Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The Ghost Grizzlies of Colorado: Part 1

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

The history of grizzly bears in Colorado is steeped in tradition and tragedy. In this episode, Wes tells the story of how intruding on sacred land led to dire consequences for bears and humans alike. Watch here: https://youtu.be/hIVYHH-hajY ~~ Cornbread Hemp: Get 30% off at http://cornbreadhemp.com/tooth and use code TOOTH Aura Frames: Exclusive $45-off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/TOOTH . Promo Code TOOTH Ollie Pet Food: Take the guesswork out of your dog's well-being. Go to http://ollie.com/tooth and use code tooth to get 60% off your first box! Rocket Money: Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to http://rocketmoney.com/claw Quince: Go to http://quince.com/tooth for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. ~~ 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

Oh, boys and girls, dogs and cats, and everyone else. This is Tooth and Cloth Podcast. We have our wildlife biologist, Wes Larson. He likes bears, he studies bears, he has slept with bears. We have his younger brother, Jeff Larson. I like bears as well. Not that other stuff, though. And we have our best friend.

sound guy Manna mini talents Mike Smith Yeah Hey thank you for having me Thanks for having me for 174 episodes straight Oh no I missed one

My streak was broken Shoot Yeah People keep asking how many episodes we have And now I know Is that like three main feed episodes I think so That's the number I put in the last upload

That could be I could be totally off Does that count the one we deleted Oh it might It might not. I don't know. We should quit at 175. I'll put one of those little squiggly lines that means approximately. I don't know what that line is called.

A squiggles. A squiggles. A squiggles. Yeah, that's what that's called. We just got back from Costa Rica the other day. Had a wonderful trip with some wonderful travelers. Just wanted to shout them out really quickly. We got Lilith, Liz, Emily, Dan, Dan, Emily, Noor, Corbett, Grace, Mara.

I'm terrible. She's Belgian. Hard to say. Caitlin, Avery, Colleen, Lydia, Andrew, Zach, Julia, Nora, Gina, and Leslie. Great trip. And Tatiana are a guide, who is wonderful. The best. Great trip.

Y'all are the best. Yeah. I'm going to kill Dan. One. You are, Dan. Watch your back. I think that's the first death threat we've issued on one of those episodes. Yeah, I said it in front of the whole group, too, so.

I feel like I have to do it We had a few firsts on this trip We have our first like attack That's gonna come as a story from one of those trips Because I got stung on the arm by a bullet ant So we're gonna that's definitely gonna make it into an episode at some point West got bit by one single aunt and it is stung by one single The biggest deal

Yeah right I did you should not make a big deal out of it In fact everyone was saying I feel like you should be making a bigger deal out of this Go watch the Coyote Peterson bullet aunt episode and you'll have a pretty good idea what Wes was acting, Mike. Pretty much the exact opposite of that and stuff. calmly telling Mike that if I pass out, you should take me out of the canyon. Yeah.

Anyway, we'll get to that. We'll tell the whole story at some point. They don't bite. They sting. They can bite, but that's not what hurts with them. It's their sting. Yeah. They're venom.

You kind of have to be able to bite if you're going to be something that eats to survive, right? Yeah. Yeah, they bite. They have like mandibles. so it's more like ripping, but it's biting. Yeah. Kind of like a predator. Does that mean everything can bite?

Well, what is if things just suck. Right. If a bullet ant breaks its jaw and gets it wired shut and goes on a liquid diet for a while, it's probably not biting very much. It's not biting anymore. Or if it gets a gumgrass. Well, like mosquitoes suck, but you still call it a mosquito bite. Ooh, that's a good point, Jeff.

Holy cow. This is, your mind works in the most mysterious and wonderful ways. It does. Interesting. Yeah. I think, though, the difference is, like, biting is often just for eating, not for defense in a lot of animals. I got sucked by a mosquito. Yeah.

That's true. I'll start saying that. Sucked off. Yeah, nothing can go wrong with that. I got a mosquito suck right on my elbow. Do we have a sloth count for how many sloths we saw? It was probably like six or seven, right? We saw a lot of some good amount.

Yeah. I think it was, so what? We saw two barelys. Yeah. And then we got our first, like, real good one. Yeah. It was a crazy. I was looking at, we were just looking for a sloth in the wild.

And I was looking at the tree with by nose, like studying that tree. Didn't see anything. And then Lilith came running up. Oh, we nailed it. Literally crying and said, there's a sloth right there. She was our biggest sloth fan too. Like, that's why they survive. They blend, they get that moss.

They look like a tree, you know? Yeah. We saw eyelash viper, furtolence, camon, lots of frogs. Red-eyed green, red-eyed tree frogs. Man, Coatamundi. No, not, yeah, we had Coadamundi. A-Goooooo-Gooty. All sorts of.

The fun. Whiteface. Basselisk. Oh, don't forget the bass list. The bass list was so cool. Howler monkeys. Yeah. Lots of monkeys.

It was great. It was a really fun trip with great people. So for sure. Yeah. Bullad ant. Thanks to everyone that came with us. Bullitt ant. Yeah.

It was, yeah, we did some fun canyering that just seemed really adventurous and cool. But, uh, yeah. A stamp of approval for Costa Rica. It turned out was legally blind. And she did the whole canyon in the jungle. was incredible. She got through it. Yeah.

Didn't even die. That's crazy. I almost died. I would have died getting out of the van to go to that. Seriously. So pretty impressive. All right. Today's episode actually has a bit of a backstory.

And Jeff, it involves Danielle from National Park After Dark. Mike, it involves Danielle from National Park After Dark. Just wanted to tell that to both of you. Yeah. No reason to exclude. No reason to exclude or to. prioritize either of you. Danielle sent me a story a couple weeks ago, and it was a great story.

I looked into it. She said, hey, this is a great story, and guess what? She was right. I looked into it, and I thought, man, it was a great story. Just for once. Yeah. Right. Finally.

The way you said that really sounded like the way Trump talked, it's like, it was a great story. Let me tell you. The story is great because it's good. And it's huge. A huge story, too. Anyway. So as I got into it,

actually was huge. And this was a story I wanted to do right before our trip. And then I realized, hey, there's a lot of stuff here that we need to talk about. And it's not going to be one that I can just do immediately. And there's a couple books I had to read, which you all know is my least favorite thing in the world when I have to order books and read it for these episodes. I didn't just kidding. I really like it. I do like it. But it does always add the timetable substantially. So I ordered those books and it turned into a two-parter. That's what I'm getting at. This is going to be a two-part episode. It's going to be a fun two-parter. People love them. I still sound like Trump. Why am I doing Trump? I don't know. People love it. People love it. I'm going to love it. It's the best two-parters.

It's the best two-parters. People are saying that Wes has the best two-parters. Yeah. This may be the best, it is the best two-parter ever made. But I'm excited about it because I do think it's a really interesting story. It's something that really gets into American history and to the history of one of my all-time favorite animals, actually my all-time favorite animal, which is, of course, the grizzly bear. Nice. So this is going to be part one of what we've

titled Ghost Grizzlies, the Grizzlies of Colorado. Oh, wow. So, for this, I didn't come up with that title. My main source is the book, Ghost Grizzlies by David Peterson, which is a great book. I highly recommend it. And then I also got a

few other sources. I'll talk about my other book next week. But that was the source that I used substantially for this episode. His name is David Peterson. David Peterson. Any relation to Pete Davidson? The names are real similar. Yeah, one of them is from an alternative dimension. And they're stuck in the same world with each other. Which one? Before 9-11. Because that's how names work. You just switch the first and the last around. Now, Mike, does ghost grizzlies sound scarier than grizzlies? For sure. I'm imagining what their growl sounds like.

It's probably all ethereal and stuff. It's not like a... I was really hoping you were delivered on that lesson you did. Yeah, okay. I think they're scarier, but also that's not the kind of ghosts we're talking about. I don't think it's scary. Yeah. Yeah, I actually don't do it.

Well, I'm afraid of grizzly bears. What about zombie grizzlies? Like the one from annihilation. Yeah, that's pretty good. Zombie grizzlies. Yeah, I agree. Or like a mummy grizzly. Yeah, right.

Are we just making up different variations? I'm getting too scared. Ampire. Alien. Bear. All right. So on this first episode, we're going to focus on some of the history. Or like a bear that's like cat dog.

but instead of a cat and a dog, it's just two bears. It's like two grizzlies and one. Dude, that would be... And they're both ghosts. West. Yeah, that is scary. That's what we're talking about? We got to stop.

