Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - The Revenant: The Man and the Bear Who Inspired the Movie

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Mike does his darndest to pack the incredibly full life and times of Hugh Glass into one episode. From piracy, to mountaineering, and of course one of the most horrific and famous bear attacks, Hugh was never left wanting for adventure or danger. Watch here: The Revenant: The Man and the Bear Who Inspired the Movie ~~ 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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Register today at richfield, Utah.com. everyone welcome to a new episode of Toothin' claw podcast. We have our wildlife biologists who have been compared to a cardboard box before, Wes Larson with us. That's me. That's my personality. And then I'm his younger brother, Jeff Larson, and we got our best friend, Mike Smith. Hey, we're all here. Listen, man, cardboard boxes are cool. They're so useful. They got a review. It's like a one-star review that said he's like a cardboard box that couldn't guide someone through Walmart. It's funny because when you make something like this,

I do really think the cost of like putting yourself out there is you have to be open to getting some criticism. Like not everyone's going to love our show. But this was like a particularly mean review and kind of funny. Like it made me laugh, but then also like kind of hurt. It's always stings a little stuff. I'm going to read it because it was funny. Tooth and Claw is more opinion than fact.

I've met Wes in the field and he had the personality of a cardboard box. I know he's trying to be a guide. I wouldn't let him guide me through a Walmart. Roasted. Oh, man. I'm not trying to be a guide. I do a little guiding, but. Kind of try. No, like, I do some guiding. I don't have to try to do it. I do it. It's not what I wanted to. Isn't that I'm trying? No, like, I am a guy. I'm not trying to be a guide. You're so good. You don't even need to try. No, I'm not saying that. Like, I'm saying that there was a time when I was trying to be a guide. But now you're too good. Now I'm a guide. But I do it as like a part-time side gig.

It's not like I want to be a guide for my full-time gig. If you guys love Wes like we do, you know, maybe give us a good review and compare them to like your favorite cardboard box, like a puzzle box or something. Or just any inanimate object. Here's what I'm going to say to that reviewer is if you need a guide to help you get through Walmart, I'm not going to trust your judgment on people. There's science. Fair enough. Yeah. I was like racking my brain for who I could have met in the field that I left such a terrible

impression on because I always considered myself like a people person and for a biologist like fairly gregarious because there are some really stuffy and you know keep to themselves like stuffy biologists out there. So I always was like kind of prided myself on being a friendly biologist. But it's fine. You know again like I said if you put yourself out there, some people aren't going to like you and that's okay. That's fine. It is. But yeah, Like Jeff said, if you like the show, give us a good five-star review and compare me to an inanimate object. I'd love to see what you guys want to compare me to. It'll be great.

We'll read like our favorite five in a future episode. I like that. Cool. Anyway, how are you guys doing? Dude, that's a big question. Loaded questions out in the world, you know? You did text me right before this and say, do not ask me how I'm doing today. So I'm sorry.

Jeff's trouble. Do you want me to just start out with a lie? No, it's cold here. It's like negative five. It is cool. And I'm all bundled up in my shed. You are? You got big old buttons on a...

What is that? Like a cardigan? This is like a wool sweater. Oh. It's just so you know it's cold in like the entire United States besides Miami. I know. But I do think when it gets really cold in the whole U.S., Montana is usually one of the places that's the most cold. I was seeing in like Michigan.

It was getting to negative 50. Yeah, that's really cold. West Yellowstone was negative 40 last night. Oh, man. But Missoula is only like negative 5. It's not terrible. Do the bison, like, group up when it gets that cold? They do.

Sometimes they'll go standover fumarles, too, which are geothermal features that just shoot up hot steam. That sounds nice. But every once they break through and then they get really scalded, so they got to be careful. That doesn't sound nice. Or I feel like when you walk away from that, you'd be all wet and get like off frozen. You got to stay there the whole winter is the problem. Yeah. You do that, you can't leave.

Well, so much for global warming, huh? Yeah. Mike, I would love to hear a story today, though, about someone who is very cold. What's done with? Global warming jokes. No. Not today either. Not today.

No. Not Tuesday. Monday, January 20th. I'm glad you're in the mood for a story about someone. Got a little chilly, West, because I got the perfect tale to spin for you. There's no way. He's as cold as Wes, right? No way. He really could have used your little wool button on my cozy warm shed with two space heaters.

That's nothing. I'm doing a pre-story. That's nothing. So, as Jeff is alluding to, I'm actually taking over. It's my turn once again to be the star of the show. It's about time. I think this is the second time I've led a main episode. I'm not sure. But forget that last one.

That last one was awful. This one. This is the one you want to turn into. Micah Soe doesn't quite have the ring that Jeff Hesod does to it. Not quite as solid of a slant rhyme. Well, I'm going to open this episode up by sharing something Professor John T. Coleman said. I don't know if you're familiar with him. He is a historian at the University of Notre Dame.

He wrote a book called Here Lies Hugh Glass, a Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation. Forgive me if I ever say Hugh Jazz, because that's just what I've been saying myself, preparing this episode of the past week. We'll just get it out of the way. Poor name. It really is. Hugh Jazz. But people are probably familiar with the story of Hugh Glass. I mean, it's been memorialized in many a movie, most recently in the movie The Revenant. And that's actually what this John Coleman guy who was talking about the movie The Revenant. And I'm going to paraphrase his thoughts here a little bit. But I thought this was an important. place to start. So, the life and the suffering of men like glass were stories held on a pedestal, helping Americans define their nation as different and exceptional, the American exceptionalism

that developed in the early days of the nation. They wanted the nation to sprout from the soil and to be ingrained in people. The reality, though, wasn't pleasant. People close to nature, working people suffered. The movie has some amazing historical moments, even if some of the story was make believe. But in a way, that's the most historical part. The Hugh Glass Legend was part art from the beginning. And as is common with these stories that are hundreds of years old at this point, it's pretty hard to parse through them and determine exactly what is all the way true,

what's completely fake, and what's somewhere in between. So I'm going to do my best to find that middle ground. Just don't tell me he only had a medium-sized ass. Okay. He had a huge ass. You have to, like, think, too, at the time, all the stuff was being passed by word of mouth, telegram, newspapers, you know? Right. For sure, it was like a big game of telephone.

I mean, growing up, some kid told me that his mom's new van shot flames out of it if you tried to open the door and I believed him. And it's like, I could double check that, you know? Right. Like, back then, I'm sure if you just made shit up, it could get really far. like how much people would believe. Here's the crazy thing. If people have seen The Revenant, I'm going to try my best to not talk about the movie very much,

even though it kind of turns out to be just as valid, a source of information as really anything else you can find. Like, every article that I read, every bit of media that I consumed movies and little docu-series and stuff, every single story is slightly or even massively different from one another. So I tried to corroborate and cross-match different events that happen. to Hugh. And I only, I'm including things that are almost certainly partly true or at the very least commonly understood to be the events of the day. But before the events of the movie,

the events of the attack, the thing that everyone knows and that Glass is famous for, Glass had already led a life that was pretty full of peril and adventure. I don't know if you guys are familiar with his early days, but it gets pretty insane. So I'm going to cite my sources real quick. First is a book called The Revenant. It's the book the movie was based on. It's by a guy named Michael Punk. It's written kind of like historical fiction. It's not very dry. It's really entertaining read, but again, I don't know how verifiably accurate it is. And then there was another... He lives in Missoula. Oh, really? Have you met him? I haven't, but I know he lives here. Good writer. I like his style. Yeah. And the other thing I pulled pretty heavily from was

an article called Hugh Glass the Epic Tale by Richard Grant. You can find it kind of aggregated in different places on the internet, but I thought that was really good. This is a little bit of an antiquated term, but I found it on Cowboys and Indians.com, like the magazine. I know, like, I'm probably going to say Indian a couple of times. I know that's not the most appropriate term, but the parlance of the day kind of necessitates using that a little more freely than I otherwise would. Yeah, it's kind of like how in the alligator episode I said one of the brothers. call the other brother the P word. It's like, you know, we don't necessarily use that word, but they do.

