Ep. 259: The Squirrel Doctor Is In

John lads Kaprowski Kaprowski, you got it? Who has a genuine PhD in squirrels? More specifically, what would you say? I a wildlife conservation biologist, but I happened to work on squirrels. I appreciate the finer aspects of life, the smaller, less obvious things. Um. I gotta ask you this right off the bat, though, before we get into Clay as uh, Clay Newcom has a squirrel baculum pecker bone, which we'll

get into in a minute. But um uh why school? Like, did you know when you were when you were a little boy and people said when your friends like I'm gonna be a fireman, You're like, I'm gonna be a squirrel expert. First it was center fielder for the Cleveland Indians. And while that seems outlandish, the Indians were so bad when I was young, there was a recentable chance there. But soon after that I knew I had to do

something with wildlife. And I grew up on the west side of Cleveland, and you had pigeons, robins, you know, Norway rats and squirrels and so it was like a wildlife deprived area. Yep. And it was my connection and my father. I grew up fishing. My father or love to fish. I like to fish. We'd go out at four in the morning. I'd fish untill about two. Then Dad would drop me off on the uh drop me off on the shore. I'd walk it looking for for squirrels,

for turtles, anything that I could and uh. So that was my It was my connection when I came home to be able to look out the window and see something. So I sat out in the garage live trapping squirrels from a young age and then painting their sides or something. We got into that and we were little kids for a while. We try to be like our own mark

and recapt Yeah, that's exactly what we do. Oh yeah, if you if you went to my mom's house right now and went into her garage and went where they have a heart traps are sitting on a shelf, you would see that they're slathered in red paint from us trying to take a paint brush and uh do mark and recapture projects on chipmunks our squirrels. Easy to have tool to fool with the trap. Oh well, no, we would just do chipmunks. We had the chipmunks aze have hearts,

and we didn't put too much effort into it. We thought it'd be cool if you could paint it and see him running around the yard and be like, oh, that's the one. You know why had that same childhood experience. We would catch them in have a Hearts and then squirt whatever I could on him. And then the neighbors started complaining about the green squirrel the red squirrel, and so Mom and Dad weren't too thrilled about that part

of it. But then I went to went to university Ohio State University, and I was like, oh, I can't wait to work on mountain lions or you know, elk or something something cool. And when I go forward and I started my master's and got a call from a professor said, hey, I got this great squirrel project. Like okay, but my next degree, I'm working on polar bears or wilds or something. And I worked on squirrels again University of Kansas, and then now I'm working on bunch of

those other things. But they're just such a good way for people to connect, you know, to conservation, to value. Uh, you know, value the kinds of places we value. And they tell us a lot about the quality of a forest, you know, how severe a fire was, all those things. Yep, they're just great indicators. I want to hit you up with some a couple of squirrel myth questions. Go for it. Well, no, not yet, except we went to talk about Clay's little

clays back and go ahead, Clay, show show him your deal. There. I'm gonna narrate because actually his back all right. Ah. I was actually unaware that that squirrels had a a a vaculum, a bone penis. Uh. The other day I pulled this one out and and they do, and most a whole lot of placentals send to mammals have them. And it's I just measured at Steve. It's exactly a half inch. And this is a just a andered gray squirrel. He appeared to me to be of average age and maturity.

So he's gotta he's got a he's a that that squirrels what a pound and a half john two pounds okay, so he's got a hat. So that's an inch per every four pounds generously, which goodness. But but described to people what you're like the because you know people at home was the driving to work right now. I can't tell what the hell you're holding, Uh, describe what you're holding.

You know, if you saw this bone on the ground, let's say, you know, you found a just a bone pile and it was a squirrel it was the bone would be totally indiscernible in any recognizable shape. It just it's kind of it's about as small as a a pencil lead and a number two pencil. The thickness of that. It's a half inch long. The tip of the baculum flares out, which is pretty typical of all these vacula of bears of coons that kind of flares out at

the end and towards the backside. It's kind of it kind of is bulbous slightly, you know, kind of kind of widen think at the back, almost like a baseball bat, that it would be a good baseball bat. Yeah, yeah, before he wanted to be a squirrel ball. Yeah. So anyway, just a little indiscernible bone. Uh, how John are you? Are you? How schooled are you on like physiology and whatnot? I'm happy to go there. And I really loved Clay's

description there. I thought you were just gonna stop. It's just this little bone, but all those those components that you talked about are are are what make that that bone function. Another name for it is the os penis, the penis bone literally. Um, and so Clay, could you take a look and does it look a little twisted? Usually they're also a little kind of corkscrewy if you if you look at there, reminds me a Limerick I used to know. It's this one, uh just a bit,

I think for gray squirrels. This one still has a little bit of This one's pretty fresh, so it's not I don't have it clean totally. It appears to have almost like a thread towards the end. It looks like a yeah, kind of like a corkscrew. Yeah, I see one kind of rib, you got it. That's uh. So these are used as part of the squirrel reproductive mating system. Uh. Males form copulatory plugs, so when they copulate with a female, they they're the seaman hardens into a plug that tries

to guarantee them their paternity. And I don't understand that, so that when uh once when you have a copulation with the female, within just a few seconds, the semen actually hardens into a waxy plug in the reproductive track and blocks other males from uh from breeding. And so the corkscrew shape that that kind of bulb his head that you talked about, that actually helps remove the copulatory

plug of the previous mail. And so it's just kind of amazing detail in that if you pick one bone in a squirrel, the vaculum is probably the place to go, Clay. You just you just see that whole mating system laid out right there. Rodents do that or is that exclusive to them? All rodents have some form of a vaculum, but the plug part of the plug. Uh, it's not some thing that everyone's looked at in all rodents, but I think for all that where it's been studied, well,

most um where it's been studied. H they're they've been demonstrated. Like red squirrels, there's not really good evidence that the red squirrel you find around here, there's not really good evidence that they form a copulatory plug. But like the whole squirrel family, most of the rats and mice do it as well. I hate the fact that a squirrel has to be lumped in with a rat and a mouse and you call it a a rodent. I always think about that with beavers, man Like, it bums me out

