll ever figure out what they mean. You know, like, you know, you probably heard those like a water drop and stuff and they use them in context of getting know to know each other. And you can tell at times when they display, they're not fanning like a turkey, but they'll puff their throat. They'll hold their beak up. You've probably seen this, especially.

around like a gut pile or something where the birds converge look real close because in the in a general sense when you see those birds that kind of drop their wings a little bit they're puffing up they drop their flank feathers those are your resident birds those are the territorial ones who own that space so to speak the others are interlopers and they'll be trying to run them off in fact when i did start reading back into the literature on ravens it confirmed what i'd seen in Yellowstone where what Barron Heinrich

one of the world's leading authorities on Ravens had found near his cabin in Maine was this dead moose one dead moose and one raven finds it

it lands and gives this call and ravens come out of the woodwork and start feeding on it with it and he's like that makes no sense

right you you like make a a beautiful barbecue dinner for your and your family, before you eat, you have the high school football team come over and dine first. Yeah.

Like, biologically, behaviorally, like, that didn't make sense until he started studying them and marking them. And what he figured out was the ones doing that were younger ones and non-territorial birds. And that call, which is a great way if you ever injure an animal or you got a downed animal on terrain you can't track them on, you've got to listen to the Ravens. because that call doesn't mean food in a generic sense, any food. It means meat. Really?

So that bird is calling out to avoid being persecuted by the residents who own that turf. So if that bird who found the moose

was caught by the residents, it'd be run out and it wouldn't get any food. But by going, it brings in an overwhelming number of other ravens and everybody ends up getting some.

Yeah. That makes it. I can think of an analog that a friend of mine was accidentally trespassing and found a mammoth jaw. So he had to go over and say, sir,

I was accidentally trespassing on your phone. And lo and behold, I found a mammoth jaw. What are we going to do about this? And at that point he called in all his butt. buddies is stained around him to make sure he got the right answer. Yeah. He's like, he's like that raven. He's like, dude. Like, I know I'm on your place. It's a big elk.

Let me help you out. I just would like to know what happens with the thing and just try to be part of this, you know, admitting that I'm on your place. And what I'm going to do is calling a bunch of my buddies to help me pack it out. There you go. No way. I'm Dylan Playfair. And I'm Tyler Smith.

We're putting loneliness in the penalty box by talking to some of our favorite athletes about the importance of friendship. This is bromance. Bromance is brought to you by Charm Diamond Centers, proudly Canadian-owned and operator. Charm has been part of your love stories and bromances for over 50 years. And you can find Bromance on the I-Heart Radio Network or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, if you're in or around, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and you live for hunting season, you need to swing. by the Meat Eaters store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall to wall with the gear we actually use in the field.

First Light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the corners of Brookfield. Whether you're gearing up for the season, dialing in a setup, or just want to talk shop with people who love to hunt, this is your place. That's the Meat Eater Store, Milwaukee, at the corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get dialed. after it.

Yeah. Hit me with the meat call again? So let me qualify. It sounds very similar to what young birds do when they're still on the nest and they're fledging. So if you've ever had a raven or a crow nest near your place,

you know, they never shut up. Like they just talk, dog, and a lot of that is, which just grates on your nerves and it's supposed to because in essence what they're saying is, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom, hey mom, right?

So if you see an adult bird and the way you tell on a lot of birds, and certainly for Corvids, if you see them call, pick up your binocs and look in their mouth. If the lining of the mouth is black, it's an adult. It's three years or older. We can't age and beyond that. We just know that after about two years, the mouth lining is all black. If it's a red pink, it's a juvenile. juvenile. So if you hear a juvenile going off like that in August or September, you're like, eh, stupid kids, trying to get the parents to still feed them. But if it's a blackmouthed adult

doing that, you want to start looking. You want to start looking for the magpies going in and out. You want to start seeing if there's a coyote coming over the hill. Oh, you know, it's just a corroborating evidence that there's something there that you're missing that the eyes in the sky picked up. And do the noise again? And you don't have to. you hear at once. Like I've had guide friends. They're like, hey, there's a new bison in Lamar Valley in Yellowstone. That's it. Don't tell me anymore. I'll go in the park and I'll hang out. I'll go to a real good viewpoint, prominent point, and I'll close my eyes. And I'll listen for the first time I hear that call. And often, because we often bias our other senses sometimes,

I'll point in the direction I think it is, then that'll open my eyes. And there it is, almost without fail. Because he's making that racket. He's making that racket. He's making that racket because it found the food and it's calling in buddies to make sure the residents don't run them out you can that's one of the best ways to find that there also what he i got mixed up about what he's saying or what you're he's being like if i go down by myself i'm going to get harassed and run off yeah so he's basically calling in like reinforcements so the thing going and feed and they're not and they got enough people there where it's not going to be.

Yeah. It's like a smoke screen. Yeah. Feathered smoke screen to give them the opportunity to sneak in there without getting beat up. And you'll hear it too. Like there's an awesome reference. Um, you ever read any of Richard Nelson's ethnography work from Alaska? Yeah.

In, uh, prayers to raven. There's a passage in there. It's awesome. And there's like a one sentence description in there that I just like, oh, I just want to know what he's talking about there. He said when the native hunters, the kitchen find a fresh bear track. In the snow, they hide and they make the calls of a raven to draw the bear in.

And I'm like, oh, really? What is that call? And they just keeps going. I'm like, no, you know, come back to that. There's two possibilities. One is that non-territorial birds saying, ha, right? That's possible. The other one, which I think is probably more likely, is the squabbling calls you hear when

ravens are on the ground at a carcass fighting. Oh, and they're all duking it out. Duking it out, told. And you have that, like, we got a good deal going here. God, that's interesting, man. You'd go and get a bunch of guys who could do that and start making that noise and see what shows up. Yeah, I don't know how effective it was, but it's effective enough, apparently, in their culture, that it's a known thing. One of my favorite things that the inmate, make prayers of the raven.

One of my favorite things that he learns from those guys he's hanging out with is, you know, they'd like to den dig bears. Yeah. and their take is like, man, anybody can, you know, because we'd look at that like, you know, most people look at that like a cowardly act, you know, unsportsman like their take is like, man, anybody can shoot a bear walking around. Go climbing there and drag them out of there.

Right. And the old days they're doing it with a lance. Yeah. They let the bear charge them, you know, go climb in there and drag them out and tell me about how easy it is. Yeah. Wussy. That's a good book. Yeah, he spends a lot of time on. I mean, obviously, like, that thing of, like, the significance of that bird,

which is probably in some way motivated by it's just incredible intelligence. Yeah, and I could totally see, like, people will often ask questions of, like, like, you know, wolves around, you know, are they leading wolves to kills? And so far as we can see, no. Like, there might be one or two instances in the last 30 years where somebody can say, I'm pretty sure the Ravens were maybe goaded those wolves over. A friend of mine was watching a brown bear. You know, tap into the carcass or something?

