Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Grizzly Bear Attack - Grouchy Glacier Grizzly

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

Wes has another grizzly bear story to share on this one, with a little bit of a mystery twist. Jeff learns that bears probably can't operate cameras, and Mike thinks it's time for "Stop, Drop and Roll" to move over and make room for the next big safety saying. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds                          Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw. On today's episode, we've got another story about grizzly bears. This is another attack that takes place up in Glacier National Park. And while we have talked about Grizzlies before on this show, and we will continue to talk about them some more in the future, this one's got kind of an interesting little murder mystery kind of twist. I mean, not exactly. I don't want to oversell it or anything, but it's a pretty interesting and slightly more

spooky story than usual. But anyways, I think you guys are really going to like this episode. This one really hits close to home for Jeff and Wes especially since they've spent a lot of time there and have a lot of knowledge to share with you guys. And this story really gives Wes a pretty good platform to share some good knowledge about some specific scenarios that we haven't really talked about specifically on the show yet. Anyway, I'm just going to make one more quick plug here for our Patreon. I know I do it a lot. It's probably annoying to you guys. But for those of you who don't know, we have about last I counted, 15 or 16 bonus episodes that are exclusive to our Grizzly and Tiger Patreon tier members.

And each of those episodes is anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour long. So, you know, that's another probably 10 to 12 hours of content that we work on pretty seriously. We try to make them a little more fun and loose than our main episodes here that we're posting. But we do try to squeeze in some good information and some cool animal facts and stuff that makes it more educational than just kind of three idiots sitting around talking about animals. And we release another bonus episode every other week. So yeah, if that's interesting to you, you can head over to our Patreon. It's patreon.com slash tooth and claw podcast. And we look forward to talking to you guys over there.

All right, that's enough talking. I always do too much. Let's get to the episode. We hope you guys like it. Okay, well, welcome everyone back to another episode of tooth and claw. All right, what's up? For those of you who are new, my name's Wes Larson. I'm a wildlife biologist.

I've mostly worked with bears for most of my career. I've worked with polar bears, black bears, sloth bears, and grizzly bears. Jeff, you want to introduce yourself? Can you just call yourself like a bearologist? A bear biologist. I guess you could maybe say a bearologist. Get a little portmanteau action. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm Jeff. I was Wes's field tech. Right now I'm kind of training to be a fly fishing guide. And yeah, that's me. Mike? I'm the tech guy. I have the microphones and stuff. Resident nerd.

I really would like to be a field tech one of these days, but Wes is always like, oh, I would have invited you on this trip. Hey, how about when I invited you to go to the owls and you were like, oh, I have to hang out with my family and celebrate a holiday that I hate anyways. Wait, hold on. Yeah. I invited you to go capture flamulated owls with me and Jeff on 4th of July. No.

Okay, hold on. Because you had to hang out with your family. I'm being, this is mischaracterization right now. I don't hate 4th of July. I just hate fireworks. You hate fireworks, but that was your excuse. I have to watch fireworks and a parade with my family. Yeah, I love my family, guys.

I don't know about you. Both of those things. You are with your family all the time. What? Did you just say I hate my family? No, you hate fireworks and parades. That would have been. Some real dirty laundry to air out there.

Oh, yeah. You don't want to know what he says. I've definitely invited you to a few things that you haven't been able to go to. Whatever. All right. We'll let the listeners be the judge of that. Sure. Let's let the listeners be the judge.

That was a fun day. Today, too, we got a bunch of owls. Oh, man. We got bit by the love owls, too. Oh, he sure does. He loves that movie, Guardians. Oh, it's so good. I love that movie.

Well, today we're not going to talk about owls. We're going to talk about bears. Oh, yeah, we haven't done those yet. Yeah, we've actually done a lot of bears. But as I've mentioned before, there are a lot of bear attacks. There's lots of books about bear attacks. Well, and you said you're bearologist. I'm a bearologist, so it's natural for me to talk about a lot of bear attacks.

We haven't done all bears either, so what? We're talking about spectacled bears this time? Pandas? We're not talking about pandas. We're talking about grizzly bears again. Oh, the same old grizzly? Come on. Yeah, we're talking grizzlies, which are mine and Jeff's favorite animal, so we're going to do it.

That should be like a new segment. Talking grizzlies. Talking grizzlies. That's the podcast, really. All right, I think we'll just launch into it unless you guys got anything you want to say. Now I'm ready for liftoff. You're ready for liftoff. Mike, are you ready?

Champing at the bit, as they say. All right, okay. Is it champing or chomping? That's the question, isn't it? Yeah, it really is. What does that, yeah, I don't know what that saying means, especially when you say champing. It's horse terms. I don't know.

Ask Jesse. Where is Jesse? Jesse? I'm pretty sure it's champing. I think it might be champing, but chomping does make a lot more sense. Jesse's on the phone or outside ask her. Okay, so we are going to talk about grizzly bears, and we're going to talk about grizzly bears for the second time

in one of our favorite places in the world, which is Glacier National Park. Oh, wow. Another one. This is a place that me, Mike, and Jeff recently visited all three of us together. And we saw six grizzly bears in the matter of one night or a night in a morning. So there's a lot of grizzlies in Glacier. That's something that people go there to see. It's one of the best places in the country to see them.

It's an amazingly beautiful place. So if you don't see bears or even any other wildlife, you're still going to be happy you went to Glacier because it's just so beautiful. So it's an amazing place. But this attack we're going to talk about happened way back in 1992 in early October. And the grizzlies and glacier are nice, nice grislies, right? They're not. And we're going to talk a little bit about that.

They're not necessarily like mean grizzlies either. We're not going to scribe either of those human characteristics to them. But they do tend to be on the more aggressive side when it comes to grizzlies. And we'll talk a little bit about why that is. It's not weird. There's a reason for that. They're like in the prettiest place in the world. They should just be happy.

It's probably because the park range. There's always yelling at them and stuff. That might be true. Anyway, all right. So this incident happened on October 3, 1992. And before we start, I want to do a quick disclaimer. It's something we say in a lot of our episodes. This podcast is very much designed to give people an idea of what you can do if you run

into an animal when you're outside and what the animal's behavior might be. And we're trying to teach people how to respond to. animals. And a lot of times those stories involve attacks, and I'm doing quotation marks with my fingers, but really these attacks often are just people surprising an animal or interacting the wrong way with an animal and leading it to respond in an aggressive manner towards the person. And so we want to explain these stories from kind of that viewpoint from a very scientific angle and talk about what people can do better to avoid this happening in their own lives. Bears, this is right up my wheelhouse.

Jeff knows a lot about bears. Mike's learning a lot about bears. So I think we can really explain what was going on in this one. It's a really good story. From three directions. Yeah, exactly. This is really kind of like, this story has a really creepy turn to it, which I really like. Okay.

