Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - Grizzly Bear Attack - The Todd Orr Double Grizzly Bear Attack

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

Wes covers an oft-requested story concerning Todd Orr and the bear who attacked him two times in a single bloody and unfortunate morning. We then do a deep dive into bear safety tactics and talk about just how good of a tool bear spray is. ~~ 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

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and we get really in depth on some discussions about bear safety and specifically bear spray. So we hope you enjoy it. All right, let's go. All right, everyone, welcome back to Tooth and Claw podcast. Hi, Wes. Hey, how's it going? Good.

Guess what? We're all here together. Yeah. We're holding hands right now. Oh, it's going to be hard for me and Jeff. Oh, we're in the fingertips. Just the tips. Sword fighting, I think, is what they call that.

So yeah, we're together. We're here in Utah. It's hot. We're sitting in Jeff's apartment, sweating. We all got our pants off. And what are we, Wes? We're Tooth and Claw podcast. This podcast is all about animal attacks.

But I think a lot of people, when you hear about animal attacks in the news and stuff, it's sensationalized. You're hearing stuff that isn't necessarily true. They're trying to paint animals as bloodthirsty monsters or predatory or. predatory when often they're just reacting to a person. So the whole point of this podcast is to tell those stories because they are really interesting, but to do it in a way that gives the animals justice to explain that often the people are the ones that are at fault in these kind of encounters. And then also to teach people about animals and about conservation and to have a little

fun in the meantime. Are we having fun? Oh, yeah. Well, speaking of fault with people, I want to ask you something about Mike. Okay. that he told me about last week or two weeks ago. He didn't ambushed right now. I can already tell.

So he went to the doctor and like had a few operations, right, Mike? Yeah, minimally invasive operations done. So, but what was more invasive was the entire time the doctor was resting his junk on Mike's elbow. It's a little weird. For like an hour, right, Mike? Yeah, so do you want me to explain? Yeah. Okay.

So this dude has a scout. actively operating inside of my back, you know? And I think he just wanted to brace himself so, like, his scalpel wouldn't slip and slide into places it shouldn't be. So I was like, you know what? If it means a safe operation, I'm willing to let this dude's junk be on my elbow for a little bit. For like an hour. Yeah, for a little too long. But you did consider asking him to move it, right?

I did. What do you do, Wes? I wouldn't say anything, but I would probably be like, I don't want to go back to that doctor. I'd kind of wonder, like, does this guy mean that? The problem was, is they had me face down on this operating table. I'm not. That's speaking of violation of privacy rights. He had me face down on this operating table in a very specific position.

So you couldn't move your arm? My arms had to be basically the way that they were. But when I did the trigonomics of the whole operation, I was like, logically, that's where his junk would be. if you were cutting open a hole in my back right where it is. Made sense. Yeah, and it's like, am I going to talk about this dude's junk to him well? I don't know. Yeah, you don't want to be like, hey, can you adjust your position when you're doing surgery on me?

Especially if he couldn't, and then you both just like have acknowledged that that's where it is. And you just rest it back there. Yeah. He did good work otherwise. Good. I'm glad you're okay. If you're into that kind of thing, you did great work on all fronts. Yeah.

Speaking of junk, me and Jeff saw the most recent Jurassic World movie last night, which was honestly god-awful. I think I hated it the most. There was like 16 friends that went to this. And I think I had the strongest opinions. But I also think I have one of the lower bars for like a dinosaurs eating people movie. But for a movie about terror that dinosaurs could cause around people, there was no terror or no dinosaurs eating people.

It was like an action movie. What? Yeah. So I haven't seen it yet. I mean, some dinosaurs eat people. Yeah, but it was like all cut away and off-screen It was boring. It was a boring movie about dinosaurs running amok. I don't want to go on for too long about it, but my main point My thesis statement about the Jurassic movies. Jurassic Park is possibly my favorite movie, which is kind of embarrassing to admit, but I saw it five times in theaters as a kid. I love it. It like fills me with wonder, but it's a horror movie Jurassic Park is a horror movie. It's about this unstoppable force that you have to get away from. You can't stop them.

You can't team up with them, you know? And it's a horror movie. Like, in the first Jurassic Park, when Timmy makes the spoonfall, it's like, you know, he's dead. Like, these things are going to get him now. And now it's like, in these movies, all you have to do is stick your hand out and they stop. It's just, it's dumb. And it sucks because I actually kind of like Jurassic World. the first one.

But these other ones have just been, it was disappointing. Not quite. Yeah. And it's hard to see the, like, original actors come back and just have to,

like, collect a paycheck. I don't know. My main thing is, if you kind of know your plot sucks, don't make it two and a half hours. Right. You know?

Like, burn through it. Have some dinosaurs, eat some people. And you can, like, make up a stupid plot and I'll still be kind of entertained.

But, man, this one drag. Well, and also, like, The other two Jurassic World movies, I felt like were a setup for this whole idea of, like, dinosaurs are loose in the world. And they hardly even show that.

It just turns into, like, another situation of them being in, like, cages pretty much. And it's dumb. It just doesn't make sense. That's overwhelming. I could go on for an hour about this, but I'm not going to. My thoughts are that if the dude who is responsible for the effects in the first Jurassic Park movie is not the highest paid man in Hollywood, Or woman, what are we doing? Because it's still so good.

Spilberg, too. Well, it could be. So I watched a documentary about that and then read this article about why the effects look better in the first Jurassic Park than they have in any of the other ones. And Lost World. Lost World has great effects, too. And it's because back then it was such a new technology that they put so much time and money into it, like getting it perfect.

And the part where the T-Rex steps out from the fence in the first month, movie in the rain is the most convincing dinosaur CG I've ever seen in my life. Still, yeah. Like it looks real. And they haven't been able to replicate that because they're not willing to put the time and the money into it. I'd say one last point with the movie,

the newest Jurassic World. Maybe more than any movie I can remember right now, it just expected the audience to go along with what they were doing. Like, what was happening didn't make any sense, but it's like, you're going to believe. believe that this uh dolophosaurus just ended up in the train somehow you're going to believe that like this thing just broke through some glass that wasn't there two seconds ago you know and it's like they were asking the audience to just go along with a lot of right you you're going to believe that

this what was the one that was bigger than the teore like a gigantosaurus gigantosaurus just has gasoline in its mouth because the second fire goes in there, it like exploded. It breathed fire. Yeah, I got to go see this. He just throws a tiny little rag in there. Spoiler. It's on fire.

Ian Malcolm sticks a locust with like a spear somehow, lights it on fire, and then throws it at this dinosaur. It hits it in the mouth, which just then erupts in fire. Like it's a fire bathing dragon. That's a billion dollar movie. All right. Anyway, I could go on for a long time about this. I did last night, but I'm not going to do that for the sake of our.

Our listeners, but we are going to talk about an attack today, an animal attack. We're not just going to talk about Jurassic Park and Mike's uncomfortable doctor experience. So we've had a lot of stories recommended to us, and this one is one that's popped up a few times. It's the Todd Orr double grizzly attack in 2016. Double? Yeah, and I'll explain why we say that. But he was attacked in 2016 by Grizzlies. It's another grizzly attack.

I think our last one was a Patreon or a subscriber exclusive episode. So I think our last main feed grizzly episodes were our night of the grizzly series. So I work with grizzlies. They're constantly on my mind. Lately, I've been every night having dreams about grizzly bears. So I just wanted to do another grizzly story. What type of dreams? Usually not nightmares, but usually dreams where I'm either chasing or being chased by grizzly bears.

Does it ever, like, switch up and like, you're on like a, game show with a grizzly bear or something? I don't think so. You're on a date with one? No, they're usually like stuff that I would actually do for work. Boring. Yeah, I know, it is kind of boring. No, like Paddington type of bear?

No, sandwiches under caps. Marmalade sandwiches? I wish I watched Paddington last night instead of this movie. All right, we're going to talk about this story. I think the most interesting part about the story is kind of the backlash to it. So we're going to talk about that a lot. And then we're also going to do a big bear safety recap because it's June. I think a lot of people are starting to get back out there and camp and hike.

We've had a lot of people tell us they want to go to Glacier and Yellowstone now because we talk about those places a lot. So I do want to do just a recap on Bear Safety 101. Can I push back on that? Yeah. Yeah. I just don't think you should tell people bear safety. Okay. I think it's bad for the podcast.

Because then people aren't going to get attacked. We're limiting future. stories that we can talk about. Yeah. Well, maybe some of these people that want to go to Yellowstone and Glacier will get attacked. But yeah, you're right. No, I'm going to teach bear safety still. You don't want people to get attacked? No, I don't, especially not our listeners. So you guys ready for the story? No? No? Yes. Yes. Yes. So Todd Orr, I'm going to set this up for you a little bit. He's a pretty Montanaan, Montana.

So he worked seasonally for the Forest Service. He worked in timber for a while. Between that, his love for like hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, dirt biking, hiking. Because of all that, he spends a lot of time in the woods. Does he ever shut up about Montana?

Because in my experience, people from Montana, that's like the signature. I don't know. I don't know. I think that's more likely a thing that people from Montana do when they move somewhere else. and he still lives in Montana. You can't do it to other Montanaans. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. So he is a lot more so than the average Montana and spending time in the woods and much more so than the average person. He's out in the woods a lot. Less than the average bear, though. Less than the average bear. Yeah. And I want to preface that because he actually does a lot of stuff right in this episode.

And I want to talk about that. And that's actually a viewpoint of mind that. because I used to think he did a lot wrong, and the more I looked into this and researched it, I think that was just bad reporting because he actually did a lot right. Okay, so he's from Ennis, Montana. Ennis is located in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. It's really good grizzly habitat. He would spend a lot of time up in the Madison Valley.

The Madison Valley leads from Western Yellowstone National Park all the way up to Ennis and a little bit further. And it was one of his favorite places to hike and hunt. A fun fact about Ennis, the science. like welcome to Ennis, people always put a P in front of it. It's pretty funny. Oh, that is hilarious. Yeah, I'd like to see that. Butte, Montana also sometimes gets some funny signs.

Yeah, that's hilarious regardless. So he really likes to hunt in the Madison Valley, and most hunters in Montana and throughout the country use high-power rifles to hunt elk. So if you're hunting an elk, you know, a big like 30-30, a 30-out-6, something like that, A really high caliber rifle is what you need to take an elk down. Or actually uses a pistol. He hunts with like a scoped pistol. An elk?