I used it. Jeff uses it frequently. So Hugh Jazz by Dick Grant. Yep. Dick. I didn't even put that together. I'm so glad you're here for this, Jeff. I hope you stick around.

So Hugh Glass's story begins when he was born in Pennsylvania, probably around the year 1780. So birth of the nation kind of years. And this is the era, I don't know if, I guess Beethoven was kind of active during these years. So just think of Beethoven. You kind of have a good idea of what era we're dealing with here. I like that guy. I don't like his music. I just like him.

What about him do you like other than his music? He had some pretty cool hair if the paintings are to be believed. His name. When he played that concert in the mall and the Sandimus Mall. That's right. Oh, man. When he's playing on the keyboard in Bill and Ted, And Joan of Arc is dancing.

I had the biggest crush on Joan. So, and they're playing that song. Who sings it? Is it extreme? I can't remember. Was it? Yeah. Okay, but sometime in Hugh's youth, it's going to be confusing.

I'm going to, like, swap between Hugh Glass and Hugh Glass. Just bear with me. But sometime in his youth, he decided that it'd be a good idea to head out to see and make a name and a life for himself. And it actually turned out he was a pretty good sailor. He rose to the rank of captain pretty quickly and everything was going really great. until, uh-oh, he was captured by famed... Octopus.

Close. He was captured by famed Louisiana buccaneer John Lafitte. And he was given an option. Either surrender and live life as a pirate under Jean Lafitte or be put to death. Which one option do you think he picked? I'd be a pirate, you know? Yeah, yeah, one point for each of you, if we're guessing right there. So he chose piracy and began sailing as part of Lafitte's crew.

Some of the stories that were passed around say that he actually committed to the role of a pirate and did some pretty unspeakable and terrible things. But mostly he was known as a kind of strange but ultimately trustworthy and honorable man. One of his crewmates actually described him as being, quote, bold, daring, reckless,

and eccentric to a high degree, his bravery conspicuous beyond all his other qualities. Which really sounds to me like someone trying to put a positive spin on somebody. This dude was insane. which I guess you could kind of call brave, I guess, but he was just kind of throwing caution to the win it sound like as a pirate.

Because he didn't sign up for this. He was kind of like, what am I even doing here, you know? And that can go one of two ways. You can either like quiet quit and just like be a really unmotivated pirate or just be like, you know what, I'm here? Let's live it up. I'm all in.

Yeah. But in 1818, about two years after he was first captured, when their ship was about a mile or two away from the Texas shore, glass and a shipmate saw a chance to escape the old skull and bones lifestyle. And they hopped off into the sea and swam all the way from their ship into Galveston Island. Or what would eventually become Galveston Island. It wasn't that way just yet. Now, we've all heard stories about cowboys and Indians, Cowboys and Native Americans.

They just, what, Jeff? They didn't get along, right? They did not like each other. Well, sometimes. Sometimes? Yeah. Yeah, when it was, like, mutually beneficial. Sometimes they would, like, kind of get along and then not get along still after.

Have you ever heard about pirates and Indians? Have you heard of aliens in Cowboys and Aliens? I have heard of that. An underwhelming movie. Really, it just had such a slam dunk setup. How did you make that boring? I don't know. And Harrison Ford was in it, and they still ruined it.

I'm just going to say it's a little bit of unexplored territory, pirates and their relationships with Native Americans, First Nations people. I think there's a lot of meat on that bone to chew on. So you set us up for that, but there's actually nothing to talk to. about? No. Okay. Well, we can talk about it now if you want, Wes. I don't know. No, it's all right. All right. It's fine. It turns out these pirates and these Native Americans, they weren't on super friendly terms either. So Glass and his friend carefully navigated their way north while trying to evade any contact with the native population who they knew just weren't not going to treat them very well. Were they to be caught? Rightfully so. And for a while, it was working until eventually

they were captured by some members of the Pawnee tribe who were decidedly not happy to see the two of them. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carrano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry and the best have you wait in the world, Francis Ngano versus Felipe Lins.

Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. So the story goes of this encounter that Hugh had with the Pawnee tribe who captured him and his friend. They took his friend, they hung him upside down, and they jabbed a little pitch pine needles over every inch of his body. Which doesn't sound that bad, right? Not yet. People pay money for that. Right?

It's like acupuncture, kind of, right? Yeah. Plus hanging upside down, you kind of decompress your spine a little bit. Do you guys ever see the commercial of that old guy, like, flipping around on that table? He did like a little hop afterward to share how much his spine felt better after like being hanging upside down. No. Oh, man. We should share that on Instagram.

Danielle with National Park after dark. She does acupuncture where they like electroshock the needles. Really? Whoa. Yeah. That's next level. I remember when I did acupuncture and I had something in my back that was wrong and he's like, let me see your right hand and like poked me above my thumb. And I'm just like, no, I said it's my back.

It's really weird. It's a weird practice. I don't know. Fine line between acupuncture and torture. Is acupuncture work? I have no idea. It worked for me. Is it?

Okay. Cool. That's good to know. Well, anyway, so not so bad. Hanging upside down has all these pine needles in them, right? Well, they also set them on fire. So it gets a little worse for this guy. He's traveling with.

Yeah, that's what my acupunctures does at the end. Danielle starts lighting the needles on fire. So knowing that he was probably up next for this line of two in execution, Hugh pulled out a sack of powdered cinnabar. I don't know if you know what Cinebar is. It's kind of like a reddish dye, a mixture that a lot of Native Americans used in dye for war paint. And it was really highly valued because it was a pretty rare mineral to come across.

And Hugh somehow had a pack of this stuff just in his pocket. And he... And he... ...tell his partner died. Right. It's like his friends on his... fire just like, dude, what? Would have been useful

30 seconds ago to have that. But apparently he stole this sack of Cinebar from the ship before, like, leaping off. I don't know. This seems like one of those apocryphal moments where it's like, so he swam with a powder through the ocean and he just like, I don't know, a pretty common element

to the story everywhere I looked. So I decided to include it. I just thought it was kind of funny that he had this big powder sack. The chief was like, oh, man, that's actually like pretty sweet. He took it, he liked the gift, and he actually accepted Glass into his Pawnee tribe for the next four years, where he lived, just kind of learning from them about how best to survive off the land. Which, you know anything about Hugh Glass, those skills will probably become pretty valuable in the near future for him. So, four years later, Glass figured it was time for a change.

He had lived amongst this tribe. Some accounts even say that he took a wife. Who knows, maybe? I think that was more common than maybe you would believe, back in the day, but there's no real proof of that happening. Taking a life. Yeah. I know that's like a weird way to put it.

I do know that was quite common. Yeah. That's just like the antiquated parlance of the day. But, um, yeah. Glass, he was like, you know, it was fun, had a good time here, learned a lot, but it's time to go make some money. And you knew that there was a lot of money. Dude, that's me.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had some fun time to get my money now. You're going to quit the podcast and go be a, fur trapper. I'm going to start. Yeah, Trump coin 2.0. That's a good idea. Hot coin. Yeah. So he knew that there was a ton of money to be made in the fur trading business. So he signed up as a hunter and a trapper with the Ashley Henry Company, which was about to head out to Montana to do some beaver hunting. Because you know, those beaver caps, they were flying off the shelves back in the day. You don't see a lot of those these days. I've noticed.

Yeah, I think that's pretty much gone. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen one. Was it mainly for hats? I think, well, so the fashion of the day, especially in Europe, Europeans just, like, loved these hats. So they just go out. A beaver hat. Yeah. But I'm sure there is.

Would it keep the tail? Yeah, they do the flap down. I'm not sure. That's what I saw. I don't think so. Safari flap. Yeah, maybe though. I know that, like, I mean, when you think about it, they have really dense fur that's, like, you know,

hydrophobic. The guy at this door said, I'm the only one that can pull it off. Yeah. Imagine like there's a beaver hat trader and he started like putting logos of your favorite stick ball player of the day or whatever on the front. That'd be so innovative. Oh man. Probably no one was doing that.