Haunted bears. Yeah. I like these kinds of stories. So, on October 3rd, 1992. The bear was dead the whole time. Like in science? I mean in six cents yeah sorry keep going no you're good on October 3rd 1992 Buck Wilde was hiking the troop the loop trail that's not his real name are you

serious he's hiking the loop trail to the granite park chalet in Montana's Glacier National Park so the loop trail is when you like when you're driving up the going to the sun road when you've entered from the west entrance and you take that big hairpin turn there's a trail that starts right there, right as you're going up, going to the sun and like getting some elevation. There's a trail that's like a four-mile loop trail and it goes up to the Granite Park Chalet and then you can hike over from the Granite Park Chalet all the way to Logan Pass. That's called the High Line Trail.

And this guy was on that loop trail, so the bottom part of it. And his name is Buck Wild. So he's a 43-year-old wildlife photographer and he had actually given himself that name. three years earlier when he left a lucrative job as an electrical engineer and took up photography as a full-time career. So this dude named himself Buck Wild. It's kind of like... I don't know if I love that or hate that. No, I love it. It's almost like, you know how people give themselves names for like their porn

screen name? Yeah. Maybe Wildlife photographers do the same thing. Yeah, maybe they do. Probably could use it for both, too. True. Yeah, it definitely works. It definitely works for either. But I think that's kind of smart because there's so many wildlife photographers, it kind of at least distinguishes you a little bit.

Yeah, if someone was like, you should check out Buck Wild's photography. You're not forgetting the name. Wait, is that his real name? And they'd be like, yeah, I'll be like, okay, I will check it out. What kind of pictures is he take? Yeah. All right, so Buck was spending a few days in Glacier, and he was actually trying to get photos of bears and other wildlife.

and he was camping nearby in the Granite Park Backcountry campsite. He was really used to being around bears. He had taken a lot of precautions to make sure his campsite was free of food and any other attractions that might draw in bears. And on the morning of the third, as he made breakfast, he actually caught a fleeting glimpse of a small bear, and then he heard woofing sounds from a larger bear in the brush. So he's like making his breakfast, he hears this bear, he sees a cub run by,

and they kind of were heading up towards this loop trail. So he grabs his camera and he decides to follow these tracks. So Buck's trying to get photos of these bears and he's heard him in his campsite and he's following him. So about 15 minutes after he's secured his food in the campsite and he leaves to follow the bears, he comes up on something that he really didn't expect to find, which is a blue baseball cap lying in the trail. Nearby, he also sees a camera that's on a tripod and it's like neatly full. it up and it's lying on the ground next to a small red backpack.

So this whole scene makes Buck pretty uneasy and he backs up down the trail about 30 feet when he looks to the side of the trail and he sees a pool of blood that's over a foot wide and it's still warm. So Buck knows something's up. He knows something's really wrong and he decides to continue backing down this trail and as he backs down the trail now he said that his senses got heightened to like the nth degree He said he felt like he could smell here and see four times better than he ever has been able to in his life. And as he's heading down the trail, he starts to see more blood.

He sees grisly claw marks. And then he sees an area on the trail that looks like it's been swept clean, like something big has been swept back and forth on the dirt. Bear was covering up his crime scene. Yeah. Oh, yeah, maybe. He then begins to find, like, more blood, pieces of human flesh. coins and scraps of clothing.

These are all along the trail. And then finally, Buck, he finds a trail of blood leading into the woods. So he freezes. He's like wondering what to do next. Don't follow the trail of blood is what I say. A little bit about Buck. Is it a choose your own adventure? Do that one.

Yeah. A little bit about Buck. He knows a lot about bears. He's even been charged by a Codiac bear. And he said it was close enough that he could feel its hot breath. And then he also, he said, that that bear had charged from 100 feet away, and it closed that gap so quickly that he didn't even have time to reach down for his shotgun.

And from that day on, he was convinced that guns weren't the way to go with bears, and he was like a really adamant bear spray carrier. And this is 1992. Yeah, exactly. He learned his lesson. That's the way to go. Yeah, exactly. And this is 1992.

So bear spray is still a relatively new product. it is used by people somewhat extensively at this point, but it's pretty new. Like, it's not something that's like common knowledge to use bear spray. And a lot of the papers that have been written on how effective it's been written, some of those were written by my mentor Tom. They haven't been written yet. So it's kind of still, you know, a bit of a gray area for whether or not bear spray is, like, the best thing at this point.

Now we know it is. So he knows a lot about bears. He carries bears spray religiously. He has it with him. And another thing that he knows is that he knows. is that he knows a lot about bear attacks and he knows that there's a decent chance this guy's still alive.

So he's staring off in the woods, he's looking at this blood trail, and he's wondering what to do. So what's crazy to me is that the bear wanted to like photograph itself attacking whoever this guy was. That's pretty anomalous behavior. Because he had the camera set up on the tripod

right where there's like the pool of blood and stuff. Yeah, but I think. The camera was like on the ground, like folded up. Oh, I see. Set up by the bear. I thought the bear had it all set up to. It's set up at like seven feet tall. It's like, I'm going to attack this guy.

Set up on a timer. Yeah. The bear kept like hitting the timer and running out there and attacking him and being like, shoot, my eyes were closed. Yeah, exactly. All right. So anyway, Buck decides to follow this trail of blood into the woods. and again he commented that his senses were just like super heightened and that he was like really on edge

and he follows this blood trail with his bear spray at the ready and he finds more tattered clothes a boot and finally a man laying on his left side completely motionless. He noted that the man had been pretty much torn up head to toe and that a big amount of flesh was missing from his arm and his butt. So he sees this guy and he goes up and he feels for a pulse He notices that some of the blood is getting really dark, which happens, like, when people have died. Oh, no. And so he, he thinks this guy's probably dead.

He can't feel a pulse. But the guy is the attack probably happened, like, a little while ago, too, right? Yeah, no, it probably, this bear was in his camp 15 minutes ago. So he, like, in whose camp? In Buck's camp. Like, remember Buck followed these bears up the trail. So when he was, like, getting ready to go out. on the trail, this bear was attacking this other guy.

Oh, geez. This guy's still warm. So that's why he thinks like, okay, there's a chance he's alive, even though he doesn't have a pulse. There's a chance he's alive. So what Buck does next is he runs back out to the trail, goes down to this guy's, his backpack to try and find a coat to cover the body and keep him warm while he waits for help. And then he goes back to the body.