Yeah. And he had brought down. Scoped pistol? Yeah. How does that work? I'm not totally sure, but he's killed 28 bowl elk with his pistol. So he's really good with a pistol. I recently trained on a 44 magnum.

That's kind of our safety pistol that we use when we're doing really potentially dangerous bear work. like if I'm investigating a carcass that might have a bear on it or trapping, I'll have one of those on my side just in case. And it's a really high caliber weapon. It kicks really hard. The recoil's really hard on them. And so they're hard to shoot.

Like we had to qualify at 15 yards and I just squeaked by. So for him like hunting bull elk where he's probably taking 100 yard or more shots with this thing, he's got to be really good at it. Wow. And that's important to the story. We really need to say that. that like this isn't someone who is a casual firearms user. He is good with his firearm.

He's killed a lot of elk with it. So he's really proficient. I'm not totally sure what the caliber of his pistol was, but from looking at the photos, I'm pretty sure it was a 44 magnum, the same one that I was working with. So on the 1st of October, 2016, Todd has a really rare weekend off.

He's a busy dude, doesn't get too much time off, but he has the whole weekend off, and he decides he's going to go look for elk, in the Madison Valley. Hunting season hasn't started yet. It's just bow season, but it's fast approaching, and he wants to get out and scout and get a good idea of where the elk have been hanging out, so then in a couple weeks he can go hunt them. So he leaves really early in the morning, quite a bit before first light, and he starts his hike in the dark, not far from this mountain called Sphinx Mountain. It's a really beautiful and imposing mountain in the Madison Valley.

I remember when I was driving the Madison Valley, I like stopped to take photos of this mountain. It's really beautiful. So he's no stranger to. a bear country. He grew up in Montana. He's lived in the Yellowstone ecosystem for a long time. And he says that he would typically, in one of his interviews, he said he would generally see about a dozen bears every year on his adventures in the woods. Most of those were black bears. Yeah, but I'm in a national park. So it is different. Like, as far as bears outside of the park, a dozen's a decent amount. Most of them black bears and every once in a while at Grizzly. And when he would see these bears, they would always either run away or they wouldn't notice them

just kind of keep doing their thing and he would go on his way. So he'd never had like a really dangerous encounter with the bear. Even though he had never had a life-threatening encounter with the bear, he was always really prepared for the worst. So that morning in the fall of 2016, he sat out on the trail with two cans of bear spray plus his pistol. So he was ready for whatever was going to come his way. Did his bear spray have a scope?

It did not. His bear spray is not scope. Maybe that's where the problem is. Yeah, we'll talk about that. No, we won't actually, but kind of. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere in the crowd. But too often, life gets busy.

Or the price holds you back. Priceline is here to help you make it happy. With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip. Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com. actual prices may vary limited time offer all right so he's walking the trail in the early morning light

and as he's going he's calling out this is what he said in his interviews at least and that's the tricky thing about all of these stories especially ones that only happen to one person who knows how much of this they did but i do tend to believe him because he had a lot of experience in the woods and he did seem very prepared for a bear encounter so as he was going every he said 20 to 30 seconds calling out hey bear, which is kind of the thing that most people say when they're worried about bears. You're just calling out, hey, bear, hey bear. I do that a lot in the park.

If I'm walking around corners or doing whatever, I just make a lot of noise to make sure any bear knows that I'm coming. Now, can that have like a bad effect where like the bear thinks you're being friendly? Like, hey, bear. No, I don't think so. You know, maybe you should be like, get out of here, bear. You could do that. You can yell whatever you want, but it does.

F off, bear. Yeah, it's not going to have a bad. That effect if you're being nice. If you're saying Hay Bear, it might be like, oh, hey, what's up? Yeah, that's what you want. Or if it's it to be like, what's up? What's this? Okay.

Yeah. If it's a tiger, though, then you got to take that into account. So I would, like, rotate through all the different animals. I don't think he was worried about running into tigers. Yeah. Better to be safe, though, is my opinion. You know what? It doesn't really matter what you yell.

That's a good point. You don't want to make it mad. It's not a good one. So he's yelling this out. And the point of all. this is just to warn any bear in the trail that he's coming and to avoid a surprise encounter. So again, yell whatever you want. It's just to let the bear know that something is coming and to give it that time to react before it's forced to react. So you don't surprise it like

with a head-on encounter? Because most bear attacks, grizzly bear attacks at least, are the result of a surprise encounter. See our daddy daughter episode. Right. The Jenna and Johan Otter episode where they go around the corner and surprise the bear. I think it was... We could pull those and name that. Yeah. Wow. You know, I do a lot of research.

Encyclopedia brown of bear attacks. Okay. He knew that surprising a bear is one of the worst case scenarios when it comes to a grizzly encounter. And he knew that the best way to avoid that was to make plenty of noise. So he's making pretty good time on this trail. He's wanting to get up to this ridge line to glass for elk to get his binoes out and look for elk.

And he wanted to be up there around sunup. Binos for the layman? Binoculars. And glass is like, sorry. It's just binoculars. It's looking through your binoculars. No, that's cool. I don't ever use binoculars.

I probably won't be able to use that. There's a lot of people say, if I can, I will. People see binos, they say bins. Bynx. There's a lot of different abbreviations. Binoch. Okay. I like that.

So it's pretty early. So he's glassing. He's glassing. Well, no, he's not there yet. He wanted to get up there. Okay. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the dangers of hiking early and being alone. So if you're alone, you're inherently not making as much

sound, you're not putting off as much scent, you're not giving the bear or whatever animal that you might encounter as many cues to recognize that you're there. You're just, you're going to be quieter and less smelly. And so it is more dangerous to hike alone than it is to hike in a group. You're also not as intimidating if you do see a bear or a moose or something. They're much more likely to charge and engage with one person than they are a group of people. So it's, it is more dangerous to be on your own. And then as far as bears are concerned, and a lot of wildlife, they're very active in the morning. The morning is just in general, a really active time for wildlife, especially right before sunup. Bears are what, Jeff? Perpuscular. Corpuscular, which means morning and evening are their

most active times. So if you are worried about bears, you're going to want to avoid those times on trails. Todd, on the other hand, was looking for animals. He wanted to be up there to see elk, and he knew that the early morning was going to be his best time to see them. So that's why he went up at that time. So he had gone about three miles. The sun was just starting to come up, and he steps into this small clearing. And as he steps in the clearing, he looks out, and at the other edge of the clearing, just below a small ridge was a female grizzly with cups. And Todd and the bear may make eye contact, and they notice each other at the exact same time. How many bus length distance away is it?

He said it was about 80 yards. So how long is a bus? Probably like 20 yards. 15 yards? Yeah, like 10 or 15. Yeah, so probably. I would say 10 yards probably. So eight bus lengths.

I'd say like six. I don't think is a bus longer. Like 10 yards is like 30 feet. Is a bus longer than 30 feet? It might be. Okay. And how you're supposed to follow buses at a pretty good distance. So he's probably a little too close to this bear.

What? 80 yards is close. You want, if you're, if you're hiking around, you don't want 80 yards to be the distance that the bear first notices you. Too close. You want it to be hundreds of yards away. Yeah. Like you want it to be on the other side of like the mountain and it sees you or whatever.

80 yards is close. How quick could a bear cover that distance? They run 35 miles per hour. So they could, 80 yards is about 240 feet. So it could cover that in like a couple seconds. Okay. Yeah, probably three seconds, three or four seconds, they could be there. Are they pretty quick to accelerate?

They are. They're very explosive, explosively fast. And that's the craziest thing about them. It's not that it like takes them some time to build up to it. They're at that 35 miles per hour quickly. And that is like a real thing, like those seconds you said, I think, because like in football, the combine, they run the 50-yard dash. 40-yard dash in like four seconds.

Right. And the bear's going to be faster than then. Twice as fast as them. Yeah. Cool. So he sees this bear. They make eye contact. She has cubs.

And he yells out hey bear to warn her of his presence. She immediately turns and runs with her cub up the ridge. And that's the same kind of behavior he had always seen that he had come to expect from bears. The bear sees him. It runs off. I want you guys to remind me to come back to him yelling out, hey bear at this point. I want to talk about that a little bit later. But I don't want to interrupt this story right now.

So she runs off. and he's like, okay, you know, he's relieved. This bear is left. Surprising a mother grizzly with two cubs, he knew it was a really dicey situation, and it looked like he had avoided catastrophe. This bear was gone. He watches them run away,

and they disappear through the timber and over this little ridge. So they had run west, and Todd waited about a minute before he decided to head east. So he obviously didn't want to go on the same path as these bears, and he wanted to go away from their direction.

So he takes about 10 or 15 steps in that direction, when suddenly he hears something behind him, and he turns to see this large female grizzly only 40 yards away charging at 30 miles per hour. Oh, wow. So she had stashed her cubs in a safe spot, and she was going to deal with Todd. A quick thing, Mike, do you have a question?

No, I was just going to say that sounds weird to me because a mama bear's priority would be just to... It's not weird, though. Okay. They do this. Like, what they'll do is they get... Her priority is what she did. She ran her cubs up over the ridge,

stashed them there and then she's like, I'm going to go deal with this threat. Wow. Without my cubs in tow. So like that's, she's being a good mom. She's getting her cubs out of danger and then she's removing that danger. A little bit about fall in Montana for grizzly bears.

We've gone over a lot of grizzly bear biology on the podcast. I want to talk about seasonality a little bit. They are hitting different food sources throughout the season. And the way that they use those different food sources is really important. And in the fall, a really likely food source for grizzly bears in Montana, especially outside of the national parks, are gut piles. So it's bow hunting season. He's in a place that has a lot of elk.

Likely, there's been some bow hunters out there that have killed elk. And when they kill an elk, they'll field dress it. And they cut out all the guts and a lot of the organs and stuff that the bears really like. And they just leave it in a pile out in the wilderness. And so there's a lot of bears in this part of Montana that in the forest, that in the fall, they just go from gut pile to gut pile, and it's a really good source of food for them. But because it's such a good source of food for them,

they can get really territorial about it. Is that something that you would encourage? I would encourage hunters to be as good as possible about reducing the amount of scent and the amount of waste that they leave on the landscape. But it's not necessarily a bad thing. This is just a thing that happens. It's actually kind of nice for the bears.