But so beaver, beaver leather and beaver pelts were actually really valued because they were easy to form to the shape of the head. but once they set, they were really tough and they didn't move very much. So it was a custom fit to your head that you could rely would stay and keep its shape, which I thought is kind of an interesting detail about specifically beaver pelts or maybe, I don't know. I don't know if more animal leather and fur isn't as thick and hardy as beaver pelts are, but that was the thinking of the day and why they were so popular. So Glass's expedition with this new company began with a 1,500,

mile journey up the Missouri River. When they got to the South Dakota territory sometime in late August, maybe early September, they traded with the Arakara tribe. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. A lot of times they're just referred to as the re, so maybe I'll just say that.

The re tribe who acted all nice during the exchange, but they had a sneaky little maneuver up their sleeve. So once the deal was done, they'd just like attack the company and take back everything they traded, which if that was, if that trick was in Donald Trump's art of the deal

I wouldn't be surprised. Like that's a good move, you know. Well, it's kind of like banning TikTok and then, you know, opening it back up as soon as your president. It's a sneaky move. It's kind of the same thing. Yeah, good move. It ended up being a bad move because

that justified us like giving them a bunch of land and then taking it right back. Yeah. I don't think it justified it, but I think it's a tough. Fair is fair. I think that's a I mean, like, if we're being objective, it's like kind of a dick move to do. But then again, colonialism's like not that cool of a thing to have done to them either.

So it's like we're giving a take here. Yeah. They probably were pretty justified. Yeah. I think they get a carte blanche when it comes to things they did to us as we're expanding. So all in all, after this attack after the trade happened, 12 of the trappers were killed. Glass made it through relatively unscathed. I say relatively.

He took a bullet to the leg, but he was alive still. So all in all, he was doing okay compared to the 12 who were killed. That sounds pretty scathed to me. Yeah. Yeah, right. I mean, death is the ultimate scave, right? Sure. Or how would you, I don't know if I'm saying that.

I'm pretty sure, though, if I took a bullet to the leg at any point in my life, I'm going to, like, that's a pretty life altering injury that I'm going to tell people about. But you're not, you're not, you're not, though. I'm not. These guys, they take bullet to the leg, like, daily. It's not there for that. I think, though, Wes's point is pretty good that, like, you don't leave that saying, like, yeah, I came out unscate. And then you're like, oh, wait, never mind, I did get shot. Well, shot in my leg.

Yeah. But no, keep going. Yeah. I thought I qualified it. Maybe I didn't do a good enough job. But the survivors regrouped, and they sat out on foot toward a trading fort located 300 miles away from where they. were, which, again, is modern-day South Dakota. But they knew they needed to restock, especially on food if they wanted to get anywhere after

this attack happened. So on a particularly tense night, three days later, there's some grumbling amongst the men. They're still scared, I'm sure, and, like, kind of licking their wounds. Captain Henry assigned Hugh and another man named Black Harris to go out on a hunt the next day. They figured they were going to have to risk a fire in the sound of a gunshot, both of which could alert any nearby parties of the Re tribe or... any others who would have no qualms about locating them, identifying them as an enemy, and killing him, taking all their stuff. So that night, Glass got to preparing and caring for his

rifle. And this is a big element to the story. So for the most part, Glass didn't have a whole lot of fine goods to his name, but his one prized possession was his genuine German-made and stat flintlock rifle. And you know, Jeff, resident gun guy, you got a gun like that. You're like you're caring for it, you're polishing it, you're rubbing it all night, you know, like, go on them in the ring. Sure. Yeah. You could take out a whole army of emos with that thing.

You would think. I think that joke's going to make sense by the time this episode goes up, but maybe not. To our subscribers, it will. Yeah. So the next day, he and Harris split up, Black Harris, the other guy that was sent out on the hunt, they split up and set out. About three hours before sunset, he spotted. some deer tracks by the bank of the river that led into some willows, so he followed them as

silently as he could into the trees. Before long, he came upon a clearing, and he did just so happen to see some wildlife. Unfortunately for him, it was not quite the kind he was hoping to see, and Wes, talking about the grizzly bear population in the early 1800s, how likely or unlikely would it be for a man to stumble across a bear in the woods compared to today? Pretty likely, especially like in this part of the world now you're not going to really find him. He's kind of like in eastern Montana at this point, right? Right. They used to be a plains animal.

Grizzly bears used to exist out on the plains and these little pockets of forest out on the plains too, which he's probably in an area like that where there's lots of open expanses but then also some wooded areas. and yeah, I mean, you would stumble on them. And like Lewis and Clark talked about them quite a bit in their expedition. As soon as they got into the Great Plains, they started running into grizzly bears. And they were very, they made a big impression on them. Well, yeah, because we've definitely conditioned grizzly bears too to like know that humans are bad to attack. Like over two centuries where, you know, we take out aggressive bears.

we like relocate problematic bears. So like bears kind of know right now, like don't mess with humans for the most part. But back then they're like, what's this? Yeah. And we had we pushed them into the forest now. And back then they just were, they were a different animal. So. Yeah.

So Hugh stepped out into this clearing and was surprised to see two bear cubs who were probably around five or six months old at this point, if that math works out. Is that kind of like in September around? Yeah. Okay. So he's. Because they're just little guys. He's like, oh, that's fun.

And it was, it's actually kind of a funny account that I think Hugh gave of this event himself and that it was passed around. So who knows again. But they'd be a little older. They'd be like eight or nine months. Eight or nine months old. Yeah. But they came tumbling kind of playfully towards Hugh. And for a moment, he stood just kind of nonplussed at the scene.

He was like, that's unexpected. But okay, weird. The danger of the situation hadn't quite clicked in his brain yet, though. And that would change in it. an instant. A low growl from across the clearing stopped the two cubs in their tracks, and the heavy steps of the mother bear cracking through the underbrush told him that suddenly things had just taken a serious turn for the worst for him. Her growl dissipated into the forest as she was stepping into the clearing, now only about a hundred feet away. Her massive muscular body

sat low to the ground, tense, ready to launch at him at any moment. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed, pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash Spotify. Terms apply. So we touched on this briefly already, but I want to go over some quick history about bears in the United States during this time.

And this is from the University of Montana. You guys are familiar with that place. They have a website. I'm not sure if you guys were aware. They got a website now, huh? Yeah. They're catching up to the world. Yeah.

It has some pretty good information there, it turns out. So when Lewis and Clark, you brought these guys up, West, they were charting out the West in the early 1800s. Around the same time this Hugh Glass thing was going down. there were an estimated 50,000 grizzly bears roaming the range stretching from the Pacific to the Central Plains. That's the lower 48, so 50,000 grizzly bears. Lewis in his journal, he actually compared grizzly bears to black bears, just having observed both. And he said, quote,

It is a much more furious and formidable animal talking about the grizzly bear compared to the black. And will frequently pursue the hunter when wounded. It is astonishing to see the wounds they will bear before they can be put to death. He mentioned one that had five balls shot through its lungs and five others in various parts before it finally died. And I know guns weren't quite what they are now. That's what I was going to say. We talk about how modern guns aren't really a great tool against a grizzly bear because you need a really direct hit in a kill zone. These old guns that are just shooting light balls.

And bullets. Yeah. It's just like a circle. It's not going to stop a charging grizzly bear. Like they're going to keep coming. You're going to have to put a lot of lead balls in the right spot to bring down a grizzar. Yeah, you'd be probably better with like a samurai sword type of situation. I would say so.

That's just my personal opinion, though. I would disagree with that. Hardily. The thing is, too, like these guns, you would shoot and then you'd take like 45 minutes to reload it. And it's like, all right. Now let's like shoot this bear again. Okay. Two bullets doesn't take it down.