This has taken like two or three minutes for him to go get this coat and get back to the body and it's completely gone. Oh, man. Oh, geez. So all there is now is a big smear of blood leading into like darker, deeper forest from that spot. So Buck was like right next to the bear

then. The bear was still there waiting. Yeah, exactly. So Buck knows now at this point like he's in over his head and he decides to like get out of there. This summer serve up the cookout classics. Oscar Meyer hot dogs and Heinz Mustard. Grill up a dog. Add

classic yellow mustard or loaded Chicago style. We all know it's not a cookout without Oscar Meyer and Heinz. So I want to do, we've had a few grizzly bear episodes, but I did want to talk a little bit about grizzly bears in this specific part of the country. So grizzly bears that live in Glacier National Park are part of the northern continental divide ecosystem. So in the lower 48, there's really two big ecosystems that have grizzly bears. There's the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, which is the,

the group of grizzlies I'm working with at this moment. And then there's the northern continental divide ecosystem, which pretty much runs from like the Canadian border down to Missoula, and it's all contained within Montana, at least the American part of it. It goes up into Canada, too. Within that population, there's about a thousand bears, probably more than that at this point, though, actually.

It's probably like 1,300 bears that live in the northern continental divide ecosystem. Grizzlies. Yeah. And so, for example, like that woman that we talked about that just was attacked in Ovando, that was a bear in the northern continental divide ecosystem. Glacier, they think there's probably somewhere around 300 to 400 grizzlies within Glacier, which is a significant more, or a significant higher amount than what's in Yellowstone, which is probably around 150 to 200. Oh, really? Yeah, so there's a decent number of bears in Glacier, and then there's a lot of bears in the northern. How much is Glacier bigger area than Yellowstone?

I don't know. I think Yellowstone is actually bigger. The Northern Continental Divide ecosystem, I believe, is a bit bigger, and there's a lot more bears. So it's a lot denser in Glacier, too. Yeah. The Yellowstone ecosystem, I believe, they think has about 750 bears, and then the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem has more than a thousand. Okay. So the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem covers about 8 million acres.

And there are 11 fatalities associated with that ecosystem in the last 50 years, human fatalities from bears. That includes the woman who died in Ovando this year. In the past 20 years, so since 2001, there have been 20 reported injuries from grizzly bears in the NCD, the northern continental divide ecosystem that caused people to be injured enough to where they had to get medical treatment in the hospital. We've talked about grizzlies, but the thing that's really important to remember about them is, is that they're territorial and they're defensive, especially the bears that you find in these inland ecosystems. They don't have salmon streams.

They don't have tidal flats. They don't have some of the resources that these coastal bears have that are really well fed and are really tolerant of other bears and of people. So many people sent us that video of that absolute unit of a bear that's just like walking by those people super close. like just a massive bear in alaska yeah that's it brooks falls alaska and that bear is so well fed that it doesn't care that there's people there we talked about this in our news episode a bit but it just doesn't really mind because it doesn't really have to compete it doesn't really have to

compete with people doesn't really have to compete with bears there's plenty of food for everyone so they do still kind of like fight in between bears for like better spots and stuff but it's not the same as a bear that you find in like Yellowstone or Glacier where they have to patrol these huge territories and they have to take advantage of any food that they can get. So like a carcass for them especially if they can get meat, that's like that's a great meal for them and they will defend it with their lives. I wonder if that translates to humans too. Just like huge huge guys don't care about running into other people and stuff. Yeah. But if you're like scrawny or you're you're just always a little hungrier and you're always a little agitated.

Yeah. So that means for the story, Buck being so close to this corpse that this bear was seemed to be feeding on, he was inches seconds away from getting attacked because he was taking this bear's meal, it might have thought. Yeah, and that leads perfectly into the next point I was going to make. Again, there's so much grizzly bear biology I could talk about, but I kind of just wanted to talk about some real specific things with this story. And that leads perfectly into that, which is really two of the worst possible scenarios

you can get into with grizzly bears are surprising a female with cubs, which is something that's happened in this story, and running into a bear that's guarding a carcass. Those are really two of the worst possible situations you can get into. So that's kind of what's happened. And we're going to talk a little bit more about how we know that there was probably a surprise encounter in this story. But just a little bit more about what grizzlies are capable of. They can run up to 35 miles per hour. Their claws can be more than five inches long. They do have one of the strongest bites of any mammal worldwide. And then again, unique among the bears,

grizzlies are very territorial and extremely defensive. They often pick fight over flight, which isn't very typical. Like black bears, almost always it's going to be flight. And Buck knows all this. is aware of grizzly bear behavior. He spent a lot of time around him, and he wisely at this point decides not to follow this trail of blood that's leading into the woods. He knew that the man he had seen minutes before didn't have a pulse, was likely dead, especially now after the bears grabbed him again. Got him again, yeah. And he knows that this bear is obviously still around. So rather than investigate more, he walks down the trail and he leaves a note by this attack site and it says, hey, get out of here.

He actually leaves his bear spray with that note and instructs them how to use it. And then he walks up to the Granite Park Shelle, which is not too much further up the trail. And he speaks there with some hikers that were there, and he tells them, don't go down the trail, go back toward Logan Pass, walk the High Line Trail out, and find some help from some Rangers.

And he writes a note for the Rangers, and I'm actually going to read that note because it's kind of silly. like first the first part of it's fine so don't wait for like the silly part right off the bat it says help discovered signs of bear mauling about a quarter to a half mile downhill from chalet backcountry campsite followed another quarter mile and found body he was in bad shape but alive which who knows he didn't find a pulse or anything went back to get coat to cover him and body was gone met these people at the chalet i plan to stay here for two reasons one to two turn people back toward Logan Pass, two, to take National Park Service personnel to cite

I saw a victim last. And then the funny part to me, maybe this isn't fun to anyone else, he signed the note, seriously, buck wild. If I'm a ranger that gets this note and I'm reading it, and then at the end it says seriously buck wild, I'm probably going to be like, nah. The seriously, especially. It's like when Calvin writes his own parents. note and Calvin Hobbs gives it to his teacher.

Or when Al Gore's trying to convince everyone about man bear pig. Yeah. Yeah. Seriously, guys. Serial. I'm super serial. Anyway, so that's what he sent that note with these hikers. They leave back to Logan Pass. And then he goes back up to the chalet,

and he's sitting on the deck of the chalet with his binoculars, scanning and looking for bears or maybe any other hikers that are coming up the trail. So a couple hours later, two rangers arrive. They're flown in by helicopter. And so some hikers from the bottom of the trail had actually found Buck's note, and they hiked down and found help. And they called these rangers. One of these rangers named was Charlie Logan, and he was a longtime ranger of the park.

He had dealt with a lot of grizzly bears, and he had a lot of experience managing them. So they briefly interview Buck to get the facts about what happened, and then they load their shotguns with heavy slugs and they head down the trail toward the body with Buck. Buck decides to go with him so that he can like show him exactly where he found everything and where the body was. So when he had found the body the second time when the bear finally like drug it off, it was about 175 feet from the trail. And this time when they go down, they find the body about 500 feet from the trail. So the bear had drag it quite a ways away from the trail and it had been fed on even more. For sure now, they know this victim's

dead. Dirt had been kind of piled up on them, which is something bears do when they're like cashing a carcass. They'll throw dirt on top of it. And that's to cut the scent down so that it doesn't bring in more bears and wolves and everything. And they don't have to defend it from other predators. They don't care if they eat some dirt. Yeah, they don't care at all. Yeah. Okay. So these bears are definitely planning on coming back. They're not done. They've covered up this carcass planning on coming back for more. So all three of these dudes, the two Rangers and Buck, They're on like high alert, you know. Yeah.