All right. So in part one, I'm going to re-rack this. We'll see if I can get through it. In Park One, in Park One, part one, we're going to be talking about some of the history, some of the attacks, and some of the interesting stories that led up to a fate of day in the late 1970s. All right, before we get into the written history of grizzly bears in the state of Colorado, I want to talk a little bit about their importance to the indigenous people of the area.

And we're really going to be talking about the San Juan Mountains of Colorado quite a bit. And the people that were thought to have mostly inhabited those mountains are the Ute tribe, which is, of course, the tribe that the state of Utah was named after. The college. They have been the mascot of, yeah, the University of Utah for a while. and like many of the indigenous people that did share the land with grizzly bears, the Ute people had an incredible respect and an incredible reverence for grizzly bears. They saw them as a symbol of strength and an important connection to the spiritual world.

I think we tend to talk about, you know, especially with kind of North American indigenous people, their relationship to nature. Sometimes it maybe even gets romanticized a little bit. But I think it's really hard to understate how important grizzly bears were to most of the people that shared the land with them. They were kind of seen as one of the most spiritually important animals out there. And that's totally true for the youths. Their reverence for the grizzly bear was so strong.

What's that? It's true for you. Yeah. But I think in a different way, I get jealous of that connection because I don't think I can even have it to that level in my life. But their reverence was so strong that they would only move into the San Juan Mountains in the spring. after they had performed a sacred bear dance in the early spring. And that dance was kind of a way of them asking for permission to once again share the home of the grizzly bear. Some of the sources I found said that the dance was intended to wake the bears from their hibernation

so that the bears could lead them into plentiful food sources in the mountains. But I did kind of see some contrasting information about the dance, so I don't want to get anything wrong. So the main thing is that it's safe to say that they had a really deep connection with those bears. and that the bear dance was an expression of that connection. Do you know what that dance looked like by any chance? I remember, I looked up some details. There was a lot of like adornments.

It lasted like three days, a lot of drumming because the drumming was supposed to symbolize the thunder, which is often like thought to be the voice of the bears that like woke up in the spring. I didn't watch any videos or anything, but from everything I read, it seems like it was a very elaborate, beautiful, like rhythmic dance that went for a very long time. I love that. Ritual,

yeah, me too. Dance is, I just think that's such a cool idea that, I don't know if it's appropriate to say that I wish we would incorporate that more into modern society somehow, but maybe that's just best left of them. But I just think it's a cool idea. I like that.

Yeah, that's kind of like one of the worst parts of science and like bear biologists. For sure. I totally. You guys told us when bears wake up and that it's just like part of their like, life cycles and it's like oh we thought there's drums for three days will come up i i totally agree i think like the big downside to science is it takes a lot of the mystery out of the world and but i also don't think that it disproves those things like who knows you know maybe this dance did wake up

the bears i i'm not you know i'm not saying that so anyway i what i can say is that a really cool thing about this i think is the concept of them not going into the mountains during the winter because it was like the realm of the bear and they had to be invited. And that is a good conservation kind of forward-minded thing because it shows that they're like giving different ecosystems breaks throughout the seasons, which again, this is just a quick plug for indigenous lead conservation is often the most effective type of conservation because there's like a real sense of stewardship for those animals and for the land and everything. Wouldn't you say we, for the most part, kind of do that now, though, like with hunting seasons and, like, fishing seasons and stuff like that?

To some extent. But I think the difference is, like, they wouldn't even go up there. There's no resource extraction at all during that time. And those, it's not like our seasons are perfectly. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. There's no human presence. Or end game when Chris Evans was talking about the whales swimming in the harbor again.

Yeah. We need a Thanos. That's so cool. And that's not every tribe that did that, but this was a practice of the U tribe in the San Juan Mountains. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough.

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All right, when we mess things up, when Frontiersmen and Explorer showed up in Colorado in the 1800s, the grizzly was far less scared of them and far more scary. Grizzly bears were often shot on site because their reputation from early expeditions like the Lewis and Clark expedition was well known. And Lewis and Clark had killed 43 Grizzlies. Their expedition had killed 43 Grizzlies

during their roughly two years adventuring and probably wounded a ton more because they would essentially shoot at almost any grizzly they saw. But their more devastating effect really came by way of their reports because they described this white bear as pretty much a bloodthirsty monster.

And the killing intensified when trappers came to the area... White? Yeah, they called it a white bear initially, trappers and stuff. That's what they called it, before it got the name grizzly bear. Before they found polar bears. Yeah.

And we're going to dig, into what I'm about to say. Before the word brown was invented maybe? Yeah, brown was it. They're like, we got black and we got white. There's nothing in between. Anyway, so when trappers started showing up, they were getting hides and skulls and claws that they were selling for high prices. Then people started building homesteads and villages and towns and more and more bears were killed in direct conflicts. But we're going to rewind a little bit and we're going to go back to kind of some of those early days. So there were a lot of Grizzlies in Colorado in the early 1800s up to the mid-1800s, and some of them did end up attacking some of their new, entitled neighbors. And the first attack on

record happened in Colorado, or sorry, the first attack on record in Colorado happened on November 13th, 1821. It was a cold fall day, so this is like two days from now. We're recording on the 11th of November. That's crazy. I just realized that. Oh, 11-11. Yeah. numerologists are going ham right now. Make a wish, everyone. Yeah, make a... Right. It's kind of like 9-11, but just the first number's a little different.

But nothing happened. Yeah. Or is that just what the government wants you to think? That's just what they want us to think. Building 7, dude. Ooh, 7-Eleven. That's another good one. Now, oh, man, we are numerologists all of a sudden.

We got to connect these somehow. All right, it's a cold fall day, and this guy, Louis Dawson, was traveling with a group of mountain men near what is now Los Anamis, Colorado. The group had made a midday stop, and some of the men were out to hunt, and some stayed in camp, and some were foraging. And the quiet noises of these men making themselves busy were suddenly shattered by the crack of a gun, and then the sound of someone yelling, white bear, which again is a grizzly bear. Brown bear. All of the men, including Louis Dawson, grabbed their rifles and ran in different directions to try and kill this bear, and they were unaware that this injured bear had actually taken cover in some brush right next to their camp.

And when Dawson ran by that brush, the bear charged out and knocked him to the ground and began shaking him back and forth and biting his skull. Hugh Glenn, one of the leaders of the company, tried to shoot the bear, but his rifle misfired. It seemed like Dawson was about to be ripped apart in front of his friends when a large dog from the company ran out and attacked the bear, drawing its attention away from Dawson. When Dawson got up to run, the bear turned back on him and began ripping into him again with both its teeth and its claws.

Hugh Glenn once again raised his gun to shoot one more time, but again the gun misfired, and then again, the dog charged in and drew the tension of the bear. These guns used to misfire a lot. They weren't very reliable, so this was pretty common. This is like a flint gun. But at this point, this guy with the gun, Glenn, realizes that probably nothing is going to stop this bear from mauling him, too, because it's taking him forever to reload. And he decides that he's going to climb a nearby tree and get away from this enraged grizzly bear.

The bear is still busy with the dog, so Dawson also gets up, the guy that's being mauled, and he limps to the tree and starts climbing up behind Glenn. You guys, how well does tree climbing work with grizzly bears? A little better than with black, right? Better than with black bears for sure. And better than nothing. So Tom is currently, or maybe finished already, working on a paper that kind of goes into all these secondary ways of getting away from bears and how effective they actually are.

And I think his, I'm kind of paraphrasing what he told me, but his findings were that, yeah, it actually does quite often work with grizzly bears, but when it doesn't, it's really, really bad. Because the bear will come up after you. It'll pull you out. and you've given up any kind of chance of getting away, and you might sustain a pretty good fall in the process. So it can work.

It's a good last case scenario, but it's never what you should go for first. It really reduces your options. And the eight, wait, what year was this? This is 1821. So it might be a better option back then. Good plan back then. Yep.

Yeah, it's not like they had bear spray. No bear spray. Their guns took forever to fire. They're low caliber. They didn't have good options. So this is a great option back then. Unfortunately, it wasn't a great option for Dawson. As he's climbing up the tree, the bear decides.

Well, the dog probably scares the bear up the tree. Yeah, maybe. And I honestly, I know, I know people are going to ask what happened to the dog. I don't know. This is from one of the expeditions people's journals, and it's written in like, you can hear this guy spitting into a spittoon as you're reading his thing. So he didn't say anything about the dog.

I don't think they really cared. back then, or maybe they did, who knows. Anyway, as Dawson's climbing this tree, the bear decides to climb up after him, it bites into his leg, rips him out of the tree, and back down on the ground. By now, Glenn, the other guy in the tree, has fixed his rifle, he's loaded another shot and he fires at the bear from the tree and hits it, knocking it over. He climbs down, he grabs Dawson by the leg and pulls him free of this bear, but when he does that, the bear gets back up and charges toward Glenn and Dawson.