Yeah, or here's a weak animal. Oh, got it got it. You know, there's a carcass. Like, come quick, come over here. Yeah. Right here, you know, it's more they're just like parasites to the wolves. They're just taking advantage of the wolves kill. I've seen times where wolves will be feeding on the back end of an old war out bull elk and the ravens are literally an antlers like waiting their turn.

Come on, man. Give us a little space here. But you don't see that there's like a legitimate like, hey, come quick. This thing's wounded. No, no, but like the northern cultures all over the globe were like, yeah, that's how we find the caribou. And I think a lot of those signals are as much behavioral. Like, for instance, because we live on the edge of the national forest right north of the park, there's a lot of hunting that goes on. And I can go out for a walk with a dog and I'm like, somebody killed something over by the Travertine two miles away.

just by the continual unidirectional flight of every single raven going that way. So I think a lot of those early cultures probably were not just picking up on sound, but they were picking up on directional flight, flight altitude. If you see aerobatics in the air, they probably, they're close. There's a certain, I don't know, number of hundreds of yards, hundreds of meters that you'll see ravens chasing each other, trying to get food away from each other. And, you know, like, so you know, you see that, you're like, oh, we're within a couple hundred yards of, of that food source. I was in, I was in Tanzania this summer and the trackers.

Use the what oxpeckers do in the morning. It's, it's like, it's diagnostic. I mean, they don't look at like, oh, maybe. Maybe there's something over there that it's going to. Yeah. They're like, he's up in the morning. When he flies out, he already knows. he knows where they're at

the Buffalo yeah like he knows where they are because he was with him before or whatever and he's going there yeah you know and so yeah in that way

and those messages come from all over they might not go there because of whatever factors but they're like at daybreak when six of them go yeah and disappear down somewhere like

that's not for something else and bugs there's a large animal there you know you probably read Boyd Vardy's, you know, line trackers guide to life or something like that. One of his mentors was finding, found a lion kill from watching the flies. No, really.

Same deal. You know, I interviewed a guy from the book and he didn't end up making it into the final cut, but he and his buddy hunted a lot in California. Really rocky ground, you know, the first time it happened. He shot a buck. It ran off somewhere. Could kind of see, you know, ran out of blood, didn't know, just kind of gave up almost sitting on this. this hill or next to this trail and sort of seeing he called him meat bees, you know, yellow jackets that you're trying to avoid if you're processing game from getting stung, ill jackets keep going up this trail. So he followed him and he's used that for years thereafter to find down game.

Got it. In places he couldn't track. You know, Tom Petty, the late Tom Petty. He once said, in one of his songs, he says, I can track a single bee to its high. which is like how they used to find staying there swarms and yeah you stay in there

wait till one goes by see as far as it went go there stay in there wait for the number one to go by you can find your buck like that man yeah badass you can and it's it's all

that's to me and I don't hunt anymore and that's a whole different conversation but just paying attention and trying to see the world through these other creatures eyes, you start picking that stuff up a lot more. And this is what our ancestors, all of our ancestors

knew this animal language stuff in far better detail than I do. Like a friend of mine's hung out with the Sond people in the Kalahari. They are unfreaking believable in interpreting non-human communication. And the ones were the best, you would think are the hunters. He's like, no. Actually, it's the women. The women are out in the bush digging roots. They've got kids with, with them, they got old people with them, all these people that are very vulnerable if the hyenas or leopard or the lions come through. So they are ultra peaked. And he went out with them one day and they're digging away and these women's just spread out. You're like, dude, that's not safe, right? From our perspective, hundreds of yards between these different women with the children digging roots and things like that. And he'd walk up to any of them. We're the closest lions without even stopping. They point. How far? About this far. Walk to another one.

Hey, we're the closest lions. They point. Go around and visit multiple women doing this just effortlessly. As part of their day, they're absorbing this information as they go. And in that particular case, they went over a couple hours later in a vehicle. There's the fresh lion tracks. Got it. And even on down of really specific stuff.

Like he told me this story. They were in this, it was a small plot of forest, and they hang out there in the day because it gets really, really hot. And they said to them, the white guys, the tourists, do not leave this patch of forest. There's mammas out here. There's cobras. There's hyenas, you know, the whole laundry list. But one of the guys with him there was one of his students in animal language, bird language. And this student of his comes over, he says, hey, I know we're not supposed to leave, but I'm hearing this bird.

do something that I think might be talking about a snake. Can you come listen to it? So he goes over there with him at the edge of this little patch of trees. And he's like, yeah, I think you're right. But, you know, we're not going to go out there. But let's go get the one white guy. He's got a gun. We'll check it out.

So he comes over. The three of them walk out. And he's like, yeah, I think you're right. I think it's a snake, but let's go get Isikwa. You know, this native guy, his name literally translates into Kof. He'll know. Mm-hmm. So Yisikala comes, the four of them then walk within, I don't know, say, 60, 80 yards.

And he's like, yep, there it is. It's a black mamba. Don't go over there. So my friend says to his student, who originally found this whole deal, he's like, now watch this. They go back into the trees. And there's like five women sitting around making beads with ostrich eggshells. And they're just talking. Kids are playing around.

They're playing around. People are working on tan and hides. You know, just usual stuff of the community. So they stand their patient. And finally, there's a break in the conversation, and the translator says, do you want to ask the question? So my friend says, yeah, do you ladies hear any alarms right now?

And in unison, all five of them point over their shoulder to what is hundreds of yards away. It says there's a mamba over there. Don't go over there. Hmm. So not only through their regular routine, where they hearing it, they also knew exactly what it meant. Haven't not even seen it with all this other noise and stuff going on. Like that's the level that not just Native Africans, not just Native Amazonians, like our ancestors knew that.

And it's like so cool that we're discovering it now. It's like, no, it's neat. But this is really old. And it was used because it was so useful. retained because dinner was on the hoof and you need to know it was in there before you even went in there to just limit the chaos that that life brings at you so on and for me it's like i was guiding a ton you know it's like people are paying you to find the bear well well if there's anybody on a carcass that's out there it's probably going to be a bear yeah you know so

you got to listen to the raven you got to watch the duck so i don't i want to see a wolf you know, somebody might, like, I don't care. You got to watch everything here because everything has a response and a relationship with everything else. And the more you pay attention to that, the more you're going to see all those connections start on just blossom. And what's even more cool is when you see the position you yourself hold. You're being talked about. They respond to you, Steve, different than you, Brody, different than you occur in. They respond.

You see it in our dogs. Dog has a different bark for the UPS guy because he gives him snacks. Definitely different bark for the FedEx guy. No snacks there. Different bark for the neighbor. Knows that guy pretty well. Different bark for or behaviors when one of the family comes home.

So we're not in isolation of this, you know, as it's seen in the wild world, like we're doing it. Our pets are doing it. It's just paying attention a little bit more so that you start seeing in the places that you want to know more. Our dog has a greeting for people whose house she has stayed at before.