They know that this bear isn't finished. So they take some notes. They go back to the backpack in the trail and they're kind of getting some notes there when suddenly this bear shows up and it charges them again. Oh, man. So a large grizzly charges up the trail toward the men, but she stops short. So she does like a block charge. But as she stops, she's like woofing.

She's pacing back and forth. She's kind of doing these little mini charges. They can see her cubs in the distance. So she's obviously like just aggravated that the cubs are nearby. They're by the carcass. And both these rangers have their shotguns out. They got the bead on the bear. And Charlie Logan remembers thinking, if she takes one more step towards me, I'm going to open fire.

But she doesn't. This bear wisely turns around, collects her cubs, and disappears. Man. So these guys have had enough. They're like, okay, we got to get out of here. They go back up to the chalet and they try and come up with a plan. So the next day the weather actually turns for the work. and it starts snowing and there's like really bad fog.

And so they can't even get a helicopter in until around 11 a.m. And once they get a helicopter in the air, that pilot sees a bear on the carcass with two cubs, and he sees that it has really light-colored fur around its neck that almost resembles like a collar, and that's like an identifying characteristic of this bear that they see feeding on the carcass. So their plan is to get six rangers to help get the body,

and five would actually walk into the area, and the six would ride with the helicopter pilot and look for the bear. The five men on the ground hike into the body, and as they're doing this, the helicopter pilot notices the bears nearby, and he decides to go in and haze them with the helicopter. So he flies in and he's doing these close passes to the bears trying to push them away, and it's not really working. Like they'd run away, but then they'd change direction and try and come back,

and he'd have to go in and push him again. And if a helicopter isn't enough to scare off bears, those bears are really keyed in on that carcass they really want it that's pretty unique to grizzly bears too where like helicopters aren't even that scary to them right i've talked yeah i've talked to biologists like polar bear biologists where they're like polar bears hate helicopters they'll run from every every time and this polar bear biologist told me that he'll chase brown bears with them sometimes when he's darting brown bears which are grizzly bears and they'll just stop sometimes and like wait for the helicopter to come down so they can attack it.

Like they'll get on their legs and try and grab the helicopter. That's awesome. So these are like, they're crazy animals. Anyway, they managed to get these bears, you know, away from the body. And after about 20 minutes, the rangers on the ground load the body into the helicopter. And then they investigate the area for more evidence of what might have happened. And slowly, they managed to get a picture of what had happened. John Petrani was the name of the victim.

He was a 40-year-old man from Madison, Wisconsin, and he shared a home there with his dad, who was a Hungarian immigrant, also named John. And John, the younger, was an avid bike rider. He loved jazz music. And every year he spent three weeks adventuring out in the West. So he'd go all over the West for three weeks. And this particular year, he had decided to go into the Canadian Rockies, so he went to, like, Jasper and Banth, and then down into Glacier.

And the day that he was killed was actually the last day of his trip. was planning on going home to Madison the next day, which is super tragic. I also thought about it. It's also kind of nice that he got to have this really amazing three-week trip, you know, before he died. I don't know which is worse, like getting killed on the first day of your trip or like the day before you were going to go home. I'm sure to his family, it was like, oh, he was almost home.

He's so close. Yeah, it's definitely like less lucky that he died at the very end. Totally. So Rangers think that there's a chance that John had been going to the bathroom when he surprised this bear. The reason they think that is because his camera and his backpack were laid down somewhat neatly and because his pants and his underwear around his ankles when they found him. But I think I want to bring that up that like it's not uncommon for bear attack victims, especially fatalities to be found with their pants and underwear missing

because they really thrash you around a lot. I mean, there's a spot in the trail where this guy had been thrashed back and forth, and it doesn't take much to have your pants pulled down. So I don't know how I feel about this theory that he was like going to the bathroom. My guess, another theory is that he was getting his camera ready to try and take photos of these bears when they noticed him. He surprised them, and it's a female with cubs. So she came in and attacked him. So the general consensus among the Rangers, among bear biologists that investigated the scene.

is that it started as a surprise encounter. He surprised a female with Cubs, and she neutralized that threat by mauling him, and then it turned into a predatory encounter. And that's not unheard of. But what they think actually happened with John is that he was attacked first, got hit pretty hard,

and then got up and tried to like walk back to the trail and back to his pack, and then he was hit again. And that's when she rubbed him all over the trail, and they think that's when he actually died during that second attack. And then it's October. These bears are in the middle of hyperphasia.

They're trying to put on as much weight as they possibly can before they den. Hyperphasia is a time when their metabolism and everything is just going full speed because they're trying to get as much food as possible. And so they're not going to turn down an easy meal. And I think that's what happened is this surprise encounter and this defensive attack turned into a predatory attack because it was like, hey, we're not going to pass up this thing that we just killed, you know? It's cool, like, that you can kind of dissect so much in just, like, a bear attack.

Like, it's almost, like, detective work for what happened. Yeah, CSI. Yeah, from, like, the outside, I feel like it's, like, kind of seems more obvious. Like, it's a bear. It attacks somebody. Yeah. That's what happened. But then it's, like, cool, like, you can, like, break down, like, probably attacked him twice,

probably was doing this, might have been doing that, you know. Yeah, and it's impossible to say, obviously, but that is the consensus is that this one was a defensive attack that then morphed into a predatory one. And it makes sense, given the time of year, and the fact that this bear's trying to put on weight, she's trying to get her and her cubs healthy enough to den up for the winter. It makes sense for, like, bears to strip people, too,

because, like, we're pretty soft, but, like, eating through our clothes is probably kind of hard. Yeah, I mean, the, the, Likely is it just the force of the attack is what pulled his pants down. Who knows? Yeah. I think any bare attack I'm involved in would turn into an attack where I was going to the bathroom. Yeah.

Maybe not beforehand, but somewhere in the middle of the attack, I'm probably going to the bathroom. Yeah, I would agree with that. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week. We start with only the freshest items, then review your list and carefully choose each one. Then we pack it all up and deliver it in as little as 30 minutes. So you can feel confident it's what you ordered. Fresh groceries, your way with Ralph's delivery and pickup. Get free delivery during online deal days, plus $30 off your first online order.

Ralph's, fresh for everyone. So these Rangers had a pretty hard decision to make. After discussing internally and actually speaking with a lot of different bear biologists from Montana, they decided that they would actually have to find these bears and euthanize them. Even the cubs? Typically when it's a female and she's defending her cubs, you won't kill that bear because that's natural behavior. But the fact that all three of them fed on the carcass, they decided to euthanize all of them. Every once in a while when cubs are involved in those things, they can put them in zoos.