But luckily for these two men, at this point, some of the other hunters had shown up, and they all fire at the bear, and they kill it on the spot. So they take Dawson back to camp, and while he's still conscious, he's been really torn up, really badly, especially on his head and his scalp. And he tells the men that he knows he's going to die because he had both heard and felt his own skull cracking in the mouth of the bear. And he was right about that. Now plug your ears, if you're squeamish. because this next detail is a little bit gnarly,

but when these men investigated, they found a large puncture wound from one of the bear's canines near his upper right temple that had gone all the way through his skull and they said that some of his brains were working their way out of that hole into view. Oh, wow.

He must have big brains. He probably just had big old brains in there. They did their best to stitch him up and make him comfortable, but he did die from his injuries three days later. Dawson would be the first person to be killed on record by a grizzly bear in what is now Colorado, and he would also be the first non-indigenous person to be buried in the state, which is kind of cool. Oh, wow.

Probably worth it, right? Yeah, leave your mark on history. Yeah, you get the record. Yeah. He's probably going to die some sickness soon anyway. Yeah, syphilis or something. Yeah. Which isn't a good way to die.

It's kind of like V for Vendetta. How? Well, that scene where he gets shot, but then he goes and he kills the one guy he really wants to kill, and then they all shoot him like a hundred more times and they dies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just remember, remember the 11th of November or whatever. Wait, is that?

The 11th? No. What is it? The 6th of December or something? I don't know. No, it is November? Is it November? It's November?

Yeah, I don't know. Okay, now we got to look it up. I feel like it's the 4th of November. Remember Remember the 5th of November Oh we missed it All right We forgot

Should we quit 511 Jeff's true height All right Don't out me dude Oh I 6 1 I meant 6 2 even Probably In those early

Mountain Man days of Colorado's history There was a lot of other memorable run-ins With grizzly bears The famous trapper and mountain man Kit Carson was out hunting elk in the 1830s, he'd just killed and started processing an elk when two grizzly bears showed up and chased him off this elk.

Without any shots left in his rifle, he ditched his rifle and climbed a nearby tree, which the two bears started to climb up after him. He broke off a large branch and swung it at the nose of the bears, hitting them and causing them to back off and hang out at the base of the tree. They stayed there for a few hours, then they got bored, went back to his elk and ate it, and then he spent the rest of the night in the tree and climbed down back to camp where he told his story.

So those are just kind of illustrative events from the 1800s of this relationship between grizzly bears and white settlers. And it was fraught with conflict, but that conflict was somewhat evenly matched. You know, like these guns didn't work very well. I think the scoreboard was maybe pretty even on both sides. You know, we definitely killed more of them than it did us, but when they got us, they got us good. Right. Yeah. What a, how long did you say that bear was waiting at the base of the tree?

They were there for like five or six hours, I think. Okay. That's not bad. No. It would feel long, though. It would feel really long. Right. Well, I was just thinking, like, with our, with our TikTok brains these days, that bear would have been gone in like three seconds.

Oh, yeah. Like, ah, it would have been so hard. There's nothing going on here. Yeah. Just ADD bears. Yeah. Can? Well, maybe that's not a good question for right now, but

Bears and other animals have Attention deficit disorders? I don't think we have any way of knowing that. That's probably true, huh? Some dogs. Yeah, there's that one, have you guys ever seen that experiment Where they gave a spider, like a bunch of different types of drugs And then watched what happened to its web?

Oh, yeah. And it like on cocaine and meth, it like went all crazy. That's pretty much what Adderall is, right? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know where that doesn't mean. I started taking that when I was like eight. Yeah.

Hey, you know what I'll fix your kid? Methamphetamine. That's the, yeah. And then if he gets too excited, let's give him some downers too. Yeah, his grades are still bad, but he's sitting still. Yeah. That's that. Matt doing the trick.

All right. In the late 1800s, white settlers really started realizing that the combination of lots of winter precipitation and summer sun led to some really good growing conditions in Colorado. And countless farms and ranches started popping up around the state. And at the same time, the timber industry was also really starting to accelerate. And like almost all resource extraction of the time, basically no thought at all was given to the effect.

wildlife and a lot of prime grizzly bear habitat was destroyed as a result. With all this livestock around and with a reduced amount of good habitat, these bears naturally started killing livestock and there was a lot more conflict than there had been previously. So while they're used to have this kind of strained relationship between grizzly bears and white people, now they're ready to completely declare war on predators like grizzly bears and wolves and other predators. So they called professional hunters to come to the state, and these guys killed so many bears that the population quickly fell, and they started to be seen only in the most remote parts of Colorado, places like the San Juan Mountains and the Sangre de Cristo's. Now, this is an interesting time.

It's a really sad time for predators, but it's also an interesting time because this war kind of created some animal heroes. Bears that were especially troublesome or hard to kill started to become a little bit famous and they would make it into newspapers around the country. One of these bears, one of the first of them, was called old two-toes or old clubfoot. And he was a massive male grizzly that was often seen on Grand Mesa. He was especially proficient at killing cattle. And he had earned his nickname in 1890 when he was briefly caught in a foothold trap but managed to free himself losing three of his toes in the process.

It's kind of crazy actually how many of these bears and wolves did this. where they would get caught in a foot trap and manage to, like, lose a couple toes as they got away, and how every single one of them would be like old one toe, old three toes, old club foot, like almost all of their names. They always nicknamed them. Based off of that, which just shows they weren't very creative back then.

They would have got out of that first trap and saw so fast. Yeah, just a saw guy would have just been like, shit. Yeah, he wouldn't even get to wheel out his little bicycle guy. What's that guy called? Jigsaw? Jigsaw. The bear just knocks the saw away. All right.

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A $500 bounty was put on his head, on old two toes, but he continued killing livestock and evading capture until 1902, when a small hunting party decided to go to Grand Mesa to hunt some deer. And in that party was Franklin Manges, who was a bit of a novice but wanted to tag along with these hunters to try and get some game. The hunters were out one day and he was alone in camp, and he got bored, probably after like 20 hours of sitting still and like doing nothing, and picked up his 30-30 and went to go look for a deer.

He was walking alone when he heard a woof behind him and he turned to see a large grizzly bear charging toward him. He froze and the bear broke off of its bluff charge and ran about 60 feet away when Manges raised his rifle and fired. He hit the bear and it sprinted off and then he followed this blood trail through the brush. This guy wants to die apparently. Tracks it a few miles, is crossing a creek

when suddenly the bear stands up above the bushes about 75 feet away. He shoots again, he hits the bear in the shoulder, and then shoots again, and the bear runs off once more. At this point, I think he has like a repeating rifle, so he can get off multiple shots pretty quickly. He runs into the brush where the bear disappeared, and then it charges out at him at about 50 feet away. He starts shooting really fast, and the bear collapses.

And at this point, he had hit this bear, old two toes, 11 times. Wow. Yeah. 50 cent almost. Yeah. He decides to go back. Yeah, how many, he got shot nine times, right? That's what he says, but I don't know about that.

Yeah. I don't believe it. Prove it. Yeah. He decides to go back to camp to tell it. 50 cent just shows up at my door. I could see it. Part two, special guest, 50 cent.

Yeah. He decides to go back to camp and he tells his hunting companions about this bear. and a group of these guys go back to the spot where this bear had died, but it's no longer there. They follow the tracks for about 100 yards, and they see the bear still alive, lying in a thicket, and Maine just takes aim and fires his final shot at the bear, his 12th shot, hitting it under the eye, and finally killing it.

When they inspect the body, they do see that it's missing three toes on the right foot, and this old two toes had finally been killed. All right, but the famous of these marauding grizzly bears in Colorado, at the beginning of the 1900s is old mo's. Why do you guys think he got called old moz? The moz famous one. Moes famous, that's pretty good. Because he was the most famous grizzly bear.

I think you forgot the word most, but that's fine. It's M-O-S-E. I don't know if you'll get it. I'm just going to tell you that. Moses? He was found as a baby bear in a basket in the Nile. I thought these guys love the Bible. It's probably their only book, but that wasn't it.

You got any guesses Jeff? No. He's called old moze because he liked mozying around a lot more than other grizzly bears. No, come on. No one shortens the word mozie to moz. That's ridiculous. They did, Mike.

That's why they called him old moz. And he was famous because he had reportedly killed hundreds of sheep and cows and three people. But only one of those humans. How many sheep you call one person in your view? Was? Like how many, like on the trolley problem, how many like sheep would have to be line up before I hit that switch and let it kill one person? Yeah.