What is it? Just a level of like swirling around, making whining noise. Rolling over on her back. That means she's like been dog sat by them. Yeah. Well, the crazy thing is like, if you haven't done that, she's not going to do it. Right. It's true.

It's so true. And like literally three mornings ago, my wife and I are working at the dining room table. And our dog, we got a black. Lab Hobbs, Hobbs starts going bananas, like ape shit. I'm like what, he only does that level of craziness for the UPS guy or if the neighbor's dog comes in the yard because he wants to go play. Right? I'm like, what is it?

He's just like bouncing. He almost looked like a coonhound, you know, it's baby, you know, treat a raccoon, bouncing on his front feet, barking, barking, barking. And I look out the front door before I let him out. And here's a bobcat walking up the stairs from the lower yard into the upper yard. 20 feet from the from the door and then just veers off and through the yard you'd see those traction you're like oh yeah that bobcat came through in the night like no dude it was 10.30 in the morning we were working and we would have missed it had hobbs or in other cases we've seen lines in our yard because the magpies told us yeah you know we had a lion with four kittens in our yard this spring and they disappeared after a while didn't think we'd see him again and we're sitting on the porch my wife and i and jenny says you hear that? I'm like, yeah. Magpies. Magpies, when they are social and just hanging out together, they'll go, you hear it in different places. They're just checking in. But when it goes,

they're yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like, that's what we heard. And she says, there's something down there. I'm like, I know. And she no more than stands up, walks less than the distance from here to Brody, looks over the railing into the lower yard and she says, the fucking lion. And because of the forewarning, had enough time running the house, grab her camera and got this killer footage of the cat walking like 30 feet from the corner of our deck. And those magpies around the afternoon. Yeah.

When you at least expect it, it's like when your life is on the line, like a magpie who might be whacked by a wild cat or a raven who might get whacked by an eagle, like look to those things that their lives depend on most. And then you just start seeing this, this whole scene open up is, that's why they're talking that way. And you're just, you're just an eavesdropper,

listening out. I was like, oh, whoa. Like, Ravens have a specific call for Golden Eagles. Some things seem generic, but some things are extremely specific. And this one, it can take a while.

Like, this one took me about five years to figure out what the heck it meant. I'd heard it. I'm like, whoa, that's different. I can't figure it out. flying high, just making noise, right?

No. No, that's what happens when there's a golden eagle. What does that noise like? So it's a very consistent, uniform series of notes to just go on. Uh-huh. And it's serious.

And I was having lunch with a guy who runs the bird programs in Yelstone. I'm like, hey, Dave, you, did your graduate work on Golden Eagle? He says, yeah, yeah. He's like, do you know this raven call? I've been hearing this raven call.

I'm pretty sure it's just for Goldens. He's like, oh, yeah, that's exactly what we listen for to know to get the eagle traps ready because one's coming. Oh, really? So you hear that and you're like, oh, there's an eagle? Why are they tuned into Goldens? They're killers. So, Golden's will kill them off of the, like, swipe them off a carcass or whatever. I've only seen it twice myself.

It happens more, but it's really infrequent. But he wants to eat it. Oh, yeah. Okay. They're eating them. Got it. It's like a difference between a wolf killing a coyote versus a lion. Lion will eat you.

Wolf just kills you. Yeah. You know, so their level of response is different. That line is going to hunt you. Yeah. That wolf is going to opportunistically kill you because you're filching off its kill. And they know these variations. So I asked Dave, I'm like, have you noticed a variation?

for bald eagles because i think i have and he's like no you know he wasn't doing research on them so he didn't but on the spectrum of raven chasing another raven off versus raven chasing a golden eagle off back from that golden eagle end of the spectrum is something that has a few more gaps in it a few more bits of inflection and it's hard because you see the value of indigenous knowledge of a landscape because I only get maybe half a dozen of these in a lifetime, some of these behaviors and calls. But if you've got a hundred other people who are listening for exactly the same thing

for a couple thousand years and you're telling the stories, yeah, you see why the Bushmen are so damn good. But I've been able to call it on balds a few times. You know, you hear a kha-k-ha-ha. And I don't know if you can hear the differences in there. It's not that... And it's not the raven chasing another raven.

there's a little more insistence to it. There's a little more uniformity, but compared to the Golden Eagle, there's still more inflection, there's more spacing in there. And they're doing those things for a reason. It's all this stuff, like, are you doing all this just kind of based on memory

and things you're hearing repetitively out while you're out? Or are you recording it all to like listen to this stuff and get nuanced out of it? Or is it just, for years, for 20 plus years, it's been me just listening in ways other people haven't been. And making some connections and missing most. Right. But what's really cool right now is my friend's kind of at the center of initiating a bioacoustics project in Yellowstone, which at the most specific level is wanting to disentangle wolf language.

You know, can you sense this a wolf population in a place like Colorado? Can you keep wolves out of a place by playing certain types of howls in an area to keep them on a cattle? Right. Right. So they're doing more or less the basic research, though, which is basically, you're putting out all these recorders and recording 24 by 7, 365 days a year. But you're not just getting wolves. You're getting everything. You're getting all the ravens.

You're getting all the bison conversation. You're getting everything. And we've got one of them in our yard, a part of this project. So what I have now is a spreadsheet on my phone Where I see a raven chase a golden eagle over I just make a time and date stamp and a noted behavior in my phone And now I can actually go back because you're in you all had this If you're trying to take a photo

Of something you're trying to record something It's over before you're done especially these things I only have a few data points ever But this is always running It's always running So I can now make a note and I'm like, Raven being chased by this or Raven chasing that, I can go back to the sound recordings and listen to it over and over and it's in its context. Totally.

I'm Dylan Playfair. And I'm Tyler Smith. We're putting loneliness in the penalty box by talking to some of our favorite athletes about the importance of friendship. This is Bromance. Bromance is brought to you by Charm Diamond Centers, proudly Canadian-owned and operator. Charm has been part of your love stories and bromances for over 50 years. And you can find bromance on the IHartRadio Network or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, if you're in or around, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and you live for hunting season,

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That's where this AI stuff is really cool on one level with wildlife acoustics and other behaviors, but you still need the field time. You still need somebody who's dyed in the wool in the field, and that's all they do to interpret that data. Otherwise, it's just noise. So that's the part I really enjoy. And I'm really wanting to figure out, I have a strong suspicion of what the alarm coyotes use for when they encounter a cougar.

It's different than when they find a wolf because they're bad dudes, and they're going to tell everybody about it. They want them known and they want to avoid them themselves, their families. But I've only had four instances where I can verify that that coyote, through snow tracking or somebody else's observations, that coyote was barking at a coover. One data point. And hope this bioacoustic stuff is allow us to then go in.

