Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Grizzly Bear Attack - Short King Colin and the Bear on Mt. Doogie Dowler

Episode Date: February 16, 2026

The intrepid Colin Dowler embarked on a mission to summit the mountain that was named after his grandfather, but a grizzly bear had other ideas. With only a small knife and presumably a normal-sized bike at his disposal, Colin's fight to survive began. Watch here: https://youtu.be/j0OgmeF86hQ ~~ Rocket Money: Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster—join at https://RocketMoney.com/CLAW Graza Olive Oil: Take your food to the next level with Graza Olive Oil—visit ⁠https://graza.co/TOOTH⁠ and use promo code TOOTH for 10% off your first order! Nutrafol: Visit ⁠https://Nutrafol.com⁠ and enter promo code TOOTH for $10 off your first month’s subscription and free shipping. Mint Mobile: New customers can make the switch today and for a limited time, get unlimited premium wireless for just $15 permonth. Switch now at ⁠https://mintmobile.com/tooth⁠ Hims: To get simple, online access to personalized, affordable care for ED, Hair Loss, Weight Loss, and more, visit ⁠hims.com/TOOTH⁠ for your free online visit ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/c/toothandclawpodcast ~~ 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

Let's be honest. Buying cannabis shouldn't be complicated, sketchy, or low quality. That's why I want to tell you about mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com. Mood ships federally legal cannabis straight to your door. No medical card, no hassle. And here's the kicker. The quality is better than anything you'll find at your local dispensary. Yeah, I said it. Whether you're into edibles, concentrates, flour, or just looking to explore, you'll find it all at mood. And it's not just the variety. that makes them stand out. Every product is sourced from small American-owned family farms that care deeply about what they grow. It's cannabis you can trust, delivered discreetly, and ready to elevate your mood. And because you're a listener, you get 20% off your first order. Just head to mood.com. That's M-O-O-O-D.com to get started. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Tooth and Claw. This is Mike. Just wanted to give a quick producer's note. So our last episode, many of you noticed that it was only playing a

small amount of the beginning portion of the episode. I'm really sorry. I don't know what happened. I tried everything I could. I re-uploaded, told everyone to refresh their feed, close the app. Nothing was seeming to really work for a small section of you, and for that, I'm really sorry. And at this point, everything should be good. The whole episode should be playing for everybody. So go back and check that out. Imogene was an amazing guest and had so much cool information to share about Snow Leopards. So go check that out if you haven't or if you weren't able to. I'm pretty confident this issue is just a one-off thing. It hasn't happened before. for I'm going to try my hardest to never let it happen again. So you're safe to listen to that

episode and this episode and every other episode we ever do, wherever you want to listen to it. But I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to plug our YouTube channel because you know the only platform where there were no issues, the whole episode played start to finish, the whole hour and half was on our YouTube channel. And that's just tooth and claw over on YouTube. You get to see our faces if that's something that interests you while you listen to our nonsensical ramblings. Well, at least Jeff and I. nonsensical rambling. West, he's doing a great job. Very scientifically sound, as always. Anyway, just wanted to get that out there, spread the word. That's all I've got. I've done enough

talking. Let's get to the episode. Let's go. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Tooth and Claw podcast. We have Mike Smith. Hey, he's over there. Hey, Mike. He's a English major. And then we got our bear biologist, Wes Larson. That's me. And no one can smell a bear. Fasson. faster than Wes. Yeah, I just fall in my nose. I'm like that toucan. And I was Wes's field tech with some bear work. I studied some business in college.

Sure. If you need business advice, he's your guy. He could come to me. Uh-huh. I'm an expert. Yeah. He's cheap. So, yeah, that's us, tooth and claw.

What do you guys think of the Winter Olympics? What's your vibe on the Winter Olympics? Mike, I know you love the Sun. Summer Olympics. No, baby. I'm going to answer that myself before I even let you answer. I like the Winter Olympics more because I feel like they do just crazy. Like I was watching the ski jump, like the far one.

I forget what it's called, big jump or whatever. Yeah. And I just thought that's got to feel better than anything in the entire world. Just launching off this ramp and sailing like hundreds of meters just has to feel amazing. It is a lot. twist your toes in their fingers during a pedicure. Yeah, I think it's better than that. I love that feeling.

It's a lot more intense for sure. It's like summer Olympics, it's just like, who can run the fastest, who can jump the furthest, who can swim the fastest? And this one, it's like, who can slide the fastest with knives on their feet? Who can go fast for a little bit and then jump as far as they can? And if they don't land on their feet, they lose. and they also almost die. Let's go a billion miles per hour on a sled down a luge. Head first.

So sweet. Yeah. I love the winter limits. I love that it's also, it's like Norway's time to shine. You know, it's like Norway is finally like, this is us, you know? Yeah. I've been loving them. I actually have really gotten into the Olympic spirit and it's been fun to watch and kind

of root for Japan because we are just in Japan. I feel like a lot of their athletes are very likable. like they're snowboarders. All right, we're going to do a bear episode. And there's a few reasons I want to do another bear one. Part of it is I have a two-parter coming that has nothing to do with bears that I'm really excited about. And then we have a couple other episodes scheduled after that that aren't bear episodes. And it's going to be a minute before we have another one. So I wanted to do a fun bear episode. And they're definitely the ones we have the most of. And then also, I get a lot of questions from people saying what bear spray should I buy? And I tell them they're pretty much all the same and they

are. I have actually been working on my own bear spray and it is going to be an improvement over the existing bear spray. I'm really excited about it. I have some partners. We've been working on it for years. That's coming out probably this fall. So I'm not telling people to wait to buy bear spray if you're going into bear country. Definitely just grab a can. But if you aren't needing to buy it, you should wait for mine because I'm really excited about it. Voss kind of a bad time to release your bear spray. It is a little late. It'll be hopefully before like hunting season and stuff for people. But yeah, I mean, it's as quick as we probably can get it out. What flavor is it? But I'm excited to talk more about it. A cherry, uh, cherry flavor. Oh my gosh. No, it's just what I like.

You know how to sell. No, we'll talk about it more. But again, don't wait for it if you need bearspring. Because you said you said what if you make 10 million dollars me, Mike and Brent, I'll get a million dollars or something. I think I might have said that. Hey, nice. I think I've already promised away my first 10 million if I do happen to get rich from this Bears Frey, which is fine. I don't think people should be that rich.

Well, 10 millionaires, I think is okay, actually. Wow. You're really tightening that belt. Yeah. Wait until he gets to 10 million and see what he says. I'm just going to hold on to it. He'll be like actually 30 millionaires are fine too. You guys would get.

You guys would get some money for sure, a million. Why not? Oh, I actually, I don't like money at all. I'm a better person than you because of how little I like money. I don't, it's not that I dislike money. I don't think people should hoard money when so many people need it. All right, I got a question for you guys to start off this episode. What does the name Doogie Dowler make you think of?

Dugie Hauser, right? Correct. I thought of a go-hart. Go-car. I like that, too. It's also a great answer. Okay. Duggyhouser.

The Duggy? The Duggy. Who's the country, who's the country singer that doesn't know how to do the Duggy? Do you remember that songs? I don't do the doggie. I don't do the Duggy, I just fish and wear my boots. That's all he does. Duky Houser.

West watched the turning point half time. Yeah. I just want to fish and camp and wear my boots and on my grass. All right. So when I was a kid, there's a show on TV called Doogie Hauser. And it makes me feel a little old that probably a lot of you don't know who this is or what this was. I actually don't know who it is. It's Neil Patrick Harris's first role.

And he was as a child actor, he acted as this doctor who's 14 years old and is like the best doctor in the world. He's a child prodigy, graduated medical school when he was 10, became a full-fledged doctor at 14. and it was a weekly show of like his kind of challenges being a child doctor. Great show. It's one of the one of the rare moments where someone is cast as a 14 year old and they're like they look like they are 14 years old. He looks like a child.

He looks younger than 14 when you look at photos of this. Anyway, that's what I thought of. Has nothing to do with this episode aside from the name Doogie Dowler is in the episode. Thanks for taking us down that road. I have some sources. I have some sources here. One of my main sources was actually another podcast called Storytime with Seth Rogan. If you probably know that name, Seth Rogan.

You know who that is, Jeff. He did this story. That's pretty much it. The episode is called The Ballad of Mount Dugie Dowler. Outside Magazine did an article on this. Reader's Digest did a story. story on this. Those were all sources that I used in prepping this episode. Okay. Don't listen to him. Listen to him. Doogie, it is. It's a great episode. It's really good. I do recommend it.

Dugie Dowler, though, isn't a show about a teenage Wunder Kid doctor that finished medical school in he's 10. It's a mountain in coastal British Columbia near Campbell River and really near the top end of Vancouver Island. It's also named after someone who's pretty cool. So nearby there's a little island called Quadra Island. And on that island, there's a little, yeah. Sorry to interrupt. I really am. So is Doogie Dowler all one word, or is it two different?