that beavers are a rodent. Yeah, too cool to be a rodent. Yeah, yeah, but that's a scientific term rodent. Yeah. Yeah, it's a whole order. So it's everything with those kind of you know, gnawing teeth. For the most part, rabbits are a whole different order, but somewhat closely related. And so rodents include beaver, muskrat, all the voles and field mice, rats, all of those things. The cappy barra cappy bar or

you got it, chinchilla, chinchilla roding chinchilla are yes. I was just gonna say, going back to the the semen plug and then the corkscrew bacula. It's it seems counterproductive because if the semen plug is designed to keep other males from you know, actually breeding a female successfully, but then you've got an anatomical feature that defeats the semen plug, then it seems like you might as well, Like from adaptive standpoint of a squirrel, it doesn't do any good

to have a semen plug or a corkscrew. Do you see what I'm saying. It's an arms race man, and that's it. Yeah, survival of the fittest. Yeah, they've got this feature, but then they've got another feature that defeats the first feature. Yeah, but what it pushes toward is that you would develop a really like that your plug is the best plug on the in the in the field, and your extractor is like a phenomenal extractor. So you're like, I don't care if you could he if he plugged it.

I'm gonna I got the best unplugger and then I'm gonna throw something in there that no one will unplugged. Yeah. Yeah. I once I asked an ecologists like, is there such thing as the evolution like to go backwards? And like, well no, because if it goes backwards, it's for a reason. It's just evolving more despite it like losing some trade or something. That's still evolution. It's not the evolution by going backwards, it's still going forwards. Yeah, I yeah, sure,

that's John Well. And so that's this is an incredible opportunity where you can just kind of see this battle. Right, so you say, all right, we need more squirrels. Uh, you know, it doesn't really matter who is the one that breeds, who's the most successful, but in this case, you just see that battle played out. Right. You talked

about plug characteristics. You know how much sperm is in the um, you know, is it is transfer transferred during that copulation and then this removal tool that helps you be successful. And the other thing is it's not just the males where this is happening. There are multiple males that mate with a female. You've probably seen one of these squirrel mating bouts where um, usually the females only in heat for a short time on a single day, usually just like six or eight hours, so you'll get

really yep and you'll get eight or ten females. I've seen as many as males chasing a female. I've seen as many as forty five Eastern gray squirrels like the species. Uh, Clay was just talking about males chasing one in heat female for six hours yep. And for the female that's the one time time she gets to mate. So typically it's to her advantage to mate with a number of

males and rodents. And so after a copulation, the female actually will remove the copulatory plug if it isn't um embedded far enough in a reproductive track, and then she'll mate with the next mail um you know that's able to gain out? How does it? She just reaches down and with her teeth pulls it out. So you know, rodents have those two two big upper incisors, two big lower incisors, like presumably she can feel that it's seeded

properly or like not where it needs to be. So every time she mates, she'll actually groom herself and the male will groom himself as well, and then uh, there's there's a few minute period before she'll be receptive again, and during that time males are all attacking each other trying to gain access to the female. And then during that grooming, if it's if there's any plug sticking out, she'll she'll pull it out and throw it to the ground sometimes even eat it. There's a lot of It's

a massive kind of waxy plug of protein. How do how does a male win about? Like does a female then select one? Or like what is what is the winning process? Like? So there's varies a little bit between different species um in, but it's typically based on size

and just the ability to continue to track the female. Uh. Males can figure out that a female is going to be in heat about five days in advance, and so they start during the breeding season, males are just roaming around figuring out kind of the timing of when some of their female neighbors are going to are going to be receptive. And then before sunrise they're out there waiting for the for the female outside outside her nest yep, and you'll get dozens sometimes, you know, lined up and

they're fighting each other. Where where were you though? You had forty five males? Like where were you? There's gray squirrels in one like Steve and I are going to go home there. I'm not telling you that's my secret spot is a park or there's just no predators around. Yeah.

So this was in Lawrence, Kansas, where I was doing my PhD, and so kind of open park land, pretty high density of animals, and it was the other part of this is during the breeding season, when mails start picking up that faint scent of a female that's coming close to being in heat, they really expand their range. And so for those five days they're they're roaming farther

than they ever moved the rest of the year. The rest the rest of the year, they're in just a couple couple acres of their home range, but during this time they'll expand it five to ten times. And so they're trying to find mates and you know, be successful in the survival of the Fittest battle that we were just talking about by just finding as many females that might be in in heat. So they come We've had males move uh, three or four miles during to find

a receptive female. So they are coming in from everywhere. So you get forty five coming in from you know, say a square mile or two. You've seen where one squirrel has moved how many miles three to five miles from his home during a mating chase. I've seen a move about about three miles. I've actually this is how how lonely I am. Guys um during my PhD, I would go out in the morning and follow male squirrels

and see how far they went. And well, you know you weren't just spooking them along, so well at a great distance, and do I look scary? I'm a good dude. You're following him with some sort of tell him that try or this was the old fashioned way. It was an open park land, so I was just a little bit well like big oak and hickory forest. But because it was in in a small town Lawrence, Kansas, you know, mode grass, you know, some some houses even in that

kind of thing. And then the whole campus, which is so just take a pair of binoculars and keep an eye on them. Ye stayed at a distance, followed them around and and uh figured out how much time you puts. It used to be much better shape back then, following squirrels three miles. One of my questions was is there such a thing as a rut tree? And I think

you've pretty much answered it. When we roll, when we sometimes find like a tree where you like, you shoot one and then alone and behold ten squirrels start, you know, jumping. He talks about finding a rut tree. Yeah, but so it's one female and nine males and they're just all working that But it's just that they happened to be in that tree, like that tree could move, not the tree doesn't move, but I mean you just happened to

catch it where it's occurring in that tree. But it's likely to drift to the next tree, to the next tree. And so it's part of that uh spencer you were asking about what makes him successful. The female doesn't. She's moving around too. She's trying to feed that day and and and so she's moving out there in the forest. And if the males get they're all fighting, and that level of aggression, they're really hyped up, and they'll attack