Because he and I hooked up with a high school honors student. Kid wanted a project on wildlife. So we're like, great, we need to train the AI model. So we had him go listen to a bunch of stuff and accumulate enough howls to say, this is a howl, it's not an airplane, this is a howl, it's not a truck, this is a howl of a wolf, not a coyote, so that then you can let the machine listen to a year's worth of recordings without you having to sit there for a year for every single unit. And they can isolate all the, yeah. Right.

And, you know, there's been an explosion in the amount of info out there in the research world about this kind of stuff in the last 15 years. A friend wrote a book came out in 2012 called What the Robin knows by John Young. They had to scratch and dig to find any documentation that talked about any of this

stuff. You know, everybody's got the app now. Like, here's the song of the Robin. You know, here's the song of the Phoebe. You know, all these, what they don't tell you and they can't is what the hell that actually means. Yeah.

And, And so there's been a lot more research in that field recently, which is just, it's pointing to the complexity that we've been ignoring as modern humans for a long darn time. And it's fun, you know, you don't need expensive equipment to engage with this stuff. You just, you don't even need binoculars. Just listen. Well, I don't have good hearing anymore. I shot too many guns or like me, you know, power tools and guns. and, you know, I got compromised hearing,

but it's not about what you can hear or can see. It's what you do with what you can hear and see. Like I noticed a friend of mine who's had a lot of the same history, we pick up on cars on dirt road a lot further off than our wives do. Right, get the dogs, get the dogs in, out of the road. Like, what are you talking about? There's a car coming. Yeah, there's a car coming.

I don't hear it. Well, just give it a sec, you know, and there it comes. So each of us comes to the to the game with a slightly different set of superpowers, if you want to put it that way. Yeah. And we're tuning into things in ways that you aren't or you're tuning in stuff that I don't. It's just in some ways, like I don't like to give a lot of instruction on this stuff because I want to hear what you find. And if I tell you what to look for, that's all you're going to see. You follow me?

You know, so it's like, yeah, I'm going to tell you some cool stuff to get you started, plant that seed. man, I really want you to do this on your own and teach me what you find. Oh, yeah, the lions, you know, the coyotes do that at the lion, but it's when the lion's behaving like this. So like when that bobcat came through the yard the other day, I did get a small recording of the magpies, and it was nothing like what I would point out and say, uh, bobcat over there. Mm-hmm. And what you start to realize is they're oftentimes talking about, sure, they're talking about the animal. specifically, but as well in that mix is them talking about that animal's behavior. It's intention, you might say.

So when a cat is hunting, those alarms go through the roof. They light up the woods. But if the cat, like this one the other day, it was just kind of like walking through the yard, you know, drops off the retaining wall, sits down on a log in the little copse of cotton woods. Yeah, yeah, there's a trouble, but we're not ratting it out like crazy. You know, so in many cases, you can, you can actually read into the behavior. You can read into the direction in animals moving.

Like, so when the coyote is alarming at something like us, naturally, they'll often shadow it as it progresses. So you'd be like, okay, there's a, there's a wolf over there, and it's going right to left at a trot, I think. and if we want to see it, we're going to have to go over on the hill here where we're downwind. You can start doing these predictive things that our ancestors were using intimately because they're hunting with rocks and sticks.

Yeah, yeah. You need everything. And this is one of those tools that helps you on that razor's edge of survival. It's like the, you know, the Crow Indian, you know, crow tribal folks here, they had a, you know,

crowfare. I don't know if you guys have been to Crowfare, but they were just, a few years ago, a Twitter with the fact this one elder was coming out of the mountains to attend. And this photographer friend of mine got to meet him. And, you know, he's very low-key, asking questions. And the elder asked this friend of mine, he's like, so, you know, what do you do? You know, I'm a photographer. He saw, oh, what do you like to photograph? You know, bears and wolves and otters and stuff like that. You want to know where every bear is, every wolf is? He's like, yeah, he's like getting his notebook out. He's like, you know, thinking he's going to

draw a map and he's like he says no he says you listen to the birds he says they're like our women they gossip about everything yeah you know that's some deep wisdom right there because it's going on all the time but we just don't give it the credit it's due what uh what other animals that people that people listen would know would have a familiarity with the with the with the vocabulary with the vocabulary already. Yeah, great ones like gray squirrels. Okay. Like in North America, at least, you know, gray squirrel is a great one.

They're in Europe, you know, they've been introduced to Europe and there are a plague over there. But again, nature doesn't care whether you're non-native or native. Sure. Everybody's contributions to this community conversation is equal and listen to. So gray squirrels, um, if you spent time in the woods, you know something's coming through when you hear. What? What? What?

What. Which is in contrast to ever hear that one? Oh, yeah. Without the, r-r-r-r-r-k. Yes, exactly. Look up. That is typically for a threat from the air. Is that right?

Yeah. He leaves off the couple like whatever. The chucks or chubs are. Yeah, he leaves out the chucks. The chucks are typically something on the ground. Same with red squirrels. You know, that's him on, that's something on the ground. There's some, there's some debate in the scientific community over what that actually means.

And no, it doesn't mean that. It means this. And we don't know. And the bottom line is the squirrels know. Listen to the squirrels, spend time with the squirrels. Because when they go, sik, sik, zit, sik, sik, sik, sik, I hate that one. What does that mean? Because they got a version that just means I'm mad at another squirrel.

There is that. Yeah, you can't discount that. That's for sure. Like, dude, get out of my midden. I wish I knew. I got all the, like, I wish I could isolate the one. Because I'm real interested in the one where he sees something. But then a lot of times you'd be watching him from afar and he'd be like, he's fired up because he's fired up at that squirrel.

Yeah. You know, he's not telling about some elk coming down the trail. He's like pissed at a squirrel. Mm-hmm. And what's really crazy cool is not only are most of these things innate. in these species, so like those vervet monkeys, they are wired from birth to yell at the leopard like they do. You think so? We know so.

What they don't always have is... They're not learning language. Well, yes and no. What they need is refinement of how to use that. So like young ones, they've seen in those vervets like adults basically like cuff the kids. Like, shut up. That is a root. It's a tree root.

It's not a snake. Oh. All right. So there are these innate tendencies. there's these innate alarms, but then there's also training that comes with the social arrangement that helps them refine it

so that the group can agree, right? And that's also where you end up with these dialects. You know, the ravens on Vancouver Island, like, dude, they say stuff I've never heard before from here. Okay. It's a totally different accent in California. Oh, dude, he's almost so forward. You know, it's like, Maineers, you know,

those ravens have different sounds. Same in Alaska. You can see then it's like there are these pockets of agreed upon sound culture. Yeah. And they're talking about things in pretty complex ways. They're talking about us too, which I don't think a lot of people realize. They're talking about us in ways that these wild communities are actually across species, not just across species, across genera, family, order.

of organism that are all listening to each other simultaneously. So the mink is listening to the frogs. The frogs are listening to the owl. The owl is listening to the jet going overhead. There's this whole hierarchy of order that they fall into. That's a great point that as much you're talking about trying to sort, figure out what the noises make. There's all these different noises that have to mean something.