Like 10 billion sheep. Wow. That's like all the sheep in the world, right? I don't know. How many would you guys say? 50. You basically are saying you'd rather have zero sheep in the world than like probably this person's not that. I guess like if everyone lost their sheep in the world, then a lot of people.

are going to die. So, yeah, probably like a couple thousand sheep. I call it even like one to one. Even one to one. You can't make up your mind. Yeah. Yeah. I'm letting the train hit both of them.

Two people equals one cheat. Okay, two to one. In favor of the sheep. Wow. Yeah. Anyways. On the people. All right.

So old Moes had killed hundreds of sheep and cows and three people. And only one of these human deaths was somewhat verifiable. It happened in 1882 when Jake Ratcliffe was hunting with a friend and they stumbled on Old Moes, just mosing around. Ratcliffe fired close range. I don't know why that makes you so mad, Mike. It's ridiculous. I loved it. Oh, my gosh.

Old Moes immediately turns to attack. Ratcliffe quickly realizes how big of a mistake he's made, but not quick enough to get another shot off. all he manages to do is smash the butt of his rifle into the face of this huge charging grizzly bear before it's on top of him and mauling him and it mauled the shit out of him this bear essentially ripped off the back part of his neck with its mouth, broke one of his legs

completely shredded both of his thighs and ripped one of his arms completely off oh man he did this guy died which it's kind of fun when you talk about these ones from like the 1800s because it's like we can just kind of say whatever we want but yeah he died from this bear the other two of deaths attributed to old Moes probably didn't happen

I would say almost certainly didn't happen because the story behind him is that two human skeletons were found near the entrance of a den that he commonly used in the winter but I feel like if they knew where he was denning they would have been able to kill him pretty easily. Like chucked some dynamite in there. Yeah. Oh, everyone wanted old Mo's dead.

Oh, yeah. Gets he killed all that shit. What were the skeletons, posed in an interesting way? I don't think so, but I'm not sure. Wasn't the Pompeii volcano explosion? Didn't they find volcanoes having sex and stuff?

I think they're just like hugging. Yeah. Oh, hugging. That's kind of the same thing for. Some people prefer just a hug. It's not even close. One thing leads to the other. My neighbor puts like little decorations on her door throughout the year.

So maybe the bears did that with its den. It's possible like a little reef. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like it's not going to find anything much better than a skull. Maybe like a big horn sheep skull, but human skull would be cool. It would be the coolest, like predator. He's got that little wall of skulls.

If Hugging counted as sex, I would have like, the highest body count because I love giving hugs. You do like hugs. All right. That's actually because, yeah, I won't even bring up how many times I've hugged. Okay. Yeah, never mind. I take that back.

Okay. Here's the thing, though. Maybe bleep that out. If they were having sex and the volcano erupted, we could easily say like they're probably just hugging. That's true. Sure. If you're just looking at their bones, it's like, yeah, they would just hugging, trying to say stay.

Yeah, but have you ever seen them? They're like both like front to front and like their crotches aren't together. 69 in. I just don't think I've ever. That position that they're in doesn't seem like it would work. But I. Whatever, dude. Okay.

I'll agree with you though. Mo's only got one. He only got one. Maybe someone killed some people and like tried to blame him on old Moe. That's a good frame. Yeah. It stuck because they really wanted to kill old Moes, but he was really hard to kill.

He's a smart old bear, and he'd managed to steal a lot of bait from a lot of traps. The only time he was ever caught in a trap was when one was placed underwater and therefore had no scent, so he couldn't realize that it was a trap. He did get free of that trap, though, and he left two toes behind,

so he was old three toes. Yeah. And dozens of hunters tried to kill him over the years, Many of them successfully actually shot old mows, but they all failed to kill him until 1904 when a famous bear hunter from Idaho and Wyoming decided to try his luck. This guy's name was James W. Anthony,

and his secret weapon was a pack of hound dogs that they were very good at chasing down grizzly bears and baying them up. You guys know what baying up a bear means? Jeff, you know this. It's in there. Is it just getting them up a tree? Close. That's treying. So if that's treing, what's baying?

Getting them in the ocean. Getting him in the, yeah, Hudson Bay. Ah, no. Bang just kind of means they surround the bear and push it up against a place where it doesn't want to run anymore. So sometimes that'll be against like a rock wall or against just an area. With grizzly bears, if dogs chase them long enough, they'll finally just kind of turn around and decide that they're going to fight. And then the dogs just kind of know to keep a certain distance and it just keeps the bear in one spot. Okay, so that's his...

I think this guy needs to pick one place to be from. You can't be from two states. Idaho and Wyoming. Yeah, I don't even think they were states though back then. So I think he was just from that part of the country, those territories. But fair. I think that's fair. Yeah.

Coming from the guy that every time he tells someone where he's from, it's somewhere else. Yeah, that's what I was to say. If anyone asks where you were from, you'd have like 10 answers. Yeah. So, when he's not fair, he's not to say, that's true. Yeah. When he arrived in Colorado, it took Anthony about a month to finally find a fresh track from Old Moes. And when he did, his hounds were on the chase.

He followed the barking dogs and found them surrounding the biggest grizzly bear that he'd ever seen. He dismounted from his horse, walked up close to the bear and the dogs and raised his rifle. He fired, but his aim was off, and when he shot, he hit Old Moes in the throat. And his dogs have been taught to back off. That doesn't seem like too bad of a shot. Yeah, it sounds like a pretty... you want to hit a bear. There's a lot in there that it'll just pass through

and not do any real damage. And that's what happened in this case. The dogs have been taught to back off at the sound of his rifle too. So when he shot, they backed off. And old Moes did his thing. What did he do, Mike? Woof?

No, he bayed the dogs. He mooseyed off into the bush. Just mozied off. Just like a slow mozy. That's what it says that he just slowly walked off into the brush. Wow. But then his intrusive thoughts got the best of him, old Moes,

and he decided he wasn't actually going to walk away, and he turned and charged at his tormentors. Anthony fired a few more shots at essentially point-blank range, and one of them grazed Old Moes' neck and caused him to break off his charge. This guy's really good at hitting him in the neck, but that's not where he's aiming. Anthony, who's got to be really brave,

decides that he's not going to accept a stalemate, and he runs up behind Old Moes, and he fires another shot. This bullet actually hits him behind the shoulder and then goes through his shoulder, passes through his lungs, and exits out his breast. And now Old Moses pissed. He turns to charge. But Anthony was ready for this charge. And he fires his final shot.

This shot actually separated the part of Old Moses' spine that connects his neck to his head. And it was enough to drop this big old bear. But like the best slasher's movie slasher's, or in my opinion, the best movie he, heroes, however you want to look at this. Old Moes still struggled one last time to get up and move forward toward his attacker, but his strength gave out and he fell, breathing his last breath. When they examined his body, they found somewhere around 20 healed bullet wounds and one old bullet that was still lodged in his spine. His skull was 14 inches across and 15 inches long and it was the largest

ever grizzly bear skull measured from Colorado. It's a lot of bullets to get shot by. It's a lot more than 50 cent. It's true. 50 cent ain't shit, dude. You can come to my house. I don't care. Actually don't. Please don't. When he needed

freaking doctors to help him out a bear than eating doctors. Yeah, just walked off. You ever see the music video for Inda Club? He's got like a whole fleet of physicians and stuff just training him. Eminem comes and checks up on him. He's doing those like upside down hanging sit-ups.

I do kind of remember that. Maybe he did get shot by all those bullets. He's tough. Yeah. I mean, he has scars from some of them for sure. Yeah. Okay. We'll give it to him.

Yeah. All right. So in the late 1800s and early 1900s, we enter the real heyday of the grizzly slaughter in Colorado. And that was made much much easier with the proliferation of higher caliber, multiple shot rifles. Tomorrow morning is knocking. Stock your fridge now.

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so you can get your gym gains on. Or just get lunch. For only 250. Get more value on the under $3 menu. Limit time only, prices and participation may vary, prices may be higher for delivery. So we're going to take a quick look at two different historical accounts about grizzly bears in Colorado that are just 55 years apart. So in 1855, Captain J.W. Gunnison is surveying the wilds of South Central Colorado, and he says the following when he's talking about the Sangre de Christo Mountains, which are the mountains that border to the present-day Great Sand Dunes National Park. This is what he said.

Sportsman's spirits are excited by grouse and pheasants, deer and grizzly bear, in every valley and every glen. So he pretty much said that every valley in glen he saw there was a grizzly bear in it. And then in 1911, 55 years later, the Department of Agriculture sponsored a biological survey of the state. And federal biologist Merritt Carey had this to say about grizzlies at that point. At present, grizzly bears are uncommon, if not rare, in the northern me. mountains, but are occasionally seen in the wilder mountains of southern Colorado, particularly in the San Juan, La Plata, and San Miguel ranges. Small numbers are found in the San Juan Mountains north of Pagosa Springs in Balacito.