It's a way to keep some of that energy in the ecosystem. I'm glad like all the elk gets used then. Yeah, it's not a bad thing, but it can put other people in danger. So hunters just kind of have to realize that in grizzly habitat. You need to know that that's a possibility. So there's a chance that that's what this bear was on. She could have been on an elk gut pile,

and it does tend to make them a little bit more territorial when they're on any kind of meat or high protein food source because it is such a big payoff for them that they want to defend it from other animals. She also could have been pretty jumpy because she's working. worried about bears that are hitting those gut piles and she's trying to avoid them as much as possible. They're also in hyperphasia. And hyperphasia is when bears are trying to pack on as much weight as possible right before they den for the winter. Especially mothers with cubs that have to take care of those cubs still. They're really trying to pack on weight and they're pretty

desperate to do it. And so it can be a time when bears are a bit grumpier. When you bump into a bear might be a bit more aggressive. So all of those factors are kind of coming into play in this story. They're kind of hungry. Yeah, they kind of are. It's an interesting time. It's like if you go suddenly to where you have to eat four times the amount of calories that you typically do and your body's telling you you have to eat that much, you do get a little desperate. And that's what happens with these bears. All of this comes into play. We're going to talk more about what could be the factors in this attack. but those are some things to consider. Do humans experience hyperphasia?

Because sometimes I kind of feel like four times the allotted daily amount of calories. In the fall, is it seasonal? Yeah. I don't think so. Well, no, it's more like always. I don't know. Hey, Wes. Just a reminder, he said, hey, bear.

He did say, hey, bear. We're not ready to talk about that. You want to keep doing that. Okay. So back to our story. We're not going to do too much biology because we're going to talk more about bear spray and safety. But Todd realizes in a moment of whole, that this isn't going to be like his other bear encounters.

He knows that this is different. So while working for the Forest Service, Todd hadn't been able to carry his pistol with him. He's obviously on his own right now. He has his pistol. But during these decades of working for the Forest Service, he had just carried bear spray every day. And he had it on a chest holster,

and he had just thought about it all the time, about how he would go to his bear spray if a bear showed up. And so having that spray in the same location every day for years became a habit, and as this bear charged instinctually, he reached for his bear spray chest harness and pulled out his can of bear spray, which is really good. This again is something he did right. He knew exactly where his bear spray was. He had built that habit of knowing where it was, and without even having to think about it, he reached for it. Which is what he needed since this bear's like hauling. Close. Yeah. At this point, when he gets his bear spray, the bear's only 30 to 40 feet away, so about 10 to 15 yards or meters.

And he removes the safety clip from the bear spray, and he sprays a couple seconds directly in her face. She's only 10 to 20 feet away by the time he gets the spray out. So she runs right through this cloud of spray, and he knows he's about to get attacked. So the momentum of this bear leads her right into him. She hits him, she attacks him, and he drops his can of bear spray.

He falls to the ground, and the bear's on top of him. She bites him five or six times, and then immediately leaves. So as she leaves, he hears this bear like woofing and snorting and coughing, and he's like, okay, the spray got her, you know. She'd run through this cloud of spray, and likely what happened was just the momentum that she had. She couldn't just like stop on a dime. So she hit him and still bid him a few times, but then that spray kicked in and she was like,

okay, I'm out of here. This had only lasted about 10 seconds. It left him with some smaller bite wounds on his right arm and then a fairly serious bite on his right shoulder. So he stands up and he knows like, oh, I'm pretty lucky here. I just got attacked by a grizzly bear. He sounded like he's pretty stoked at this point. Like he's got a story.

He got out of this pretty much unscathed. Got a lot of adrenaline. Yeah, he's got adrenaline. And he knew that he was fine. He's going to be able to walk out. He's going to be able to get treatment for these puncture wounds. The bear's nowhere to be seen. But he had last seen her running in the direction of where she had stashed her cups.

So he decides he's going to walk the trail out. It's not the same direction the bear had gone. And he's feeling pretty good about it. So he's understandably pretty shaken. and as he's hiking out, he's kind of near a creek, and that obscures some of the noise, but he's really keyed in on all these noises listening for any kind of noise.

And he'd made it about a half mile down the trail when he hears exactly what he had been dreading. He hears the sound of snapping twigs and rustling brush behind him. He looks over his shoulder, and he sees the bears about 15 feet behind him and charging again. So he has no time to grab his bear spray or his gun.

The bear immediately knocks him to the ground on his face, and she begins mauling him really violently this time. The enraged mother bear bites into his left arm, immediately crunches his ulna bone, snapping his tendons, and tearing through the muscle surrounding that bone. The pain was really immediate, and so when she bit his bone and snapped it,

he pulled his arm back and cried out, and that caused the bear. It triggered her be even more furious and more violent, and she stood on top of him, jumped on his back, and then was biting him and slamming him into the ground while she was doing this. Wow.

So like a really vicious neutralizing attack. This isn't an attack where it's necessarily trying to kill prey. It's an attack where it's just trying to break the crap out of him. And she's just slamming him into the ground. In just this brief moment, she bites him 25 times on his back, his side, his right arm. And during this really frenzied attack, one of her claws catches him above his ear and rips a five-inch gash in his face and just fills his eyes with blood. which I thought about that.

Like if you're being attacked by Grizzly and all of a sudden you just have blood in your eyes and you can't see anything, you're probably like, oh, like she just ripped my scalp off or you don't know what's happening necessarily. Yeah. But you know it's bad because you can't see anything

because your own blood is obscuring your vision. Yeah, that's never, that's... It's not a good sign. Like you like to say your check engine lights on. Is it on at this point? No. Not yet. It's not.

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Cayman Jack, America's number one margarita. Camin Jack is a premium malt beverage with flavors. Please drink responsibly. Camin Jack beverage company, Chicago, Illinois. So he felt like any movement that he made, the bear reacted to it, and it made her even more aggressive. That's when she broke his arm and like snapped all those tendons and stuff. So he decides to remain completely still and quiet and just endure whatever punishment she was going to dish out. That's where like the play dead advice kind of is true. Right? Once you're being

attacked. Yep. So we'll definitely get into that more. But again, he does the right thing here. He realizes that at this point, he doesn't have his deterrence anymore. He doesn't know what's happened to his gun. It's like gone. His bear spray is gone. He just has to endure the attack and he has to remain as neutral as a threat as possible. That's what this bear is trying to do. Do you think Coyote Peterson could stay still after this? Oh, man. Can you imagine his reaction?

After a bear bite? If you're one of our subscribers, Jeff just did an episode about some YouTube. He's pretty dramatic about his stings. Yeah. Anyway. So, and then what's his name would go out and get bit by a bear and be like, that's not that bad. Jack. Jack.

All right. So he decides to remain completely still, completely quiet. He's just going to go with whatever the bear is doing, which at this point when a bear is actually mauling you and you think it's just a bear that's trying to neutralize a threat, is the right move. It's not the right move if it's a bear that's trying to eat you. It is the right move if it's just one that you've pissed off.

Because she had cubs, because he surprised her, that's likely the situation here. So he's doing the right thing. So the differentiator there would be, if this bear was trying to eat him, it would be more methodically kind of slowly like ripping chunks and eating them. This is violent.

Like this bear is trying just to like beat him up. If the bear was just sitting on him and occasionally like ripping off chunks and eating them, then it's trying to eat you. At that point, you don't want to play dead anymore. At that point you need to fight back. You've pretty much said he's done everything right to this point. I have a question about that though.

Like he had already been attacked by a. bear. So shouldn't he have had like his bear spray or like pistol out? He had the bear spray in his hand. The second attack he did? The second attack. Did he spray? I think I forgot to say that. No, because by the time he noticed her, she was like 10 feet behind it. It was like too quick after he noticed. He didn't have time to even turn around. So the gun or bear spray went to matter. It was pointless at that point. Gotcha. And he thought he had gone the different direction from the bear. So he wasn't expecting it to be that quick of a thing again. We are going to talk about that as well. But once you're being mauled by a bear, your chances of using it a turn are pretty low.

There are people that have done it, but likely, like, I just saw the video of this, of the sub-adult bear that I was working with getting killed by one of the other bears. This was like a 150-pound grizzly bear. Yeah. This bear was just throwing around like it was a toy. Yeah. And I just watching that, I was like, if they can do that to another bear, what they can do to us is unreal. Like, I don't understand how anyone survives these things.

It's probably like getting hit by a truck, which is like getting hit by a great white shark. Yeah, exactly. Which is like getting hit by a third of a bus. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, that's good. He's getting just hit and hit and hit by this bear bit over and over and over again.

And he decides to remain quiet. And at this point, he actually thinks he's going to die. The bear had just come back for a second round. He thought, okay, I got, I escaped the first one. fine, but this time she's going to kill me. It bites into his side and thankfully doesn't tear away. It just kind of releases its teeth and then it releases him. And in his peripheral vision, he could see her huge head right next to his. He could feel her claws digging into his lower back. But he stayed in the fetal position. She was pushing her full weight into his body. He's curled up in a

ball in the fetal position with his knees on the ground and he could feel his knees pushing into the ground. So he's like turtle shelled? Yeah, which is I think the best position. for a bear attack, to have your legs tucked under you and your arms over your neck, and that's what he's doing. After about 30 more seconds of this of her just pushing down on him, she finally takes her weight off of Todd and then retreats. Todd lays in the dirt. He looks around for the bear. She's gone, but he's wondering if she's simply checking on her cubs and then going to come back and hit him again. So he is really doubting that he's going to survive a third round with this bear, and he reaches up and he wipes his blood out of his eyes,

and he's looking for the bear, and he's looking for his deterrence. So he's looking for either bear spray or the pistol. He can't see the bears, but he does see the pistol about 10 feet away lying in the dirt. During the second attack, it had been ripped out of its holster. The holster and the gun had been thrown about 10 feet. I bet you the bear did that on purpose? Good it. That's attack 101.

Get rid of the bear spray, get rid of the gun. Do you think there's bears out there doing a podcast, and they're like, So when you meet a human, first thing you do is get rid of their gun. You won't be at least 15 feet away before you charge if he's holding bear spray in his hand. Stash your cubs. Okay, so he sees his pistol. He immediately springs for it.