each other. Another male tries to mate with the female, males will try to interrupt it, and so it's risky for her. And you know the male that's the one that's the one day they have to you know, they have to be successful. The female has to raise that litter now for the next few months, and so she'll hold up in a cavity, you know, going one of these what we call leafness or dres is kind of balls. Was the word dre clay nuke. Have you ever heard that word dre. I've seen it in the literature. I

would not have used that word, but I've seen it written. Dude, I'm gonna start using that word big time. Man. How's it spelled? Well, it depends if you're if you're British, you spell it d R E y or d R A y. Uh. And so yeah, if you if you really want to speak that you know speaks PhD and s stuff. And I'm gonna be Dr. Trey has to be sweet, man. Do red squirrels participate in gray squirrel

bouts and vice versa? No, it's just a single species, uh, and so there, but there is some confusion that can occur, and so I did. I've worked in areas where fox squirrels and gray squirrels both occurred, and you would in that case where there are forty five Eastern gray squirrels, there were a couple of fox squirrels that were attracted by the noise, maybe like vaguely the scent, but they

never really participated. You know. There there's enough difference between the species that you know, it doesn't seem to get there. And red squirrels are even more kind of taxonomically distant from fox squirrels and gray squirrels, so they're never seen any overlap there. Do you, um, have you heard? I think we might have asked you about this? Have you heard?

Are you familiar with the theory that or the idea that people put out there that when males are competing they'll actually try to harm, that they'll like bite the testicles of another male. I like, are you familiar with this being an idea that people throw out there? I hear this all the time. And who from? Uh, well from you from St. John is the person I interviewed for the article. He was one of my tea. I don't trust things coming through your coming to you before

we go here. I want to know can you handle the truth? Steve? You know I can that. If you notice my line of questioning, I haven't asked you does it happen? I said, are you familiar? And and and I want to then get into how far back in time? Like have you heard this theory? And where do you feel that it? Uh? Where do you feel that has come from? I almost FELFI Felfier skilled interview technique of

sneaking into this. Yeah, I was very deliberate and my question as well and I'm also I listened to the podcast UM just last night where where you were discussing this previously, and you two have a relationship that's kind of tenuous, and this seemed like something that could really separate you. So the whole other thing that we're in a fight about that I don't even know about yet, as there was something he did to my friend Doug during Oh yeah, Well, so I know people who have

said they're great grandfathers told them that. And I'm fifty nine years old, so we're talking like, you know, last century, you know, people two centuries ago, late eighteen hundreds. I know folks who have heard that story. And uh so it is something that's been passed along from you know, from generation to generation, which is zero zero evidence, zero evidence. Ye,

And I mentioned following males for three miles. You don't do that and see lots of things going on between, you know, between different squirrels, and have never seen that. They do all the dirty trips. So they get in fights they don't need to. They've got the you know, the copulatory plug and the h the baculum that you know that helps them in that battle. But what happens, What does happen, and so you've hit on something that's

kind of unique about rodent biology. Uh, you can see why someone thinks that they have an animal that doesn't have any testicles, because it's just a seasonal cycle in rodents and squirrels. During the breeding season, the testes descend into the scrotum and you know, in large produced sperm, and they're ready to get ready to mate day after day for sometime times two or three months, so they're

they're really functional then. But then during the non breeding season there they move back into the abdomen up a canal and they're kind of held in the abdomen and they get really really small, so you you would have to if you're just gutting the squirrel, you're not even gonna notice. You could have to really look and see it. So just this natural natural pattern then and the screwed um itself to sort of just struggles up and it just becomes belly skin again. It looks like belly skin.

You'll see if if you've got an older male, you'll see that there it takes on a darker pigment and you'll kind of see where the scrotum was and if you kind of spread the hairs a little bit. You'll notice that, all right, you know that this is you can tell us an adult male because of that, juvenile males will not have a pigmented screwed them. And then once they've gone through a breeding season or two, it gets dark and you could tell, hey, this guy's bread before,

but it just it will. You wouldn't notice that this was even a male if you were just watching them, you know, from a distance with binoculars or something like that. Do you do you believe in squirrel migrations? Is that true? Yep?

That historically massive squirrel migrations, and I think like like concerted movements where they're like all the squirrels are moving in a direction now now, so yeah, loosely using the word migration, there there have been historical reports and even relatively recently, I was getting reports two or three years ago in the Eastern US of following mass failures. So master you know, acorns, primarily hickory, some of those things, and when you get a failure, it's often a regional failure.

And especially if you're looking at uh, you know, forests that aren't super diverse and there just you know, a

long stand of just a couple of species. If it's a bad year, then there there are reports of literally tens of thousands of animals swimming across the Ohio River to get into Kentucky, um swimming across the Great Lakes um leaving some Some of the more recent reports of these kind of large scale movements are uh in Lake Michigan UM and I think Lake Superior, coming off of islands where you've had a failure of mass and then

swim into the mainland. Yep, yeah, oh you know. Nothing I want to ask you about back to reproduction is what is the timing of the squirrel rut right now? Perfect time? These uh so right now they're the squirrel ruts starting. Uh it begins sometimes even late December. Kind of depends what, uh where you are in our in a country, but like the heartland of the country, going back to Michigan or or Ohio where where we're from, Steve, Uh, things are starting right about now. You'll be seeing these

mating chases that I was talking about. And for many things. Many species like eastern gray squirrels and the fox squirrels, the two most common species around the country, those will have a second reproductive season during the summer also, and uh so there's kind of two peaks and that's when during those times are when males have squirrel testes that kind of real obvious case, you know that that it's the breeding season. So then the most females kick off

two litters annually they can. Females in good condition will pull off to two litters. Uh most often the average female usually pulls off one during those times. And if if you have a late spring frost, that knocks back, so they're breeding now in places with deciduous forest that the uh the food crop is still not really determined and so you're just gonna start getting leaves starting to

pop out and that kind of thing. If you have a late spring frost and all that gets knocked back, often females will absorb their litter and not produce that first breeding season, and then they'll they'll be in better