In an average of one or two had been killed north of Pagosa Springs every spring until 1907 when none were killed. Grizzlies were quite common in the higher San Juan Mountains as late as 1873. I have no data of this bear along the eastern slopes or the front range, and it appears now to be extremely rare or entirely absent. So just in those short 55 years, we went from having a bear in almost every single valley in Glenn to people hardly ever seeing them anywhere in the state. It really goes to show just how effective this all was.

But we're going to get into how got even worse for them. And the true death knell really came for them in the early 1900s when the U.S. federal government got actively involved in the wholesale slaughter of predators in an effort to ramp up livestock in agriculture production. Okay, bear with me here. A big step in that process was the formation of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Predator and Rodent Control Branch,

which was called PARC for short. And the PARC got really wild with their tactics for killing predators, and no method was deemed too extreme or inhumane. This is another little trigger warning because some of the stuff they did to these animals was terrible, but I do think it just merits kind of saying this,

because it's part of our history here in the U.S. One of the most sadistic trapping methods they used was what was called a keg trap. And this is essentially a big beer keg that was baited, and they drove all these big spike-sized nails into the keg. So these nails are pointing inward inside of the keg. And then they'd put the bait in the back. And when the bear or the wolf or whatever stuck its head in to get that bait, these nails would catch on it.

And as they tried to struggle to get out, they would drive in further. and they would drive in far enough that they were stuck into the animal, and then they have a beer keg stuck on their head, and most of these animals would just die from starvation, and they're also an incredible pain from all these nails driving into their head. So it's a terrible way to kill an animal. I can't think of a much worse way, and thinking of a grizzly bear with one of these on its head

makes me so sad and angry that I almost don't even know how to process that. It's just so terrible. Like even when you see a video of just a bear with like a bucket stuck, on its head. It's sad. And this is just unbelievable. So. Yeah. Okay. A more effective and less inhumane, but still really terrible method they used was something called a coyote getter. Now it's basically a bait that's booby-trapped with an exploding cyanide bullet that would literally blast into the mouth of the animal unlucky enough to eat

this bait. So they'd bite into the bait and this thing would explode cyanide into their mouth. Which isn't like, if you're going to die, that's not the worst. worst way to die. You're going to die in like seconds. Yeah. But it's the problem with something like this, the biggest, I mean, it's already a huge problem, but it's totally not targeted toward anything. So you can put this bait out and you might have

ground squirrels come up to it and feed on it. Coyotes, wolves, vultures, golden eagles, bears. Anything that might want a free meal could get exploded by this thing. Javier Bardem, he didn't die. So maybe that's like a Javier. Beardom.

Yeah. Out there that lived through it. It's got like a huge grudge against the CIA or whatever. Am I? Do you guys think he's the best bond villain of the like modern ones? Oh, I don't know. Le Schiefe is so good. Ooh, Lechefe is really good.

Casino Royale or whatever that. Just smack in his balls with that thing. Dude. He sure does hit him. He hits him so hard. That's a good villain move. Yeah. When I watch that movie, it's like, oh,

I'd be dead after the first one of those. I'd just be done. Right? I'd tell him anything. Like, anything he wants to know. It seems like for the rest of the five Daniel Craig movies, he would just kind of be like not. He shouldn't ever be able to have sex again in his life.

Like his balls were overrised. Yeah. Right. That's a fun thing to think about, actually. Yeah. Jeff, you got nothing to say about that. Yeah. Come on.

I mean, I'm pretty sure he had sex afterward. He sure did, ninty. We saw it. That's the difference between the common man and 007. They can take... He can take that. He was getting hit. He was joking.

Yeah. He said a little bit to the left. Yeah. I like that scene. He was ripped in that scene, too. I think Bardam's film is my best of the Craig villains. I really like him. Did you use cyanide in the bear collars when you

blew their heads off. No. Oh my gosh. We did not. So inhumane. And we didn't blow any bare heads off. All right. This cyanide thing, this coyote getter, was extremely effective.

And they used it all the time. And aside from the indigenous people that still remained in Colorado, almost no one seemed to care that they were doing this. So while these government trappers are really running roughshot all over the Predators in Colorado and elsewhere in the West, the war against predators was officially codified into law with the passage of the Animal Damage Control Act in 1931. It was a terrible act. It created a new federal agency that was charged with the eradication, suppression, or bringing under control of animals injurious to agriculture. So basically any animal that threatened

agriculture in any way was deemed an enemy of the United States. Man. And they were, yeah. It's crazy now, though, to see predators doing so well. Yeah, yeah. And running the government? Sexual predators, yeah. That's a good point. Yeah.

Or dominating the box office when they don't deserve you. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point, Jeff. Predators are having a real heyday right now. It's like either side predators are going to win. Yeah.

You can be the president of the United States. Basically the idea was that even more government trappers were given the full-time job of killing as many predators as possible, all in order to maximize profits and the output of ranchers and farmers. And I want to take a minute that reading and researching all of this did make me think to be a little bit appreciative of how far we've come politically when it comes to conservation. But I do think the current climate here in the U.S. has swung back toward the idea of maximum profit over everything else. And that does, it does feel like we're kind of drifting back toward a concerning view of wildlife as like almost like it's, you know, like the frosting on top. It's something that, I don't know, what am I trying to say? You know, it's not something that actually matters. It's just kind of like a bonus.

Sure. We just need like a way to get fossil fuel involved with it, like with windmills where they're like, think about all the birds they kill. Like if windmills were killing bears, it'd be like, oh, man, we got to save these bears. Yeah. You know. Yeah, right. That's true. If, yeah, if we can tie the plight of predators into, like, pushing forward fossil fuels.

Yeah. Yeah. I had one question for you. Uh-huh. So, like, I know Colorado has the most elk of any state. Yeah. I think that's true. I was wondering, do you think, where do you think, like, Colorado?

Colorado ranked for grizzly bears during this time period, like during like the heyday of grizzly bears in America. I think pretty high. And the reason I think that is because they were the last state where they were completely eradicated. The states that now have grizzly bears are the ones that still had them. So I think outside of like Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Washington and Alaska, obviously, Colorado probably was the next highest when it came to grizzly bear population.

would be my guess. California probably had a lot too, because California has some great habitat. But Colorado is pretty much all grizzly bear habitat, aside from the far eastern part of the state. So that'd be my guess. You think a bear ever climbed a sequoia, a redwood? I'm sure black bears climb them, yeah.

Like all the way to the top, that's cool. Yeah. I don't know if they've gone all the way to the top, but probably. Just like the Alex Holmold of black bears. Yeah, free solo. It's too bad Nevada got rid of all theirs before they could see this sphere. Yeah. It would have loved it.

It's really sad. I think about that all the time. All right. In the early 1900s, these trappers were responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of Colorado bears, both black and grizzly. And in 1941, just 10 years after the passage of the Animal Damage Control Act, it was thought that only about 12 grizzlies were still surviving in Colorado. It's not enough. Nope.

All of them were thought to be in the areas in and around the San Juan Mountains. Quickly, let's take a quick minute to talk about the San Juan's. Have either of you been to the San Juan Mountains? Yes, sir. Where have you been, Mike? Do you remember? I don't remember exactly, no. Okay.

Well, if you're out there wondering, like, where the San Juan's are, if you've ever been to, like, Telluride or Silverton, Colorado, or Ure, Colorado, those are in the San Juan mountains. They're high, rugged peaks. There's 13 peaks in the San Juan's that are higher than 14,000 feet. P, 14,000 p. And they, there's a lot of almost shockingly blue high mountain lakes. The bluest lake I've ever seen in my life was Columbine Lake in the San Juan Mountains. It was almost unbelievably blue. They have some of the most beautiful mountains that I've ever personally been in. And they really do seem like Grizzan. like prime grizzly bear habitat.

And this range stretches really far too. It's about 150 miles from southwestern Colorado into northern New Mexico. So it makes sense that this kind of would kind of be the last stronghold of these grizzly bears in Colorado. That's where they reintroduced links, I believe. They may have. Yeah. Yeah.