It's interesting to get into. like what are other animals so here you are a human here you are one species hearing an elk bugle drawing conclusions from that but that elk is listening to a pine squirrel drawing conclusions from that none of them are in isolation we are the ones in isolation we're the ones out of the out of the conversation and it's not like you got to go into a wild place to hear this no like Literally, I'm gassing up here in Boasme before I got here, and the chickadee is pissed off at something. I didn't see what it was, but I at least knew something's going on over there. I've done enough times to walk over and be like, oh, I bet nobody in this neighborhood seen that owl.

It's been sitting there, probably lived there its whole life years, and nobody's known that it's sitting right there. We had one hanging dead in that tree there today. Did you really? What happened to it? We emailed or I texted one of the games. wardens and he said there's so much avian influenza right now and it's hitting owls hard enough where they don't even they're not even testing all the birds anymore that's sad and that's he was going to come by and grab it but he was like he's like there's a lot of it yeah

overwhelmed and that's yeah like that's the trouble there's too many to check check them all right now that's what i lament is as we see biodiversity tanking around the globe is we're losing these informants we're losing these community members who are more than happy to welcome us in and share information with us if we slow the hell down. Like something I do with students that I've done for years is I'll take them out somewhere in the park. And I said, everybody puts your phones, your watches, everything in a bag.

Pull out a notepad or a piece of paper and a pencil. That's all you're allowed to have. Spread out, you know, so we'll have everybody spread out for, you know, a few yards between everybody over, let's say, an acre. and we're going to sit for an hour, 60 minutes. That's it, 60 minutes. And then I just want you to look for any animals you see, any sounds you hear, just jot them down. And we come together at the end of that, and I keep time, and they have a crude way for them to keep rough time stamps of when we're out there so they can correlate certain things.

and I'll say to them what um what did you hear nothing man there was nothing for like I don't know I thought I heard a chickadee like maybe minute you know around minute 40 or when you made the signal for the fourth quarter or something like there was nothing and then there was stuff all over I'm like anybody else noticed that like yeah actually the nuttatch came down the tree I saw a coy like all these things start happening. I said, do you think us going in there, screwed things up? Did they know we were coming? And you see the wheels start turning. The answer to that is absolutely yes. The same signal system that's ratting out the Cooper's Hawk coming through the neighborhood or the owl perched up in the spruce is the same system that's telling everybody

else about us. That's super interesting from a hunting perspective because like you could be glass and some mule deer that are say a thousand yards away and you're like they have no idea we're here but maybe they do and they're just not worried about it yet. They know the proximitys. They know the priors. They know that squirrel isn't going to do that until it sees something of trouble. But they're 300, 400 yards down.

if we see the kail hauling ass up through this meadow past us we know that trouble's gotten about another hundred yards closer you know that that that ghost buck that nobody could ever harvest they at a very fine level at that age had to be have to be tuning into these ultra fine details of alarm in their environment and every species has a different threshold you know so toys for instance they're out of their so fast or like ninjas, you just noticed like they're gone. Like where the hell they go? And then the sparrows, you know, pay attention and they make a couple chip notes and then they take off, you know, and a couple minutes later, here comes the dog has followed

your trail into the woods. Yeah, when you're sneaking along thinking that the thing that's alerting stuff is you crunching leaves and then you think about, and you go, it's like, like the forest is alive with bird calls and whatever and squirrels and stuff, but you think it's like you stepped on a twig. Yeah, it's a good point. They might have been talking about you for forever, man. But Turkey's, turkey step on twigs, elk brick, branch, big, big, big, big stuff. So, like, why aren't they alarming at that?

I was, like, so pissed as a kid, like, watching these birds on my grandmother's feeder, like a woodpecker come in and flush everybody or a J or, you know, squirrel sidles up. I walk out, everybody takes off. I'm like, I'm not bad. I'm not a bad guy. Like, come on, let's, you know, hang out, show me some stuff. And no, it's like, you screw the least common denominator. As a hiker, a dog walker, a beachcomber, and you scare everybody.

That's the piece we don't get is if you scare the robin, you've already been blown for everything. You scare the brown creeper. You scare the mink. You know, it's like, and then there's this beautiful, this is like gourmet level stuff where you start getting into secondary alarms. So like, as you slow down, I'll back up just a second. So that one exercise of making everybody sit for 60 seconds or 60 minutes, I'll say, how many times have each of you gone out in the woods or somewhere just wildish and sat for 60 minutes and done nothing but pay attention? You ask that yourself.

Like, you know, hunters, some. But, yeah, archery, whitetail hunters. Yeah, that's how I learned it. A lot of it. That's when you see everything. Well, you got to, like, you got to go sit there at like an hour. hour in. Also, you're like, where is all this stuff normally?

Bingo. It's like stuff everywhere. It's normally exactly like you see after that hour. And that's what this lesson conveys them is like, I've never sat anywhere for an hour. And so the result is the reason we don't pick up on so much of this stuff is we have never, ever seen the environment we live, our home, the place we think we know the best in anything other than a state of alarm and disruption. Right.

alarm and disruption that we have created ourselves. But the beauty is, as you start to pay attention to that, they recognize it in you. And it's very simple. Slow down, walk without an intention. Photographers, you know, even the photographer, not hurting anything, doing anything, the behavior most people take on when they're trying to get a photo, it's predator-like. I see you. I'm focused on you.

I'm, that is scary as hell to wild animals. What's it saying is, I'm going to get you. Yep. I'm getting you. Yeah. Like, I'm acknowledging that you're there. Right. So, like, if you're coming up, you tell people, if you're trying to get up on a cotton

tell, be like, last thing you do, don't look at it. Exactly. Look at it out the corner of your eye and don't ever aim your eyeballs at it. Because when you aim your eyeballs at it, it knows you're aiming your eyeballs at it. Exactly. Exactly. It's that language. So as you slow down, and as a friend calls it, I love this term, the honoring routine, you start to honor their space.

You very quickly can tell what the squirrel's personal space extends to. You respect that. You give them a little bit of room. Oh, crap. You know, I'm just trying to get to the store. Like, I'm not walking around every pigeon. Well, that is the barrier that it's going to stop you from moving through the woods like that ghost buck. like that lion.

Do you follow me? They are paying attention to the signals in the environment and working around them and using environmental components to their advantage. So there's some places that are worthless

to try to hunt until it's a south wind, right? You've got to wait until the wind's right. You see certain birds and predators hunt when it's pouring down rain. Their survival is so narrow

on that that razor edge and they've got this huge neighborhood watch trying to disarm them and keep them from killing their prey and so they're doing all these different things to try to subvert

the community of communication that's busting them that's busting you that's busting you you step like literally you got two minutes usually this is a fun one to play with tell a buddy to

Meet me at this trail intersection at 11 o'clock, let's say. Except you get in there at 10. So it means you leave your car or do whatever you have to be sitting down by 10 and let things go back to normal. And then... Which is 30 minutes, whatever, yeah. Yeah, at least. Not five.