Let's do it again. It's like 10 bullets later you're just like, what is going? on? What is this just like an unstoppable god? He also Lewis in his journal again, he wrote later, these bears being so hard to die rather intimidates us all, which I thought is just like classic literary understatement. Just like, yeah, I'm sure that is kind of intimidating. We find them quite intimidating. Yeah. Yeah. It's like when Jeffrey Dahmer told his dad, I think I really messed up this time, dad. It's like, you think. Okay, so I found some more information on the National Park Service website.

Also, they have a website, pretty nifty little place to go. You're looking for some good info. So the grizzly bear was formally classified as a species by naturalist George Ord in 1815. I should have quizzed you on that, Wes. You probably would have been able to guess that. But it was not for its hair being grizzled that it was called grizzly bear, but more for its character. Again, these things were just scary and intimidating.

and not used to humans, not scared of humans really in the same way as they are now, like Jeff was talking about. A grizzly bear is known as Ursus Arctos, but Ord classified it as Ercdus Horribilis. Horribilis, meaning terrifying bear, and its reputation for being violent and dangerous started to spread to settlers who are coming out west, like with the gold rush and stuff. California, we know they have the bear on their flag. There are once tons of bears there, but settlers, they're like, we've got these cows. and all this livestock and these prey items for these bears to go after. So we need to get rid of them. So they just started killing them indiscriminately, shooting them, doing whatever they could.

It would be crazy, too, to, like, live in Philadelphia or New York City at that time. And, like, you're thinking about going out west, but it's just like, yeah, there's these huge monsters. We'll immediately try to kill you if they see it. Yeah. You see that black bear? That's nothing. No, like you just said there's 50,000 of these bears in, you know, what's now known as like the lower 48. Isn't that what you said? Yeah.

That's currently about what the population is throughout North America. So throughout Canada, Alaska, all of those places that have a lot of habitat. So that's a high number of bears in a relatively small area. Yeah. I think what the population I saw now in the lower 48, it's like 1,500 maybe, 2,000? More than that. I would guess probably like 2,500 bears. Okay.

So making a bit of a bounce back, but like nothing compared to where they were previously. Yeah. Yeah. Are they, what are they threatened? Is that what they are on the? Currently, but that's the whole thing that's right now they're talking about delisting them. They just had a decision the other day to keep them. But with the new administration, they'll probably be delisted in the next few years.

But we got TikTok back. Yeah. So it's like a give and a take, you know. Okay, so back to the story. Hugh and the bear were having a bit of a standoff. They were on opposite sides of this clearing, kind of looking at each other, monitoring the situation, each deciding what their next move was going to be. Hugh briefly considered running back to the river,

but knew that the bear was way too close and it would close that distance long before he could reach any kind of protection that the water would bring to him. So he's like, no, river's out. His next thought was maybe there was a tree nearby that he could climb up, maybe get a good vantage point and start shooting from on high because grizzly bears, they do climb trees, but they're not quite so good it is black bears. It's a good tactic if you don't have anything else. Yeah, and Glass truly had nothing else. And he didn't even have a tree, it turns out.

He looked around him and any tree that was even like reasonably close that he thought maybe he could get to before this bear comes down on him, they're all too small to really be worth even trying to climb and hide in or find protection in. so his options quickly evaporated until he was only left with one. He raised his 54 caliber rifle right as the grizzly bear began her charge. Every instinct in his body once again told him to run, or to shoot immediately, but he knew with how fast she was closing the distance, he would really only have time for one shot, and he had to make that shot count.

When the bear was about 20 feet away, she raised up on her hind legs, preparing to bring her full weight down on him. With her heart now at about his eye level, Hugh pulled the trigger and shot her directly in the chest. The bullet struck true, but did little to slow the momentum of the now-enraged bear. With one swipe of her six-inch claws, Hugh felt her ripped through the flesh on his shoulder and throat like tissue paper. He was thrown backward, dropping the knife he had pulled out just before the bear made contact, and he instinctively started pushing his boots against the dirt back towards the safety of the willows behind him,

but that was not going to serve any kind of protection or service to him. The bear wasn't done with him just yet. She stood over him on all fours, and so he curled up in a ball to try and protect his face and chest. If it's brown, what, Wes? That's home. We're not doing it. Although in this situation, yeah. That's all he could do is like his.

He had no knife, no gun. This bear was standing over him. He just had to protect his vitals. He's done the worst thing you can do, which is injure a bear and then, but not kill it. You know, this is a very bad situation at this point. And I do just really like a quick little aside, you saying this, I'd never heard this detail the story before that 20 feet away she stood. That was probably a bluff charge just from my like experience.

Interesting. That's what they often do when they do a bluff charge is they'll run in and stand and kind of look as intimidating as possible and then run off. It's hard to like I can't say that for sure. Yeah. But that behavior does sound like maybe she was about to run off. But him firing and hitting her might have changed her. mind. Wow. That would really suck. Because if you know how this story goes, that would have been

real nice for that bear to just leave him alone, which could have happened for sure. Anyway, he felt her teeth sink into the back of his neck now, lifting him up off the ground. She shook him so violently and so easily that he felt like his spine was going to snap in half. She quickly adjusted her jaws and bit down again straight through his shoulder blade, teeth making contact with bone, all while raking his back with her claws. So scalp back, everything's just getting shredded while her teeth are just like munching down into his shoulder blade. He started screaming and maybe that was enough to startle her to make her drop him down onto the ground. But she quickly readjusted and bit down again, this time deeply into his thigh.

She lifted him one last time before slamming him back down onto the ground with so much force that he lay completely stunned, unable to move or make a sound. The last thing he saw before his world went dark was the bear back up on her hind legs. letting out one final terrifying roar, and then he drifted completely out of consciousness as he felt an immense weight collapse down on top of him. So, you remember Black Harris, his little hunting partner, who was off a ways. He had already begun walking towards the scene

when he heard the first gunshot, and he started jogging when he heard the bear's roar. But when he heard Glasses scream, he stopped. He was like, okay, something real, real bad. Let's think about this. Yeah. So he slowed down, he was like, okay, let's evaluate what's going on.

But he knew Glass, he was in trouble probably needed some help. So he did the brave thing. He carefully made his way into the clearing and was just completely stunned by what he saw. A massive bear lay dead on the ground, her two cubs restlessly moving around her. One was biting and tugging at something

that was laying underneath the mother. And when Harris recognized it as a human arm, he raised his rifle and shot the cub, killing it. As he ran up to help push this bear off of Glass, who he thought was probably dead at this point. The other cub ran off. With its own story to tell, you can imagine, probably.

Yeah. Got revenge on someone. Right. So the other men in the company, they were a bit farther away than even Harris was at that point. But they thought it was strange that they had heard two gunshots at this point, but they were spaced so far apart that they're like, that's weird. They're not shooting at the same target, probably. So something is a miss here. So they all grouped up and started off towards all the noise. When they reached the clearing, Captain Henry, quickly took stock of the situation.

Glass was still alive, but badly wounded. Most pressing of which was a slashed windpipe. You'll remember the bear ripped through Glass's neck and actually punctured his windpipe. So he was like gurgling on the ground, literally breathing out of the side of his neck. Relatively unscathed. Relatively, yeah. Now a bullet to the leg doesn't sound so bad, huh guys? Relative.

It's all relative. So the captain poured the contents of his canteen out to clean the wind. wound, which brought glass two for a moment. He sputtered, struggling to breathe, and then threw up, which probably, like, really hurt considering, like, his throat was just completely ripped open moments before. They did their best to dress the wounds, and he lost consciousness again. Hiram Allen, another man from the company, he was at the scene, and he later wrote that, quote, the monster had torn the flesh from the lower part of the body and from the lower

limbs. He also had his neck shockingly torn, even to the degree that an aperture appeared. do have been made in the windpipe and his breath to exude at the side of the neck. Beautifully written. Yeah, very eloquently put. And they're like, understandably, you see this scene. This guy is breathing out of his neck and it's like, oh, this guy's dead. He's got maybe hours and he's gone.