Two words. It's a first and last name. The mountain has a first and a last name. For a mountain? It sure does, Mike. What's Everest's last name? Or is that its last name? Ev.

Mark. Rest. Ed. Eve. All right. Interesting. K2, I guess. Is two names.

Wow. That's awesome. Nearby Quater Island has this little community on it, though, and in 1956, Doogie Dowler moved to the island, and he started to run a small grocery store and a post office with his family. The store became something of a community meeting point, and stores like that, little grocery stores are really the lifeblood of these tiny rural communities, and Doogie became really well-known, well-liked, and well-respected around town, which is a triple threat. you know if you can have those three things you're sitting pretty in a town like quarter island uh he did a lot hard it's kind of hard just to have like one of those yeah well liked but not well respected yeah yeah i think that there's a lot of people like that uh he did well not a lot but some he did a lot of other stuff for this community though and he'd become a really

important fixture around quadr island uh this is both from like you know running the store being the postmaster, all of that. And a cool thing about Doogie is from the front of his store and from his house, there was a great view of this really prominent mountain that had two peaks that kind of looked like the rise and then the folds on the top of a cowboy hat. And it wasn't officially named. Everyone just called it Cowboy Hat Mountain. So when Doogie died in the early 1980s,

some of the other prominent community members decided to name that mountain, Dugie Dowler and I'm sure it had an indigenous name that they kind of just steam rolled over but I don't really understand how you do that how you just say like hey let's just name this mountain after this guy that just died but they went ahead and did it and they went through the right channels I think because if you look up this mountain on like Google Maps it comes up Mount Dugie Dowler I don't think it was just like a nickname it's pretty cool for him it is cool it's a great name for a mountain too in my opinion his kids and his great sold on it.

You don't like... He's confused by the two names. Mount Dugie does sound pretty good. I kind of like Mount Dugie Dowler, though. I'm coming around. You know what? I'm sold. I'm back in, boys.

All right. Dugie Duller's back on the menu. So Dugie's kids and his grandkids grow up on Quadra Island as well, and one of those grandkids was Colin Dowler. And Colin really seemed to love growing up in a place like Quadra Island. He's incredibly outdoorsy.

He's fascinated by the natural world and wildlife and pushing his body and that even like the TV they had in their house had a really flimsy antenna and was always malfunctioning so he hardly ever watched TV and just really spent his entire childhood outdoors he's also a short king i could only find articles that said he's shorter than 5 8 which is a real short guy way to tell someone your height like when you start just using a benchmark that you're a shorter than that uh you're probably like five 55, 5, 6. I'm 5.8.

I think I'm right on the, I'm right on the, like, crux of what you could call me short. I would say I'm short. I don't really ever, I never thought of you as like a short person. Yeah. Never, never did I think like, wow. Notably short. Growing up, but yeah, I don't feel that way. Anyway, he only weighed about 125 pounds as well.

So this is like, he's a pretty small dude. But everyone just talks about how tough and scrappy and just kind of. wild he was too so you kind of got that that mental image kind of like smeeble kind of like smigle yeah i think he's very similar um this story takes place when he's about to turn 45 and at this he's a pretty he's a pretty good short king right he's a short king for sure we're going to have our favorite short king category but i think smigel's a great entry into that spoiler my answer is smigle yeah um what was he again he's like he's a halfling but was he a hobbit? I thought he's a hobbit, but it's like some different group of hobbits. Yeah, I think

that's what it is. So at this point, Colin had married, he had a kid, he'd moved to a bigger town on Vancouver Island, Campbell River, but he still thought about Mount Dugie Dowler all the time. And part of the reason was because it was named after his grandpa, and part of the reason was because no one had ever actually summited Mount Dugie Dowler. And Colin and his brother, Paul, yeah, they wanted to be the first. And it's a pretty imposing mountain. I get why no one summoned it. It almost always has snow on it. It's very steep. They had tried in their 20s, but they had to turn back because of bad weather. And someone else had tried when Colin was young, and they fell 800 feet to their death. Holy moly. If you've ever been to British Columbia, coastal British Columbia, there are so many

mountain peaks, and so many of them are wild. Like there's no infrastructure, no trails, just thick, thick brush, unbelievably thick and thorny brush to get through, and then really treacherous rocky slopes to get up to the top. But in 2019, Colin and his brother decided they would start making plans to summit the mountain. In July of that year, just a few days before Colin's 45th birthday, he told his wife he was going to take some time off work and do a short reconnaissance trip to Mount Dugie Daller and try and find the right route for when he and his brother would climb the mountain. It would require a boat ride, a kayak ride, a bike ride, and then a long hike and some night camping alone. The bike ride would be on one logging road that like ran eight

miles up the mountain, but that was it. How'd they bring a bike on their kayaks? They strap it on. I think it's just like strap it to it. And it's just Colin doing this. He just kind of had some free time and decided he'd do it on his own. And his wife had a tiny bike because he's a, he's a living back. One of those little Classic. A clown bike. I think it'd be easy to get one of those onto a kayak. But does he have a tiny kayak too, you know? Like, that's the thing.

Oh, shoot. Oh, my gosh. Everything's scaled down. This bear's going to eat him in one bite. All right. Bear? Yeah, I mean, I already spoiled that. All right, his wife had a really bad feeling about this trip,

and she told Colin not to go. And when they're talking about it, it he even said i never really read any statistics that say you are more likely to be attacked by a grizzly by yourself than with other people right and his wife said yeah i guess i haven't either now if any of our listeners ever say that i'm going to come to your house and i'm going to pinch you i'm going to pinch you hard because is that true jeff that he hasn't read those statistics do those statistics exist does it say that you're not more likely to be attacked by your You are, there is a lot of statistics out there that say if you're by yourself, you're going to get attacked.

You're not going to be, but you are much more likely to be attacked. It is one of the biggest factors in grizzly bear attacks. And I'm going to kind of do things different this episode where there's not going to be a break to go over like biology. But as we go through the story, I'm going to remind people about some of the bear safety stuff you've learned over the years with tooth and claw. And that's the first reminder that groups of people are much less likely to be attacked by a grizzly bear, especially groups of three or more. If you are by yourself, you are taking a much bigger risk than you would be with even just one other person with you. But who even made up those statistics?

A bear biologists that have worked closely with these attacks and have learned a lot of good insights from them. What if it's three kids in a trench coat all stacked up on each other's shoulders? I don't think that would be effective, but I think it would maybe be confusing for a minute for the bear. I think it's worse, right, than three kids? Yeah, I think that's worse than just having three kids that are like a unified. Yeah. I don't know. I'm just saying people do that.

I don't think we have any data points for that. Like if you're going to an R-rated movie and you're a child, And you get attacked by the griper on the way. Trust these scientists and their statistics is they haven't tried that. Yeah, that's a good point. What if it was three regular-sized adults on each other's shoulders in a really long trench coat? I do think that would be intimidating to a bear. I think it would kind of be like, what am I dealing with here?

Yeah. See, there's plenty of studies for all you kids out there who are aspiring to be a bear biologists and think there's not a lot of work to be done. Yeah. Just think outside the box. Colin would need like four. Yeah. Colin. And that regular size coat for all three of them.

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At only $12, it's great for affordable touch-ups on the go. Get this new must-have concealer at Sephora or at Sephora.com today. All right, so he decided to go even with his wife's misgivings. And as he left the house, he said something akin to what he always said, which was, if I'm not back by 8 o'clock Sunday night, you can start worrying about me. So he would always give her like a time and a day where she could start worrying. Colin had put this trip together pretty quickly and he wanted to travel lightly so he brought a little bivy instead of a tent he brought minimal food his backpack and a bike he had planned to run by his dad's house to grab a can of bear spray right before getting on the boat that would take him to the right bay on the mainland but he didn't have time and he decided he really didn't need bear spray because he had seen countless black bears on excursions and only a couple grizzlies so he wasn't really worried

That's bad reasoning. Yeah, I've seen tons of bears, but I don't need bear spray. But for a guy like him, he sounds like he's tough and he's scrappy, like against a black bear, I'm taking Colin. He knows bears pretty well too, and he knows that the chances of being attacked by a black bear are really slim. But what he might not have known is that mainland British Columbia, just, you know, right across the straight from where he lived on Quadr Island was really great, great.

grizzly bear habitat. So even though Vancouver Island isn't and Quadro Island probably only had black bears, just across the straight, there are prime grizzly bear spots. So prime, in fact, that the grizzly bear viewing industry is doing really well in this area. It's not a spot. I would want to be traveling and bushwhacking alone without bear spray. There are definitely a lot of grizzly bears around. For him to just, I feel like when you are in nature that much, when you're outdoors that much and you like he's encountered a lot of bears he's gotten a little too comfortable type of thing you know it's like sure it's it happens yeah i've been close to bears before they don't bother me i don't bother them type of thing you know exactly i can relate i mean even us like there's

been plenty of times where i've gone fishing and i realize as i'm on the way that i'm entering grizzly bear habitat and that i forgot bear spray and sometimes i just go for it you know and like that's not right, but it does happen. So I do understand how this happened to him. But I will say if I was like bushwhacking up a mountain and camping by myself, I would feel very, very uncomfortable without bear spray or without deter. I only ever bushwhacked by myself. I don't like to do it in the company of others.