It's usually more like 40 to 60 minutes. And then as you're sitting there and the birds are feeding and they're preening and they're singing, you hear the most common alarm in the woods. What is it? Silence. Silence is the most overlooked and most common alarm in nature that exists. So you just might think there's nobody singing over there anymore.

And then you see a couple birds like hauling ass going from the parking lot area past you. set your watch two minutes so you got two minutes to figure out do you want to scare the tarter you're in my buddy you don't want to hide or do you want to go to somewhere else where I can watch them and screw them

that's a good point about the quietness man this is what the lion or the deer knows of you is it's got two minutes through the robins through the sparrows to do a wide loop out listen about your progress through all the other birds and animals. And then you've had,

I know you guys, if you spent any amount of time in the woods, you come back the same trail you went in on. Like, son of a bitch, there's bear tracks right on my tracks or wolf tracks or coyote tracks or the deer. You know, it's because they walk around you. They're listening and monitoring you through the animal language in the environment.

So we're like, oh, yeah, okay, he's still going. He's going. left over that ridge and this stuff is is of such high utility that um it's one fella I mentioned in the book interviewed him he was training special ops crews and um he had a guy he trained in bird language as well as tracking and they had a Humvee um ran over at IED you know in the road but just made a mess this thing and they sent him this student of the the fella I knew

in to find the bomb layer. And he does a few loops around the Humvee site. You know, just chaos. Bleeding guys, screaming guys, smoke, fire. He picks up a single set of tracks, leaving. Same set came in one way, left another. So he starts sign cutting. You know, some of you may know that term.

You're moving fast, but you're periodically rechecking that you're on the prints. Okay, you broke a branch over there. you know just trying to catch up and he gets to a certain point where he's this is afghanistan there's this wadi his little ravine and he hears the alarms he's like that guy's he's over in there and as he's standing there trying to figure out what to do he starts hearing the bird alarms go up this ridge beyond the wadi and based on what he learned he went the opposite direction so he'd get it over onto another point, get a clear view of that ridge and ends up taking a guy out. Never saw him up until that point, but he was clearly delineated in his

movements and direction and speed even through the bird conversations. And that's the thing. He didn't know any of the birds. You don't need to know any of the birds. You learn the birds at home and the patterns you find anywhere you go are the same. They're going to be filled by different species, but like I've heard so many people say, hey, you know, I never would have seen that mongoose where in Africa, but it's responding exactly the way the sparrows do at my place along the river when the lint comes through. The painted dogs, oh my gosh, they're like, we never would have seen them, but those birds, whatever they are, are the height off the ground, they're excited in the same way the birds are in my yard when the neighbor's dog gets loose and comes

over. So the universality of that concept is fascinating to me that we all are operating on this same level of awareness and use of sound to know what's going on sometimes miles beyond our own sensory abilities. Like I know there's wolves in the park two and a half miles away if I'm walking my dog, I hear. Oh yeah. Yeah, at this point, it's not even a if.

It's just where. So I'll find that signal maker, the coyote, or wherever, and I just set up the scope. And from the deck of the house, you're like, oh, yep, there they are. It seems like magic to people, but it's not. It's just paying attention better people. And when you pay attention better, you get treated different. That's the real beauty to me is you start getting to know individual wild animals. and they at the same time,

they've always already known you. Oh, yeah. It's like why certain people can be out in their yard and have stuff come into it. Absolutely. That kid is the one who, when he comes to the prairie dog town, he's freaking popping our buddies off.

That guy, he doesn't even care. And they remember real well whether you've been nice or especially if you've been naughty. So they're at times, like even pigeons. Let's go back. of pigeons. Like, they remember hundreds of people. Faces. You can change your clothes and the pigeons

remember you. There's some, there's study done in Paris to that effect, one done in Philadelphia, where they guessed that pigeons rocked up might know and remember thousands of people. Remember who's a regular, who's a tourist, you know, and log all this stuff. We are being patterned all the time. I'm Dylan Clayford. And I'm Tyler Smith. We're putting loneliness in the Penley Box by talking to some of our favorite athletes about the importance of friendship. This is Bromance. Bromance is brought to you by Charm Diamond Centers, proudly Canadian-owned and operator. Charm has been part of your love stories and bromances for over 50 years.

And you can find Bromance on the IHeart Radio Network or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, if you're in or around, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and you live for hunting season, you need to swing by the meat eater store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall to wall with the... gear we actually use in the field. First Light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the corners of Brookfield.

Whether you're gearing up for the season, dialing in a setup, or just want to talk shop with people who love to hunt, this is your place. That's the Meat Eater Store, Milwaukee, at the corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it. There's probably some dude listening

who's thinking, like I that there's probably some like if you think about like trying to call mallards or something that like that there's like some code that you could crack do I mean like that to a duck

when duck comes over and it's clearly looking for other ducks and it's like the duck's like I know that that's not right I don't get the problem right there's something that's not right.

Yeah. You're doing something that's not right. Everybody's just bobbing simply. Yeah, there's something. Or you're like, there's something you could say. You know? There's something you could say that would just make it that absolutely that

duck would have to come down. But you'll never learn it. You know what I mean? You'll never learn like when he goes like, no, not buying it. Yeah. That speaks to another point where I don't sometimes share too much. much because what these animals offer you when you are let into their world is to see their

strengths, they're incredible talents. But also their vulnerabilities. But you see their Achilles heels too. And that, I don't, it's thrown around so cliche, but sacred that to me is there's a sacredness in what they have shared to then betray that. Like a great example, you probably know this from. your bison work is bison have this Achilles heel of following the matriarch. Yeah.

And those bison hunters, and partly annihilated them because of their allegiance to the matriarch. Yeah. They don't move anywhere. I've watched them for years. Exploite that. Shoot her through the guts. So she can't move and everybody mills around and you just mow the rest of them down.

Anybody else tries to take off and chart a new course? You bust them through the guts. Everybody mills around and you, you know, in one stand, you can get a dozen or a hundred. I think there was one record of like 100 or something, Bison in one stand. Guy named Vic Smith got over a hundred one time. So to me, when you're let in,

it's changed the way I, there are things I couldn't reconcile hunting. And part of that was... Do you mean there are things about hunting you couldn't reconcile or there are animals that you couldn't reconcile hunting for? It was the former.

Okay. Like, I didn't know what it was, but there was an honoring piece, a recognition, a sacredness that got clouded over and me trying to get that turkey, that Tom, that specific Tom, that buck or something like that that, um, I'm, I missed. I've found now. And, and for me, this is just me, it took me stepping away. from hunting to really soak into their world on their terms. Mm-hmm. If you follow me and that, you know, and so they share things like there's a, there's a mule deer dough model mother, model mama, just we called her, um, mama dear. And she, she always brought off fonts. She was amazing.