shape and uh reproduced during that second season. But some really some older females and females and good condition, if you had a good uh you know, mass crop the previous year and they're they've fattened up over winter, they are you know, ready to go, uh in in really good breeding condition, you'll get a couple of litters, they'll they'll be able to pull off. During a mass failure, nobody will reproduce sometimes and you'll have no reproduction in

a given year. And what's the average litter and then a great litter size? So usually about three So two and a half to three and a half is average for most most tree squirrels. And the records are kind of eight or nine um, depending on which which sources you believe, but they're published records of seven eight nine uh nine squirrels. Ground squirrels have have larger litters typically, but most of the tree squirrels are kind of in that three animals two and a half to three animals

that half animals always difficult to difficult to count. Do you, uh, what's been your relationship with um squirrel hunters and squirrel hunting like, do you find that that's where most of your of the sort of popular interest in your work comes from or do you find it more more from wildlife observers. That's the great thing about squirrels, I mean,

it's kind of across the board. It's one of the things to me, you know that the reason I'm doing what I do and wildlife conservation is to bring people together to save these kinds of opportunities, you know, keep our wild and working lands, um, you know, for future generations. And squirrels are one of those species that you can,

you know, can bring everyone together. Sure there's an occasional squirrel hater because they're bird feeders being attacked, but you know, that's just the cost of having a bird feeder, uh it. I have a number of folks who are very interested because just like I mentioned when when I grew up, it was the connection that someone has with the you know, with the natural world. And then you know, squirrel hunters also, it's a connection they have with the natural world. And

then you don't have any animosity to squirrel hunters. I don't know. I've hunted squirrels, I've I've eaten squirrels. Every time I go to my brother in law's house, he's got a different squirrel recipe for me to try. You never feel bad about it. There's this one moment perhaps, but you know, but then if it's well cooked, of course I don't feel bad about it. Um. Can you explain, Can you talk a little bit about how the the

color phases work with at the eastern gray squirrel. I find there is like endless confusion about it's a black squirrel, it's a gray squirrel. There used to be a lot of black squirrels. Now it's all gray squirrels, like, which is true. Yeah, it's like shifts over time. Just watch my mom's yard. You're like, most of gray squirrels are black. Then it's like a while later, it's like, most of

gray squirrels are gray. What's going on? So they're all gray squirrels, you know, to someone who's interested in kind of the taxonomy classification, they're all gray squirrels. They were that species. They can interbreed eastern eastern because the western

gray he doesn't have a black phase. Right, there's just been a couple of cases of of uh, and in the most species you you have this rare these rare occurrences of melanic forms, the you know, the black forms, and then also some Albanistic or just uh, you know forms that are that where some of the pigments gone, so they'll be some kind of something in between are

mostly white but not completely. But yeah, it's just a you know, just like hair color, eye color in humans, it's you know, it's all due to genetics and the So I'm guessing your mom lives in in Michigan still. Ye. So once you start getting north far enough, the black forms become more common and that actually has a physiological advantage, like with heat. Yep, that's exactly. It heat better, Yep, that's it. So the advantage is during winter, during the summer,

people have done physiology on him. Doesn't make a difference. They you know, they they're both color morphs, have this you know, kind of same metabolic cost. But during the winter, the ability to absorb and retain heat in that black color. You know, we've all watched the sunshine and they come out and splay out on that s that sun up exactly, and that's usually in the winter. The first thing they do in the morning, they come out of the nest and just lay flat, warm up and and and then

start their day. While the black forms have an energetic advantage. And when you're on that kind of razor's edge of you know, do I have enough energy to survive to produce offspring? You know, any little advantage um, you know, it's something that could be capitalized on. So Toronto, you know,

southern Ontario, lots of black color morphs. But if you go down to eastern gray squirrels get all the way down to the floor to South Florida and close to the Florida keys, black forms are are hardly ever seen down there? Is there right now? Can one litter have full on like full on gray and full on black ones? Yep, that we just talked about. We started off talking about the mating system, multiple fathers for a single litter, and so you've got that possibility, and then just the heritability.

People are still working out how that black color morph you know how dominant it is in that kind of thing. But uh, typically that melanic form, we do know that it is a dominant morph. So if it's if that gene is present, then you're going to get the production of lots of black pigment. God should be dark individuals. So you can have you can have mixed litters of mixed coloration, usually that kind of grizzled gray color that you're familiar with, and then the black morph. Okay, guys,

I'll go I'll go on for three hours. Man, you got do you want to throw one in there? So I read from an aerospace engineer once that squirrels can survive a fall from any reasonable distance, like any height of any building. What's like the furthest You've seen one fall and live. I've seen one fall seventy ft and hit the ground and just get up and start running. They're always a little dazed. They're always a little dazed

when they hit the ground. Um they so that's excusable, Yeah, okay, And it's just like you if you fell, you know, usually see them kind of shake their head, blink their eyes a few times, and doesn't shatter every bone body. I guess they're not like they got like enough air resistance. And that's it. It's kind of a surface area to volume. You know that people of people said, no one has experimentally looked at this, but you know that a mouse could fall off the Empire State building and and still

and survive that fall. Uh you know where a squirrel with its size, when they've calculated it, they wouldn't be able to survive fall that far. But during those mating chases I mentioned all that, aggression males do not sit there passively. When you've got you know, ten fifteen forty five males, they'll knock each other out of the trees all the time, and you know, it sets their competitor back a little bit. But I've I've seen I've seen them fall, you know, seventy feet and hit the ground.