And you always have your bear spray. Yeah, right. Just in case my mom burst in the room, deter her. Ghost? Oh, my gosh. She's always watching me. Yeah, you're going to need a proton pack for that, not bear spray. You think she's in there watching you?

Yeah, of course. She did die in the house you're in, right? She did, yeah, she's in the walls. So it could be like she got stuck in there type of situation? All right, so Colin takes his little boat to this bay where he's getting to the beginning of this logging road, and he's actually completely astounded because he runs into other people there, and he really shouldn't be because this is out in the middle of nowhere.

But specifically, he runs into a cook that is from a logging camp. And they chat a bit. That's really interesting. Yeah, it's like if you were to go, you know, way up into the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and as you're starting your hike, there's a camp, you know, where you didn't think you would ever see anyone. Kind of. This seems more extreme than that. Yeah, this is even more so. But they chat.

He tells him what he's doing. And this cook actually asks him if he needs anything. And Colin says, yeah, I actually need some bear spruce. and the cook brings him a brand new bottle and Colin stuffs. Yeah, he stuffs this bear spray into his pocket. So let's talk for a second about where you should carry your bear spray. What do you guys think? Your bear spray holster.

On your belt. Yeah, but then sometimes I don't wear a belt. So really what you want it, what you want is to carry it in the same spot every time you go. And it needs to be somewhere where you can quickly grab it and somewhere it's, secure. Those are the three things. So for me, I really like having it on my belt, on my right hip. That's just where it's always at. It's where I carried it when I was in Yellowstone every single day. And I just have that muscle memory of that's where I would go. If you have a chest holster, that's fine. If it's on your left hip, that's fine. It can be in your pocket. But as we're

going to learn, that's not always the best place for it. It can get caught as you're pulling it out, or it's maybe easier to lose. So the main thing that's, knows you don't want it in your backpack or somewhere where you can access it really quickly. So the things to remember is always in the same spot. So you have muscle memory and then somewhere where you can quickly get it. Okay. This cook actually offers him a ride up this gravel road, which is like eight miles. So saves him a lot of time.

He gladly accepts it. Eight mile. Yeah. I think that's where they were probably in Detroit. Did they have a rat battle? Yeah, they had a rat battle before they left. With the bear. Yeah.

He doesn't need his bike to get up there. Wait, so the cook drove there? The cook, yeah. So they take a boat to this logging road with like their truck and everything on it. And then they had an eight mile logging road that just goes up into the mountain. Just one road. And it was to take their crews up to the top so they could log and then bring them back down. And then they would send logs out on boats and barges and stuff.

Gotcha. So he takes Colin up to this top of the road, Colin stashes his bike. in the bushes right there. And this cook grabs his camera to take a picture of Colin. And he says to put on the milk cartons in case you don't return, which is, you know, kind of a bit of a, yeah, I don't know what the word is. Foreshadowing? Foreshadowing.

Yeah. Harbinger of a harbinger of doom. A bit of a harbinger of doom. Yes. A bit of a foreshadow. That's what I would call that guy. All right. So Colin starts hiking up through this really thick brush and almost immediately is noticing

a lot of bear sign. and is stepping over a lot of fresh piles of bear scat. He's making plenty of noise. He's yelling out. He's continuing to make his way through the forest and uphill, but it's really slow going, and the brush was so thick he couldn't even see his feet. So he has to take a number of breaks to rest and get his bearings.

When you see fresh bear scat on a trail you're on, what's your advice at that point? You just turn around, go home, or you veer off in another direction or what? My advice would be you increase your alertness. You maybe take your safety off your bear spray. You just become a little bit more alert or maybe carry it in your hand from there. It depends on how fresh. Like if it's steaming, you know, if I know a bear was just there,

then I have it in my hand and I'm ready to go. But if it's like, looks like it's maybe a few hours old, I'm just going to be aware then that there's a bear in the area and that I have to be even more alert than before. If you see the bear going to the bear going to the, bathroom actively do you what turn around and give them the privacy or you keep your eyes on it just to make sure you're safe you know i i keep my eyes on that mike you know that's just then you can't answer that question that age old question does a bear shit in the woods you finally have your answer

right you want to be all right eyewitness so during one of these breaks while colin is sitting on a fallen log and looking his GPS his bear spray slips out of his pocket and he doesn't notice oh that's not good. That's not good. Colin hikes a good way before he realized he lost his bear spray and he doesn't want to go back down and look for it, but thinks he'll probably find it on his way back down the mountain. So he hikes until around 5 p.m., and as he's starting to get into the subalpine country, he stops, makes his camp, and goes to sleep. You guys think this is going to be a campsite attack, or is he going to make it through the night

without any problems? Campside attack. I'll go. He makes it through safe. He makes it through safe, gets through the night with no issues. Yeah. I owned you, Jeff. I won. Yeah.

I'm a winner. I owe you $100. Nice. That was for $100. I forgot to say that at the beginning, but that was a $100 bet. In the morning, he breaks his camp down and starts heading down the mountain, careful to look for his bear spray along the way. It continues to see a lot of bear sign and a lot of berry bushes that had obvious signs of bear foraging,

but still no bears and no bear spray. and by around 11 a.m., he'd made it back down to the top of the gravel road where he'd stashed his bike. And he gets a little euphoric getting onto his bike. The hard part of the trip was over. He scouted out this route, potential route, to climb the mountain. And he's cruising pretty fast down the road thinking about his birthday tomorrow, about hanging out with his wife and his kid, about having a few beers, and as all of these thoughts are passing through his head,

a grizzly bear walks out onto the road about 80 feet in front of him. of Colin. Wow. Now, this may seem kind of ironic to people that Colin spent all of this time in thick brush, in great forest, and never saw a bear, but then as soon as he got onto this logging road, he ran into one, but this actually makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah, I would say the milk cart in line was more ironic. Yeah, that is, maybe, isn't it ironic? Yeah, rain on your wedding day.

Uh-huh. bears and wildlife often use roads, especially roads that don't have hardly any human traffic like this one. Like this road sees hardly anyone on it because they offer a really effective, obstacle-free way for them to move through their habitat. So like in Yellowstone, there's places where there's power lines running through the park and there'll be a clear cut around these power lines

so that the power company can access them. And it was actually a place we would always look for bears because bears would walk that clear cut because it's just like a really easy way for them to move through their habitat and it's also like usually pretty good food in those spots it's productive habitat where there's good berry bushes roots grasses and a lot of other food sources

so that's one good thing about deforestation for it's good bears grizzly bears do really well in disturbed habitat they do like you still need some forest, but they really like the edges of forest because it creates this really good productive habitat for them. Jeff, I know you were joking there, but in a way, there have been some studies that show that these places that have like pocket deforestation, so it's still like a wild ecosystem, but there's little pockets where they've deforested that bears do

really well and they use those areas because the stuff that grows up after you take out some of those trees is often food. So. Well, and like, it makes sense because they weren't necessarily mountain animals until we made them that, right? They used to be more in the plains and more in open spaces when they could. Yeah. And they really like foraging, digging for roots, digging for, you know, grass and forbs, all these different things that they can find on the ground. And those things often sprout up in places that have lost their primary cover. Do you ever think of a bear? I was going to make a real stupid joke and now it's over.

We said it at the exact same time and then I let you go. I was glad to bail because it was going to be real stupid. I was going to say, what if they found hidden treasure? Oh my God, are you serious right now? That's exactly what my joke was going to be. I tried to let you say. It's fine. I'm trying to figure out how that thought popped into both of your heads,

and it's not really making a lot of sense to me. Well, I mean, I feel like if I dug as much as a grizzly bear digs, I would find track. Eventually. But then, like, if I'm a grizzly bear, I probably wouldn't understand the value. Right. I think that's probably very true. All right. All of this is to say an old logging road is actually pretty great habitat for a grizzly bear.

Like to a grizzly bear, it's. It's valueless. You're right. No, we gotta stay on this for a minute. Because who does that belong to? It's the bears by right, I would say. In the Count of Monte Cristo, where he finds all that treasure, he becomes the richest man in the world, he gets his revenge.