And one year she had triplets. Mm-hmm. Actually, no, no, I think it was quadruplets. which for meal, there almost never happens. Like she knew her to feed, build up those reserves, could handle that many kids,

and lo and behold, we start into that winter and it's a bitch. And one by one, we start seeing those bonds not show up in the yard. And pretty soon, it's down to just one,

and then we don't even see mama deer. They're gone. I'm like, what the hell? And we had years with this deer. Like, we had enough understanding that I would walk at that time our two black Labradors, each about 70 pounds, and I'd go get the mailbox, like 10th a mile up the driveway, and she'd be there grazing, you know, off a distance, but in the meantime, she might come, like, right along the driveway.

And I would put my hands on the shoulders of dogs, not, they weren't even, they weren't leashed. You know, our dogs run. But to her, this was my gesture of, it's okay. They're with me and I'm not going to let them bother you. And there are times we could walk within 12 feet of her and the Fonz. Like I go sit in the yard sometimes and she was so comfortable that she would walk between me sitting on the edge of the retaining wall and the edge of the decking, which was like at most 30 feet. Good. She'd walk through. Like we had an understanding.

It wasn't, she wasn't my pet. I didn't, you know, but we gave each of. other, this space and understanding of each other's boundaries. Well, that hard winter that she disappeared, we assume she was just gone. And lo and behold, like mid-February, maybe early March, who shows up on our deck, but mama dear, and she's just emaciated. She had this huge patch of hair missing on her back right side, like her lumbar vertebra. I don't know if she'd been hit by a car. You can see her ribs. And what does she do? She came up and bedded down on the welcome mat to our front door. She came up on the deck, which is, you know, like a eight-inch step up.

And she bedded down there every night for, I think it was three or four days until she eventually went under the deck and died. Because she knows nothing's going to get her there. Exactly. She and I and our family, had put in the time for her to see us as in her worst hour, her worst time, she knew she could find refuge with that, with us. Like to me, that was like one of the most crushingly heartbreaking, but also beautiful things at the same time that we had made enough of a connection that she felt that she could live out her last hours in our company.

And that I can't now look at another deer and not offer them that same capacity to reproduce what mama deer did. Yeah. Not that I, let's say, wouldn't hunt again, but the way I would hunt and view that is, and the author Joe Huddo put it really succinctly nicely this way. It's not. Isn't that the dude did all that worked with turkeys? He did, my life is a turkey. Yeah. He did. And he wrote, he did a great film and book called Touching the Wild. on these mule deer down in lander. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Joe said... Is he still around?

He is. He moved back to Florida. He, you know, I keep touch now and then, and he's such a wealth of... I'd like to get this dude on the show sometime. Yeah. I don't know if he does that kind of stuff. There's been some stuff going on, so I don't know how he's doing right now. But I would...

He's another one that's put in the time to see all these other facets that most of us overlook when we say, oh, look, a deer. You know, and in the way he sort of described what I'm, I feel is like, yeah, I'm going to go hunt again, but now I have to reckon with the fact that it's not what I'm killing as much anymore. It's who. Yeah. Who am I, who am I choosing to take out of this population? Is this the matriarch mama? Is this a fawn, a faun that has a certain spark and talent that none of us.

of the others do you know like it's it'd be very hard for me to go into hunt the way i used to when i was younger and when i did kill something if i did kill something i would it wouldn't be with high fives anymore you know i mean like get that big buck or something like that it would be you know silence silence with that understanding that that it was a who it was a who yeah yeah and um just every single day of our lives is enriched by paying attention to these conversations and having these individuals come in and out of our world because they are our best teachers when you have a shit day at work and your family is pissed about something or you know it's like you can always look to that look at that

you know that coyote over there is it's got a broken leg you know and it's it's not making excuses it's still keeping up with the pack be it a little slower you know listening to nature at that level is you start seeing issues and trends that magazines and the popular media want to make into you know the save the whales kind of approach where it's like top down big stop you know it's Like, to me, this is the groundswell of where caring for your environments, real stewardship, real conservation takes place as you, through these conversations and overhearing what matters to them lets you into their world to know what you're doing, that is harmful that you weren't even aware of.

Like, oh, shit, I guess I shouldn't mow the grass there now because those, that's where the bunnies, That's where the litter's coming off Is that hole underneath that long grass Okay, I won't mow there for a month more Like simple stuff sometimes Don't cut down that dead tree That's the woodpecker nest site Or that is the sentinel location

For the principal players In your neighborhood wildlife alarm system You take that one seemingly useless dead tree out And all these animals can't get a view now of what's coming before it's on them. You know, it's like, so you have a true, um, bottom up level of appreciation and interaction that makes you a better neighbor, I think.

I feel that way. I still feel like a fool. I still feel ignorant and like I'm making so many mistakes. But, um, I feel, and I know when you enter into those spaces with that sort of humility nature's pretty resilient. It gives you more latitude than you would have otherwise. Like people ask me, well, should I'm, should I make animal noises when I'm out, you know,

I see some deer when I'm out for a walk, or I see the fox. Do I make fox noises? I'm like, no, do not. I don't imitate animals in the wild anymore because the reason is, I want to see them do what they naturally do. And once you inject yourself, it's game over. It's like pulling the trigger. Almost. You change the entire equation. I've been with people. We've actually killed animals through making noises and interrupting the situation. I want to see them do what they naturally do so I have a better sense of what they have to teach me. And use your own voice. A lot of indigenous cultures will say, when we talk to the animals in our native tongue, they treat us like family. And so other people are like, well, I don't know. I'm only a marriage.

can I speak English and you know like you speak in the most expressive language you have and be sincere and you'll start having experiences like you know the deer jump up on the morning walk with the dog and you say hey wait wait it's us it's us and they stop and they go back to grazing I mean even bed back down like that but if you bring a friend with you to watch it doesn't work because they're always responding to the lowest common denominator. You bring in somebody that's not paying attention, and we give up infinite amount of micro signals. And they know whether you're paying attention or not.

There's stories like horses that can do math and tell time and read calendars and stuff. And they find out they can't do that stuff. What they're doing is queuing off of their handlers at such a fine, minute level that it gives the impression that another member of this, you know, another species has these capabilities. when they're just, it's called the Kluger-Hans effect.

They're paying attention to you so well, better than most humans pay attention. And it's like, how are we missing these cues? Well, your life doesn't depend on it. When it does, you start paying attention to stuff. You know, we all have that capacity like, oh, the furnace shut off. You know, look to the things that are important to us.