They shake around a little bit, you know, they're stunned for a few minutes, and then they're they're back at it during those mating chases. So we what was going on at the seventy ft fall. So they were at the top of a large tree. The male and female were copulating, and another male came and knocked him both out of the tree. The female was able to hold

onto the tree. The male fell seventy feet and you know he went from you know, thinking that he was going to be successful that day, trying to work his way back. You know. So have you ever seen one die from a fall? Then nope. But people have looked at, uh looked at skeletons in museums to look for breakage of longbones and that kind of thing, and not surprisingly, uh, somewhere from five to ten percent of the animals have

broken longbones, so they may sustain some damage on those falls. Uh. You know, those broken longbones could have come from lots of things, but uh, you know, they there's some evidence that maybe maybe you know they they do, you know, take on some some real physical damage too. We've come across dead squirrels laying like inexplicably on the forest floor. It's exactly my question deduce with for no reason whatsoever,

that they must have fallen. Yeah, it might be an impossible question to answer, but yeah, you're like, it's probably been the same squirrel a couple of times. But I know that just with my kids, I've been walking through the woods squirrel hunting, and there is a perfectly fine looking squirrel, not eaten, not eaten, no claw marks, no talent marks, uh, no twenty two hole in it. Um,

I mean, looks fresh as as a daisy. Like you do almost want to just put it in your game pouch and take it home, but you don't because you don't know what killed it. So a couple of things. Often when you find those animals and you and you actually if you skinned them out and looked, you'd see that there was a talent that whacked him, and the and you know, the hawk or uh, the owl ended up you know, losing it. Sometimes they'll fight over each other.

So we've had a number of times where where I'll get an animal, I'll say, oh, there's absolutely absolutely no reason for this animal dieing. And when you skin it out, you just see those you know that you can see where the talent marks were. So it's possible that it's that I hate to go back to squirrel mating systems again,

but we're going to go there. Uh So, where I have seen animals fall dead was that during the breeding season, those males are getting up early every morning, going out, trying to mate with females during the day, then trying to figure out when the next female is going to be in heat, and you know, plan their next day of activity. And when you do that for forty fifty sixty days, males are often in horrific condition and they're

fighting each other. So we've had I've seen probably a dozen animals that have They'll wake up in the morning and fall dead to the ground and you'll and you will just find them. They'll look like there's malnurished. Yep, they're just malnurished. Skin them out and we do a knee cropsy on them and you'll see often puncture marks from other males the incisors where they beat each other up, and then they've got no body fat on them, so

you know they're they're giving it. They're all you know, and and you know, as far as survival to finish, if they've made it with some females, you know that they've done all they need to do for that year. But so I have come across male squirrels like that on the ground and they have and I've watched them fall out of fall out of a you know, from a den first thing in the morning or early in the morning, just haven't been had enough energy to to

continue to move. I was at the Durren's house, he's a buddy bars in Wisconsin deer hunting one time and I heard uh noises like that most people wouldn't recognize, but it was a mink. They have a very high pitch, like like this high pitched squeal when they're agitated. There's a mink trying to gain entrance into a squirrel hole, and there is a squirrel fighting yep like the dickens to keep him out of that hole. And eventually the mink gains entrance into that hole. And I never heard

another peep and never saw that mink come out. Well, it's got a lot of food for a while he like went in there. I don't really know, but it's like he went in there, killed the thing and then just settled in. Well, I'm sure that's the case. They there may have been more than one squirrel in their Most squirrels, especially during the winter, you'll you'll get groups

of especially female squirrels. Eastern gray squirrels are actually really highly social, so there'll be several generations living together of females. During the day they're out, you won't see them in groups, but at night they all come back and it's that same Instead of a predator trying to get in, it's another squirrel trying to get back into that nest. Uh. You know, they use each other's body heat. That gives

them an advantage, and so you'll see multiple animals. I've seen nesting groups I think I think the largest I've seen is fourteen related females together in a nest, and then males will get together and nest um uh. And they're not based on relatedness, So you'll sometimes find eight or ten males in the coldest nights nesting together, and then first thing in the morning they take off. But that's a finding a quality nest that they can defend from inside is one of the biggest resources. You know.

We always think of food and that kind of thing, but those quality dens that you get in big old trees are huge for these these groups of related animals. So when we think about managing forests, retaining some of those big old trees, you know, becomes really important to quality forest management. I'll tell you something. You got to write a paper on two years ago. I was hunting squirrels and Brodie Henderson was there. He can back me up on this. We're hunting squirrels and we got a

bad hit on a fox squirrel. He goes into a hole of a cottonwood tree. But then a fight ensues and another fox squirrel kicks him out of the hole, fought him back out, and then we want up getting him. I would call that. I don't know what to call that paper. How how how would you name a paper like that? Uh, Steve is a poor shot and and elicits the assistance

of because we uh Hefflefinger. Heffle Finger who you know recently sent a paper where a guy got a publication off of the fact that, Uh, they got a publication off of that they had a trail camp set up, and a jaguar came and drank from the whole leaves and auslot sons and drinks. The jaguar kills the aslot, and this guy gets a scientific publication out of it.

It's just like an observation. And then you're like, huh, so I do feel that you could publish this piece well, but with that attitude, but you know, yeah, I'd be game as long as we can put the steve as a poor shot um like in the abstract. It could be the first line of the abstract. But those kinds

of rare observations are really critical. And you know, I know some some scientists get a little snobby about oh, sample size and things like that, and for some things, we obviously want to have enough sample size so we you know, we can make rigorous management decisions and conserved species. But you know, for these really rare events, to me, it's really important to get that information out. And so I am all four of those kinds of kinds of

publications my health. I mean, I sent that jaguar awesol Lot thing to my brother who's an ecologist. Um, he thought it was interesting, but he felt that in that article that talking about the that this was possibly something to do with climate change. He felt that was a little ting too far. He thought that was a little so it's important, but understanding the significance more talent. John, I've got to I've got a question for you about

something that I read. And it was a research project and it was actually done in between nineteen thirty nine and nineteen forty three, and this guy was studying squirrel populations in Illinois the height of World War Two. Yeah, in the height of Americans that's what he's thinking about, Yeah,

right of American squirrel hunting. To um. He said that the earliest they saw a female squirrel coming to estrus was December eleven, and the latest that they saw a female squirrel come in was January, you know, for the

winter rut. And he was real clear that there were two breeding cycles, especially with older females, and he get He said that that from northern Illinois to southern Illinois there was a ten to fourteen day delay, Like the southern Illinois squirrels came into breeding cycles earlier than Northern Illinois.