If that was a bear, the bear would be like, this isn't food. Yeah. If only the bears understood the basics of economy, money. of using treasure to buy food. They could exchange treasure for goods and services. They could buy all the berries they want. Just give me a call when you're done with this, and I'll be ready to keep going. Sorry.

Dude, we taught bears to ride unicycles. We could teach one to, like, give a cashier a coin for blueberries. That's a good transition, actually. For blueberries? Because he's on his bike and the bears looking at him right now. I didn't finish my sentence, Wes. I know I said I was going to let this run its course, but I am going to cut it off. An old logging road is great habitat for a grizzly bear.

I would expect to see one more on this road than I would bushwhacking and dense forest. This is the kind of place you would see them. And Colin pretty much immediately knows that this is a grizzly bear because he had seen so many black bears. This bear looked bigger, different with a more rounded flat face and a pronounced hump. Also, black bears in this area are all more. almost always black, and this was a brown colored bear. And I wanted to take a second about bear ID because something I've been thinking about a lot lately is how many bear professionals, myself included, tell people color isn't, you know, you shouldn't use color, you shouldn't do that.

And I don't think that's necessarily true. I do think color is your first really good clue about what bear you might be looking at. And sometimes it is enough. Like if you see a jet black bear, It's almost certainly going to be a black bear if you're in North America. If you see a bear that's like brown with really light, blonde colored tips, there's a very good chance that it's a grizzly bear if you're in grizzly bear country. If you see one that's like cinnamon colored, it's probably a black bear. So there are, that's your first really good clue. If you see a white bear, it's probably a polar bear.

It could be a black bear, though. Depends. Or it could be a grizzly. There's been white grizzlies, too. Yeah, spirit bears though are like a, yeah, much more common than a white grizzly for sure. It could be a panda if you only see like a very small portion of it through the bushes. Yeah, maybe you're the colorblind and you can't see black. Or maybe you're all blind.

Yeah, that's true. And it could be any and see anything. Might be a car. Get out of the way. All right. Oh, gosh. So this is a relatively large grizzly bear and Colin immediately yells, hey bear to let it know that he was there. But instead of running away, the bear just turned and looked at him, then looked back

at the brush where it had just come from, and then looked back at Colin. Colin mentally was pleading with this bear to just go back into the brush and leave him alone. And then it turned and started walking straight toward him. Wow. It's interesting. This is our first real story where someone's on a bike. Yeah. That was why I wanted to pick this one, actually. It's kind of an interesting scenario and we're going to talk about that a bit. He's in a bit of a pickle because he knows that he has to try and discourage this bear from approaching him. So he swings his backpack onto his front, he grabs his hiking poles and he extends them and starts knocking them together and banging them on his bicycle and yelling,

but this bear keeps coming and it's kind of swinging its head and huffing while it walks towards Colin. When this bear's about 30 feet away, he starts getting nervous and he didn't want to be on his bike like straddling it because he felt like he had a limited range of movement. So he hops off the bike and that movement actually makes the bear do a tiny little bluff charge and scrape its claws on the gravel. And then it stops for a second, but then keeps coming when Colin stands there frozen in place, holding his bike. Then this bear walks to where it was just a few feet from Colin and his bike. And then as he stands there totally still, it slowly walks by him and the bike close enough that he could reach out and touch it.

Wow. Which he doesn't do, but he could have. He can't believe what's happening, and he kind of feels like this grizzly bear is just going to pass him a few feet away, and then he's just going to have a hell of a story to tell when he gets home that no one's going to believe. And as this bear is, as its butt is just inches from passing the end of his bike, it flips 180 degrees around and comes at Colin and he has just enough time to get one of his poles in between him and the bear

and push at the bear's forehead with it. So he kind of like puts this hiking pole right against the bear's forehead and then pushes and it kind of seems to work. Like this bear hasn't fully launched a charge yet. It's more just still investigating him. So he's keeping pressure on it and kind of keeping it away from him. And it's working a little bit. and then suddenly the bear just rolls its head,

snaps into this pole and breaks it and kind of pulls it away from him a bit. So it's broken in the middle and they're kind of doing this tug-of-war thing with it. And Colin says out loud, oh, come on now, we don't need to do this. I'm your friend. This is so interesting.

A bear that's like 10% like, might attack you. Yeah. I'm sure it gets elevated even more, but just like at the start. It just feels like the bear's kind of winging it, you know? I think you're right. I think this bear is investigating them as food.

I really do. I think it is thinking, I'm going to check this out. This might be food. And it's still a little nervous and not totally sure what it should do at this point. So is this hiking pole scenario? I know we've talked about with like sharks and stuff. They always teach you to put something between you and the predator, the animal that's, you know, posing a threat. Is that a thing for bears at all if you have like a sword,

if you had or some kind of like a spear or something? Is that going to deter them or are they just going to like not really understand what that would signify? Its last resort is what I would say. Like if you are completely out of options and this bear's not leaving, sure. But I also think you run a pretty big risk of just antagonizing it by by touching it with anything. That's the same with sharks. Like if you actually make contact with the shark, it might actually charge and and bite you because you're antagonizing it. What about in like 1700s Japan, a samurai where there's grizzly bears?

Yeah, I think it should, the samurai should probably try and use his sword. That's all he has. Yeah. That's worth it. We should have asked some samurai while we were there if they did that. Yeah. You should have. Shoot.

Okay. Next time. So the bear drops the pole and moves toward Colin again. And Colin decides that he's going to have to get a little bit more aggressive to deter this bear. So he throws his backpack on the ground near the bear. There's some food in this backpack still. So he's hoping that it might go for the pack. And when that doesn't work, he picks up his bike, which is tiny.

So I'm sure he can pick it up really easily. And he throws it at the bear. And that actually kind of is enough for this bear. It decides it's going to go ahead and attack. So it clears the bike In a single lunge It bites into Colin's side Between his hips and his ribs

And lifts him off the ground Kind of like if Mike Bit into a big hot dog sideways That's kind of what this would look like Not the best strategy for speed But I'm going to try that You know it was a funny little blip On social media

Was that like one day Where someone dressed up as Justin Bieber And ate a burrito sideways. And everyone was like, Justin Beaver doesn't know how to eat a burrito. That's so funny that that's what you decide to do. But that is, I mean, it worked. It was perfect. I didn't realize that was a fake Justin Bieber. I still thought that was Justin Bieber. Some guy dressed up as him and made it look like he could eat a burrito. Yeah, so picture that. That's what this bear is willing to call in. Youch. He's being actually carried in this bear's jaws.

toward the brush. He says he thinks his foot may have been dragging, but aside from that, this bear has him totally in the air. It's carrying him in its jaws. Yeah, toward the brush. And he said that he had this thought that if the bear took him off of the road and into the brush, he would probably die. So as they're making it toward the brush, the bear sets him down on the side of the road, kind of in this little ditch and bites into him again, sinking its teeth deeper into both his back and his abdomen, and then it starts moving him toward the brush once again.

And I do again think now that this is a predatory attack. I think this bear is trying to get him to a spot where it can dispatch him and eat him that isn't so open. So Colin decides he's going to have to fight back, which is appropriate in this circumstance. You do want to fight back.

He starts trying to gouge the eyes out of this bear. He pulls on the hair on its face. He's doing everything he can, to try and annoy this bear, and it does kind of work. It drops him, and then it moves down to his leg where it can kind of chew on him and bite him without him being able to reach it as well. And it starts biting into his leg repeatedly.

And at this point, I think it's kind of antagonized because it's doing these aggressive bites that are leaving puncture wounds, but it's not necessarily at this point stripping away big pieces of flesh like it's eating. It's just doing these really aggressive bites. and it would bite one leg mostly every once in a while would bite the other one, but it's mostly focused on one of his legs.

And Colin decides what he's going to do now is reach down, put his hands in the bear's mouth. This feels like a very Jeff-coated thing to do to this bear. Yeah. It's good. And try and peel its mouth off of his leg. So he shoves his fingers into its gums and tries to peel it back with all of his strength, and the bear bites into his hand. right into the ball of his thumb and then goes back to chewing on his leg.

So in this case, Jeff, it wasn't a very effective strategy. I will say, just for anyone who tries that, I would recommend having bear spray and sticking your hand down its mouth with the bear spray. Just firing it halfway down its throat. Like we always say, you should have bear spray before you do that. You should have bear spray, yeah. We will talk about kind of what went wrong and right. in this.