Like for example, the three cubs or the three bears in the Hogle Zoo in Utah are bears that they fed on a dude. And the mom was euthanized, but they decided. put those cubs in a zoo, but typically they'll euthanize those cubs. That's generally what they end up doing. So they decided to do that. I do think in this situation, that's probably the right decision. Food conditioning is a thing that happens in bears. And essentially what it is is if a bear gets a new food source that it sees as easy to get and packs a lot of protein or calories or whatever, they'll continue doing that. They'll continue trying to get that food source, whether that's trash, or, you know, if they're, like, raiding dumps,

or if they're getting into people's cabins, or if they kill someone. And they realize, hey, this dude was pretty easy to kill, and it was a decent amount of food. Yeah. So there's this common misconception that, like, with man eaters, the idea is, like, oh, once they get a taste of human flesh, they just, like, can't get enough. We taste so good. Yeah, that we're just, like, so good. good. And that's not the case. The main thing is that they just realize, like, we're pretty easy to kill. And I might as well keep doing this because that was easy, you know? Yeah.

And that's the idea and the thought among these rangers and among these bear biologists is that there's a chance this bear would do it again. And if it does, then we're liable because we didn't decide to remove her from the population. So it is a liability thing as well. So after nine days of searching. It took them nine days to actually catch this bear, and it was a really frustrating hunt. They do manage to find this female that has this kind of collar-shaped marking on her neck, and they do manage to kill her and her cubs. Unfortunately, an autopsy reveals that there's, like, no evidence that these were the bears that ate this guy. Oh, no. It was the bear in the area. It was the bear they saw in the carcass. So they're like pretty confident it was the

right bear, but there was no hard proof, which is, that sucks. That's pretty shitty. It had been wild, though it could have, like, digested most of the evidence. Yeah, but the other thing that really could have happened that I thought about the whole time I was reading this is this bear that they decided was the bear that had this, like, cream-colored marking on its neck. They saw the next morning on the carcass, and it's not uncommon for other bears to come in and run the initial bear off of a carcass. That happens all the time. So who knows if the bear, that they saw on the carcass is the one that actually killed John. Yeah, that sucks.

It sucks. So it's likely they got the bear that they saw on the carcass. Who knows if it was the right bear? I hope it was. So they found that the female they killed was in pretty good health. She weighed 251 pounds, which is right in that average range for female. But she was a little less fat than she should have been for that time of the year. And she also had a rotten tooth, which might have led her to be a little bit more aggressive.

So the day after John died, authorities and Madison actually delivered the tragic news to his father, John, and then his brother Mark. His other brother had actually died in 74 and an accident. And then his mom had passed away in 1990. So the family was like, unfortunately, all too familiar with tragedy. And the next day is they prepared to head to Montana to identify the body and bring him home. They actually got a postcard from John that he had sent while he was in Calispell. Oh, man. And he had said, like, I haven't.

seen any bears, but I know they're around. And that was a really hard card for them to get and read. That's tough. Not the best. No. Really sad. So that is the story for today. I should mention that story is from this book that I read called Mark of the Grizzly. It was written by Scott McMillian. I took a lot of the details straight from that book. I also did some research on the side to fill in some of the gaps. But that's where I got a lot of this from is that book. It's a great book. It's available in a lot of National Park gift stores and stuff. Yeah. I'll read that.

Yeah, it's a good one. I have a question. Uh-huh. So you're saying that, like, grizzly bears will stand up to fight helicopters? Sometimes, yeah. You know Guardians of the Galaxy 2? Uh-huh. So Rocket sees, what's his name?

The main character's dad. What's the main character's name? Peter Quinn? Quinn. Yeah, he sees Quinn's dad far away in a spaceship, and he's like, yeah, I saw a man. He was, like, one-in-year. big because he's so far away. So do you think they just think helicopters are like little birds until they get like super

close? I don't know. Maybe. I mean, it's possible. But I don't. I don't think that. Yeah. You don't think that or you don't think that bears think that.

I don't think that bears think that. Okay. His name is Quill, right? Oh yeah, Quill. That's it. Yeah. What's his super year? Star Lord.

Star Lord. Okay. All right. So let's give this story our ouchy rating. So the man who was killed in it and John Petrani, we're going to give it, I guess we're going to give it outchies. So I think probably it's a 10 outchy. It's a grizzly bear and it killed him. I'm going like a six. We don't have the details, but it attacked him more than once. No way, Jeff. dragged him across the road. It ate parts of him while he was probably still alive. And we don't even know if he was dead on that the first time that Buck came across.

He might have been laying there just suffering for a long time. I'm going probably nine. He wasn't suffering because he wasn't moving or anything. I guess we'll say nine. Like if you're like in a lot of pain, you're reacting to it, right? I don't think you can just be like unconscious and suffering. All right. I'll say nine because we have done worse.

and I think we're going to do worse. I'm saying six because most people have like days and days and days of pain. His pain was like a few minutes. Just always thinking outside of the box on these, which I appreciate. You are talking me down a little bit. I'll settle on eight, but because he died, I'm not going lower than that. No. Yeah, I feel pretty good sticking at a nine.

Okay, so we have six, eight, nine. That's our ouches. I obviously this is like a really tragic one and awful for both of these. these guys, like much worse for John, but Buck to like find that and have that be that, that would really stick with you for a long time. Yeah, that's tough. All right. Do you guys have any questions about the story before we go into our categories?

Have you looked at any of Buck's photos? I haven't. No, I probably should have. Yeah. I haven't looked at him, though. I bet, I mean, I bet he's still taking him. I mean, this wasn't that. I guess it's 30 years ago.

Yeah, who knows? Huh. It looks like he's been in different shows and stuff. There's this show called Great Bear Steakout that's coming out that he's in. Oh, way. Yeah, weird. Interesting. All right.

So let's move on to our categories if you guys don't have any more questions. Fresh out of questions. Okay. Nope. So this is our pop culture category. This is like our third or fourth grizzly bear episode. So we have done grizzlies. But I think, you know, there's a lot of pop culture bears.

So I think we're just going to do another one. Another round. Another round. Yeah, I like that. Keep them coming. I'm going to start with one. And I know we've mentioned this bear before on this show, but I can't remember if it was a pop culture choice before.

And so I'm going to go with it. And that's Ben from the Simpsons specifically. That was my choice. Really? Yeah. So Gentle Ben was like a famous bear from a show back in like whenever. But then the Simpsons did have funny little like, skit where they were watching TV and it was Ben and he hosted like a talk show and it's like the

actual bear he's not speaking or anything and then he like goes and malls someone and attacks the food cart and it's really funny it's one of my all-time favorite simpsons sketches so that was my pick sorry jeff it's all right i'll i'll just on the spot the one i thought of i just went favorite beanie baby ever so i'm going with kicks The soccer-themed Beanie Baby Bear. That was the one I always wanted as a kid, and it's probably the happiest day in my life when Hallmark had one. Just sitting there waiting to be bought.