They transported him back to their central campsite and they're like, well, let's take care of them. Sorry, Glass. You were a fine, fine man, but you've reached the end of your road, right? Yeah. A few hours tops. Wrong. Wrong. Yeah.

The next morning rolled around and what do you think, what do you think goal of Glass was doing? He's surviving. Still breathing. Still breathing. Still just. Probably a lot of wheezing, I would guess. Yeah. Just gurgly, bloody wheezing. Like when you take like the Vader mask off of Darth Vader, that's what I imagine he's doing.

Right. Okay. So everyone's amazement, Glass is still alive and breathing the next morning. And they're like, all right, well, we can't just leave him. So they cut off a bunch of branches. They made a little litter to carry him on and they started transporting him west, taking turns. You know, each man would take one side of the gurney or whatever, the litter. And they just were hauling him through some of the most unforgiving.

And swiftly, the winter was setting in, not like quite so cold probably in September yet. But like, this is not a forgiving place to have to carry a full grown man through, especially when, you know, there's tribesmen out there who are going to kill you on site and, like, take you for all your worth and leave you. I think something that's kind of lost between the movie, which I think most people probably know the story from The Revenant, is that was filmed in very lush kind of dense conifer forest in the mountains. And this was more kind of open, scattered forests with like very high winds. We're talking kind of like the great plains as it meets the mountains type of places. So it's like very windy, very harsh country just in a different way from the way the movie

was filmed. Yeah. Eastern Montana. I mean, you gotta hate it. It's a rough place. Yeah. I love it, but it's rough. I'll never go in there. There's bears there, it sounds like. Not really anymore. Yeah. Well, a couple days passed. They were carrying glass around all over

the wilderness. And Captain Henry was finally just like, okay, we can't really afford to be slowed down like this in such dangerous territory. The cold was setting in. Parties out there, they were going to attack them if they ever saw them. But he also knew that they couldn't just abandon him. So what he did, he came up with the idea of leaving two men behind

to kind of care for Glass during his final hours, bury him, and then catch back up with the rest of the company once Glass had finally passed. And he offered extra pay. It was like $80, which back in that day was like half a year's wages, I think, is what he offered them. I don't know the exact figure, but that's the number I saw thrown around. And you would think that like for these two guys that are going to be left behind, it's a little bit of a conflict of interest. Because it's like... You want him to die. The faster he dies, the faster you can, like, go get paid and be safe and be with the rest of the guys.

But I'm sure, like, well, we'll get to it. Well, like, and in the movie, I'm not sure this is real life, but, like, one of the people was... Didn't really even care about the money. He just wanted to make sure glass gets, like, the care he needs type of thing, you know? Right. So I'm glad you brought that up because we're going to talk about the two men who volunteered here to stay behind with him. One was an unreputable, disreputable sort in John Fitzgerald.

And the other was a teenager. Bad move by the captain. Yeah. Yeah. Come on, dude. And this is in some ways a little bit worse, but the other was just like a teenager. He was a 17-year-old kid who is just like all also stay behind. I don't know.

Parenting. That's a grown man back then. That's true. Probably. Yeah, I was going to say teenagers at 17 have been through a lot back. They lived to like 30 back then. He's like a 50-year-old. He's having his mid-life crisis.

So for five days, Fitzgerald and Bridger, these two men that volunteered to stay behind, they were sitting around just kind of waiting for glass to die. And they were down by the Grand River. And every once in a while, they'd go fetch some water, pour it down his throat. Just like, again, they didn't want him to suffer during his final moments more than he already was. Of course, he was already in, like, probably the worst way a human being has been in, maybe ever. I don't want to say that. but it was bad.

I didn't say that, but they were just like he was barely conscious. They'd dump some water down his throat every once in a while, and his condition just kept getting worse. He developed a massive fever, and finally Fitzgerald was just like, okay, these are the quote unquote death sweats. And he told Bridger, it's time to go. Let's get out of here. He's dead.

He may even have concocted a story about some retribesmen coming to attack and kill them. and Bridger for his part Some re tribes Yeah, re tribesmen Ara-A-Cara I don't know how to I don't know what they're called I don't know if you guys are familiar

with their name but Re-tribes sounds funny too many Retribes I do think we keep saying this is like Eastern Montana but it was more kind of in present-day South Dakota right

It's like on the border Dakota Montana like that general area Yeah okay Anyway Bridger may or may not have had some reservations about leaving glass behind

but the fact is that he was still alive and the two men decided to leave, whatever the case was. One final act of betrayal saw them take his knife, his flint, his steel, the gunpowder that he had on him, and most painfully of all, his prized rifle, reasoning to themselves, kind of rightfully so. But it'd be more useful to them because even Glass was alive, but he couldn't even use it even if he were conscious. And he was. He was like listening and seeing everything these two guys were doing. And I like to think that he was just like so mad at that moment he decided, I'm going to live through this so I can get up and go kill these two people.

Yeah. For leaving me for dead. Well, maybe they did the move that Tom Hardy does in the movie where he's like, hey, if you're okay with me, leave and blink. And he just waited until he blinked for like two minutes. If you're okay with me taking your rifle, blink. Wees. Just wheeze a little bit through your throat.

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Save on the stay. Oh. And free walk. Offles are yours to claim. Well, I hope you like my little song. Book direct at Shoreshiltails.com. Glass had festering wounds, a broken leg, and deep cuts on his back and head that exposed his bear ribs.

His ribs weren't in his head, but the ones on his back. That's where his ribs is the bear's ribs? He's got the bear ribs. Crazy. No. But, like, imagine that. Your wounds are so bad. It just doesn't seem like you should be alive if you could see some of ribs from the back.

This seems unsurvivable. Right. Yeah. Especially in that time. Right. So he was laying on the ground, just broken and now abandoned, more than 200 miles from the nearest American settlement at Fort Keowa. When his fever finally mercifully broke,

he gained some strength by picking and eating some buffalo berries from a nearby bush. He smashed him up. He mixed him up with water, and he just choked him down his ruined throat. Not long after, and this is another detail, take it or leave it, but a rattlesnake came slithering by just close enough because he still wasn't mobile, but a snake came by close enough

that he grabbed a rock, smashed it, mashed that up, mixed it with water, and he drank that down too, some like snake smoothie, I guess. Weird way to eat it. Yeah. It's real weird. But like, you can't eat solid.

Thruly, yeah. He knew, though, that he needed to move if he wanted to survive. So he set the bone of his own leg and wrapped himself in whatever clothing he had available to him, and he began literally crawling the 200 miles towards Fort Keowa.

So just a bit of it. imagine even in the best of circumstances crawling 200 miles. Now imagine doing that with your ribs visible through your back wounds. I had like a little bit of lower back pain last night in bed and I

wouldn't flip over because I was like worried that it would kind of hurt my back if I flipped over. So it's impossible to imagine what kind of thing is talking about. That's not what I'm saying. That's nothing. I completely understand.

So, Mike, you're probably going to say this, but what is the world record, Army crawl? That's, I was, like,

you'll be shocked to learn that I wasn't actually going to cover that. So if you want to look that up, I'll really be happy to hear that, maybe once we finish the story. So he knew that he'd be able to restock, hopefully get a little healthier,

and then plan out his next move from this fort, Fort, Fort Kiowa, Kyoa. however you pronounce it, K-I-O-W-A, Kyoa. Driven now only by vengeance, he vowed never to stop until he found and killed

both Fitzgerald and Bridger. And here's where some accounts actually differ. Some people say it was purely vengeance and spite that made him like continue this journey to kill Fitzgerald and Bridger. But some people think he just liked his gun so much

that's like all he cared about. He's like, I don't, whatever, just give me my gun back, which is great. I just really love that. All night long again. Yeah. So at some point, and still crawling, mind you, he happened upon a dead buffalo calf and managed to scare off a pack of wolves who are feeding on it by using a torch in one of those little, like the bow drill to start a fire.