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Actual prices may vary. Limited time offer. All right. So Colin can actually hear the teeth of the bear grating against his bone in his leg. He said it was like the sound of a dog chewing on a big bone, which does sound like you can really hear that

when they're chewing on bones. And he started yelling, stop and why to this bear. He wasn't yelling for help because he didn't think anyone would be in the area, but he is yelling, stop and why. And he's starting to think about his family and feeling remorse.

because he thought he was going to die out there and abandon his family. And he's also thinking about his death and how they're just going to find his rotting corpse in the brush. And then as he's thinking about all this and things are getting pretty dark, he remembers his pocket knife. It was a buck knife that his dad had picked up a Canadian tire for 80% off. Have you guys ever been to a Canadian tire? It's kind of like the Canadian version of Walmart, but a little bit

weirder. Yeah. It's just like a huge, I know, because you see it and you think tires. Like this is an automotive store. No, they sell like everything there. But they also sell tires, I believe. You would hope so.

But his dad hardly ever gave him gifts just out of the blue like this, but he had given him this knife recently and he had it in his right hand pocket. And the bear, as it's chewing on him, is essentially laying down on his stomach So they're like belly to belly. And he had to kind of push his hands through his and the bear's stomach,

like that tiny gap, to try and wiggle them into his other side as the bear's like tearing into his legs and now pulling off strips of flesh. But as, you know, the bear's doing that, he manages to get his hands into his pocket, get this knife, open it with both hands. And then with all of his might, he swings it back and stabs it into the the bear's neck. Oh. Where would, is that where you would aim if you were in this situation?

I was going to ask that, yeah. I think that like, A, I'm trying my hardest to never get into this situation because, you know, we had our episode not long ago about the hunter that killed one with the broadhead arrow. And now we're talking about this knife. And the reason that these stories have trickled to the top is because they worked. But there are plenty of other people out there that have been attacked by bears. that have used weapons to try and stop them where nothing, it just absolutely has no effect. Even guns can sometimes have no effect at this point.

So I would probably aim for the neck or the eye or something, but I don't know. It would be really hard to pick a target. The 127 hours guy would probably just cut his arm off. Yeah, cut his own leg off, let the bear have it. With a knife and then run away, which is maybe that would work. so he doesn't do that he as he stabs this bear in the neck the bear actually does stop biting

it pulls its head back and rather than stab the bear again he just waits to see what would happen next and I think that's smart his reasoning there was like it did what I wanted it to do it stopped biting me so I'm not going to stab it again because it stopped

and what actually did happen next was a huge gush of blood came out of the bear's neck and splashed onto Colin. And now according to Colin, I'm putting that in big letters. He says, now you're bleeding to, bear. That's a good line. Which is a great line. You think he came up with that on the spot?

On the Seth Rogan show when he said that, Seth Rogan said, did you actually say that? And he said, I actually said it. And I'm very proud of it. So I think he did. I'm going to give him credit. I'll give him that. Yeah. The bear pulls away and slowly,

walks away from Colin, looking at him and then looking back into the brush. And then Colin takes a second to look at his leg. And when he looks back up, the bear's gone. So Colin at this point knows he needs to do a little bit of wound management quick. So he tears off his shirt sleeve and he makes a tourniquet to tie around his leg. And when he looks at his leg, he kind of sees these weird folds and bumps and he thinks maybe his pants are bunching up. But what he realizes is that this bear's puncture wounds have brought out a bunch of meat and he has meat that looks like raw hamburger from his own leg that's laying all over his leg and that's what he's seeing and it's funny because this this isn't funny that is yeah yeah i need to stop saying that hilarious one of my colleagues that

i trapped grizzly bears with when we were doing research with grizzly bears he had actually flown a little too close to the sun once while he was trapping and a bear bit him in the arm and he didn't really even realize he had been bit because it happened so quick. And he looked at his arm and he thought he had a piece of raw chicken on his arm. And what it was was the muscle and the tissue that the bear had pulled out with its tooth when it had bit him. And he was trying to brush it off and then he realized what it was. Oh, crazy. All right.

So as we've mentioned quite a bit, Colin is a smaller dude. And at this point, he was actually grateful. Too much, probably. Yeah, way too much. cut some of that out. At this point, he's really grateful for that because he's pretty small and he had small legs. And he called them himself like chicken legs. And I know that pain.

I got smaller legs myself. But the nice thing about it was that this sleeve that he had torn off would have been too big had had bigger legs, but it was just big enough that he could get a granny knot in it and tie it over his legs and make a tourniquet. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. So he's kind of like really. happy at this point that something his wife had always made fun of him for his skinny legs was

actually kind of a life-saving thing. Oh, wow. What did she call him Wednesday legs because she would say like, Wednesday going to break or something. I forget. It was like a funny, fun that she, yeah. But if he's bigger, you'd have bigger sleeves, too. That's true.

You know, it kind of is a, but if you got those big old, like tree trunk legs like Mike, It doesn't matter how big your sleeve is. I just cut the waist of the shirt. Yeah. Maybe he did have huge arms. That's true. He could have been good. He's 130 pounds.

125. Yeah, but if he's like three feet tall, then that's a big torso. I don't know. He should have just given us his height because now my imagination is running wild. He may have in one of these articles, but they all just said that I read said less than 5'8. What other great benefits are there to having short legs, Wes? Plain rides are great. You're just comfortable.

I've said this before, I think, on the podcast, but being short kind of sucks when you're in high school and maybe like college. After that, it's just great. You just fit everywhere nice. You're nice and comfortable all the time. Everything is easier when you're short, I think, besides, like, maybe grabbing things on high ledges or whatever, playing basketball. Okay.

So he decides that he's probably not going to survive waiting for the logging crew. They might take them hours to get up there, even days. So he's worried the bear might come back too, and he starts crawling toward his bike. But the gravel on his kneecaps is really bothering him as he's crawling, which he admits is kind of funny because he's completely ripped to shreds by this bear, but the gravel on his kneecaps is bothering him. And his kneecaps are fine. That is funny. So he flips over and he uses his better leg to scoot him on his butt back to his bike. But now he has another challenge.

Getting on this bike was not easy. So he tries to use his pole to push himself up and onto the bike, but the pole bends and breaks and he crashes back onto the ground. And then he manages to finally climb onto this bike and he starts to pedal and he immediately faceplants on the other side of the bike. No. But he's not going to give up. Again, Colin is really tough.

And he crawls back onto this bike. He managed to stabilize himself and start pedaling. And he really only pedals with his good leg and he just uses his mingle leg to keep weight on the other pedal. So it's this really lopsided, clunky bike ride, but he's making time. He's getting through it. And during the ride, he can feel his pants and his bike seat getting warm from all the blood that's spilling out of his body. but he just keeps focusing on getting to the three kilometer mark because that's where a big downhill starts

and he can coast down to this logging camp. Sorry, this road's eight kilometers, not eight miles. I misspoke early. It'd be like snow informer. He's the rapper probably because... Wait, do they use kilometers in Canada? I'm not sure. They do.

Yeah. I was just trying to think of a white Canadian rapper. Even when it was eight miles, I was kind of like, I don't know if it's worth the effort of, kayaking your bike out there. Eight kilometers. It's like, what do you bring a bike just for that eight kilometer road?

But it worked out. It seems like it's like such a nice grade on the way back, though, that it was just kind of fun to ride it even. But yeah. It's a really harrowing bike ride, as you can imagine. He has to focus on every pedal and concentrate on the horizon. And reading about this part, it seems like he had to summon like a pretty unreal amount of determination.

and courage to make it downhill, but he finally does. And he coasts down the hill, and he pretty much crashes on the front porch of this logging camp, main tent. The men rush out to a really horrific scene. His entire body is covered in puncture wounds and big long gashes. It looks like Freddie Kruger had dragged his hand down his back. His legs are full of large holes that have all this meat hanging out of them. And his side had a huge chunk missing, and you could actually

look into his body cavity and get a clear view of his kidney. No way. Yeah, which was a new experience for all these loggers. They had never seen anything like that before. Holy cow. Yeah, that tracks. It'd be weird if they had. There's like a guy that's like, oh, I've seen this.

That's a kidney. That's nothing. They rush to patch him up with their first aid kits. And while they're also calling Rest. rescue services. And they talk about it like it's kind of that scene in Vegas vacation where Chevy Chase is plugging holes in the dam. And every time he plugs one, another one starts spurting. That's kind of what's happening. Yeah. That's what's happening with his puncture wounds. As they cover one, another one would start bleeding more intensely. And they're kind of playing

whack-a-mole with his puncture wounds. Colin calls his wife, but she's at the lake. So he just leaves a message. Or no, he doesn't leave a message because he didn't want to scare her. And then he calls his brother and tells him that if he died, he wanted him to know that he may have killed a grizzly bear with a pocket knife, which is like a very brother thing to do. I think that's probably what we would say too. When the paramedics do arrive, they're able to give Colin blood and they stabilize him and load him onto the helicopter and he sets off for a hospital in Vancouver. And they do think if they weren't able to give him blood in the field, he probably wouldn't have made it to the hospital. Meanwhile, Colin's wife is getting home from her lake trip. It's almost 8 p.m. on Sunday.