I think there's something like 250. I forget how many they re-released, but that was kind of a big story around the time we were living there. Yeah. And I don't know if you could really even. put grizzly bears back there because there are so many little mountain towns scattered throughout now, but they would do great if they did go back in there. It's great habitat. But for these trappers, 12 grizzlies was still 12 too many. One of the more successful government trappers was named

Lloyd Anderson. He decided to wage a personal war on some of the last few remaining grizzlies in the San Juan's. In 1952, he was called into the San Juan's to the headwaters of the Los Pinos River, where a bear had killed over 30 sheep. He set a foothold trap in what's called a cubby, which is like essentially a shoot that you build out of logs and stuff, that funnels the bear into an area where the trap is set. And he managed to trap what was thought to be the last grizzly bear in the entire state of Colorado,

a big sow with two yearling cubs, which both escaped. But people still thought this was the last grizzly. It doesn't make any sense. Don't ask me to explain that. Still got credit. Yeah, the government pretty much said, we got them all. We got them all.

And he was even like, just so you guys know, there's two cubs that got away and they're like, nope, all the grizzlies are dead. It's kind of interesting how Lloyd was a hero for that. And now he's kind of a villain in at least our eyes. Yeah. There's a really kind of pensive chapter of the book where the author interviews one of these guys that was a government trapper back in that day. And he had killed one of the last Grizzlies, and he, like, asks him how he felt about that. And he's like, I mean, I regret it. But back of the time, that was my job.

You know, and he kind of goes into how he feels about it. But the government, the local government of Colorado. That's what the Nazis said. Yeah. That's true. I'm not excusing it. But that's true. That's what they said.

Yeah. I'm not saying he's a Nazi, but, I mean, that's what the Nazis said. So you come to your own conclusion. conclusion. And I'm just, yeah, I'm just going to let you say that and I'm not going to say anything else. The government made a big deal out of saying that this bear was the last grizzly in Colorado and two years later they officially declared the species extirpated in the state and Anderson was told that he could no longer shoot grizzlies even if you saw one. And this begins the ghost grizzlies period of Colorado, which basically was a span of time where people would report seeing grizzly

bears in ranges like the San Juan's or the Sangare de Crease those, but the state and federal government really didn't make too much of an effort to deny or to verify those claims. They kind of just let them claim whatever, but no one really checked into it. These white settlers that had never gotten permission from the Great Bear to go into the mountains had now slaughtered one of the most spiritually and biologically important animals of the Rockies. And over the next 25 years from 1954 to 1979, officials received a lot of reports of grisly sightings in Colorado, from hunters, from trappers, from hikers, from forest service workers. Some of these sightings were solitary males, others were females with cubs, some were just tracks in

the mud. Even Lloyd Anderson, this trapper, who was certain that he'd killed the last grizzly bear, aside from those two cubs, filed five reports of new grizzly bear sightings, but they all went ignored. And most of these reports came from the San Juan Mountains. And what the state would pretty much just say is, oh, you saw a black bear, it's hard to tell the difference between the two. You saw a black bear. That's what you always say. I do say that it's hard, but I'm very good at telling those two apart. Whenever someone sees a bear in Colorado, you say you saw a black bear. It just looks brown.

Yes. And we're going to talk about that in the next episode a little bit. But you scoffed irisively. It's pretty insulting, actually. I don't usually scoff derisively. But maybe if it was like a bear biologist, I would. I would say you should know better, man. Come on.

For the next 25 years, grizzly bears were considered extinct in the state, even though a lot of these people who knew the mountains best, and had a lot of experience with grizzly bears were reporting sightings. But as those sightings died down and were fewer and further in between, just about everyone started to agree that the grizzly bear was truly forever gone from the centennial state. But the ghost grizzly would make one last appearance, 1979, and it would be one that was soaked in blood. And that's on next week's episode.

Really? Yeah. It's a crazy story. Geez, I thought they're all dead Nope, that's what you think Jeff But they're not Oh my God Well, they are now

But they weren't in 1979 I think Yeah Yeah, I'm pretty Pretty confident now I would say like 99.9% confidence That there's no Grizzlies in Colorado But again, we're gonna talk about that next week

Okay You finkers got any questions Buh No Okay That's because of how I ask Yeah. Yeah.

You think I've been thinking about Grizzly Bear with Infinity Stones? I forget why I was thinking about those two things together. Bears can't snap, though, so I don't think that would really do anything. I feel like if you had the Infinity Stones, it would just, there would just suddenly be like Huckleberries everywhere. You know? That's a future. They only had two fingers. Yeah.

And they're like hard ones to snap, like a pinky and a pointer. You can't really snap. Snap with those. Yeah, it might be wasted on a grizzly way. Yeah. It makes sense that that's not what happened in the movies, that it wasn't a grizzly bear. To me, that makes sense.

But I'm glad we finally talked about it. Any other questions? That was your question. Is just what, if they had the infinity stones? Yeah. It's a good one. I got my answer. I'm satisfied.

All right Well let's go on to our categories then Great I'm curious what your favorite culture Favorite pop culture That takes place in Colorado is That's a terrible way to ask that question What's your favorite pop culture that takes place in Colorado

Sorry I feel like Yoda You look like Yoda I kind of do Which one? I'm going to go with dumb and dumber I think that was like the ones That really, it made some good jokes about Colorado.

It was actually, like, pretty scenic, you know? It makes you feel like, oh, I'm in Colorado right now. Yeah, right. I feel like it was during a time to... When Colorado was, like, super boozy, it was, like, the place to go if you're, like, wanting to, like, have a ski vacation, you know? Aspen just seemed, like, the nicest place in the country. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

Which one was dumb and which one was dumber? That's a good question. Lloyd Christmas seems like the dumber of the two. Yeah. I think. But I don't know. They're both really dumb. They're so dumb.

That's the, yeah, that's the crux of the humor, in fact. Yeah. I thought that was the funniest movie ever for most of my life. And it is really funny. Yeah. But it doesn't quite hit like you used to. That was my pick too. But I have a backup.

But Mike, why don't you go next? I'm going to go, so basically, I'm just going to say pick your favorite band and go watch a live recording at Red Rocks of their performance because basically every band of note has a really high quality live recording. But for the intent of this category, I'm going with Primus. Is that what? No. Primus, their 2010 show at Red Rocks, they played Golden Boy, which is my favorite song. It's off their Brown album. They just rarely play it live. And Larry, Larry, he has like the sickest guitar. tar part and the solo is just amazing. In Primus, they always put on a good show. So, yeah, that's mine. Did they play the South Park theme song in Colorado?

They should have. You would hope so. They would have written it by then, yeah. So maybe. Oh, South Park. I didn't even think about South Park. But I'm going to say the Shining. Shining's in Colorado.

And Dr. Sleep. They're both great. They're both in Colorado. So those be my picks. Yeah. The overlook. Brokeback. Is that in Colorado?

No, that's in Wyoming. Ah, yeah. Wrong. Those states are shaped the same, though, so it's basically... They're all squares. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Next category is your favorite movie that is a last movie. So, for example, the last Jedi or the last of the Mohicans. Gone with Indiana Jones. Oh, the Last Crusade. Yeah, it's my favorite of the three. I won't say it's the best because that's a dumb and inane thing to say. Plus, I think, objectively, it kind of inarguable that Raiders is. is like maybe the most perfect action movie.

I don't know. I'm getting into dangerous territory, but I do prefer Last Crusade. It's just got it all. Raiders feels like an action movie, and Last Crusade's almost like a buddy movie. It is a little. Sean Connery is so funny in it.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. What's yours, Jeff? I feel like it's crazy. Use the Last of Mohicans as a... You can use it. Example. You can use it.

Titanic for Men. Dude, speaking of really boring, that night in the chamber of the goblets, just like sitting there for a billion years, not doing anything? Staring at those goblets. Probably jerked off a lot. All right. You got to imagine. Jeff, what's your last stuff movie?

No, it would probably be last Mexicans. The Last Survivor. Last podcast on the left. Yeah, I like that. The last dance was a... Ooh, yeah. There you go. I'm going to pick Ferngoly the last rainforest.

I loved that movie when it came out. I loved. You remember the guy, the bad guy that's all made of grime and smoke and stuff? Right. It's so good. I had a big crush on Ferengoli. Oh, yeah. What was their name?

What if you said, like, the bat? Yeah, really. What's the bat? I'm thinking of the bat from Anastasia. The bat was Robin Woolie. Williams. Baddy. His name was Batty.

Not very creative. Hexas was the victim, played by Tim Curry. Always good. Of course it was Tim Curry. Yeah. All right. Oh yeah, and Tonlock was the big lizard, which is really cool. Tonloak.

Tonloak. Am I saying it wrong? Okay. The rapper? Yeah. Tonloak. My bad. Okay.

If someone is trying to trap you personally, what would they use for bait? And for your answers, I want a food. thing and a non-food thing. What are just two things you wouldn't be able to turn down, even though you maybe are worried that there might be a trap nearby? Yeah, I mean, for food, it'd be like a box of pizza with one slice missing. Yeah. Why is one slice missing?