He brings the hammer back. He whips around looking for the bear, thinking that this movement might have triggered her again, still sees nothing. So he gets up to his feet. He picks up his pack and his hat, and he knows that he needs to get some distance between him. him and the bears. His arm is pretty much useless. His left arm's been, the bone's been shattered,

so he kind of tucks it in. He puts his pistol on his holster, grabs his bear spray and he starts walking out, bear spray in hand. He'd gone about a quarter mile when he stops to look at his injuries. And he's bleeding a lot, but not enough to indicate that he had ruptured like an artery or a major bloodway, but he is bleeding through his shirt. His tendons are sticking out of a hole in his left arm. And he can hardly even move that arm at all. The blood's so, He was soaking through his shirt and the blood on his head was drying out. And all in all, he's feeling pretty lucky. He realizes like, okay, I got to attack twice by this bear and I'm still able to walk out to my truck.

Yeah, I guess. It is. I mean, he got really lucky. Silver lining, right? It didn't go for his head. And I think a big part of that is because he was protecting him. Why was his head bleeding? It got like one claw caught above his ear and like dragged across his head right there.

Pretty good slash. But the claws aren't necessarily what you're worried about in a bear. attack. It's much more the teeth. If it's biting your skull and biting your head, that's when you're in trouble. That's the old famous check engine lights. All right. So it takes him about 45 minutes to get back to the trailhead. And when he gets there, his truck is still the only vehicle in the parking lot. But he knows it's a popular trail for hunters, bow seasons in full swing. And he doesn't want anyone else to run into this bear. So he decides to write a note and put it up on the board of the trailhead just to warn everyone. So his left arm's useless and his right arm's

starting to really cramp up. And he can't write a note. So he finally gives up on this. I mean, I give him credit just for thinking of hiding a note in that situation. This dude's pretty cool, actually. That's awesome. All you need to do is write bare and do like a bloody handprint. That's true.

That to me is much worse than like a note that was like at 8 p.m. I was attacked by a visitor. So he can't do this note. He decides to give up and call fishing game and just let them know what would happen or what had happened and just let them come up and close the trail. So him and his friends love to tell stories to each other about their exploits in the wilderness. So he decides that he's going to take some photos and take a little video selfie of what had happened because he knew that his story was probably going to take the cake.

Unbeatable. Yeah. That week? Maybe it's like forever. Probably forever. He takes a little selfie video that he like describes his wounds, he shows the blood on his face and talks about what had happened. and it later goes viral.

It sucks in bear country. I just had a crisly with two cubs come at me from about 80 yards. And I stowed out of her with bear spray. And then I went to, on my face and protected the back of my neck. She got my head good. I don't know what's under my hat. My ear, my arm, pieces of stuff hanging out. I don't know what's going on in there.

And then my shoulder, shrift up. I think my arm's broke. legs are good internal organs are good eyes are good i just walked out three miles and i go to the hospital so be safe out there very spray doesn't always work but it's better than nothing so i'd sent that video to you guys jeff do you want to explain it really quickly uh yeah so apparently he was attacked by a grizzly bear yeah you've been listening no so he has like blood all over his head And they, like, shows his arm, and, like, you could see what Wes was just describing. Like, it wasn't, like, a huge cut, but it was, like, a really deep gash where you could kind of, like, see the tendons in there.

Or, yeah, a really deep puncture. That's a better way to say it. And then, like, he shows you his shoulder, and you can't really see the wound, but you just see him, like, bleeding through his shoulder almost, like, in the movies if, like, Vin Diesel got shot in the shoulder. That's how it looks, you know? Yeah. And then he's got his hat on. All right. So, Mike, what would you say about his, like, general demeanor?

His demeanor, if I wasn't seeing footage, I would not have expected really anything had happened to him. Right. It's amazing. He's kind of. Impressively calm. Yeah. Like, he's just kind of like, so, I just got attacked by Grizzly Bear. Here's what happened.

Here's my face. Pretty crazy. You know, he's like, oh, you got to watch. Watch out for bears. When it pans down to his arm, I was, I just couldn't believe. It looked like, like, a makeup artist on a set of a horror film had done that. It seems like he's like an actor, like in the makeup. And like, he's like, oh, I'm filming a bear scene.

I just got my bear scene. Like, that's his demeanor. And I do think that's a big part of the reason this story was so reported and made so my music because he made this video where he's covered in blood. and it's just kind of like, well, I got attacked by there. If you get attacked by an animal, try to make a video after. Exactly. So he starts driving.

He makes it a few miles down the road, and he spots a rancher who's checking his mailbox on the side of the road. And he couldn't, Todd at this point with his arms, couldn't manage to roll down his window. But the rancher sees him, looks through the window, sees that he's covered in blood, and opens up his truck door to ask what happened. And Todd explains he's been mauled by a bear. He asked the rancher if he could call the hospital. and let him know that he's on his way.

And the rancher's like, yeah, sure, I'd be happy to give you a ride. Good man. And Todd's like, I've already bled all over my truck. I don't want to bleed all over your car. It's only 10 minutes away. I'll be fine. Oh, Todd. Like, just keeps going.

The Samaritan calls the hospital for him. Todd continues down the road. On the way to the hospital, he calls his girlfriend. This was also really funny to me. They chat for like a minute about her morning plans. Before he tells you. She's going to meet up with some friends and do some shopping. And they're just kind of chatting and having a nice little conversation.

And then when she's done telling about her morning plans, she's like, oh, why are you calling me? Aren't you supposed to be on the top of the mountain? And he says, well, I don't want to worry you, but I had a little run in with a grizzly bear. I have a broken arm and some puncture wounds and a gashed on my head. And I'm headed to the hospital. And he's like, if you're not too busy, could you bring me a change of clothes and a toothbrush? And she's like, I just told you what I'm doing all day. I'm going out with my friends.

Like, I'm obviously busy. He's like, okay, no problem, no prob. So I'm really impressed by his how calm-headed he is about all this. It's almost weird how calm he was about all of it. He gets to the hospital. X-rays confirmed that he had a broken arm on his left arm. They get to stitching up his wounds. And so again, like listening to the.

story and seeing the video, you're like, okay, he got beat up a bit, but it wasn't that bad. He had seven to eight hours of two doctors. They spent that long just stitching him up. Probably resting their junk on him. So he had a total of 26 inches of wounds that needed to be stitched up. So he got pretty torn up. Wow. That's a lot.

But a crazy thing is, by 4.30 that same afternoon, he was released from the hospital. He had to make an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon to have his honor. looked at the next day. And a weird thing for me is those first doctors that worked on them, they just, like, stuffed those tendons back in the hole and then stitched over them. I don't, is that how it works? Yeah, because they weren't, like, orthopedic surgeons, and they knew the orthopedic surgeon would have to reattach those.

Oh, okay. So they were like, we're just going to stop the bleeding. Put these in there and, like, make them safe by stitching it up, but they're going to have to deal with that later. Wow. So over the next. I guess that kind of makes sense, but it is weird. Yeah.

Over the next while, the search. Surgeons got to working on his arm to repair the broken arm to stitch his tendons back together, or reattach him, however, and give him full use of his arm. So through intense rehab, he's able to get his arm back in shape. He was even back out hunting that same fall. What? He no longer works for the Forest Service, but now he has a knife-making company called Skyblade knives.

Oh, cool. And I wanted just to include that because I like Todd. After watching all these interviews with him, reading about him, he was really, level-headed. He had done pretty much everything right. And he just, like, seemed cool. He seemed like a cool guy. The fact that he was so calm about all this, it was really impressive to me. And it was kind of neat that he recorded a selfie. It's amazing. What was the knife company? Skyblade knives. Skyblade knives. Yeah. I use Skyblade knives every day. X-Maw. As a lot. As a lot. As a. As a. As a. As a. As a.

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And visit Ebglis.com or call 1800 LilyRX or 100545-979. All right, so that's the story. I did want to just briefly bring up some of the reasons for the attack. So what did I want you to remind me of? The hay bear. He recorded his video after that. The hay bear thing. So one thing that kind of struck me in this whole thing, and I don't know if I would have

done this differently, but it might have been a contributing factor to this bear deciding to charge him, was that he got into this clearing, and he said that he knew the bear recognized he was there as soon as he recognized she was there. And he still decided to call out hay bear. And I'm not sure if that was the right move or not. So I'm just going to preface this with that. That could have been the right move. It could have let the bear know that, you know, even more so that he was there. But sometimes in these surprise encounters, if you know the bears already noticed you and then you make a loud noise, it might lead that bear to think that you are a threat. It seems like the hay bear thing's more just to like let the bear know you're there.

You're coming. So if it sees you, there's not really a point to it. Exactly. So I think more at that point, if you see a bear, rather than yell out, you want to start just kind of talk to the bear. And like, that's for your own kind of mental well-being and to let the bear know that you're not a threat. So if you start screaming at it at that point, it might decide that you're a threat. So in Lost World, or I mean in Jurassic World, Yeah.

All they had to do was like stick their hand out. It's kind of like the force or like 11 in stranger things. Yeah. That doesn't work with this. I don't know. I do know. It was pretty convincing in that movie. Okay.

Yep. Yeah. You can't just stick your hand out and tell them to stop. The other thing that we already mentioned is hiking alone early morning. You are just putting yourself at risk. I'm not saying you can't do it, but it is a much riskier way to hike. I do think this was a surprise encounter. It definitely wasn't a predatory attack.

It was a female with cubs. She was likely in hyperphasia, and there could have been a gut pile nearby. She was in hyperphasia, and there could have been a gut pile nearby. So those are some potential contributing factors to this attack that I thought we should talk about. Let's get into our ouchies before we get into kind of the backlash of this attack. Why don't you guys go first? What's your ouchy rating for this one? I think the first attack, I'll add one point because he already sprayed it with bear spray.

so then he probably got some bear spray in his wound when it bid him. Good point. Because it probably had some on his teeth. So that would put a little extra sting in there. Yeah. And then getting jumped on. But like he walks out three miles and records a video. So it's not as bad as our other stories.

He's got tendons hanging out. I'm keeping it on tooth and claw rating. So everything's bad. I'm giving it a four. Okay. Oh, wow. Okay. I'm going to give it a six.

For me, if you're attacked by a grizzly bear and you walk out, you did pretty good. You know, you did okay. Drive yourself to the hospital. He did have a broken bone and some tendon injuries and some bad puncture bites. 26 inches of stitches is a lot. So I don't think this was a minor attack. I think it was still a major attack. But as far as Grizzlies are concerned, he was really lucky.