And I just saw that parallel. I guess with a lot of mammals that are the breeding cycles of the North are gonna be later, so that the the offspring survival is better because it happens later in the spring. But I was just gonna say, like here in Arkansas, if you were to ask just the squirrel hunter down the road, when's the squirrel rut, they'd say early December. You know, that's that's kind of what they would say. But like I heard you talking about Michigan being is

it later John up there? Yeah? Correct, it's a little bit later up there. And it actually varies between species a little bit. If you have both gray and fox squirrels. Fox squirrels usually are a week to ten days earlier. I'm not really sure why that is, but that's kind of a widespread pattern, and they'll start a little bit earlier in December. And you hit on it, Clay that that the farther you go north, they're usually a little bit delayed, And that all makes sense, right. Reproduction is

all about producing young. Those young You want them to emerge when all those buds are coming out on the spring, on the spring trees, so that the female is going to be in in good condition while she's producing milk. Because the most energetically costly event for a female mammal is lactation, not pregnancy. Pregnancy is costly, but trying to nurse those young and produce all that protein and you know, fat rich milk that takes energy. And so the timing

of these things are really critical. And so as you go a little further north, springs coming a little bit later, and you're going to see that that that change in the timing. You're right on the money, Clay. I asked a veteran guy, veteran squirrel hunter here in Arkansas the other day. I said, what's the toughest time of year to squirrel hunt? And he said late January because the females are dinning and not leaving their nest munths much.

Can you is there any research on the movement of males and females during that time of year, because it is really tough right now and it it uh And he said, it's because they're dinning up, they're close to their nest, their their dentries. Is that is that about right? Well, if we eliminate poor squirrel hunting from this, then uh, what you're exactly dogs not great dogs, So you're exactly right. Yeah,

So the females have gone through and reproduced already. Now they're you know, they're pregnant, and so they hold up. They don't they're not using much energy. They usually go out for literally just an hour or two a day, feed, you know, eat whatever nuts they can, and then go back in the males though it's it's usually still the end of the breeding season and they're still roaming around and they start ranging even more widely trying to find, you know, one of the last females that might still

be available. So you're you're you're basically trying to hunt half the you know, half the population now because females are hold up and unless you know where Dan is you know where the female might be coming out, Um, you're you're not even going to see them very much during during that time. So you nailed it. Yeah, that's the interesting thing you brought about. The lactation takes so much energy because and people that hunt, um, people the

hunt a lot of wild pigs. We'll say, the best wild pig, the best condition is a pregnant sou And always thought that like that they'll be fatty, And I thought, like, how could that be? Because how's it not so taxing to produce it, and they're saying, the worst pig is a nursing sou Yeah, that just get like sucked dry. Well,

that's that's exactly it. You know, milk is really expensive to produce, and so typically they're putting everything into just producing as quality and offspring as possible, giving them the best start in life. And so with with female squirrels, they won't even the second most energetically expensive part of their life is changing their pellage, you know, molting their fur and grow a new fur. It's all protein, right,

a bunch of its protein. That's costly. They don't do that until after they've finished nursing their young, so you'll see these really raggedy looking females late in the spring. I get calls where someone's like, oh, there's some kind of you know, horrific disease going through the squirrels. You know, look all mangy and manges that you know can be a problem, but it's just they're just females who are given everything they can to their offspring, and so they're

producing and producing that milk. And if you look at fat stores of females at the end of nursing, there's no fat store, just just like males are invested in everything in those breeding seasons, and I mentioned some of them dying because they you know, don't have any they're just so malnourished. That's exactly what you can see with females at that kind of end of nursing. You're exactly right.

I got a double question for you. Rattle off, like what normally kills squirrels like from predator from a predatory standpoint, and then what are some of the freakish things you've seen? So usually avian predators, hawks and owls are the number one predator. Then you start getting into things like you know, foxes and bobcats also take a large number of them, catching them off the ground. Catching them off the ground much harder, obviously, you know, they squirrels can get into

the trees pretty quickly, but raptors nail them. Raptors and some of the studies we've done raptors account of the mortality of red squirrels. And then the remaining of predation events are from foxes, bobcats, that kind of thing. But when they're in those I mentioned the necessity of those quality den cavities and that being part of you know, kind of good forest management. If you don't have a

quality den cavity, lots of things can get in. Raccoons will will come in and you know, eat a whole litter ant or a group of these nesting adults that are in there. You mentioned the mink, you know, being able to get in. Uh, we'll see crows. Crows will go into those nests. Crows actually the leaf nest the dreys that we were talking about, those piles kind of a basketball side eyes ball of leaves up in the trees.

Crows will fly from tree to tree, from from tree to tree, looking at those nests and trying to pull out squirrels from within. Some raptors will do that as well, but uh, gopher snakes, bull snakes will there. There's a really cool study that showed they actually will climb trees that have those leaf nests in them more than they'll climb trees without them. Yeah, yep, and they go in.

It just smells the activity at the base of the tree could be um Usually, though, squirrels they come in from they don't come from the bottom up into their nest tree. They're usually coming in from the canopy. And that's something we should talk about is some of the kind of subtle scent communication that goes on between squirrels. But that so snakes are are great nest predators as well. But there's some incredible records documented a lot like the

jag are an awesome lot that you were talking about. Um, they've been reported in the stomachs of bullfrogs. Uh that's that's a big bull frog in a small squirrel. But h and they've been uh large mouth bass had plucked them off of tree branches. Uh. So there are a couple of reports of you know, seeing a bass come out with a squirrel, you know, eating some berries, you know, in this idyllic setting. You know, you can imagine the you know, the Bambi music in the background, and then

out leaps this uh, this large mouth bass. So you know there anything that you know, they're a nice chunk of meat. So anything that can anything that can get them is going to go for it. I had read that squirrels, like all road into their teeth never stopped growing, so they have to grind them down and if they don't, they'll grow into their skull and kill them. Is that something you've ever like witnessed or seen. Yeah, So you're so you're partially right. The cheek teeth don't the mohlers

don't grow, they're not everlasting. You actually can age squirrels by looking at their cheek teeth. So if you're out there hunting and you know you can't you get a young of the year, it'll look like a kid's molars, you know, human child's molars where you can see every little nook and cranny. But they get worn down, you know, as they get older. So really old animals, you'll see those teeth worn down to the gum line, you know,

just like Heffelfinger was in here. I'm sure probably talking about deer aging numerous times, but uh, you can do the same thing with squirrels. And but the incisors are ever growing, and that's really the you know, the business end of the squirrel. If they can't gnaw into things, then you know they're not going to be able to survive.