I don't know if you guys have ever tried to do like the little like castaway fire. It's not easy. It's freaking impossible. It takes like all day. I've never been able to do. I've tried for hours at a time, you know. That's pretty brave to decide. No, you have not.

I think I'm going to scare these wolves. You know, I'm going to crawl out. bleeding and dying and hope that I scare them and not that they decide to eat me. It's pretty brave. It's amazing. So anyway, once Hugh was able to procure this. Did he drink the buffalo? Yeah, he smashed it up and put in water.

He pulled out his little juicer and put a chunk in. That's where Aeroon started. No, so Hugh, once he procured this buffalo meat from these wolves, he started. Sorry, Joe Rogan, if he was like on. this, just be like, bro, Hugh Glass, he had it figured out. You got to like drink buffalo calf every day. It's a true primitive diet. Well, maybe he's on to something because this buffalo meat's really helping Hugh out now. He lays kind of just right next to this buffalo corpse, just tearing off chunks. With his fire, he'd dry out, like, kind of analogous to what

you'd call beef jerky, just like dry all this meat out and eat it slowly. regained his strength until finally he could actually get back on his own two feet. He still had a broken leg, still had all these wounds, but like at least he was able to limp on the ground instead of just crawling on his belly. So great, things are looking up, right? Another change for the better was somewhere along the way, a passing band of Sue mercifully took him in and let him continue his journey alongside them. And this part's gross, but they actually, they stripped him down of all of his clothes. and they started cleaning his back of all the maggots that were festering and feeding on his dead and decaying skin on his back. This is like weeks after the attack, so who knows how...

That's, like, kind of good for him, though, right? I think it is, but at the same time... I learned that from Gladiator. Oh, that's right. What part were they eating on him? When he first gets caught as a slave... Yeah. And he's going to, like, clear the maggots out of his wound, and the guy...

is like buddies like no leave him that's right so it's a good thing maybe these sue natives were doing him a disservice by taking his maggots off him but yeah after a certain amount of time you can take yeah six long weeks after the initial bear attack he arrived safely in fort keowa where he got himself set up with a new gun some clothes and then he caught a ride on a riverboat heading up towards fort henry on the yellowstone river which is where he expected to find the two men that had left him for dead and Fort Henry was their original company's destination. So that was his best chance, he figured, to find these guys. And you know, he was going to get there.

He was going to give him what fur? Chew him out. Real good. It's actually funny to say that. Well, we'll get to it. But depending on who's telling the story, Glass survived either one or two or several more deadly encounters, usually with the Araqara tribe, each time just barely escaping with his life, continuing his journey.

solo through the quickly setting in cold of winter. And after months of traveling, he finally arrived at the small encampment near Fort Henry on the Yellowstone River, still horribly scarred and now covered with frost. And it was like this that he made his first appearance to his old company

led by his old captain. You can just imagine all these guys probably sitting around the campfire being like, oh man, poor glass, dead, long, long gone. And then he just shows up looking literally, probably like a zombie or a ghost or both. They're just like, wait a minute.

They've been told by those two people like, yeah, he's dead. Right. Yeah, they had lied. I'd want to talk to the... Manager? Yeah, the guy's manager, though. Jeff's Karen side coming out. Captain, what, Captain Henry?

Yeah, I'd want to talk to Captain Henry's manager. Oh, that's another interesting thing you bring up because he is actually about to go meet with them in St. Louis. So Fitzgerald, it turned out, he actually wasn't there anymore. He set off downriver a month or so before he was arrival. But the teenage Bridger was. But all of a sudden, the young man just looked too young to Glass to kill. So he contended himself with just berating him loudly in front of the rest of the men.

And then he just rejoined his old company and hung out with them, just not knowing really what else to do. But still, that festering in his heart just needed to be. find Fitzgerald and make things right. And I can imagine it's probably pretty awkward for Bridger at this point because he's like just hanging out with Glass again after he just like crawled through hundreds of miles of wilderness. And he's like, my bad man. That's on me. Sorry. But soon after Captain Henry instructed Glass to head to Fort Atkinson near St. Louis to deliver a message to the trapping expeditions backers. And I always, I like to think about distances back. in these days and like how long it took to travel across the United States.

And it's like, your boss is just like, here's a letter, go give it to my boss over in St. Louis. And you're like, that's like 5% of my life that I'm about to spend just delivering a mess, you know? And it's like, who knows? They might not be there. I might die. Like so many things could go wrong. But it's just like, that's just the way things were.

As fate would have it, Fitzgerald was there at Fort Atkinson. and Hugh thought to himself, finally, I've got my chance. Let's do this. But in a cruel twist, Fitzgerald was now an enlisted soldier in the U.S. Army, now under the protection of his commanding officer. Glass knew that if he were to kill him, he'd probably be put to death himself. And if not that, at least jailed at this fort for a very long time. So he just like threw his hands up, I don't, I can't kill him.

I don't know what to do. But he did get his old rifle back. his journey ended without him getting vengeance on either of the two men, which maybe you can say is probably, I would say, is a good thing, even if he would have pulled that trigger, could he have, and not forgiven either of them. It wouldn't make him feel better. No, vengeance never, it's perpetuating that circle of violence, you know?

Well, and it is, like, I think in our minds, I'm speaking for people who have only seen the movie, and that's their whole mindset of the huge ass story. Yeah. But in the movie, you really want him to get his revenge because Fitzgerald kills his son and tries to kill him. Yeah. Like, this is much different. Like, I don't necessarily feel like Fitzgerald needed to be killed, you know?

Be killed. Yeah. Yeah. There are some tellings of this story do say that Glass just forgave him that he wasn't ever really going to kill him to begin with. But who knows. It's miraculous that he survived. Like, you can't blame these. two men for thinking like this dude is dead.

He's going to die. Right. I mean. And it's almost like a sort of vengeance he got just by like showing his face to them again. Yeah. Because it's kind of saying like you coward, you left me there. For the rest of their life. They have to live knowing that.

Yeah. Anyway. So we're going to wrap this story up. There's so much that happens even after this meeting with Fitzgerald. But he did issue one final warning to the man saying you would better never leave the army or I'll find you and I'll kill you. According to some tellings of the story, he actually did manage to put a small pistol ball through Fitzgerald's shoulder before heading back west and living his life as the

legendary mountain man that we knew him to be. Yeah, that's the Army's current recruiting slogan, right? Yeah. Whenever leave or we'll find you and kill you. Exactly. It works. Yeah. Impressionable young minds. Yeah. Like, oh man. Hardcore. So just in the interest of time, there's just so much that happened. after this attack. I focused on the attack because that's kind of the purview of our show,

but I just can't get over this hundreds and even thousands of miles that this man had to literally crawl and then walk through, grievously injured, just... The world record is 35 mile crawl. I don't think it is. He's got a beat. Yeah, it's kind of. Anyway, that's the end of Hugh Glass's story. Ten years after all of these events took place, he had one final fateful encounter

with the Arakara, and most likely they did kill him and take his possession since a friend of glasses did recognize his rifle in their possession once when he crossed paths with them. But no one, no one ever saw a dead body. And when it comes to Hugh, I'm going to need to see a body to believe that he's actually dead. It has to be no pulse. Yeah. I'd at least imagine his ghost, like, didn't leave the earth. Yeah, he still, you know.

Like most ghosts, I think, leave the earth. But I think his is still around. The bears too. The bear cub probably has a huge ass. One thing I thought of while you were talking about this was like, it was probably kind of fortunate for him that this happened the time of year it did because it wasn't so hot that there was probably like tons of bugs. Oh, yeah.

And that sort of thing. But then it also wasn't so cold that it was impossible to move. Like he probably is right in that sweet spot where he didn't get. crazy infected and bug ridden but then also not too cold to where he couldn't even survive. Probably easier to army crawl in the snow too. Yeah, he slide a bit more. Yeah, a little more fun to make like snow angels and stuff because you're already like on the ground. May as well get a couple of those in.