So I'm going to give him a six. Six sounds right to me. Because his left arm was messed up. It was just like a pulpy mess of gore. But I also think, I mean, hearing that detail about how long it took just to suture him up, that's a pretty intense attack. And like, that was just the start of his road to recovery. I think because he was so cavalier about it, it makes it harder to give him a higher rating. That could be too.

And he hunted, like a little bit later. Yeah. It wasn't a super long recovery. But he also seemed like he really charged into his rehab and like. really went for it. This dude's tough. Todd Or it's a tough dude. Yeah, I like him.

So that's our ouchies. I want to talk about the outcome of this attack. Because he had sprayed this bear and it came back and hit him again, a lot of people started saying bear spray failed Todd Orr. It was a big, it was a big tool and weapon for like anti-bear spray people, which, believe it or not, they're out there to really use against bear spray. And he, in all the interviews I watched with him, he credits bear spray was saving his life. He says, had I not sprayed her, I think that first attack would have been a lot worse.

And he says, you know, it didn't work perfectly. Even in the video, he says, like, bear spray doesn't always work, but, you know, I think it helped. He credits Bear Spray with helping to save his life. But a lot of people that are more into guns really ran with this and said that, you know, that it's not as good of a tool as a gun. and it really ignited, re-ignited a firearms versus bear spray debate. And I've actually, I've personally had a lot of, like, gun nuts send me this story saying, like, bear spray is a terrible tool.

Why are you telling people to use bear spray? I want to talk a little bit about why this happens. If you're not from the U.S., you don't really maybe understand, you probably do still from the news, gun culture in the U.S., which can get a little intense to say it lightly. And I think with the gun lobby and the NRA and some of these pro-gun, pro-second amendment organizations, there's a lot of gun messaging in the U.S. and a lot of it can be pretty toxic. But people that are really into their guns like to think that that weapon is their best tool for any kind of life-threatening attack, whether from people, animals, whatever, like that, a gun is the best possible thing.

And this story was actually used to strengthen gun legislation. and like having people carry guns in the wilderness and just in general, which is kind of wild, but it's true. A little bit of an aside, I think guns can be a really valuable tool. I'm not necessarily anti-gun. I think that we should only be selling guns to people that should be able to have guns. I think we need to be more careful about who we give guns to in the U.S. But I use a 12-gauge shotgun with less lethal rounds to haze bears.

I have lethal rounds with me when I'm in a really potentially dangerous situation. Sometimes I have that 44 Magnum with me. I've trained extensively with both. I've been qualified by the park service to carry both when I need to. They're tools that can stop a charging or aggressive bear. But I go to my bear spray first, and I always will. And that's what Todd did as well. And I want to talk about it a little bit.

So before we get into that, do you guys have anything you want to say about how you feel about guns or bear spray or anything like that? Just echoing your sentiments that there's nothing wrong. with having a gun with you. You know, it's, it's a, in a situation like this. In a situation like this, yeah. But I think in this situation specifically, it's like, I think you'd be kind of dumb not to have a gun with you.

Not dumb. Dumb is the wrong word. But it's smart to have another form of deterrent. It's a secondary deterrent, you know? And that's how I treat them. Jeff, did you have anything you want to add before I get into my thing again? I would just say, like, you know, I'm a big gun guy. No, you're not.

You do have a big gun. The pistols that are like really big ones, what are they called? The 44 mag. We tried shooting those. Yeah, I'm a big gun guy. I'm just saying for the other people who don't know that. So they're 48 magnums. 44 magnums.

Yeah, like I said, I'm a good nut. But for people who don't know. But no, we had one of those when we did our Black Bear stuff. And like I'm a pretty good shot with a rifle. Yeah. I was trying to shoot a thing of Kool-Aid or something. I don't remember. Like a bottle.

We set like a bottle. A can of pop. Okay. And like I got like five feet away and still couldn't hit it. It was like. So hard. And like bear spray just shoots such a huge cloud. Right.

You can't really miss. It's got to be go-to thing. And we'll talk about the bears bring. So yeah. I don't really think. I think people just think having a gun is cool. Right. But it's just not like going to be like the main.

Yeah. Like the best way. And in the U.S. it's a really politically charged topic and we're not going to get into the politics of it. We kind of did. I think you guys know my politics if you've listened to this podcast for a while. I like how West just like talked about it for like four minutes.

I could have gone a lot harder on that. Like a lot. We're just going to brush on it. Yeah. But it was, this became a big talking point. And it worked in his attack. So when Todd first sprayed this bear,

like I mentioned, The momentum that the bear already had, he got her at only like 10 feet. So she still made contact with him. But he escaped from that first attack with what we would classify in a bear attack as minor injuries. You know, he probably wouldn't even needed many sutures to fix those first ones. And I think what happened with the second attack is that he got really unlucky in that when this bear went over the ridge with her cubs, she headed a different direction. And they kind of just met in a V.

So I think as he walked down the trail, she was walking down. down on the other side of this ridge and they just happened to come across each other again. And she was like, I tried to teach this dude and he's still here and now he's in trouble. And by then the initial shock of the bear spray had worn off and she's ready to go again. So the main thing with bear spray is you're turning off the lights for that bear. When you hit them with bear spray, it chokes them, it blinds them, it clogs their nose, it makes them possible to smell. It's turning off all of their senses and it's such a shocking experience for them.

that they're going to get out of there. It's not necessarily like a really long-term thing. It's, you know, you need to get out of there too. It's not like, oh, I don't have to worry about that bear for another week. Like, that bear's going to be ready to go again here soon, and you want to get out of the area. And he was just so unlucky that they both happened to go the same direction. And that's what happened.

Talking about how powerful bear spray is real quick. Yeah. So my last patron episode was like insects stinging people and how bad it hurts. Yeah. And there's like a YouTube kid who had gotten sung by most of them. Uh-huh. But he said like the most pain he's ever felt was pepper spray. Yeah, that's what Johnny Knoxville says, too.

Bear spray is even worse than pepper spray. Well, it's the same thing. It's just that it's aerosolized so it can get in so many more places. Like when a cop hits you with pepper spray or something, it's like a squirt gun almost. Bear spray is aerosolized. It's like thin particles suspended in the air. So it's really bad for your pulmonary system. Like it gets into your lungs and it really hurts.

I've walked into a cloud of it. It sucks. Yeah. Like it chokes you out. Probably tastes really bad too, right? Yeah. That's the worst part. So I don't know why I agreed with that, but it probably does.

It's not the worst part. Yeah, it's not the worst part. So I want to talk a little bit about what might have happened had Todd used his gun. And he even talks about this in interviews. He says, I'm really competent with my pistol, but a bear's head, the way it's shaped, where its skull is shaped, you can literally have your bullet ricochet off of its skull. It's not necessarily going to work. There's very few places where you can hit a bear where it's just immediately going to drop it.

And I've seen videos of people shooting bears, unfortunately, where it just doesn't go down. And we talked about that in our last Patreon Grizzly episode. They got a few shots into that bear and it still mauled one of them not to kill them. It broke the skin and lodged under its lungs or whatever. Or spine. And that was a 30-0.6 round. Like, that's a high-caliber, high-powerful range. Sure, I was gun guys.

That's strong? Oh, yeah, for you gun nuts yet. That's a strong one? Yeah, exactly. You knew that, though. So the problem with a gun is that if you don't get a kill shot in that bear, it's charging you and you just hit it in a spot where it doesn't kill it, you're probably going to piss it off a lot more. And then you're dealing with an injured bear that's a lot more angry at you than it would have been previously.

So when people send you this story saying like bear spray doesn't work, can you send them stories of people using a gun? and be like, well, look at this. So what I, perfect segue, what I send them as a study. And the study was done by my mentor, Tom Smith. He's one of the main guys that's written about bear spray and done studies on bear spray. And specifically, he's looked at both bear spray and firearms and how they've worked in encounters with bears. Oh, you like looks at actual encounters that have happened. Yeah, so he analyzed, I want to tell you some of his research findings.

He analyzed 197 people that use bear spray in 75 different. Incidents. So of 197 people in bear incidents, only 2% that used bear spray sustained slight injuries caused by Grizzlies. That's like what his first attack would be considered slight injuries. And in those 2% that were injured that used bear spray, it was because the bear, the bear already had that much momentum and it still made contact with them. But as soon as it actually realized that it had been sprayed, it took off. 98% of the people in this study that he did that used bear spray were uninjured. Now, if you're looking at firearms, so bear spray had a 93% success rate in altering the bear's behavior. Firearms had a 75% success rate. There was stories involving 444

individuals. There were 17 fatalities and 35 severe injuries. So the other one had two slide injuries, or 2%, so like probably three or four people with slide injuries. Firearms had 17 fatalities, and 35 severe injuries. So you're much more likely, based off this research, to be injured if you're using a firearm to defend against a bear, then bear spray. I will play devil's advocate a tiny bit here, where I'm sure some of our gun listeners will think this,

is like, if he did use his gun and kill it, there's no second attack in this case. Right. But if he did use his gun and didn't kill it, Maybe the first attack might have been fatal. That's a good point. So the other thing I wanted to bring up about all this data, and Tom does get a lot of like devil's advocates or just devils that charge them on this,

you know, that say like how come you're not including. Like the literal death. No, I'm just saying people that aren't playing devil's advocate, they actually are like upset about it. People that say like, how come you're not including data from a bear that's like in someone's yard and they step out their door and shoot it with their rifle? And it's because those people are never threatened by the bear. His data looks at people that were in threatening situations with bears and decided to use either bear spray or firearm. And according to his data, bear spray is much more effective.

And the main thing I wanted to bring up is you don't have any dead bears. So not only are people much more likely to survive the incident or the encounter, but the bears are going to survive it too. So it's really a win-win. I think the biggest downside to going to your gun before your spray is that you might kill that bear. And it's like in this case, it's a bear that's just being a bear. It's trying to protect its cubs. This is natural bear behavior. You don't need to kill that bear.

If that happened in Yellowstone, we wouldn't track that bear down and try and remove it. It's just doing what it does naturally. This guy was out hiking alone. He's taking some risks. That bear just taught him a lesson, you know, and that's like what they do. So if you use your bear spray instead of a gun, you're also saving bears. Save the bears. Yeah.

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Get started at redfin.com. Own the dream. A couple tips. Jeff brought up how bear spray works. A few things about bear spray that I wanted to teach you guys. And we're going to get into more bear safety here in a second. But as far as bear spray goes, a few things that you guys should learn. Always keep it really accessible.