She turns the corner and she sees that Colin's truck wasn't in the driveway, but his brother and his mom's cars were both there. So she gets out of her car. They rush outside. They tell her not to panic, but that Colin had been attacked by a grizzly bear and already being operated in the hospital, which is like, do you kind of panic when someone says that to you? Especially if they're rushing out, to me. If someone's like running at me, yelling at me to not panic, I'm like, well, I don't like, kind of panicking. I'm fixing to panic, actually.

Well, and it's not fair to her, too, because, like, if she doesn't panic, they'll probably be like, what's wrong with you? Why aren't you, like, taking this more seriously? Yeah. That's why, yeah, you should be like, panic a little bit, but not like that much, but enough to know that we know that you care. Find that perfect little middle ground. panic. By the time she does get to the hospital in Vancouver, Colin had already undergone over

six hours of surgery. He had over 50 wounds and gashes. The doctors had to use over 200 staples in stitches to patch him up. His femoral artery in his leg had to be fixed. They couldn't stitch it back together, so they had to use a vein transplant from elsewhere in his body to stitch it up. And then the bear had come millimeters from rupturing his kidney and some of his other internal organs. Following the surgeries, he reunited with his family and got the bad news that the bear had done a large amount of nerve damage to his leg. And the doctors told him he would probably never walk normally again and probably would never be able to walk on a trail without some sort of brace. This happened in the summer of 2019 and in the fall of 2020, Colin had already run a full half

marathon. Hell yeah. This guy is sweet. He is. He is. That's amazing. He had also also has tried to summit Mount Dugie Dowler again, but wasn't able to because of weather, I think. He's pretty, pretty freaking tough. Yeah, I'm pretty impressed by him. Yeah, that's amazing. The bear wasn't so lucky. After successfully evading capture for a while, British Columbia Wildlife officials managed capture and euthanize this bear. It was a four or five-year-old male bear that weighed about 350 pounds and was in good condition.

it most likely would not have died from this stab wound, but I do think the knife saved Colin's life. They do think this was a predatory attack, the people that investigated the incident. Oh. Yeah, so you think it's the right decision to get this bear out of there? Yeah, I think the fact that it approached him when he's on the road and, you know, doing, there was plenty of distance for this bear to turn around and run.

The fact that it approached him and then did attack him, that's not typical behavior. It's not atypical, but it's not typical either. So, um, do you know what's crazy is Americans were still, we're game to use millimeters. Yeah. Like we don't really have a smaller, like a universally acknowledged measurement smaller than an inch. So we have to just go to centimeters and millimeters. That's true.

We got to, we got to get on board figure out the imperial a little like in the other direction. Yeah. I go back and forth on that. Because in some ways I like the imperial system, especially for temperature, I think it makes more sense. And I know we're going to have so many comments of people being like, zero degrees, though, that makes so much more sense. But like, I like how fine-grained the imperial system is. But I agree. For like millimeters and centimeters, we don't have an answer for that.

We got to come up with a new word. Yeah. With Celsius, what temperature is it like hot outside? like man it's so hot like 40 is like when it's unbearably hot to most people that's like when you're close to 100 right see that's where it's confusing

to me is like 40 doesn't sound hot a hundred sounds hot yeah but to them 40 sounds hot I don't know grew up with it yeah to them 100 means their water's a boiling yeah it means they're dead

all right so I want to do a quick recap of what Colin could have done better at what went wrong. Obviously he tried to have bear spray. He lost it. That happens. You know, you want to have it somewhere secure. You want to make sure that you were thinking about it, making sure it's there. But that's, you know, stuff like this can happen. But having a deterrent is definitely the number one thing. This encounter would have ended at the bear approaching him on his bike had he had a deterrent. It would have been enough to convince this bear. I'm very confident.

It would have been enough to convince it to leave because you can kind of tell it was a approaching him in a measured way. It wasn't, you know, just full on like, this is food. It was kind of trying to figure it out. And a blast of bear spray to its face would have been enough to be like, okay, this isn't food. This is a threat, a bad threat. No, a threat I want to run away from.

So that's first. Well, sometimes we eat things that are a threat to us, like the puffer fish. Sure. Food people are like, it's worth it. Yeah, maybe it's like, it makes it better. Yeah, I mean, this could be the one in a million bear that just is like, just goes through the spray and still malls him, you know? Another thing that I think,

I think the big crux of this one that is the big question mark is what he should have done with his bike when the bear was right there and it was super close. I tend to think like riding away from this bear may have worked. Had he just like, as it was kind of getting close, had he just jumped on his bike and tried to get by it and ride down the hill, it may have worked. I don't know though.

Again, you're at a point. point where it's kind of like you don't have any good options. So I don't disagree with his plan to throw the bike at the bear, but he didn't have a good option at that point is what I'm trying to say. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, I don't know, almost feel like just try to fly by it on your bike. Yeah. It maybe would have been the right thing to do. I know that could like trigger. That's like definitely hindsight had the bear split decision to attack him, we'd be like, oh, you shouldn't have gone flying past it on your bike. But then it's like, I don't know, maybe that would have worked.

Yeah. And up until that point, aside from not having the turrent, he'd kind of done things right. He had yelled. He had let the bear know he was there. He had tried to be really big and kind of, you know, intimidating when the bear was approaching him. I don't think this was a bear that was just trying to walk this trail and get by him.

In that case, what he would have wanted to do was just kind of move off the road or the trail and let the bear have it and get up into the brush and let it go by, I think this bear was investigating him. So there wasn't a good option because he didn't have a deterrent. And this is why you always need something to give you control. So Brown bears, one of one of the strategies is to slowly back away and not break eyesight. The eyesight thing, don't worry about. Don't worry about the eyesight, but like slowly moving away from. So had he maybe last. his bike and backed away just his body, would that have been something you would recommend, maybe?

Had I been in this particular situation, I think what I would have done, had I yelled and the bear just kept coming, I would have tried to throw something from my backpack, grabbed some food really quick and thrown it to try and distract it. I probably would have taken my bike with me just because it's like a faster mode of transportation, and I would have backed away slowly. Okay. So the three things I always tell people are group up, get your bear spray out and get it ready, and back away slowly. But if you have a bear that is potentially predatory, which we know is incredibly rare, you are going to have to deter that bear.

That's not a bear that, like, backing away is going to work or grouping up might work in that situation, but backing away isn't really going to. So you need, that's why you need a deterrent Is it in case you run to this kind of bear Which doesn't happen much but it does happen Also listeners, there's some hammering I'm in my closet and there's no walls connecting to it So I'm tripping out that someone's like on the ceiling or something I don't know where this hammering's coming from if you heard it

Yeah, that's on my end Yeah, maybe my mom's in your place now Tired of watching me She was always hammering. She's like, Mike just sits there on his computer doing nothing all day. We got to go find someone new to haunt. No, dude, that's who you need to haunt. Like someone who just watches stuff.

Let's move on to our categories, unless you guys have any other questions. Yeah, no, that was a really interesting one. Yeah, I like that story quite a bit. Colin seems just like the type of person that I always admire and I always feel like that that couldn't be me, you know, like way too much, way too intense, but also like really admirable how much he just needs to be out there doing all that stuff. Like the survivor. I think the hindsight stuff's interesting on it where it's like obviously the bears, losing

the bear spray and not going and finding it was the biggest mistake. And as interesting too because it's like he knew that he messed up by not bringing some. And then he was given that lifeline just to lose it again. So it's like, I solved the problem and then I got myself right back into where I was. Yeah. But then, yeah, like, I think he could have maybe flown past the bear. I think he could have maybe like used the bike as more of a barrier than to like throw it at the bear. There's things you could nitpick.

But that being said, for not having bear spray, it's like that bear was acting really strange. too where it's just right kind of brushing up against him not attacking him so it's kind of like you don't want to do too much but you also like can't just like do nothing right and and like we've talked about there are things that are going to work for almost every bear out there but there are still going to be bears that act differently and that's why you need something that works for all of them and that's what a deterrent does for you is it gives you the up hand in you know 99.9% of those encounters and there still could be a bear that deterred doesn't even work but if we pretend that bear's a human for a sec just or like under the same laws as humans he kind of attacked first the bear kind of self-defense yeah in a way i guess that's true like the bear never attacked him until he chucked his bike at it yeah it's a good point okay extreme miscarriage of justice that this bear was put down, I think. That's not exactly what I'm saying, but I do think it's interesting, like, just hypothetically,

what would have played out had you not thrown the bike at the bear? Yeah. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed sponsor jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75-sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

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Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. Okay, let's move on to our categories. I asked you guys first your favorite short king. This can be from real life, from movies, from TV, whatever you want. Yeah, if I'm going to take it real literal, I'll probably say like Joffrey or from Game of Thrones or... Joffre's your favorite?