But thus ends maybe the life and times of the legendary mountain man Hugh Glass, one of the toughest men maybe ever to have lived. if even 50% of this story is true, which there's some good evidence that a lot of this did happen the way it's been told. Just a different time. I wouldn't be able to make it even a day out there. Short list for toughest dudes ever. Without a doubt. He's on my Mount Rushmore. All right. If we've got nothing else, we can go on to categories. Let's do it. We're going to do a full movie review of The Revenant too. This is kind of in a way a two-parter because we're doing the story and then we're going to movie review the revenant so we'll talk about that movie more

when that happens what are you what are you guys going to give them on the ouchy scale oh nine i'm gonna give him nine outchies man i don't know this is probably 10 getting that torn up by a grizzly bear and then just having to like sit in your pain for that long without any kind of help and then army crawling for yeah i can't think of any i'm giving them 10 this is a 10 outchy story if it happened how it was reported then it's a 10 outchies all right it's it's it's it's it's It's a 10 for me. It feels like the aftermath of the attack was almost worse in a lot of ways just because of how drawn out the suffering was and how brutal that trek across the wilderness would be.

But yeah, 10. I think I'd still rather be Hugh than this, I don't know, Cynthia Dussle Bacon's rough, but like I don't even know which one I'd pick between those two. I mean, she had a terrible experience, but she at least got to like somewhat modern medical care not long after. Yeah. You know? And like for him, it was like probably the rest of his life that he felt pain from this.

So it's got to be 10 for me. I'm going to give it a nine. Okay. I think he recovered pretty well. I don't know. Sure. That's my only thing. Yeah.

Maybe. All right. It's hard to say exactly. Like he didn't lose any limbs or anything. I don't know. That's true. That is a good point. Yeah.

Yeah. It seemed like people back then were a little more impervious to like psychological and long lasting emotional damage. He's just like a day in the life of a man. Yeah. Right. Hadaday presents in the red corner the undisputed, undefeated

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eyes. And, The winner by knockout is Hatterday. Paraday. Bring it on. Okay. First category is. So we went over a lot.

Hugh, you led a life of great incident. I just want to know, even before the bear attack, he was getting into all sorts of tight spots. So what part of Hugh Glass's story would you most likely have personally given up and or died at? I think when the pirates got caught,

I wouldn't have been like the only one to escape. Yeah. I'm probably dying pretty early in the story. Yeah. But the part that I, say I survived, I think the hardest point of his story is right after he was mauled, where he's like gurgling out of his throat and his ribs are exposed and stuff. I'm for sure giving up at that point. Tapping out. But yeah, I'm with Jeff.

I would have died pretty early on in all of this. Yeah. So considering the pirates extend me the offer, I of course accepts because I don't want to die. Yeah. But I think once I miraculously survive the escape from the ship and go through the whole Pawnee tribe situation where you see your friend get burned to death and just like miraculously have some powder in your pocket, you're like, all right, I've used up all my luck. I'm just going to go home.

I'm done. But yeah, he's made of different stuff. Okay. So like Hugh Glass's rifle, I want to know what one inanimate object you own that you spend, spend the most time caring for. I thought this was a category because someone compared me to an inanimate object. I like that it's a huge, huge ass one. For me, it's my shed, my recording shed that I built this year is my favorite object that I own.

I just, like, every time I come out here, either to record or watch a movie or something, I just feel so cozy. You compared it to a fort the other day, Mike, and that's perfect. It feels like an adult fort that I got to build, and I just love being out here. So it's the thing that I definitely put the most time into caring for and, like, enjoying. I have two from my grandparents. I have like a little bamboo stonefly or salmon fly that are my dad's dad made. And Wes has one of those two.

And then I have some rocks that I really like from my mom's dad. And one especially is like Mexican fire opal that I like used a tumbler to really grind it down. and it just kept opening up more and more fire opal. Like, at first it didn't seem like it'd be that cool. And then, like, the more I grinded it down, the more it opened up. And now it looks like scratch marks across the rock, which I love it. Yeah. And I'm afraid I've made another fire opal rock into a ring of his, and I lost it.

And I'm so afraid that someday I'm going to, I think I've lost it like five times. But I managed to find this one. Dude, rocks are really, like, those are good to have just in case you need to smash a snake with one and eat it. That's true, and make a smoothie. We should all get ourselves some snake smashing rocks. I should have said my grizzly bear school. That's a much better answer, because that probably is the one thing I would, like, grab in a fire and take out is a school. Oh, really?

But do you, like, on a daily basis, do you, like, dusting in caring for? And that's the reason I didn't pick that, because it kind of just sits in a, in a, like, little, display box, but it is probably my favorite inanimate object that I own. I got a pretty nice tablet recently, and I get really paranoid when I get new tech, just like, I hate finger smudges on anything. I get like super tank gear protection to keep it safe. And I found myself just kind of absentmindedly wiping the screen with a microfiber cloth, just kind of like instinctively, like a knee-jerk habit. And I probably have wiped the screen with a, fiber cloth more than I've actually like read something on it.

What image do you have up on the screen when you're wiping it? Which girl from One Piece is it? Okay, anyway, so we're going to move on to kind of like a special back half of categories. I really wanted to let Jeff Cook with this first one. So I just gave him the assignment to come up with a top five list of literally anything that he wanted to make a top five list about. Yeah, no, I appreciated that. I came up with a top 11.

Okay, that's true, Jeff Passion. With some honorable mentions. All right. Good. Buckle up. All right. So it's top 11 houses I can think of. Okay.

Yeah. So first I went with Palace of Versailles, Versailles. Versailles. Versailles. Yeah. Yeah. Me and Mike went there when we went to Paris. It's the one Marie Antoine.

Antoinette lived in, I think. And I really liked the movie Marie Antoinette by, what's her name? Sophia Coppola. Yeah. So, like, it's, like, kind of too big, but back then, they didn't know about global warming things. So it wasn't really, they didn't care how big it was, you know? Also, I wouldn't choose something this big, but in that movie, it looks really nice. All the garden.

So that's 11. The garden plants and stuff probably offset all the global warming they're producing, right? And then next is just when I was doing a moving job and I moved the accountant for Bill Gates in San Francisco. And he had a house where you could see the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz and like it's just really nice house that I saw. Number nine is the house from the Pixar movie up. Like not the best house, but just a lot, like, very charming. More memories packed in there.

And then it went into space. So that's like a space house. Right. Did it go into space? Number eight is from the TV show Big Little Lies. I really love. Great homes in that. Nicole Kidman's house.

Great hopes. Yep. Nicole Kidman's house was my favorite. Most people might say Laura Derns is a little too big for me. Yeah. Nicole Kisman's was perfect, and I just think Monterey Bay is like one of the best areas in the country. Great house. Next I'm going number seven in the movie Count of Monte Cristo with like Guy Pearce, where he like pulls up to that palace or mansion and then just like empties his wagon full of treasure and he's like I'm buying your mansion.

It's cool, like a cool man. Next time going real life Pablo Escobar's house. That thing was sick. He had like his own zoo with hippos. Him and the boys would just like ride motor cars around a track that he had there. Like Columbia is beautiful. Sure. Next I'm going Logan Roy from Succession.

I just love a huge penthouse in New York City to get like some sunset and stuff. Would be pretty sick. Next time I'm going, this is number four. Okay, we're in the top five now. So we're in the parameters of my ass. Next time I'm going with Shrek's house. A lot of people will probably be mad at me for this one. But like he lives in a sick tree.

And like he has like this swamp area. He takes mud baths. Like his house is pretty nice. No plumbing. He's got the outhouse. I just, that's a like that's a red flag for me. But this is your list. Yeah.

Number three. I got the house from parasite. I don't know. No, just like the way the characters talk about the house and stuff. I don't love mansions. So, like, Parasite house is, like, a great size. And, like, the way he talks about how the architect made it so that the sun hits it just right. It's made me like that house a lot.