So don't put it in your pack. Don't put it somewhere where you can't just immediately get it out and draw it. So I carry mine on my hip. Another good thing are these chest holes. like he had, those are two great places to keep your bear spray. Keep it in the same location every time you go out. Because if it's always, like for me, it's always on my right hip. Every single day I'm at work, my bear spray is on my right hip.

So I don't have to think about it anymore. I know what's there. I'm ready to grab it. So that's what happened with Todd. He reached for it without even knowing that he was reaching for it. Practice with that safety tab. So the tab on the front has like kind of this little swoop. You put your thumb in front of that tab and kind of push it back and up.

and that pops that safety tab right off. When the safety tab's on there, you can't spray it. So go ahead and practice with it, pop it off, carefully push it back on. And then if you're going out in Grizzly Country, do that at least 10 times before you go out just so you're ready to use it and you know how to use it. If you practice, don't have it pointed at you. Yeah, be careful with it still. And then that leads right into the next point.

Don't test your spray. Sometimes people want to do a little spray test with it. As soon as you spray it, it starts losing head pressure. it's not going to be as effective as it would be otherwise. And that residue kind of builds up on the nozzle and you're going to get some on your fingers and get it in your eyes and stuff, and it's really nasty. It's a one-time use product.

Like if you ever end up spraying it, I'd get rid of it and get another can. It sprays for about six to seven seconds and you can get multiple sprays out of a can. But after you've had an encounter and event with your bear spray, then get rid of that can. Gotcha. When you do spray it, how far does it go?

About 30 feet. 30 feet. Once the bear's at 30 feet, you should start spraying. And this leads into what I was going to say next. Aim it a bit low. So kind of aim it toward the ground, not right at the ground, but lower than the bear. And put a cloud in between you and the bear. You're going to do a short bursts of like one to two seconds.

And that aerosolized like bear spray, it's going to kind of raise up in the air as you spray it. And that puts this wall in between you and the bear. So you're not necessarily trying to like get the bear in the face. You can if it's close enough, but you're trying to put a barrier between you and the bear with the spray. So you can even kind of like do a little wiggle motion to like spread it out a little bit more, but just get that bear spray in between you and the bear. How long does it stay like in the air? Like when I told you I walked through that cloud, it had been like 10 minutes since I sprayed and it still choked me out.

For a bear though, you want it to be like, you want them to pass through that within a second or two. Okay. And then if it's closer, just get it right in the face. But when it's at like 30 feet, you're just trying to get the spray in between you and the bear. There are a lot of places that sell inert cans that are filled with like an alcohol solution that you can just practice with. And then there are some nonprofits that also will like, you can show up and they'll just let you use those. At the park, we have some of those too. Oh, interesting.

Yeah. That's good to know. Okay. So that's a bit about bear spray. Are you guys, do you guys need a break from bear safety or should we go into some bear safety too? What else is there to talk about? I was thinking with bear spray. Have we talked about making them for kids?

I don't know. And just, like, having, like, little cartoons on it and just give it to kids. I don't think that's a great idea. Each have, like, collectibles. And each one has, like, a new theme and you can, like, have a little kid version. I don't think we want kids to think it's a toy. And also... Make some money.

Just so... Yeah, good. For you folks out there that aren't really familiar with it, just remember that it's not bare deterrent. So you're not, like, spraying something with it to, like... Like bug spray. Keep them away. Yeah. Yeah.

Actually, I have a good idea. For like the people who want guns instead of bear spray, why don't you just make bear spray shaped like a gun? Yeah, that's not a terrible idea. Like a machine gun bear spray. Yeah. They'd be stoked. Yeah.

You could even make like a bullet out of condensed. You're a gun nut, Josh. Oh, yeah. You'd love that, dude. What kind of gun would you want it to look like? 60. A 60 ot? Sweet.

Bazooka. Wait, is it a yacht or yacht? Aot, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to pretend to know anything. Jeff knows his stuff.

So typically this is where we would just launch into our categories. But I kind of want to do something special this time and talk about bear safety. We've talked about it a lot, but it's June. People are going out. I want to do like a Bear Safety 101. And this can be an episode then that you can like bookmark or highlight and come back to if you can't remember what we've talked about in other episodes about Bear Safety. I'm going to try and bunch it together here in kind of a really easily digestible format.

First and foremost, there are three things that you can remember in any bear situation that are going to work regardless of the species, regardless of the situation you're in. These are the three most simple things that no matter what you can do these three things. We're going to get into some nuance after this. But if you're going to remember one thing from this whole talk, these are the... I shouldn't say... You're going to remember one thing. Remember these three things.

That's what you're about to say. I was about to say that. If you're going to remember one set of advice from this whole thing, remember this set. One, three things. Here you go. Okay. Those three things, get your bear spray out and get it ready. So that means pulling the safety off and aiming it toward the bear.

Group up and slowly back away. Those three things work regardless of the species, regardless of the species, regardless of the situation. If you do those things, you're greatly increasing your chances of not getting injured and surviving the encounter. Get your bear spray out and get it ready. Group up, slowly back away. So just remember those things, but the rest of this is all some nuancedy stuff.

I know you guys are like the real heads. Any distance. When you see the bear. I mean, if you see it like, you might as well get it out. 400 yards away, you don't need it back away. No, then you can like sit and watch. If it's like not on the trail. Right.

But like if you're nervous about a bear attack, that works. These things are going to work. Okay. Okay. So all of those are important. Getting your bear spray out and getting it ready, obviously that's getting your deterrent ready to stop the bear.

If it does come at you, grouping up, they don't like groups of people. It's much more intimidating to them to handle multiple animals rather than just one animal. They really don't attack groups of two or more. And then slowly backing away, you never want to run. You never want to,

trigger that predatory instinct. I used to tell people to stand their ground, and there are situations we're going to talk about where you should stand your ground. But slowly backing away is a good thing in case the bear might have cubs or a carcass that it's defending. Then you need to get out of that area.

So I like to tell people just to slowly back away. Okay, the rest. There's a lot of other things we can talk about. There are certain bear biologists that like to educate based on behavior rather than species. I still prefer a species-based education when you're talking about attacks because in my experience black bears and grizzlies act very differently. If you live in the U.S. or North America and you don't spend much time in places

where grizzlies live, you probably still live around black bears. So we're going to start with black bears. If you encounter a black bear on a trail, you're out in the wilderness, in a neighborhood, whatever, make noise, hold your ground, watch the bear and see where it's heading. If it's heading like in your direction but it's not necessarily paying attention to you, maybe just get off its path and let it pass by you. But when you first just see it and you encounter one, you see a bear, make some noise, let it know you're there. This is a black bear. Watch it. Don't ever run. Get your bear spray out. Get ready. If it charges you with a black bear, hold your ground and spray it if it gets within 30 feet. You're going to want to yell. You're going to want to make

yourself seem really intimidating. You're going to want to throw things at it. You're going to want to be really dominant with a black bear always if it's following you really quietly so if you're being followed by a black bear or like stocked by a black bear it's probably interested in you as a potential meal this is a bear that might be predatory in that case you're going to want to get really aggressive and really dominant once again you're going to hold your ground you're going to get your bear spray out you're going to use it on it if it gets within 30 feet you're going to throw stuff at it you're going to do whatever you can to discourage that bear this is a worst case scenario with you're going to with a black bear. This is the only situation where you really have to worry about them is when

they're following you and they're not really relenting. At that point, you just have to give it a reason to stop. You need to convince it. You're not an easy meal. So whatever you can to do that, do it. If a black bear actually makes contact with you, if you're being attacked by a black bear, you fight back always. Never go into the fetal position. It's not trying to neutralize a threat. It's probably trying to eat you. You need to fight back. So fight back with black bear. bears. Okay. We're going to transition to grizzly bears. If you encounter a grizzly bear, say you're just out hiking, you see a grizzly bear. We're going to say it's at 100 yards or 80 yards like Todd. Again, group up, get your bear spray ready, slowly back out of there. You might want to talk

out loud to the bear, let it know that you're there. People always say let it know that you're human. It doesn't really matter. Just let it know that you're not, like, aggressive. Talk to it. If it charges you, if you're charged by a grizzly bear, at that point, stop backing up hold your ground it's probably a bluff charge and by you holding your ground it's going to peel off of its charge so hold your ground if it charges you get your bear spray out get ready again group up but that's what you're doing you're going to spray it if it gets within 30 feet that's what you do with grizzly charge if a grizzly actually attacks you it's on top of you it's mauling you at that point you can go into the fetal position and play dead so you're going to

want to do what Todd did. Some bear scientists like to say lay out flat and if the bear flips you over, like flip back onto your stomach and that prevents it from flipping you over, I think they can flip you over no matter what, you know? I think so. They can flip over like 400 pound boulders. They can flip you over no problem. That's a good animal Olympic category.

Yeah, much more than 400 pounds. Probably like 2,000 pound boulders. So you laying flat isn't going to stop a grizzly bear from flipping you over. your main thing is protecting your soft parts. So you go into the fetal position, put your hands over your neck, be like your stomach should be down, you can tuck your knees under, and if it does flip you over, just flip back into that position. Mike called it turtling.

I hadn't ever heard that before. I don't know that that's a thing. Did you just think of a turtle? He said it like it was a thing. The imagery reminder. I thought turtling is when you have a poop that's coming out and you really have to go. I thought it was a break dancing. There's plenty of ways.

If you have a backpack on, leave it on because the bear's going to rip into that first. But I just want to stress that if you go into the fetal position, at that point, you're allowing the bear to make the decision of how that encounter is going to end. If it wants to mall you to death at that point, it's going to. If it wants to eat you, it's going to. You've given up your deterrence. You no longer have any control. So I would only go into the fetal position after I've exhausted my spray or if my spray has been, knocked away or if I don't have a gun or anything else, then I'll go into it.

But at that point, you're surrendering control to the bear and that's not a good position to be in. What about pulling on its ears? It could help. I mean, at that point, you know, I don't think you should because again, like in Todd's, when he moved, it kept going. Yeah, but if it was starting, like we talked about, if it started eating you, then you got to fight back.

Yeah. Sure. Then probably go for its eyes before his ears. Maybe. I don't know. They kind of have like a bony. plate behind their eyes. So if you like try poking a bear's eyes, it's just going to kind of squirt around.