We still have those capabilities. We just have directed them other places. right right you're like something there's something screwed up with that trailer got pull over pull over we gotta check the

the change there's a bearing going out or you know like we are laser focused on those kind of details but the power of our brain to do that can be used then

to go back into the natural world like our our people did in deep time and know stuff that is magic seeming but in ways that's really damn fulfilling you know when you get it's like I'd love to see a mountain line at all like well we get we get

photos of them you know it's like it changes the the whole equation you um do you have opportunities that you wouldn't have otherwise tell me about the artwork you do real quick you know I always say my art work is kind of my um tourist trinkets or my souvenirs from living so every piece is just done to make a turkey or make a bear it's done to tell an individual story that I've been let in on some of these animals I've known for an hour or two some of them I've known for years some of them I've known for generations and so I feel that the artwork to me is the a focal point to spend a ton of time figuring out what the heck that experience meant to me if that makes sense and it forces me to see details I would miss otherwise.

And you notice that bull has a knot in his lower, you know, metatarsal. He broke that, you know, at some point. Or, oh, there's people who say, oh, that cow elk is, you know, walking across the lawn and mammoths. She's limping. No, that's actually part of the normal gait. But that one over there, she's got, she's got a tooth infection. Look close.

See that little swell here? No, no, no, not the bulge that's the, the, masseter muscle or the the buccanator muscle in her cheek but right below that's a little you know it's like it deepens further still my experience with the wild so that turkey is a turkey that's a specific one inspired by I gave a couple of talks at a nature center in Utah and they had three tom's Tom Tommy and Thomas and after I was done with my my obligations I just followed her around with some clay and sculpted and you know it's just I was just so taken with that that dexterity in their tail it's like a geisha you know they wave that tail back that thing off the side so beautiful you know and um when you enter into these spaces you find that words don't really work and I guess that's I grew up around sculpture tried like hell not to do it but it came back around in a way that I could do it my way and for me it picks up where the

words sort of trail off. Mm-hmm. Like that, just that curve of the Achilles on the bear or that shin bone, that line of always love bones and skulls. And it's like, it was a place to put it. My love of that stuff, like knowing every bone, every muscle from the inside out, then seeing the overlay of the behavior. And when they do this, how that bone articulates this way.

So I don't use photos. I don't use video. I used to take a ton of that stuff. I found I didn't use it. I got a roadkill kit. I got a tackle box full of calipers and dissecting knives and rubber gloves and my own data sheets. I made up one for birds and one for mammals, so I find a moose or a grizzly bear that's illegal to have. I can take a full set of measurements and have that archive in my studio to go back to.

But more accurately, what it does for me is on an elk, I find a dead elk. I might take 50 measurements, but in stretching the tape measure or the calipers, that, number of measurements guarantees I have my hands on that animal at least a hundred different ways. So when I go to work on a sculpture, I'm working from more of a felt sense of the creature. I see just a momentary pose that a fox or a badger or an otter might do or something. I can freeze that in my mind and I can fill in all the details of what was where to make that happen. Yeah. Does most of your income come from the art or from your work as a naturalist and guide?

Yeah, it's the art by far. We're starting to do... So you're like occupationally an artist. Yeah, yeah. But when you just kind of follow your interests, you kind of start screwing up the ability to be defined. Like I love, I love since I was the time of the kid loved stone tools and ancient technology. you know it took me 30 years then flew to clovis point but like always as a kid there was just from the time I was young a desire to have a felt sense of what it meant to to make that

to I had one teeed I was able to do it because I had it teed up for me did you I had everything ready all I had to do was give it the final little flap and it was all teed up yeah I did I did a flute but I took a dirty way to get there that's dirty dude. Because whoever made the preform for you will tell you the flute's nothing. I just had to give it the final little thumb and blew a flute off. Right. And I was like, I'm done.

I'm not going to do a second. Success! You didn't break it. Yeah. But it's what's, you know, that sort of stuff as well. I just has always turned my crank and I find a flake of obsidian on the ground near the house or something. I'm like, I know almost exactly what that what size and dimension that thing would have been off of. I know what direction the blow came from.

I know what it was trying to do to take off that lump on whatever the preformer. Like, just that's always really been gratifying to me to have that bottom up, inside out kind of look at things. And the art and the educational programs, they're just kind of, you know, the veneer at the top.

Yeah. And then, uh, How long? When is the book out and available right now? It is. It's available now wherever books are sold. You can find them all over.

Amazon and beyond. Your local bookstores can order it through Greystone Books. Okay. The title is eavesdropping on animals, What We Can Learn from Wildlife Conversations by George Buman. Got a forward by John Young. Anywhere books are sold. Yeah.

Thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for having me. Can I give one plug? What do you mean? For something other than the book. Oh, yeah. Something we're doing right now. It just went live.

We got an online event. That's where some of our education stuff went on. Oh, Chris put that in the note. Sorry. No. Oh, no. That's fine. Go ahead.

We have an event for people who love nature in Yelstone Park called the Yelstone Summit. And it brings together, we have this year, over 30 world expert speakers. as we have for the last five years on Yellowstone, talking about everything from filming mountain lions, the history of beavers in the park, to population census of moose, geology, Native American history. If you are thinking of coming to the park

and want some insight on what to do and think about, join us. If you're longtime Yellowstoneer, want more deep stuff, join us. If you're from the region, there's nothing that thrills me more than running to somebody from Billings or Butte or, you know, Idaho Falls or something, there's like, oh, my gosh.

Is that like an ongoing thing or is it like one time or? Yeah, it's online. So anybody with internet can get involved, watch it anywhere in the world. It's registration just open. So by the time this airs, registration will still be open. It goes live on February 19th through the 22nd of this year. And, yeah, it's cheap. We try to make it affordable for $15.

You can get access for 48 hours to all those programs. Or if you want, all access, which means you can, like, it's great because it's online. There's a live component, too. You can go or you can watch, you can get a ticket, watch online. So like Deputy Superintendent, Mike Trunell of Yellowstone will be given a park update and you can show up and ask him questions yourself. So like, yeah, since the flood, you know, what actually is going on with the road and things like that. We've got folks who use it for homeschool curriculum. We've got folks who use it to train their park guides.

So this is a training tool for them. We've got park service people who watch it for their own training. So it's a very high level but also has entry-level basic stuff for anybody interested whether they actually ever make it here or not. And just check it out at Yellowstone Summit.com. Got it. So Yellowstone Summit.com and eavesdropping on animals, what we can learn from wildlife conversations with George Beehlestone. human. Nice for coming on, man. My pleasure, guys.

Thanks for having me. Hey, if you're in or around, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and you live for hunting season, you need to swing by the meat eater store in Milwaukee. We're stocked wall to wall with the gear we actually use in the field. First Light, FHF gear, Phelps game calls, and more. You'll find us at the corners of Brookfield. Whether you're gearing up for the season, dialing in a setup, or just want to talk shop with people who love.

to hunt. This is your place. That's the meat eater store, Milwaukee, at the corners of Brookfield. Stop in, get dialed, and get after it. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.