Oh, short king. I get what you're saying. Napoleon. He wasn't a king. He wasn't a good one. Emperor. He was for a little bit, wasn't he? He was emperor, yeah.

Okay. I wasn't looking for an actual king. Favorite short guy from movies or TV. I didn't find a king, but I did find a prince. His name is Prince. Oh, yeah, Prince was pretty short. He's tiny. He's like 5-2, I think, which isn't tiny, tiny, but he's a little guy.

Sex symbol. And skinny, too. Yeah. Man, love that guy. He transcended being short and not being sexy, you know? I think plenty of people are out there doing that. Yeah. I pick Josh Hutcherson, Hutchison, Hutchison.

Peta from the Hunger Game. he's a short guy He's like 5-5 And I don't know I've always liked him I think whenever he pops up in a movie I kind of get happy that he's there I think he's a fun actor

And I think he's great in those movies So that's who I picked Well Josh Hold on I just had one I liked a lot And then that I'll throw out some names Bruce Lee Jeremy Renner short

I don't like him Barry Sanders Kendrick Lamar's pretty small Tom Holland. Oh, Mugsy Bose. Mugsy Boz. Bogs, yeah. Bogs, yeah.

He was like five feet tall, and he was a starting point guard in the NBA. A little taller than that. It's like five cents, right? He's in space jam, so you know he's got supreme talent if the monstars are trying to steal it. That's true. All right. Next category, if you had a kid that's a 14-year-old mega prodigy, kind of like Dugie Hauser, what would you want him or her to be really good at?

Pitching a baseball left-handed specifically. I think that's the way. It's like a non-contact sport pitchers. I don't know. It just seems like a good lifestyle for your child to have. And hopefully they'll kick back some of that ace pitcher money our way, since we treated them very nicely. And we're very supportive of his athletic endeavors.

Yeah. They couldn't really monetize that at 14, though. They'd have to wait until they're like 18. right to join the MLB. I guess that's true, huh? Shoot, I'm going to have to rethink that. Cooking? Ooh, that's a good answer.

Like just an incredible chef that's just running an unreal restaurant and then they're 14. People would come from all over the world. Yeah, I like that. Curling? Curling? Curling is a good answer.

Interesting. No, I think like the long jump would be thrilling. That would be thrilling. This kid who I love so much Just jumping a 200 feet And I'm just terrified every single jump Not a prodigy but like a superhero Is kind of what you're thinking

Well they jump like 180 feet, don't they? Long jump? Long jump? Oh like on skis No, on like skiing side Oh okay, yeah, okay sure That would be fun Yeah, skiing long jump

I don't think I said that Yeah, like the long jump in the winter Olympics, if he could just like, it'd be heart racing for sure. It'd be kind of. Yeah, it'd be really fun. I picked free diving. Like, I just think it'd be cool if a kid, like a little kid, could just free dive deeper than anyone else in the world. That's kind of an boring answer. I like Mike's answer the best.

I think a chef would be pretty cool. I always think it's cool when really little kids are just amazing at skateboarding, too. And I always think they have good parents to give them such a cool, hobby to get into at a young age because it's cool and then it's going to make you like popular if you're really good at skateboarding, you know. Or if you had a prodigy hacker, it'd be safe from dinosaurs. She can like click boxes that are labeled. Chess prodigies are always fun where it's like a little kid playing like some.

That's true. Grandmaster. Bobby Fisher. I like that. Like a painter would be cool. Anyway. All right. Next one.

What's the most useful present? you ever got from your dad. Mine's boring, but I couldn't think of anything better than my first car. That's what I was going to say too. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really good one. Well, and my first car was your car.

No. And then Cyrus's as well, the convertible Mazda. You had a red car for your first car, didn't you? Hold on. My first car was your car and Cyrus's. And then when Cyrus drove it to give it to me, the engine exploded and it was totaled. And it was like, my parents still paid for it,

but they were nice enough to still get me a car that I actually could do. So it was a red Toyota Selka. Yeah. One thing I really liked about our parents and my dad specifically is that he wanted us to have fun cars for our first car and not necessarily expensive. Like I had a 1980 Camero for my first car, but it cost $900. that had a hole in the floor that water would splash up through. But it was so fun and I loved it so much. And it had a lot of character.

And I really, really appreciated that he didn't just buy me like a neon or something, you know, like something or a, what's a boring car? Rav foy. Yeah, I do. I have a Rav four now and they are boring. Yeah. Mike, what's your answer? Mine, you can, you guys can tell me if this doesn't count. But I truly believe the best thing my dad ever gave me was.

just the emotional support to pursue and do whatever I wanted to pursue and do. Like, obviously not criminal activity, but they were, he and my mom also, but my dad very specifically, he was always really excited and very supportive and wanted me to pursue new experiences and try new and different things. So thanks, dad. You're the best. All right, Jeff, this category is just for you, because I know you're going to have the best answer. I want to hear your Instagram pick from this story.

what part of this story do you want a photo from to post on your Instagram? Yeah. Oh, man. Because, like, a video of it walking right by you would be really cool. Like, it'd be like, you could get a pretty funny picture of the bike in the air, like, going at the bear. That's true. I like that. That'd be a good one.

He wished he had a camera when it was walking by him. So that's kind of what I thought, too. But you're right. A video would be much more effective for that. want a picture of me hanging sideways out of the bear's mouth. That's like a gnarly thing, but it would be kind of a fun thing to be able to show people. It's like, here's the bear and this is me. Yeah.

That'd be the funniest, like, taking a video of yourself, like not living in the moment. Yeah. You're just like on your phone taking a video being like, so, uh, look at this bear. So you're probably wondering how I got here. All right. People are like, he's not even looking at the bear. He's looking at his phone. Of course he's on his phone.

World's out here, buddy. Yeah. All right. I want to do a quick. It came from Quora. Part of me just feels like dying a little bit when I'm a bear biologist. I'm typing, can you kill a bear with a knife into Quora? But here is the answer I got that I liked the most.

You probably could kill the bear. If you could get inside it. without, just a little weird to say, without striking you with a cut or two or bite that would kill you later. Not likely, though. Forget about direct confrontation. Here's a way that it might work. You have baited the area with berries and yams. Make everything smell like berries and yams.

Or make everything smell like female bear, which is easy to do. Climb on top of a deer stand or high up in a tree and wait. your knife ready. If the bear gives you an opportunity to land on its back, then take it. Jump down on its back near the neck and gut its neck. Cut its neck. You have to be quick or you may not get the chance. Now in all caps, in all caps, I wouldn't do it. But if you insist, how does that sound? I got belligerent by the end. Back to lowercase.

You could make an extremely long ladder like spear out of the knife that allows you to spear its neck from high up. Back to all caps. That sound better? That's the end of it. I like that. Yeah. Smart from Came to Quora on this one. Got a couple of really good ideas there.

Yeah. Just whip out your essence of female bear and spray it around. Bears and yams. Do bears like yams? I guess they would. I'm sure they'd like it, but my favorite is just ending in all caps. That sound better. It's just very antagonistic.

I feel like it's a thing, too, where bears, like in cartoons and whatever, like jam. And I think they just confuse yams with jams. Yeah. This sounds like maybe not a first language English speaker, but I also just love, I wouldn't do it. but if you insist, how does that sound? Yeah. With an exclamation point and a question mark. I need to follow that Cora user.

You see what other questions they're answering. This was user Marcus Mitchell, a comic book buff. Grew up reading comics, watching them, etc. All right. I've got your favorite thing of the month. So just to kind of, I want you guys throw out something you've been really enjoying so far in February. I've been really having a good time with those dot. pretzels, specifically the cinnamon ones.

Have you guys tried those? Oh my gosh. They're all good. Every flavor's good. Yeah, there's just like a tall bag of dots. Sorry. Yeah. And for some reason, the cinnamon just never made sense to me in my brain.

And I finally like sprung for them because it was the one flavor I hadn't tried yet. It's like kind of my favorite. They're really, really sweet and sugary, but just a small handful is like heaven. Heaven on the old tongue. So I hate being in like a winter city where there's no winter. So Salt Lake, this winter kind of sucks. Like it's just ugly and not warm. But one nice thing was it has been playing golf.

So like yesterday I went to the golf course. And normally you couldn't ever play this time of year, but you can right now. And I just went on, it's like in the summer and Salt Lake, it's so hard to get tea times. Like, they fill up so fast, and then it's like, I'll have to play with random people, and I don't really want to do that. And it's just, like, a whole annoying process. And so yesterday I just showed up, and I was like, hey, can I play golf?

And they're like, yeah, can you, do you want to go on right now? I was like, sure. And I go on. There's no one in front of me, no one behind me. It's just the entire course to myself. And it was, like, really fun just to have, like, do whatever. whatever you want on a golf course. No, like, yeah.