It's going to be really hard for you to actually like puncture it. It does suck to have your ear pulled on. It does. I think you're on to something here. Okay. So worst cases with grizzlies are like an injured bear, a bear on a carcass, or a female with cubs. Those are the bears that you really don't want to run into.

A couple quick other things before we wrap this up. People often ask about tree climbing. We've always traditionally said like, no, don't do it. If I, again, if I was like out of options with the grizzly bear and I had a tree nearby and I didn't have a turn or something, I'd probably do it. Yeah. But that's again a last case scenario. And they can climb a tree, right? And if it does decide to climb the tree, you're screwed.

It's more of the black bear thing, but it's like, it grizzly could climb in. They climb. For a black bear, it's like they can run up a tree. And grizzlies, it takes them a little bit longer. But if that grizzly decides it really wants to get you and you're up a tree and it climbs up, You're screwed. You got to find the hornets. It's a next quick.

Exactly. Some, what are they in Hunger games? Tracker jacks. Or a vine to swing away on. That's always a good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's with Grizzlies. Never ever even consider it with a black bear.

They're much better climbers than you, and they'd be perfectly capable of taking you out in a tree. Another thing I wanted to quickly bring up, if you, like, are hiking and you see a grizzly and it doesn't notice you, you might have the idea of like, oh, I'm going to, going to sneak around this bear. I'm going to like go into the woods. Like say it's on the trail and you think, okay, I'm going to go out in the woods and kind of sneak around it and get back on the trail. It's a bad idea because they know what sneaking is. And for them, when something's

sneaking around in the woods, it means it's trying to attack them. And they don't like that. So if you're sneaking around and like kind of being all careful in the woods by a bear and it notices you, there's a much higher chance it's going to charge you in. Also like, what if you're getting in between it and cubs that you don't see or something. Yeah. So you want to let it know that you're there. So you're supposed to just wait if a bear's close to the trail? If I, yeah, say I saw a bear on the trail and it doesn't see me.

I'm going to put my arms up and I'm going to be like, hey, you know, I'm not going to scream at it or anything. I'm going to let it know it's there, that I'm there. If it charges me, I'm going to spray it. But it's probably going to notice me and take off. You know, like 99 times out of 100, that's what's going to happen. But you want to let it know it's that you're there. And then you can make your decision.

based off of its behavior. Right. My final thing, I know this is going on, but my final thing with this, camping. So if you're camping, the main things to think about are what you're doing with all your scents,

like your food, toothpaste, all of that stuff. The really important thing is to cut down on scent, put your food in a secure location, whether that's like in a bear box, in one of those canisters, hung from a tree, make sure that bears don't have access to your food. And if you are attacked in a campsite

by either species, Like say a bear collapses your tent or does try to get you in a campsite, you fight back. Doesn't matter the species. That's a predatory motivated attack. You need to fight back. It's not just like a surprise encounter that bears trying to get fat. If you're backpacking so like you can't bring a bear box so you just hang the food in a tree. Yeah, they do sell these like bear bags and bear canisters and stuff.

A lot of people wrote us about like your sack or something. Yeah. You can put your food in those and they do cut down on sand. and they're a little harder for the bear to get in. But what I recommend is putting all of your food in one pack and then hanging it from a tree branch where the bear can't get to it. That can be really tricky. So if you can...

Well, and if the bear got it, then you don't have any food because it's all in that way. It's a lot better than getting mulled by a bear, though. That's true. But for me, if I can't find a tree to hang it in, what I'll do is put it all in one pack and take that pack like a few hundred yards from my camp and stash it somewhere. Because you might be sacrificing all your food, but if a bear does get into it,

it's not then right in your campsite and it doesn't associate your campsite with food. Sorry, that's a lot of information, but I did want to do this 101. So I hope you guys learn from it. Yeah. Yeah, that was great. Thanks, Russ.

Yeah. All right, so we're back. We're going to do our categories. We've done our favorite pop culture grizzly probably like 10 times. So we're skipping that. I still want to do a favorite. And since we talked about the Jurassic movies,

I wanted to ask you guys what your favorite moment is from one of the Jurassic sequels. Okay. So like Jurassic World and the Lost World and Jurassic Park Three and all the Jurassic World movies. So I'm going to, both of mine are from Jurassic World. Okay. But I love like the Raptors and the tall grass. I thought that scene was like. The Lost World.

Yeah. That's one of my favorite. You said Jurassic World. No. That's one of my favorites too. Like them jumping up in the house. That's so good. Yeah.

But my, my pick's going to be when the T-Rex pulls the guy out from the cave behind the waterfall. And then the waterfall, like, turns red and all the people are just, like, in there watching it. Yeah, I like that part, too. Not the gymnastics part? When it kills the rafting. Yeah. My favorite part is in actually Jurassic Park 3, which I actually recently rewatched and didn't hate. Okay.

I watched the first movie when I was really young, and my dad was like, well, let's read the book then, because I think you'd like it. Yeah. And I got really excited about the part when they're going through the huge atrium dome. Yeah. And I was like, oh, man, that would have been really cool to see in the movie. So when the third movie came out and they do go to a dome like that, I got really excited. And I just think flying dinosaurs have been underrepresented in this news. The terrodons are cool in that part.

Yeah. Wait, but you have to say a kill, right? Just a favorite moment. Oh, okay. My bad. I always just think kill when you say that. You always thinking about killings. My favorite.

I have a lot, but most of mine come from Lost World as well. I really like Lost World. I think it's like a darker, kind of grittier take on the whole thing. But I love the part where the T-Rex is in San Diego. Yeah. It's just fun. Like, that's what I wanted this movie to be, the most recent one. Just like a T-Rex killing people left and right.

It's like a Godzilla movie. Yeah, I liked it a lot. So I think specifically the part where this guy, like, is trying to run into, like, a movie store. and then the T-Rex, like, grabs him by the door and munches him in front of, like, a bunch of other people. I love that part. All right. So our next category we're going to do is anaconda scale for Todd Orr. I'm giving him a mix of the good things about John Voight and the good things about Ice Cube.

Okay. Yeah. This is just getting complicated. Well, John Voight was, like, prepared. Sure. And had all the skills, but he was, like, egotistical and bad. And Todor wasn't egotistical. but he was prepared.

And then he was also like kind of a hero like Ice Cube. So I'm just giving him good marks. It seems like the only thing you could say he did wrong was being out there alone, which isn't necessarily like wrong. It just would be smarter to have another person. So I don't know. It seems like. No, it's not Ice Cube.

It'd be J-Lo. Ice Cube doesn't want to be there. That's true. He wanted to be there. Maybe he's just a J-Lo then. I think he's just because J-Lo is prepared, but she wanted to be there. Yeah. Right.

Okay. J-Lo. J-J-L. Yeah, a true J-Lo. Jeff, you had a new category you wanted to try. Yeah. So I think it would be funny to have a category that's just called Best Instagram Picture. Okay.

So, like, if they got a picture of this, what would be, like, the craziest picture? Oh, of, like, the entire... Of the whole thing. Yeah. I think it'd be crazy, like, the bear running through the bear spray and hitting him. Okay. I would say like where it was slamming him into the ground repeatedly. Yeah.

Would be my favorite. So the detail that I always think of or at least think is really interesting is when a bystander who has no idea what just happened all the sudden gets involved. So I think a good picture would be the rancher. The rancher who opens the door and sees the guy and his eyes are just all big. I think that'd be kind of a fun moment to catch. Okay. We'll see if that category sticks. Yeah.

If you guys like it, we'll let us know. All right. So our next category, one that has stuck around, what would Mike and Jeff do? Yeah. I'm going off the same train of thought there where, like, I love that he, like, documented the attack right after and just, like, showed us what happened. But I think I would have done it as the bear was mauling me the second time. Yeah, that would have been, yeah. Started, like, taking a video of it as was mauling me and, like, described, like, it's biting my arm.

It just broke my arm and, like, given the whole description you gave, but, like, as the attack was happening, that's the only thing I would have done different. He seemed like he was calm enough to have done that. I wonder why he didn't think to do that. It would have gotten more viral. Probably. So, Mike, what do you do it? So you gave an interesting detail about wearing a backpack because you keep that backpack on

because that's where the bear is going to get you. You wear a four backpack? I would wear a backpack on my back, of course. Yeah. One on my front. And then, like, probably a couple on my back. my legs over the groin area. Yeah.

Like anywhere you put in there. Not bowling balls because they can bite through those. So I don't know. Like extra strong bowling balls, I guess. Bowling balls made out of steel. Cool balls. All right. I guess I don't really need to go into what you actually do because we just

talk about it for like an hour. Sure. But you can just say ours are you wrong. Yeah. And then move on. You guys are wrong. Okay. Mike's is kind of maybe getting to something, but I don't know.

So I have a new category, too. How many, like, backpacks do you think a bear would, like, pull off until it's like, okay, I give one of those Russian nesting dolls? Yeah. Polar backpacks. How many backpacks are there? Yeah. All right. So my new category is called, did Mike and Jeff listen?

Oh, no. So I'm going to ask you guys some questions about the story to see if you listened and about the discussion. Mike, you're getting the first question. what should you do if you are being quietly followed by a black bear? You want to stay your ground and be extra aggressive because that is most likely a predatory situation, and you want to be extra aggressive and show that you're not easy prey. Good job. Jeff, name three of the most dangerous situations you can find yourself in with grizzly bears.

Oh, the number one thing of three things? No. No. Three of the most dangerous situations. you can find yourself in with grizzly bears. Oh, yeah, yeah. I wasn't listening by I knew this already. Okay.

So if you're by like a gut pile. Carcass. Carcass, yeah. And then if it's a female with cubs. Okay. And if it is, is it the preparing for denning season? What is that called? Injured, was the third one.

Oh, Injured? I forgot that. Okay. Okay. I can think of way worse situations in that. cage match. Like in an airplane, one gets loose. Bears on a plane.

I'm sick of these motherfucking bears. It's like all like eight types of bears. That'd be a great movie. No one noticed them until the plane starts going down. All right. Mike, when should you play dead? After, so never with a black bear. Good.

With a grizzly bear, you play dead. once your deterrence are no longer in play and it's on top of you. Perfect, Mike. Really? You're really listening well. I try. I miss my. You did pretty good, Jeff.

I'm going to ask you the other three things. What are the three things that will help in any bear encounter? The one three things. Yep. You got to get your bear spray ready. Uh-huh. You want to slowly back up. Yeah.