So those are ever growing. And you know, if you take a look at them, they've got that kind of orange or yellow part that you'll see looking head on at a squirrel that is harder than the white portion that's behind. And that's so they sharpened to a wonderful point that you know then and they're able to you know, open a hickory or or a walnut. And so occasionally those will get offline. They rub up against each other and they kind of, you know, just like you would

sharpen your knife. That's essentially what's going on with each each bite that the squirrels taking. But if they're injured, you know, in a fall, in a battle, whatever you know, causes some injury and they get offline, that's where you see these things grow back and they you've got that kind of wonderful circular shape that helps with the self sharpening. But if they're offline, that means it circles right back and usually hits the eye or something like that. So

now they're not able to gnaw into things. You know, they're going to be weakened condition and so you don't see it very often, but you do occasionally get an animal that survives long enough and still you know, still able to get enough food to be able to uh to see that you know, a death. That's there's aldo that malleclusion. Do they use those teeth to like kill little animals since they're omnivores, that's right, excellent point. They

are they're they're omnivorous. They will eat lots of insects. They'll eat you know, other they'll eat small mammals. But there are also are cannibalistic at times, and they'll uh we've there are a number of cases in some ground squirrels, like prairie dogs, they're actually infanticidal. They'll they'll kill uh other young they'll go into the borough of their sister and kill her young, um to give uh the advantage to that individual's own young. In tree squirrels, uh, we've

seen them kill birds. Uh, they'll they'll frequently kill birds. They're known red squirrels are kind of really nasty egg predators and nestling birds. Uh. Most most ornithologists that there's a group that will well hate squirrels, perhaps because of they they the nest predation that they have. But I've even seen cases where where they won't they haven't killed

the individual. Uh. Three or four times in my career, I've seen a young animal who's just learning to kind of walk and hold onto a tree fall to its death. And so we talked about adult animals surviving falls. Juveniles that don't have the muscles too and probably the balance,

yet they'll followed their death. I've watched the mother go down check the individual bumpet a few times, realize that it's dead, and then literally picked the animal up and they start eating the brain, and then they move on to other tasty bits of their own offspring that you know, they were just nursing up in the tree maybe that morning, and um, you know now they're they're uh, they're going for they've switched at carnivory. That that's called being like

a pragmatist man. That's that's really something like they invested a lot in that offspring. Hey, when I was in h middle school, I had a friend that was at like the city park and he saw a squirrel get hit on the road, and for whatever reason, he went out and picks up the squirrel. And the thing, you know, we're talking about squirrel teeth and now sharp they are, and the squirrel bites him right in the webbing between the thumb and his pointer finger just nails him deep

into the meat right there. And he like shakes the squirrel off his hand, and he cut his tendons in his hand and he had to have major reconstructive surgery in his hand. Yeah, yeah, I think about that when we hunt picking one up that's half a live I've had him bite through my thumbnail before, so yeah, they and cut all the way the bone instantly. H that's story that you just mentioned, Clay. I was my first

time ever in Arizona. Was driving along and I wanted to see an abert squirrel, a tassel eared squirrel if you guys have seen a pretty amazing, super interested in and uh, we were driving along. I hadn't seen one yet, just north of Flagstaff and I just turned to my wife and said, I can't believe, you know, squirrel biologist

hasn't been able to see one of these. And I'm driving along and literally right uh one runs out from the Ponderosa Pine forest and I hit it and um, and so I'm like, crap, you know, what what do you do? You know? And one I wanted to see it and too, I'm like, well, you know it's now donated its body to science, and I had a collecting permit so I could legally go back and pick it up.

So I turned around, pull over and it's just kind of a narrow two lane road with forest right there, so I had to pull over probably a couple hundred yards away. I'm walking walking along long and almost up on it, and this Winnebago drives over and as it that suction is that goes over, you see the tail flip up. But I kind of thought the body also popped up a little bit. And uh so I go running up, not wanting it to, you know, to be hit by another car, so i'd have a good carcass.

And I go to grab it and it jumps up, runs off the road and does that just like the falling squirrel that we talked about before, climbs up a tree, sits there and just keeps trying to shake it off. And U so I got a really good look at the at the squirrel. But it turns out that that's that's actually really common what squirrels do when they're when they're going to be attacked. Right, if you're getting attacked by a hawk, you jump first and then then you

hit the ground and start running. And that works really well if there's a hawk coming in or a fox, but it doesn't work well if there's a you know, Chevy minivan, you know that's that's driving over. You jump right up. And so they often just knocked themselves out undercarriage and then and then get hit you know, by the next car that comes by. Uh but yeah, I've so I almost had that same experience myself. Okay yan, he's got his app you with some questions, he's got

some doozies. Uh, well, real quick before we get off. What kills him? What's just average lifespan, average light span? Uh? If they if you start from when they're born, you're just talking a little over a year. Very few animals make it to adulthood. Once they reach that first year, which is when they can start reproducing, typically sometimes a little bit earlier. You're you're looking at two and a half to three years. It's kind of a good lifetime.

If you're looking at pet animals, Uh, they've read squirrels, fox squirrels, gray squirrels have all been people have had them for about twenty years. Uh. So they can even live that long. And in some of our studies where we've monitored, you know, animals and known age for decade or more, we've had animals get to about ten years in the wild, um and maybe a little bit more in some species, a little bit less, but for a small, small mammal you think, you know, isn't gonna isn't gonna

live very long. They actually, once they figure it out, once they have that den, once they you know, have know where their food is, they actually and they're weary enough of predators, they actually can survive pretty long. Mhm.