To date, that's the happiest day of life. Yeah. That's the happiest I've ever been. Not to mention that's our second Beanie Baby reference, maybe even our third in like the fast few episodes. That's why it's on my mind probably. Yeah, all right. Well, Mike.

So I'm going with Bongo the Bear from an old. Disney feature called Fun and Fancy Free. I don't know if you probably have. I've seen Fun and Fancy Free. Yeah. You have. Okay, so it's the circus bear, the little circus bear that escapes the circus and runs off and tries to find a life out in the wild. I remember that.

And this is, I mean, we're getting to like, this is our fourth or fifth Grizzly episode. People are going to stop caring, which, yeah, no one. Ben the bear is a good choice. Yeah, Ben's a good one. With, like, the microphone tape to his head. Gentleman. Yeah. Anyways, yeah, so Bongo, he beats up Lumpjaw, the big bad bear, and gets the girl bear by the end.

It's a weird, creepy, kind of unsettling little show. I might have to go back and watch that one. I got a couple more bear references. Well, we got more bear episodes, so we don't need to burn through all of them. All right, so we're going to go right into our next category, which is what would Mike and Jeff do. We've talked a lot about bear safety on the podcast, but we haven't. there's obviously every story we talk about has different situations and different like factors that play into it and because we've talked about grizzlies so much i'm not just going to say what would you guys do if you were attacked by a bear

what i want to ask you on this one is what would you do if you were in buck wild shoes and you came across this body of this person who had been attacked by a bear oh man so we come across like a lifeless body right And you know there's a bear around and you know this person's been attacked by a bear. I probably like go up and poke him. Just see if, yeah, see what happens. And then, yeah, I mean, I know enough like basic things. Like check his pulse, see if he's breathing. Yeah.

And like if I could tell his fresh, maybe I'd try some CPR. Okay. But be kind of risky because the bear's right there, you know. Right. But he had bear spray, so I'd have that out and ready. And then, yeah, that's tough. I don't know. That's my answer.

Okay. Like, what would you do? Yeah. Your answer got better and better as you went, Jeff. But it more or less is my answer, too. Like, knowing what I know now, of course, you'd get your bear spray out. And I don't, if the body looked lifeless, I don't, it's just, it seems like such a risk even to spend, any extra time there that you don't need to to leave the scene.

And so maybe this is, is this harsh to say that I wouldn't, I wouldn't even do that? I wouldn't even check for life and I just get out of there and report it to the authorities as quick as I could. Yeah, I think, you know, this one's tough.

Like, I gave you guys a pretty hard assignment here, and it's like a hard one to be silly with too. There's not much that you can really do. If you had bear spray, you would do that, Mike? Because if I had bear spray, I would undo the safety and have it ready and kind of stand guard over the body almost, I think. Yeah.

So I'd like to think that that's what I would do, but. I don't think your way off, Mike. So how I see it is like if we're going exactly the situation where you've taken this person vitals, you don't feel a pulse. You just leave. You just get out of the area. You know, you have your bear spray, but you get out of there. honestly, I don't think that's a terrible answer because you're going to go get help. There's not much you're going to be able to do to get the body out of there or whatever.

But I think you do leave. I think you're leaving one step too early, Mike. I think you do have to go in and check for vitals. Because if that person does still have a pulse, then you're suddenly like if you know how to do any kind of first aid or whatever, you probably should. You know? Right. Regardless, especially if you have bear spray, you probably should stick around and make sure that. that person survives.

I think I'm just getting freaked out by the detail that that bear, a minute after he left, he was there dragging the body off. But the thing to remember is that bear probably saw Buck there and that's why he went off or why she went off. She was like, you know, left the carcass because Buck came in on it. So who knows if she actually would have attacked Buck. But I think Jeff's a little bit closer in that you should go in, check for vital signs. If there is something you can do, do it.

But if I were to go in and I were to go in and I were to, try and take a pulse and I'm getting no pulse and I don't know if that person's alive or not. I'd probably do what Buck did and try and cover them up and keep them warm and then get out of there and try and find help. And like maybe if there's like a lot of bleeding, I would try and put pressure on that or something before I left. But there's not much you can do if there's not a pulse or anything. Like you need to get real help fast.

Would you sign your note? Seriously. Grizz kid. Gris kid. No. And like, I don't know. If you have the training and everything, if you have that kind of wilderness CPR training and first aid training, maybe you should stick around and like really try and revive that person and

get them back. But there is a bear around and you don't want to get attacked yourself. So this is a really tricky one. I don't think there's necessarily a right answer. Yeah, you're pretty vulnerable if you're doing CPR. Yeah. Because you can't like have your bear spray in your hand. Totally. And what I will say is as far as like people that are out there hiking or recreating or whatever, if you ever come up on a bear and it does seem to be protecting a carcass, you need to get out of there. You don't want to run. You don't want to do any of the things we've told you guys not to do.

You want to get your bear spray out and you want to back away slowly because that bear probably isn't going to leave. It's not like other situations we talk about where the bear's just trying to get away and it might knock you down and then leave. It wants to stay there. It wants to be by that carcass. It wants to defend it from other bears. so you need to exit that area.

But if the carcass is a human, it is a little different. Like maybe go spray the bear or something. Totally. If you got spray and you're comfortable doing that, go for it. But this was a tricky one. But I'm just saying outside of like it being a human body or whatever, if it's just a bear on a carcass or a bear feeding on something that it really wants, that's a bear that's going to act very aggressively.

It's a bear that isn't going to probably leave. so you need to leave. And you want to get your bear spray out, group up, and slowly back away. Those are the three things that you should remember. Bear spray out, group up, slowly back away. We all have that dream trip. We've been wishing we could go on. But too often life or usually price gets in the way.

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Flowing ad budget on metrics that look great until the CFO sees them, that's Bulls Bend. And marketers are calling it out in. Dashboard Confessions. I remember telling my boss, it'll be good for the brand when leads were slow. Yeah, it wasn't. Cut the bullspend.

LinkedIn lets you target by company, job title, and more. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com slash campaign, terms and conditions apply. So those are the rules for like a bear around a carcass, but for those of you out there who have asked us like a bunch of questions about bear safety and everything, those are really the only three things you really need to remember. Get your bear spray out, get it ready, group up, and slowly back away.

That's it. If you do those three things, you're probably not going to get attacked by a bear ever. So those are like, if I were to like put those on a post, it's bear safety information on a poster, it would be those three things. Doesn't quite come out like stop, drop, and roll, but I can see it catching on. No, but it's, I mean, it's hard to remember everything because people are like, oh, do I play dead? Do I make my arms big? Do I like talk respectfully?

Do I do all these things? And it's like, don't worry about all that. Do those three things that are proven to work. And you should be fine. Okay. Jeff, do you have listener questions for us? Oh, I got a couple. Okay.