Just because, like, it's not my pizza, but it shows me someone already ate a slice, so it's like fair game now. Yeah. It's not poison. Is that how that works? Yeah. Whenever there's slice missing. I don't want to be, like, the first person to eat someone else's pizza.

Like, they ordered the pizza. Okay. You know? Yeah. Sure. That's considered it. Yeah. Yeah.

And then. How about your non-food thing? Non-food thing, I would probably have, like, that's tough, actually. The ring of power. Yeah. It's hard to turn that down. Just because it's called to me. Yeah.

Right. That's a good one. You know, it would call to me. I don't think I could resist that. No, there's no way. Yeah, I had picked a maple bar donut for my food because I just feel like that's the hardest thing for me not to take It's not like it's my favorite thing, but if there's just one out I think like 99 times out of a hundred I'm taking it, you know?

You're at least going to check it out. Yeah, I'm gonna take a bite and then that's my donut I take when I'm just shopping and I just want a little snack while I'm shopping and then literally take yeah Yeah. Without. My non-food thing would be just a really pretty rock, I think, would be the trickiest thing because I'm going to want to take it and pick it up. But it's not going to throw off any alarms or make me feel like I'm about to get trapped. So that'd be the thing that would trap me.

What about like a T-Rex school? Ooh, that's good. It would be hard not to pick up a T-Rex school. I think it'd be hard to pick one up, right? Aren't they pretty heavy? They're very heavy. Nicholas Cage does it. Does he own a T-Rex?

school? Or was that Leo? No, it's Nicholas Cage. I know. I think a lot. Leo has one too. Shit, yeah. What kind of pretty stone? Are we talking like gemstone or?

I'm talking like just a really pretty like blue stone, like a piece of turquoise or something. Would be really hard for me not to pick up or like a really pretty green stone. Blues and greens always catch my eye. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to go with a nice plump slice of carrot cake. Been into that recently. I love carrot cake.

Oh, man. With the one we had in Costa Rica was pretty good. I had real legit cream cheese frosting on it. Great time with that. The ratio, sometimes they load too many raisins in there, and I'm not too big a fan of that. So you need to get that, I don't know, like six raisins per slice is what I'm thinking. Right? Yeah, sure. Okay. And then speaking in Nick Cage, I think I'm going to take the Declaration of Independence. Because what man amongst us would not be tempted to procure the Declaration of Independence. That's true. There might be some stuff on there, some treasure maps.

Yeah. Just like a treasure map would be a good answer, too. Yeah. That's true. No way I'm turning that down. Because then I won't have, people probably won't be chasing me, at least like government officials. Maybe they would.

I don't know. Well, like, all right. And I'm just thinking, the Declaration of Independence, like, there's a pretty good chance there's a treasure map on it, but you could. you say a treasure map yeah yeah that's true there's no guarantee i could if anyone infringed on my basic human rights i could just pull it out though and be like i don't know what to tell you i've got this declaration here that says i'm i'm allowed to exercise my rights as a human here in this country that's true you'd you'd always have that uh so when when me and mike first started being friends

and jeff uh but jeff and mike started a little earlier than than me but when i first met Mike, I was pretty proud of being from the state of Montana, which I still am. And Jeff is too. And we bragged about it a lot. And Mike would talk about Colorado. And as kind of a joke, Mike would send me the most depressing photos ever of Colorado. We've talked about this before. But it would just be like a kind of brownish stream with like in November, late November and just like no real context. Just really. weird photos like photos that if you got from a friend that wasn't Mike you'd be like hey are you okay man like are you doing all right and it makes me want to visit yeah and he'd say look at

Colorado so I asked Mike to do five reasons to visit Colorado kind of like this is like a blurb you would read on an airport magazine or something all right what do you got for us should we adjust it to say to visit Colorado instead of Montana sure yeah you won't find any of these things in well yeah we'll see i'm going sick oh mode on this one you guys by the end of the first thing bullet point you guys are going to be like oh my gosh he was right all along so first up is glenwood canyon you've been you drive through that canyon you'll be that you'll think you're driving through a movie set basically that is a beautiful can you feel yeah and if you want to take that little offshoot up towards hanging lake uh pretty cool hike

and then at the end of glenwood canyon lies glenwood springs can visit doc Call it is Gravesdown. That's pretty sick, right? It is. This one is not like, you can't really go there in order to visit this place specifically, at least not all the way. But if you're ever flying into Denver, yeah, the airport's kind of cool. There's Blusifer, the haunted horse.

Yeah, the haunted stallion. There's gargoyles. There's all kinds of cool art. Some Illuminati conspiracy going on in there. Dead leopard with like women's clothing around it. You'll get that, yeah, in the baggage claim of the international ingestion point. That was weird. That was a weird.

You get to hike. If you really want to hike in Colorado, guess what? You get your steps in. Just go to customs. You get to hike about three miles. Yeah. It was wild. Longest walk I've ever done in airport somehow.

Beaver Creek is my favorite mountain upon which to snowboard. I think it's the best, but that's just a personal preference. but there's all kinds of awesome ski resorts, Breckenridge, we got steamboat, Vail right next door, Aspen, of course. Rare, but like I brought up earlier, it is not impossible that you'll cross paths with a lynx while you're up in those, them there mountains in the Vale Valley.

We got Palisade Peaches, which is one of those fruits, you know, peaches. I love peaches. Like Nick Cage at the start of Face Off, he's talking about eating a peach. For now. I think he's talking about Palisade Peaches, but I'm not sure. Or call you, call me by your name.

Also a great peach scene in that movie. True. Yeah. What do you think, Jeff? What peach do you think? Kind of doing like an innuenda. Oh, is that what he's doing, you think? I thought, sir.

Yeah. Peaches are essential fruit, turns out. Yeah, it's true. And while you're in Palisade, you can see the cool little plateaus. That's a pretty little pocket of Colorado. I like that place. This is like the western slope. This is where I spent most of my time when I lived in Colorado, so nothing really on the eastern half.

And then last point is the Winter X games, which are held every year in Aspen. That's fun. That's always a good time. The snowmobile, there's like, that's a big air snowmobile. That's a wild event. That's worth seeing live at least once. It's really weird. When they switch faces, he probably still like peaches just as much with the,

new face, right? Like, they still have the same tongues and stuff. You think? Oh, you're right. Yeah. Because the taste buds don't change. They didn't do a, yeah, taste buds off. It did kind of fun to eat peaches with someone's new face.

You know that John Travolta's wife just loved that peach eating. Seems like, yeah, really. Wow. All right. If you ate a peach with someone else's face, you wouldn't have to worry about, like, how gross and slimy you got it. Yeah. I wish I could borrow someone's face every time I eat a peach.

Right. Your favorite wildlife moment from Costa Rica, I'm going to go first. Mine was the first red-eyed tree frogs that we saw. Like, I know they're really common there. I know they're easy to find. But that's just like an iconic frog that I had just seen in photos and videos and movies at the rainforest cafe over and over and over again my entire life. and just like a symbol of the rainforest

and seeing the first ones we saw in live, which seeing them live on the Caribbean side with like the bright blue down the sides and stuff, I was just like pretty mesmerized by how cool they look. So that was my favorite, I think. They were sweet. Yeah. How about you guys?

I'm going to say, and this is a shout out to an episode Jeff and I did by ourselves, which you've probably listened to you by now, Wes. I'm sure. we saw the cordyceps mushroom zombie ant happening on a night hike and it was like far from the most head-turning kind of thing

you could see out on a hike like that but just the fact that I had talked a little bit about it in an episode and it just slipped from my brain as one of those things that's that's cool but I'll probably never see that really and then we did and our guide said it was actually really rare so I felt that was really kind of a lucky

and special moment for me at least, but it's really cool just to see some mushrooms sprouting out of the back of this ant and waiting to spread its spores. It was really sweet. He did say that about like 10 things we saw. That's true. Yeah.

It does though. When I've seen that in documentaries, I always thought like this probably happened like five times. You know, it probably hardly ever happens. But then seeing it made me think like, oh, wow, this is like we're witnessing something really cool here. It's so cool. I'll go with the third sloth we saw.

Just like a really good view of it. My sloth episode I did forever ago gave me such an appreciation for them being able to survive. So I don't know. I thought it was really cool to see how well they blend into their surroundings and like how well they've adapted to the world. Yeah. Yeah. I like that for sure. That's a good pick.

All right, I've got a couple listener questions from Patreon. This one is from Hannah. Hannah says, could you please tell me who you would F, marry, and kill out of Quint, Hooper, and Brody from Jaws? F? Yeah. All of them, I think. I'd kill Hooper. He's kind of annoying.