And you want to be in a group. Yep. Perfect. Mike, these last two are a little bit harder. What city in Montana is Todd Orr originally from? Oh, it's not, he's not from Ennis, is he? He is, okay. Yeah, there you go.

Jeff. With the P in front of it, that's fine. Yeah, that's great. What is the name of Todd Orr's Knife Company? Uh, I use it every morning. No, I forget. Skyblade. Skyblade.

I think in cloud. This, most of these articles from like 2016 or 17, So who knows if he's still making them. It's funny you asked me that one because you told a Skyblade and then I like forgot it. And I was like wanting to make a joke about it, but I couldn't remember the name. And then you said the name again. And then I forgot it again. Mike, you win this round.

Skyblade sounds like the kind of product you would hear about and you'd be like, that sounds awesome. And then it's just like a scooter or something. Oh, yeah. You know, like some tech bro invented a new segue. And it's like, really? Yeah. That's what we're calling.

Okay. Segways are sweet, dude. Jeff, you got questions? Are they? Listener questions? Yeah. You know that the founder of Segway died? He segued right off a cliff, right?

In a safety demonstration to show like how safe they are and he segwed off a cliff. All right, Wes. So this is patron questions. And this is from Carly. And she says, hi, hi. I'm super excited for the new Jurassic World movie. and had a related question for the pod. If each of you were characters in the Jurassic Park slash Jurassic World Universe,

who do you think you would be? I think I've always most identified with two characters, Timmy and Dr. Grant. So I'm going to say Timmy, just to like, I don't think I'm as smart as Dr. Grant. I'm going to say Timmy. Just like kind of know a lot. I know a lot about dinosaurs, but mostly I'm just there because I'm excited to see dinosaurs. That makes sense. I'm going with Nedri for me.

He's like a computer dork and eats candy all day. Nedri flashed through my mind because really he's just trying to rob money from a big corporation that's like soulless and is like trying to exploit wildlife. And so he's kind of the hero in a way. I'm going. I'm going to a lawyer. Oh, Janaro. Genaro. Because like I feel like everyone else there's like, this is stupid.

You can't have this. And I'd be like, this is awesome. Like, we're going to make so much money. Like, that would be my first thought for sure, you know? Yeah. So, I mean, if it doesn't get sabotaged, like, it'd be a cool place. You also, when you got to go the bathroom, you got to go. I got to go.

Yeah, it's a good point. Okay, this is from Chris Hall's son. If you could choose any animal, what would it be? Or wait, sorry. Yeah. If you could choose it. any animal, what would it be, Mike? Is that the real question?

No. If you could choose any animal, what would you be? And then what is each of your favorite hero, Marvel or DC, and would you be a combined animal and superhero? Okay. So he's asking if we could be any animal, what would we be? Yeah. Okay. I'm being a flying animal, like a raven or an eagle or something like that.

Yeah, I think we've done this one. Yeah, we have. Yeah. I'm a sea turtle. Yeah. That's a good pick. Yeah. Mike?

Yeah, I'll pick just, what's that super fast falcon? Peregrine. Paragon. Paragon Falcon. That'd be sweet. And your favorite superhero? This kind of works on both fronts of that question because I love Wolverine. Yeah, so he's kind of a, he's kind of an animal superhero.

So there you go. Wolverine's cool. Well, we all know. It's obvious why Wolverine's cool. I think Wolverine's my favorite, too. Like, as a kid, he's the only one that I ever, like, drew pictures of and, like, was really, really into. I was going to say Batman, but I think it's Wolverine.

It's Wolverine. I like Spider-Man just because he's like a high school student. And I just think like high school is a really fun setting for like a superhero to be in. I think it's a perfect setting for one. All right. And then on to our Instagram question. Cool. From Zane J. Wall.

If a panda had a favorite restaurant, what would it be? Panda Express. Yeah, that's pretty. You can't be that. There's a bamboo. What's a bamboo? Is there like a bamboo chain? I don't know.

Well, I mean, nothing against Panda Express. It has the animal in its name. Well, there's much better Chinese food. I don't think, like, I wouldn't, I don't go to Smith's because my last name is Smith. Okay, fair enough. Or Michaels for my crafts. But if you were suddenly, like, say you're a human that was thrust into, like, some new world. And, like, there was a bunch of different, like, weird restaurants.

And then one was, like, human food or human express. Wouldn't you be like, oh, that's probably the restaurant for me. I don't know. I like to be a little more adventurous. I'd like to think. P.F. Chang's. Yeah. All right.

From Roth Groves. If you made a rock band, what animals would be in it and what instruments would they play? Octopus on the drums. Yeah. Oh, that's good. For sure. I was going to say the exact same thing. I'm probably putting like a wolf on lead vocals.

Oh, yeah. I was thinking whale. Okay. I like that too. I'm going to put octopus on the keyboard. That's a good pick, too. I don't know, though. I don't know about my other picks.

Let's see what else we have. I'd put a penguin on the bass guitar because I like slap. Slap like a funky bass. I'm going to have an alligator as my singer. Just like open its mouth super big when it's like doing like the big notes, you know, and just look cool. I think I like the whale for the singer. I'm pick whale.

I'll do if your band has a Maraca player, I'll put it as a rattlesnake. Yeah. I think I want a tarantula for the guitar player. Okay. Man, that's my band. All right. So from Logie Bear, if you don't touch your wiener when you pee, do you have to wash your hands after? Nope.

I'm a fan. I'm a big proponent of that question. Do you do that a lot? If I, if like, no, but even, okay. Let's get a little, let's get a little personal here. Like that seems like you always. I personally think if you're peeing, if you like are peeing standing up and you have a weiner and you touch, I think even if you touch your wiener, you don't necessarily need to wash your hands.

As long as you don't get pee on them, you're saying. Jeff, I mean, we're going to get a little personal here. There's your skin. There's got to be multiple times during the day that you, like, touch your wiener, if you're, like, scratching or something, or you touch different parts of your body, your armpit, whatever. That you don't just rush to the, like, and wash your hands. For me, it's like, if you get pee on your hands, you got to wash your hands. What? Yeah. Really?

I still generally wash my hands no matter what. I think. But I do think it's kind of stupid. I think it's, like, a good thing to just be washing your hands. hands a lot in general. Right. But I don't think you're getting your hand dirtier if you don't get any pee on it. Right.

If I touch, if there's like a bar I have to touch or anything in the bathroom I have to interact with, I'm washing my hands. But if I simply walk up to a urinal and all I touch is skin and then I walk out, I don't feel like I've contaminated anything. There's parts of your body that have greater concentration of bacteria. Yeah, but haven't they done like studies and shown that your nether regions aren't necessarily those parts? I'm going to say, okay, cool study, I'm going to wash my hands.

Do you wash your hands every time you, like, scratch the inside of your nose? I would, I mean, ideally, sure. Or every time you touch your phone that's, like, covered in bacteria? I don't know what you guys do with your phones, but mine's pretty clean. It's a good question. I like that question. I wash my hands every single time regardless of the situation. With soap?

Yeah. You don't ever just rinse them? I feel like I'm going crazy right now. What is happening? For number two, I'm with you. For number one, I'm like 50-50. Good gravy. A lot of times.

I disavow myself. In the 50 that I'm not, a lot of times I'm just rinsing. At least 90% of the time my hands, I'm like at least rinsing. But sometimes it's just a quick rinse. And it's just the one hand you used. All right. Okay. I have no idea how to say this one.

Solosh Hilafay. She like works with Ows in Montana. What would your entrance song be if you were a professional? wrestler. Song 2 by Blur. It was a good one. Yeah. It's really good.

Or Drain You by Nirvana. Is that the one playing in the new Batman all the time? No. That's mine. What's that one? Something in the way. Yeah, that's the one I would want. Yeah.

I'll go. Baby Shark. Yeah, Baby Shark's a good pick. But I think that's second place behind. There's a song called Crooked by a band called Dealer. They're a metalcore band out of Australia. And that one, that'll get you going, I think. too by blur is kind of, it's a little cliche.

It's not a great pick, but it's still my favorite song for that. Okay, from Larissa Finky, which animal has the cutest butt? Oh. I'm going to just go with a classic, I think. Humans? Rabbit. Yeah. With like the cotton tail.

Because you have like a good tail, but you can still see that butt. Like a fox has a better tail, but you don't really see the butt cheeks at all. Yeah. Rabbit, you get to see like the butt with the tail. I'm going to say panda bear. Yeah, that's a good one. Rabbit, the rabbits wear mine first too. Wombats have cute butts.

Or bunny. Yeah, okay. Bunny is our rabbits, right? Kuala, it's pretty good. No. Rejected. Denied. We're not going to do a big conservation corner just because we've talked about Grizzlies a lot.

We've talked about the Yellowstone Grizzlies. I do want to briefly just bring up again that bearspray can be considered a conservation tool because it's a deterrent that can stop attacks without heart. harming the bear without killing the bear. It's a tool that has saved hundreds, if not thousands of bears' lives. So I do think it's a really great tool that I am a big proponent of, and it helps to save bears. All right. So our final category that we're not going to skip, even though we've done a lot of grizzly bears,

is our claw rating. It's 10 claw. It's a perfect animal for me. Maybe my favorite animal. Probably my favorite animal. 10 claw number one animal. Mike, where are you at with grizzly bears these days? Nine claws still.

Yeah. hovering around my like top 20-ish animal. I think they're cool. Don't get me wrong. I think they're awesome. Very cool. All right. Well, love you guys.

Love you too. We love all you listeners. If you're really enjoying the podcast and you want more, we'd love for you to subscribe to one of our channels. Go to Patreon. Subscribe to Patreon. Or if you decide you want to do the Apple subscription, do the Apple subscription. But we'd love to have you there.

We'd love to talk to you on Patreon. We'd love to give you some bonus content. Yeah. A lot of bonus. A lot of good. honest content, you know. I think we're all pretty proud of what we've got gone. We are.

King's the most recent one. So sign up for Patreon or join the Gris Club and. And review us. Yeah. Oh yeah. If you're liking the podcast, give us a review on Apple Podcasts or a rating on Spotify. And tell us what you like about it. If you don't like it, shut the hell up.

We're close to 2,000 ratings, I saw. So once we get there, we'll, I mean, we can just shut it down. Whoever is our 2,000th rating gets to rest their, junk on Mike's arm for two hours. Yeah. On Mike. I accept. All right.

We'll talk to you later. Bye. Bye.