Oh, can't wait to hear from listeners. Whoa. You sound excited. It's the most excitement out of mic in a long time. Hurry, Jeff. Okay. So, and just so you guys, like, you guys already know, but I'm going to mess up your name. Like, it's a real simple Instagram name.

No one take it personally. But, yeah, so that being said, less free raise. Okay. So he's asking, what animal would be your ideal big slash little spoon when cuddly? For me, probably a giant panda. For big spoon or little spoon? That'd be my big spoon. That's like good bragging rights, too.

My little spoon would probably be a mountain lion. No. What? Yeah, that's my answer. Okay. Mine was big panda for big spoon as well. Actually, I'll change it to polar bear, though. Let's go, yeah, I say big panda.

Big panda. The big old panda. Let's go polar bear because they're just huge and could really get you in there. But it'd have to be cold because they're going to make me hot quick. And then for a little spoon, I'm going to choose kangaroo. Oh, come on. Because I could just slit my hands in its pouch like a little hoodie. I was thinking kangaroo for my big spoon, then I could get in its pouch.

Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah, go for it. Okay, yeah, I will. We can share it. Sure. That'd be funny because you would have your hands in its pouch, and I would be in the pouch. We'd have like a train.

We'd have, yeah, we'd have. Cuddle train. So this listener, we've answered a few questions, but they got another good question, so we're going for it. Jiminy Frickett. Okay, okay. Long time listener. When predators who don't live near water make a kill, how do they get all the blood off themselves? Yeah, I mean, they lick at it a lot.

They'll lick their fur and everything and lick off a lot of that blood. And then it just comes off. I mean, just like from traveling through the brush and like rain and all sorts of stuff, it just slowly comes off. But I think like when you see them like with blood all over their face, they're going to lick it off and whatever other animals they have. If they're in a group or anything, they're also going to lick it off. So I think it's mostly that.

I just kind of think of like the pictures of polar bears sometimes where they've just like killed a seal and they're just covered in blood. Like, how long do they stay like that? Well, polar bears are in and out of the water a lot. And then they also, they clean themselves off. They'll skid out on the, they'll, like, slide on the snow and ice and everything to clean themselves. And that's because their white fur is part of their camouflage. So they want to stay as white as possible.

So polar bears will actually go out and clean themselves and get as clean as possible because they want to be as white as possible while they're hunting seals. I like that. Cool. Good question. Okay, from Josh Scorfield. There's a zombie apocalypse and you can train one animal to be your companion. What animal would it be?

Mine's probably like a polar bear. Okay. How about you guys? I just want the biggest, baddest animal. I don't like that one because I just think it's going to draw too much attention to you. What, are you going to pick orca again, Jeff? You're going to get... I mean, that is a good choice just thing out in the ocean whenever the zombies come.

I was going to go Jaguar just because they're so sneaky. I feel like we could hide when we need to, and then it can take out a couple of some zombies. You got to go for the head. That's what Jaguars do. They go straight for your head. Break your brains. True.

You know? That's a good one. I'm going to go with a big bird of prey. I don't know. Like a golden eagle? Sure. And it's something that'll be able to be attacking from the air. That seems smart.

I'm going to change mine to a big bull African elephant. That's what I want. Yeah, just get on top of it. I don't know. I still think you're drawing too much attention to yourself. Not if you camouflage the elephant. Get on a orchid and be in the ocean in two seconds. I don't know if you're thinking about that quite right, but we'll let you have it.

All right. So from Shea gasped, how many bees does it take to shoe away a bear from a beehive? I don't have a good number. I don't think there really is a number, to be honest. Probably like there is, but it's like a million or something. Right. It's like not a realistic number. Not a realistic number.

I don't think they really feel bees the same way that we do. They're essentially flies to them. So they're probably, you're right, there probably is a number, but it's not a realistic number. But I don't know. I can't say that for sure. I think that's something important. Like when we answer some of these questions, I'm going to make sure to let you guys know when I'm giving you a definitive answer when I'm not. That is not a definitive answer.

but that would be my guess. A million? Yeah, I don't know. Like, a lot more bees than what is possible. They'd have to, like, outweigh the bear. Yeah, they'd have to be able to, like, pick him up and fly him away from the hive. And do that, like, dance thing where they, like, overheat whatever's after their hive. Yeah, exactly.

Okay, and then I have two Patreon questions. Hey, guys, I absolutely love the podcast. I'm so excited to have become a patron. We're excited to have you. Thanks for it. doubling up on that. My question is more geared towards Wes and Jeff. Sorry, Mike.

Oh, come on. Since you've both worked with animals in a professional capacity. Did either of you ever have an interest in veterinary medicine? What drew you towards wildlife biology versus medicine? Thanks. I guess I'll feel this. I personally didn't decide to get into vet tech or be a vet because I didn't want to work with like sick or herd animals. I just wanted to work with animals that were doing fine. But then I've worked

with some wildlife vets that have some of the coolest jobs out there. They're the ones that are out there like darting the animals and capturing animals and doing really cool, exciting work. And sometimes I think I would have preferred that even. So I at first didn't do it because I thought you were just like in the hospital all the time with like sick animals. But more and more I've learned that some wildlife vets have really, really cool jobs. So sometimes I wish I would have gone that route even. I think for me, I just kind of categorized them with doctors, vets, and I was like, well, I'm not smart enough to be a doctor, so I probably can't be a vet either.

So this one's from Malaney, and it says, hello, what are your favorite documentaries? Love your content. Mike, you want to go first? Yeah, sure. So I'm a big sports documentary guy. So just a couple of honorable mentions is I really liked when we were kings, the lead-up to and the boxing match between Foreman and Ollie that was going on in Zaire. That was awesome. I like Hoop Dreams.

And of course, the last dance kind of have to as a 90s kid who grew up idolizing Michael Jordan. But my favorite one is the King of Kong's fistful of coins. Yeah, that's a good documentary. I love that documentary. I guess if there's anything... It's got everything. Yeah, it's got everything that I love. So that's the one for me.

Cool. Jeff, you want to go next? Yeah. So I'll just do like one and then if you don't name one of the other ones I like, I'm going to give my mentions after. But for sports, I really like the two Escobars. And it kind of talks about Pablo Escobar running like a drug cartel. And then the Colombian national team was like at the high-down.

their powers like historically and like one of the best teams in the world and one of their players kicked in an own goal and they really underperformed in the world cup and then he was murdered like a week later and it is just crazy because he was like the hero of the country and but pablo had been murdered or not murdered but like killed before that and they think had pablo not been killed he would have protected this guy so i don't know it is interesting west what's yours You know what, I'm going to go, I'm going to say two. So I'll give like a nature one and then a non-nature one. My like favorite nature series is human planet.

Yeah. And it's like, it's like a six or seven part series about how humans and wildlife and like humans and nature interact in different parts of the world. I love that one. It's like same people that did Blue Planet and like all those blue chip. I saved that one for you. I was going to mention it. Uh-huh. I also, I don't know, I hesitate.