That's what I was going to say. He's a little annoying. Yeah. Critical part of the team, of course. but yeah. I'm gonna f***, I'm gonna kill Hooper. I'm marrying Brody.

Married Brody. I think marrying Brody's good. I don't know. He is kind of like there's some weird stuff going on there. That's true. And he's kind of anxious. Like you're gonna get a little tired of

like him telling you what to do all the time. Yeah. In part two, Jaws 2, he loses his job and he's kind of a burnout alcoholic type. So I'd be married to Quinn because he's gone all the time anyway, right? That's what I was about to say.

Quint's always out like chasing his demons. Oh, that's true. I'd marry Quint. I'll fuck Brody married Quint because Quinn gets eaten by the shark. Life insurance policy probably paid out pretty decent on that if you're married to him. Good call, yeah. And plus, like, it's suck, though. Whenever he wants to get your attention, you just scratch his nails on a chalkboard, though.

That'd get pretty annoying. Just any time he wants to talk about anything. He just carries a little like chalkboard around his waist everywhere he goes. I think I'm going to fuck Hooper because in the book he has sex with Brody's wife. So he must be like quite the lethario if he's able to pull that off so quickly. And I'll kill Brody marrying. We're all marrying Quinn. Wow.

You know? Am I going to kill my guy Roy? I love Roy though. Yeah. Nope. I'm still. Yeah, I'm killing Hooper still. Okay.

All right. I've got a few more here. This one is from Derek. Derek says, Jeff and Mike, did you see Tom Brady wearing a one-piece shirt on one of his interviews?

Does that make up for him smooching his son on the lips? Wait. I did. I thought it was really cool. And I hope that he's a fan of it and not just like having a person dress him in what the kids think is cool

or something. I think it's 50-50 chance either way. Like he does have kids that would be into it, so I could see that being like a bonding thing. And also kissing his kid is a bonding thing. Right. Listen, he had a Brazilian wife. I'm sure she brought that culture into the household.

I don't know. A lot of people kiss. They love kissing. Their kids, you know. It's a little weird, but I don't shame kid kissers. Because I don't think it would. I thought it was obviously a non-sexual thing and just a loving thing. Of course.

I agree. I can't imagine. I love my dad. He is the best person I know. But like if he had kissed me on the lips, we would be estranged right now. Oh, yeah. I'd stick my head in one of those keg traps if my dad kissed me on the other. Cyanide bomb myself or whatever.

Yeah, I mean, but your dad's pretty cool, but he's no Tom Brady. That's true. Yeah, I can't. If I'm Tom Brady's kid, when dad goes to bed, I'd be like, what, no kiss? Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, what, the greatest quarterback of all time kissed you on the lips and you're going to complain about it to your therapist?

I don't think so, dude. That's a good point. All right, this one's from Bear. Bear called Bear. First time question, hey, guys, it finally happened at the time of writing. I've listened to every single episode. I'm pretty sure this makes me an official bonafide wildlife biologist just like Jeff. I've been sitting on this question for 200 episodes because I want to make sure no one had asked it yet.

I hope that each of you has had the wonderful experience of delivering a perfect slap on the ass to someone at least once in your life. Not in a sexual way, but in a way that a good high five just feels so good. I'm going to throw a consensual slap in the ass there. With this in mind, the question is, if you could smack one animal on the butt, Without any negative consequences to you or the animal, what animal would you choose? Mine is a hippo. That's what they said, not me. Okay.

Hippo's a good choice. Yeah. That's a really good question. I have smacked a bison on the butt before. I would smack. I mean, my mind always goes to pandas. Because they're so rare. Really?

And it just feels like such a nice butt to smack. Do you know whose butts I was really impressed by it? or zebra. They got like a sturdy, thick rump. They do have a nice butt. Horse butt. Yeah.

And like if you smack a zebra, you're expecting to get kicked really hard afterwards. So if you get a free smack, that's got to feel really good. That's a good pick. It's a great pick. I think I'll go mandrel.

Oh, I like that. Okay. Those red, like, nasty butts. Yeah. Yeah. How cool. Smack that. Yeah.

That, like, good lumpy butt. Cool. All right. Yeah. This one is from Emily. Emily says, question for Wes. Please explain how are why centipedes are so freaky for you. They're not so freaky.

They're just like the one thing. When you licked a smush spider right off the floor. Is it the legs? Did you ever eat a centipede? The spider floor snack is the most unhinged thing I've ever heard. I just think about that at least every other day. At that time, had I had the opportunity to eat a centipede, I definitely would have eaten a centipede.

Like nothing was stopping me from eating those bugs. That fear, it's not even a fear. It's more just like they kind of give me the willies. For whatever reason, that just started later in life for me. So, yeah, I definitely would have done it. I'm still thinking about the spank question real quick. I'm going to spank she lob from Lord of the Rings. Because it turns out she's like a really hot lady from that one video game.

Or into the game. Yeah. So there we go. Okay. Fast forward. Let's get back. to whatever the hell we're talking about. I feel like it's kind of obvious why a centipede would creep someone out, right?

Even with me where they don't, I'd like get it. Yeah, I think they were just saying like, why a centipede if you're willing to lick a spider off the floor? If you eat bugs. Yeah. I get that. All right, this one's from Rachel, and it's just for you two. If you could remake any movie, but cast the Muppets, what movie would it be? I'll go with Sunset Boulevard.

I think Muppets in a film noir would just really do it for me. And playing it straight, you know, the dialogue doesn't change a single iota. We're just going straight. Deep, dark, heavy, smoky detective, fallen from grace film noir stuff. We really think we've answered this before, but there's a million possibilities. So I think I'll go with saving private Ryan. That's another really, really good answer. I can just see like a Muppet slowly driving a knife into the chest of another Muppet.

It betrayed it. Yeah, that's perfect. Perfect answers. Imagine Kermit just faced down in a pool in Sunset Boulevard, just opening narration over it. Oh, that's just really doing it. I'm going to think about this a lot right now. You don't have one. Old Kermit, like crying by a grave because he's hoped that he's lived.

Oh, the aging effects. He goes from like young Kermit to old. That's so good. No, I just wanted that one to be for you guys. All right, one more question. Maybe paranormal activity just so there's like something entertaining to watch. All right, this one's from Paula. Paula says, question, I've never heard Wes mention that one should change from the clothes you wore while cooking and or eaten in prior to going to sleep in your tent at night when backpacking in bear country.

Recently, however, I've heard this from two different sources I tend to trust. What does Wes think about this? It's a great question. That's like upper level kind of stuff. Like if I were camping or backpacking in a place with a high likelihood of running into a grizzly, that's the kind of stuff I would think about. I think it's just kind of you have to make those decisions based on your level of threat. And there's a baseline.

Like these are things you should do everywhere you go every single time. and then there's things that you kind of add to that if you're in a place with a higher risk and that would be something I would include in that list. So it's not bad advice. But if I'm camping in like Yosemite, I'm not doing that because I'm not going to have a problem that necessitates that. So you just kind of have to use some judgment for that sort of thing. All right. That's all I got for today.

I hope you guys liked part one. I loved it personally. Yeah. And part two has a really really. humdinger of an attack story that I'm excited to tell and then we'll get into a little bit about the search for ghost grizzlies after that last recorded attack. Thanks Danielle. All right. Well, yeah, I love that. That's great. All right. I've always been curious about the history of bears in different states. In other states. And we are we're going to go into that a little

bit as well, just kind of like when other states lost their last bear. It's good, you know, I think it's going to be a fun episode. You think that's the next. number one thing that makes Montana better than Colorado? In my opinion, yes. Yeah. Yes. Grizzlies.

We have a lot more wolves. They've reintroduced wolves, but we have a lot more. But yeah, for me, it's Grizzlies. Quick pitch, again, as always, if you want to sign up for our subscription channels, they're great. They're 10 bucks a month.

They make a great Christmas present. There actually is a way to gift our Patreon channel now. You can gift a year membership or a monthly membership. makes for a great gift for that toothy in your life. And we've had some really fun recent episodes. Mike just talked about one where animals with either really short lifespan. I think it was all short lifespans, right? Did you do any long lifespans?

Yeah. No. That's maybe Jeff can do that for me at some later date. Yeah. We've had some fun ones. And Jeff just re-upped and did a second Beaver episode. So it's been great. Check it out.

that. You get access to our whole tabelag. Rebeavered. Beaver's part d. All right. We'll see you guys. We love you.

I love you guys. Birds will sleep on the end of a branch to avoid predators. Just birds, huh? Any bird? Some birds? All right. See ya.

Bye.