That's like when you have a movie theater all to yourself. Kind of, yeah. Yeah. I hit a bad drive. Guess what? Just hit another one. Just do another one. No one's watching.

Yeah. Except my mom. I had a friend recommend a show to me called Culinary Class Wars. It's a Korean show. It's kind of like Physical 100, if you've seen Physical 100, but it's for chefs. Oh, I've seen Physical. 100. Yeah, on a lot of these shows, they're kind of like on cooking shows, you're kind of getting these real like mid-tier chefs and stuff, but this is like they have gotten the best chefs in

the entire country of South Korea. And sometimes chefs that are from South Korea, but cooking in other places. And they have them competing against like really up and coming amazing chefs from South Korea. And it's grabbed me like no other cooking show really has. And I think part of it is because they are making food that looks that is disgusting to me because I hate seafood and I like don't want. They'll be like making the most delicious looking like noodle bowl and then they'll be like and my next ingredient is sea cucumber and they pull out this like slimy sea cucumber and chop it up but they make it look really beautiful and it's just giving me a new appreciation for

it's Korean culture and cooking and it's made me want to cook more too which is good for me. So, yeah, culinary class war. Plus, you know me, I love a class war. Yeah, so why is it called a class war? Because they have, like, the white robe chefs that are like the really, really amazing chefs that have, like, established stars and stuff. Yeah. And then they have the black robe chefs that are like, they all own their own restaurants

that have, like, lines out the door and they're amazing chefs, but they haven't gotten quite to that level and they compete against each other. Like they literally put the white robe chefs on like a higher level and they're looking down on them. Like in the first episode. It's a fun show. I haven't finished season one yet, but I'm having a really good time with it. Yeah. Okay.

I got a few listener questions today. We haven't done them for a minute. So I wanted to catch up on a few from our subscribers. This one's from crystalline. Crystalin says, what non-Lord of the Rings character do you think could handle wearing the ring? Ooh. Captain America. Yeah, that's a good pick.

Pure of heart. Yeah. Luffy. Jesus. Straw hat Luffy. George Washington. Jesus is an interesting one. Jesus would have deep.

I mean, if everything we've heard about him is to be believed, I think he'd be a pretty good candidate, right? I wouldn't risk it, though, because if he becomes corrupted, then, like, aren't we all pretty much damned? That's true. Like Gandalf, he didn't want any of that. No. You kind of need like a small, diminutive little, you need someone like Colin, to be honest. Give Colin the ring. Oh, yeah.

Collie. Dobby. Dobby could wear it. No. He's like mischievous. He's stealing stuff and spying on people already. Yeah. How about Dumbo?

Do you think Dumbo would be a good ring bearer? No. I don't remember Dumbo. He can fly. and he's like a nice little elephant, just kind of pure of heart. I think he'd be great. He'd just fly right into the volcano.

That's true. He'd just fly right into that magma too. He doesn't care. No, it was... All right. That's a good question. What about like Woody from Toy Story? No, he's too pad.

Too high-strung. He's... He's a little neurotic. Yeah, if anything, the dog from... I think any dog... Slinky. Yeah. Now, imagine corrupted Woody that you'd be on a war path.

Well, that's what I was thinking. It's like, I'm not that threatened by him. That's true. Just crush him. But think of the Buzz Light Years. They'd be in trouble. That's true. Yeah.

All right. This one's from Jessica. Jessica says, regarding Japan. Mike, what's your favorite anime figurine you bought? Wes, what's your favorite bird you saw? Jeff, as a traveler and an adventurer, what was your favorite thing about Japan that you haven't experienced anywhere else? So, figurine, anime, Figuring, I don't know if I've ever actually bought one of those for myself, but I will say

this is maybe done a road a little too far removed from that to answer this question legitimately, but I bought a bomber jacket with the Final Fantasy 7 insignia on the back of it. It's like a little muggle riding a chocobo, and that's like my favorite purchase I've made in maybe my entire life. I wanted it, but I didn't know the symbol at all, and then it's perfect for Mike. also I kind of bought it Wes yeah do you want to hear how we settled our debts yeah we kind of cut you out of it for just establishing settling our own debts right yeah and I paid a lot more than Mike paid for Japan and then a bit more than Brent to you but we didn't really know exactly how much

instead of like looking through it all I was just like let's pick four numbers and And then we smash for it. So like we did a thousand, eight hundred, seven hundred, and five hundred with Mike. And 700, the second least he would owe me one. Yeah. And then after it won, we kind of figured out that I paid for a lot in Singapore and all these other spots. And it was actually like pretty, like it had a thousand one that would have been about fair. Yeah.

And then with Brent, we figured. he owed me about $300, and I put the lowest option that I owe him $100, and that won. So I paid Brent $100. That's great. Spotted him a hundred more dollars. Yeah, that's so bad. I'll get you back, Jeff. I know you're going to say don't, but I'll find out.

It's fair. It's fair. Anyways, in Japan, one of my favorite things was just finding a random building and just riding the escalators because every single floor would just have, like, pop-up shops and then like restaurants and then just like all there's just so many like cool stores that you have to kind of discover yeah like that was my thing that i like Tokyo without seeing everything my suggestion would be don't go too hard on there's a million Instagram people suggesting what you should do out there but like make sure to just like try to find some hidden

spots yourself too because i get lost that yeah Yeah. My favorite bird I saw, I didn't do much birding in Japan, but I saw an azure-winged magpie that I really liked. So that was my favorite bird. You know, it does ducks a lot, too. Yeah. But the azure-winged magpie is my favorite. Okay.

What were the ducks? There's redheads, I think, but I'm not sure. This one's from Krista. Two-fold question for all three of you. But I'm actually just going to say the first part of it. Sorry, Krista. Would you rather be attacked by a bear while you're wearing a scuba suit? A snow suit or a fancy business suit?

Snow. Business suit? I'll say scuba. Okay. There you go. I feel like the neoprene would hold in a lot of the blood and stuff. Neoprene. Do you have like the B.C.

and the tank and everything else on? I imagine so. It'd be useful to have some of those. Yeah. You could spray air at it. Exactly. I feel like the paramedics are going to go a little faster. to get me helped.

If you're fancy. Yeah. If you look like, it'd be like, wow. He was a top priority. Yeah. Okay. I think I got one more here. This is from Shauna.

Hey, fellas, if you were being mauled to death by an animal, what song do you want to be mauled to? Oh, that's a good one. Yeah. Bing bop, boom, boom, boom, boom, bach. Kendrick. Kendrick. I like that. I mean, another one bites the dust as well.

what my mind went to, but that's kind of cliche. But I'll just say that because I didn't really think about it. Mike, what are you picking? Uh, it's a raining blood by Slayer. That's a good one. Yeah. Wait and bleed by Slipknot. There you go. All right, Malu says, West, can you explain why people are taking frozen iguanas in South Florida? I watch videos of people getting like hundreds of them. Is that legal? Do they eat them? I'm very confused and upset. Uh, I, I, understand why you're upset, but these green iguanas are actually highly invasive in southern Florida. They are doing very well down there, and they're really kind of pushing a lot of the native wildlife out of the same habitat. So people are encouraged to remove iguanas in Florida,

and when it gets too cold, they literally just kind of fall out of the trees. Yeah, it's crazy. And they'll be on lawns and stuff. Yeah. So that's what people are doing, is they're removing them. It is kind of sad. You can eat them, I believe, and I think they actually taste pretty well, or taste pretty good. But, uh, yeah, that's what's happening. Yeah, it's one of those things where it seems like something you should shame someone for. Like, why are you killing all this wildlife? But it's like, they're kind of protecting the native wildlife. And it's, maybe they're being a little disrespectful about it, but ultimately it's kind of a good thing. It's crazy how many fell out, I saw people with like 50 iguanas and stuff.

Yeah, it's pretty wild. There's so many iguanas down there now. So really, they are never going to not have iguanas down there anymore. But okay, well, that is it for the story. Like I mentioned, we have a really fun two-parter coming up soon. We have some fun guests on the horizon. Really excited about the next few months for our podcast. We're going to Antarctica, which is going to be all three of ours last continent, which is exciting.

and yeah, Jeff just did a really fun review of the movie, Primate, on our Patreon and our Apple Gris Club. It definitely went off the rails, but it was really fun episode that I really enjoyed. So check it out. Yeah. No, even if you didn't see the movie, it's a fun episode. And I think I'm going to follow it up with it. Like, my next subscription episode is going to be real chimpanzee stories. too.

Cool. That'd be great. All right. Follow us on YouTube too. How about that? Yeah. You get us see our faces when we do this kind of thing when we record. Face.

Love you guys. Bye. Love you.