Like, I think one of the documentaries that affected me the most was this one called Deliverus from Evil. And it was all about some of the Catholic Church scandal with priests and altar boys and stuff. And it was like really hard to watch, but really, really well done. Right up your alley. Yeah, it wasn't. But it made me think really hard about how you got to protect your kids and stuff because you never know where they might get in trouble. So that's a good thing for documentaries to kind of stick with you afterwards. Yeah.

So that's one that really stuck with me. But those will be my answers. Yeah, I want to just shout out, planet Earth is incredible. And then... Grizzly man's great. Grizzly man was going to be... I was kind of deciding between two Escobars and Grizzly man. Grizzly man's so good.

So our next category... Oh, thanks everyone for questions. We truly appreciate it and we love answering them. And we'll try to get to yours if we haven't yet. So our next category is how are we messing things up for them? So we've talked about this with grizzly bears quite a bit. Globally, grizzly bears are doing fine. Ersisusarchdos, which is their species.

Globally, they're referred to as brown bears, and they're doing okay. There's roughly 200,000 brown bears globally. In the U.S., there's, like I said, those main two ecosystems, the lower 48, there's the greater Yellowstone ecosystem and the northern continental divide. So I wanted to talk a little bit about how the bears on the northern continental divide are doing. They're actually doing pretty well compared to how they were doing when this attack happened in the early 90s. There's been a lot of conservation initiatives. There's been a lot of nonprofits that have helped.

There's this nonprofit based out of Missoula called Vital Ground that's all about connecting populations. There's just a lot of really good work that's going on to help Grizzlies in the Northern Continental Divide. And they're expanding and they're actually doing really well. They're almost to the point where they're thinking about delisting them from the Endangered Species Act, where then the management will be left up to the states, which is a little bit scary if you're a bear biologist and someone who loves grizzlies as much as I do. But for them to lose that protection seems scary, but it's also, it's showing you, it's like a celebration almost.

Like we did it, we got this animal back to where it can be managed again by the state. So they are doing pretty well. And yeah, it's a great place to see bears. So if you are really interested in seeing grizzly bears, both Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park are great places to do it. If you spend enough time in those parks, you'll see them. If, as you guys know, if you spend enough time with me in those parks, you'll for sure see them because I have laser focused on seeing bears. Yeah, we need to go visit Wes in Yellowstone. Exactly.

Wherever, if there's bears around, like we're spending some time looking for bears. Yeah, we're going to find them. Sometime, more like all the time. Wes, that kind of made me think of one more listener question. I'm just going to throw out there real quick because it's relevant. Okay. So C. Winters 90 was asking, so there's five states with grizzly bears, right? Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska.

Right. Okay. So they were asking what state would be best to reintroduce grizzlies into? That's a good question. My knee-jerk reaction would be Colorado because people there seem to be somewhat tolerant of reintroductions. There's a lot of wilderness. There's a lot of area for bears there. The thing about grizzly bears is they need large areas of wilderness, not just like forests. Like they need big areas to roam in. And that's what makes them different from black bears. So Colorado is kind of

the first state that comes to mind. I think there's like an argument for putting them back in California too. Yeah. But uh, Northern California maybe could handle some. But I would I would honestly probably rather see him back in Oregon first because then you get this connectivity and everything between states. But yeah, I would say that. Honestly, like Washington, I hardly count because there's hardly any bears in Washington at this point. So if I were to like, I would say Washington is where we need to start reintroducing bears. But technically they do have some bears right now. So we won't count that. But that's my answer. It's a long answer. Sorry. We'll have to talk some more about that connecting territories some more. That sounds really interesting and I just would want to know how they go about doing that.

Yeah, we'll do that at some point. It is super interesting. Okay, so we are going to give grizzly bears our claw rating. You guys know what my claw rating is for grizzly bears. I think we know what Jeff's claw rating is for grizzly bears. We're both 10 claws. Maybe if we give an animal a triple 10 claw rating, it has to get some sort of special level that it gets up to into. But Mike, What claw rating do you give Grizzlies? It's not going to be a 10, I'm sorry to say. I do like Grizzlies. Grizzlies are, they're more like an eight to me.

Where do they rank in bears for you? I'm going to guess third. So I like pandas more. Yeah. And you like polar bears more, don't you? Yeah. That's probably it. Panda, polar grizzly.

And then the rest of those bears. I know you like the back of my hand. Yeah. You do. The rest of the bears can. Go kick rocks for all I care. No. But as far as our old category, does Mike like this animal?

Mike does like this animal. Yeah, my second favorite, followed by my favorite animal. So it's kind of cool. Whoa. Yeah. Since last time we did jaguars and then grizzlies. Cool. Well, that's it for this story again.

If you guys want to read more about it, it's in the book Mark of the Grizzly by Scott McMillian. There's some other great stories in that book. I'm sure a couple more will make it on to the podcast at some point. I'm about to head back to Yellowstone, but it's great seeing you guys. Yeah, that was fun. You're a cool guy. Yeah. Hey, thanks.

You know, I'm excited to just give you guys a hug and leave. Careful for that volcano up in Yellowstone. Oh, you know, if that caldera goes, I want to be there. I want to be ground zero. Front row seat and I want to be instantly vaporized instead of like slowly dying like the rest of the world. So, yep, I just want to be there. All right. Well, thanks everyone for listening.

We really appreciate it. If you haven't given us a review on Apple Podcasts, go ahead and do it. What's stopping you? Yeah, we dare you. But it should be, but make it a five-star review, please. Please. Sorry, we came out really aggressive, but all right. Well, bye, guys.

We'll see it. Bye. Hello, everyone. Looks like you made it to the end of another one of our episodes. Congratulations. I don't know if I could have done that myself. Ah, just kidding, I get to the end of all of our episodes. I edit them after all.

I listen to all these things like 40 times each, and I really have no idea if they're any good by the time I'm done with them. But you guys seem to like them enough to even subscribe to our Patreon. And speaking of, we have a bunch of new patrons to shout out. So without any further ado, we want to give a personal shout out to each of the following for being awesome and for subscribing to us on Patreon. And just a quick shout out for anyone who's still here. and is not a patron yet.

We have hours and hours of extra bonus content over on our Patreon account, and we add to it every other week. So if you're interested in hearing a little bit more from us, go ahead and subscribe to us over there. We actually do put in a lot of effort into what we produce for our patrons exclusively. Anyway, here are the new patrons. Thank you so much to Kayla, Tammy, Kara, Stein, Kim, Jennifer, Lisa, Matt,

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It really is no exaggeration. We say this every time, but it's not an exaggeration that you are truly the only source of income that we have and it turns out that making podcasts actually does cost a little bit of money. So you guys are keeping us afloat. No joke. I don't know why I would joke about that, but it is not a joke. Thank you so much and we'll catch you all in the next one. See ya.