Number two is one I visited Robert Redford's house at Sundance Mountain Resort. It's, like, the coolest house I've ever seen in my life. And he has, like, houses for all his kids right there and, like, friends. and then you don't see any of the resort stuff or any of like the cabins at Sundance. It's just like a hillside that goes into Sundance or into Timpanoga's Mountain. Yeah. So like it's just beautiful. Robert Redford's house is awesome.

And then my number one choice is Emperor's New Groove where they have like him and his best friend have houses at the top. And they have water slides that go out of their house. into a pool where they can go hang out every day. Yeah. I can't think of anything better. If we all three had houses up there, a perfect dream. It's a great top five. Okay, great.

Top five. Thank you. I also gave, well, I didn't give Wes's assignment more of just like, I mean, give him a quick quiz. Yeah. A warning of sorts. So what I'm going to do for every question that he gets right, and I'm calling this the big bucks bear quiz,

I'm going to donate $25 to a charity of his choice. Okay. And you get one phone a friend. So you can ask Jeff for help on one of these questions. So use it wisely. Can I use the internet? No. I guess there's not really a good way to stop you.

I won't. But okay. So we're going to start off with a bit of a softball question, Wes, because we want at least some money to be going to this charity of yours. Yeah. So, Ballou from the Jungle Book. What kind of bear was he? Most likely a sloth bear, because he's an Indian bear living in more jungly part of India.

India does have a few species of bear, but they think he was probably a sloth bear. Wrong. Blue bear. Blue bear. Do sloth bears, because he is kind of like a blue grayish. Do they, is that a color that is naturally a friendly? He doesn't really look like, he looks probably most like a polar bear or a black bear. That's true.

But no. But just because it's in India and the jungle. jungle, he's probably a sloth bear. And we're going to do an episode soon on soft bears. Well, the jungle book wiki has me believing that that's the correct answer. So, $25. Anster. Anster. Amsterdam. So the next question, the correct way to spell the barrenstain bears is with an E-I-N at the end or an A-I-N at the end. Because this is that Mandela effect thing. Yeah. It's A-I-N. Final answer?

Yes. All right. You got two for two so far. You're doing great. So this is like a, well, you'll see. It's a 50-50 chance for you here. So on the cover of the children's book, Corderoi, the titular bear is missing one of the shoulder buttons on his overalls.

What shoulder is it? Left. Oh, you missed it, dude. Oh, you hate charity, Wes. Oh, man. Okay, it's his right shoulder. Great book. I love that book.

Yeah. Next question. multiple choice. Which of Winnie the Pooh's friends is not mentioned in the original song? Is it Rabbit? Is it Rue? Is it Tigger? Or is it Eeyore?

I'm gonna go with Rue. Nope. Oh. Man, you really, you must not really care for this charity. It's Tigger. Okay. Tiggers, yeah. Because he didn't appear in the first volume of Winnie the Pooh.

So far, I'm 50%. would not have helped you one. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I think you're going to get this one now. Next question. What color is Paddington's cap under which he stores this marmalade sandwich?

It's like an orangish red. Yep. I would have gone with, yeah, that, it works. I was just, I had red written down. I don't really think there's any orange in it. We always disagree on colors. Me and Jeff see colors vastly differently. It's orangeish red to me.

Okay. Next question. This is a Muppet question. This is a bonus Muppet question. What is Fossey Bears occupation? And you get an extra point if you can do an impression of his famous laugh. I'm going to phone a friend on this one. Jeff, do you know Fuzzy Bear's occupation?

I don't know who Fosy Bear is. He's a Muppet. So far, my phone of friend isn't going well. I gave you a little bit of a hint in the second. I would say a lawyer. Wait. Here, I'll read the question again. He's a comedian.

He's a comedian. And his laugh? Mahaha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha he is a comedian you got it Yeah, so that's another 25 oh man I'm going I don't have enough I well I have to go A pan handle maybe so next question Freddy Fasbear you ever heard of Freddy Fasbear no is the titular Antagonist of what hit franchise of video games that was recently adapted as a movie Five Nights at Freddy's oh you got it I actually surprised you got that one.

From four of six right now? Yeah. So final question. Banjo, the star of the hit platforming Nintendo 64 game, carries his bird friend around in his blue backpack. What is this bird's name? Kazui.

Hey, you got it. You knew that, dude. Yeah. I'm surprised. Pleasantly. But you, man, you've... 125 bucks? You got me, yeah.

I'm broke, but in a good way. So just let me know what charity you want me to donate. Grizzly Bear Foundation. I sit on their board. I know how they spend their money. They do a great job with it. So you're just going to pocket it? No, I don't get any money. I'm not paid to sit on their board. It's a volunteer position. But they're based out of Canada. They do some great work for grizzly bear conservation, especially in British Columbia. So let's go with them. That money is just going to go to buy you flights to your next convention, probably. Set you up in a five-star hotel. Okay, well, that's it for the quiz. Good job, Wes. I'm glad. Thanks. I'm glad. I'm glad to. I'm glad to. contribute a little bit to Grizzly Foundation or whatever it's called? Grizzly Bear Foundation, yeah. Last category.

How much do we like Hugh Glass, Hugh Jazz? I like him a lot. I don't think I would want to be his friend, though. He tells some good stories. I would love to get a beer with him. Yeah. He's probably not going to be, like, really kind. Yeah.

You know what, I'll take that back. People said that he kind of was, yeah. Yeah, and like he'd just have, yeah, you're right. You'd just have a new story for you all the time. Show you some cool shit, probably. He would leave you to get poked by needles and burned, and then you would pull out the powder and save his own bacon. But that's like, you know.

I don't think he would, like, ever introduce me to girls. That's your parameters of what a good friend is. I'm just talking to that. Yeah, sure. You're my best friend. You've never introduced me to a girl. That's true. I'm going to give him eight claws.

I think he's probably like one of the toughest people ever. He's probably got some of the best stories of anyone you ever meet. But then he loses some claws for probably doing some pretty bad shit throughout his life. Like if you're both a pirate and a fur trapper in the, you know, or 1800s, like you're doing some stuff that's really bad without a doubt. And I just, I think that just kind of comes with the territory. Yeah, so I'll do eight claws. That's what I was feeling too. I'll give him nine.

I like they just loved his gun more than he loved people. I do like that. It's really endearing to just read all the accounts of him just like, he's got this beautiful Kentucky flintlock rifle just everywhere he went. It was his best friend. He just wanted it back. I actually like that version of the story more than the revenge angle. The revenge is kind of like, it's more.

like sensational. I like the idea that he like wanted to kill Fitzgerald until he got his gun back. And then like all that anger just left him. Like this is all I ever needed. You just see like the tension run out of his body. His wounds heal the same thing. Yeah. Like King Theodin after Saraman gets cast out.

Well, that's it for the Hugh Glass story. Again, we're going to be talking more about him in an upcoming episode. We're going to do a movie review of the Revenant and we're going to get into, I tried to keep it a little more factual base so I didn't get into the more kind of like crazy anecdotal stories that we're told about him. But that's coming. We're going to get, we're going to get a little more grisly, a little more detailed about some of these encounters he had in that movie, I'm sure. So I look forward to that. And that's a movie where people often ask me like, how good is this attack scene? So I'm going to take some time to really break it down and talk about how good or not good it might be.

So I'm excited for that. So subscribe because it's going to be good. No, that's going to be a white. Oh, that's going to be me. Yeah. Don't subscribe. Don't subscribe. Yeah.

We are trying, because we're weekly, we're kind of experimenting with new formats for episodes. So that's going to be a movie review episode on our main feed. Well, thank you everyone for listening. Mike, great job. Yeah. If you want to listen on our subscription episodes, West just did the emo, emo, Emo War. EU.

It's like taken back Sunday and brand new when they had the feud going. No, it's emus in Australia and they wreaked some havoc on some farmers. And it's really interesting. It's a whole war against them. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah, thanks guys.

Thanks, Mike. That was a fun episode. Yeah. Thanks for helping me. Yeah. All right. We'll see later. Love you.

Love you guys.