Did you like the ones I had highlighted? Are the ones that I had under my name there under your name, And I added a couple of doozies in there, but stumbled across the across that section under Yanni's I stumbled across that section under Yanni's name and my document, Um, let's let's talk about how they stash stuff and like that whole process. And Spencer's gotta follow up there too

about about stashes. But were you were you involved in that study everybody got all excited about about whether they could remember where they put their nuts or not. Well, then part of a couple of those studies. Well, so a couple of different strategies that that you're looking at. If you're talking about red squirrels or Douglas squirrels out here in the in the West, mostly they're what we

call larder hoarders. So you've come across I'm sure around here around Bozeman you've come across there what we call middens, these big piles of cone scales that they actually bury more cones in. Those are those middens. Those cone scale piles are effectively a refrigerator for the squirrel. They keep their they bury cones from subsequent years in there, and we've actually studied put little temperature transmitters in and studied that that they functioned just like a refrigerator does. The

cones don't open. If the cone scales open, seeds fall out, anything can eat them. If they stay closed, mostly just squirrels can can eat them. So by keeping them in the refrigerator, you know, you know, food isn't spoil. So that strategy works really well with pine cones and and um in places where there are lots of coniferous trees. But it's those men's are also just a result of them just sitting in the same tree, on the same branch and just chewne on pine cones, right, and so

that's often how these things start. You'll you'll have, you know, you'll have a tree that's got lots of lots of cones that in a good year the animals just start feeding there, and you get a little bit of a pile, and then a juvenile squirrel that's trying to find a place to live often starts with that place, buries a few cones there, tucks a few in the log, and then keeps eating and building these piles. Sometimes they get three or four ft high, kind of the size of

a baseball pitchers mound. Uh And they're they're typically a huge resource. You can imagine, you know, a refrigerator that's you know, already proven itself in previous years. That becomes a huge resource, and so they're passed on from generation to generation. We've followed middens that have been occupied by squirrels continuously for thirty years, forty years, not the same squirrel, you know, just as soon as one one dies, another

one moves in. As soon as sometimes when we're doing some of our live capture studies and market them, even when the animal gets in the trap, the neighbor realizes, hey, I can go steal a few cones. So we have to check these live traps and let animals go quickly because the neighbor comes over and starts stealing cones right away.

Uh So that that's a strategy that works really well with with pine cones out here, and you know it's and the the red squirrels that we have around here in bows men are territorial, so that's their whole life is, you know, packed into one of these middens. Everything that's going to enable them to survive this winter is found there because these guys don't hibernate and uh, you know, they're they're relying on stored fat and then whatever pine

cones that they've that they've saved. So being territorial and

piling them in one pla it works here. The other other strategy that you see in more indeciduous forest, typically with fox squirrels and Eastern gray squirrels predominantly here in the US, they they they're scatter hoarders, so rather than pile them all in one place where they can defend them and it's just there's uh and they last for a long time because your refrigerators working uh with things like acorns, they spoil relatively quickly and tons of things

can eat acorns, right, you know, those decisious force In those good years, you've got turkey, deer, every small mammal, some other crows and some other kind of you know, good sized birds uh will will eat them beside squirrels. So they take a different strategy and they scatter them out. So they actually go under a tree that has a concentration of them and they spread them out. Um and uh so that reduces the risk of other things eating them. But the problem is, you know, how do you find

them again? And so it turns out that part of its memory, part of it is a strategy that they uh you know, this is their general area. Um. So there's there's not it's not territorial where it's just exclusive use they will, but they tend to bury them in the same general area. So a squirrel goes back to that area uses its memory to say, hey, over here, you know, I know I buried buried some nuts. Um you know if you're thinking like this from a from

a person. But they actually find them, typically not solely by memory. It's the smell. They've got an incredible sense of smell. Their eyesights just okay, but their sense of smell. They've they've been shown to be able to find a nut three or four ft under the snow by s So it gets there, you know, it says, okay, this general spot, I know I buried them, and that makes sense if you know it looks a lot different with

three ft of snow. We've all, you know, been hiking in a forest and said, you know, and no notice how different it looks in the winter. So memory alone, you know that log now is covered up, and you know the uh even parts of that tree are covered up. So they go in and they they smell through three or four ft of snow, they'll they'll pick up that set. I got two related questions here. One is do they

ever stash meat? And then the other one is can you explain deceptive cashing and have you ever witnessed it? I'll take the first one. Yes, you are correct, Steve. Uh. You know you know the problem that you're I think your field has created. I don't say red squirrel. I'm all about solutions. So I'd like to problem get expunge

red squirrel from your vocabulary. Pine squirrel, pine squirrel, unless there's a problem there, because I find like I got a buddy from Missouri who now lives in Michigan, and he calls fox squirrels red squirrels, like it's not a red squirrel I'm like, okay, I said, just to clean up, I said, listen with him. I'm like pine squirrels, which he is not accustomed to because he didn't grow up with them. I'm like, you got pine squirrels once you live in a place with pine squirrels. Don't say red

squirrels because everybody gets mixed up. I feel that, like nationally, like Biden's is signing all these executive orders, I think you should add that in and clean that up. And in terms of Spencer's question, I read a paper one time where they're doing a study immortality study and Alberta on Leverett's so baby snowshoe hairs, and they would find the bulk of the dead ones in pine squirrel middens. And I'll add quickly that I have seen were grizzly

bears dig up and raid middens. I'm back out now, Okay. So first I'm gonna go with your pine squirrel suggestion. While I am incredibly appreciative of your suggestion there and will take it into consideration. Everybody loves clarity. So red squirrels, and I said, red squirrels U in the Eastern US. You find him in deciduous force, so there aren't even pines around. You can find red squirrels. Well, ee, it's still it's still a red squirrel too, So I don't

haven't grown up in the Midwest. Lots of people call fox squirrels red square you know, the red ones ye like in their orange right. Yeah, So let's go with orange squirrels. We'll talk to Joe Biden and see if he goes. I can't get in the executive more orange orange squirrel orange squirrels. Um. So those the middens that you talked about, uh, and that we've kind of discussed as a refrigerator, the refrigerator for more than just just cones.

They'll squirrels will put mushrooms in there, and they will store meat. So I found chipmunks and uh Leverett's uh, we found them buried in cash within the those cone scale piles. It's kind of risky though, because lots of things eat meat. So what more frequently what they do is they hang them up in the trees. They hang mushrooms up in the trees, but they hang it's stuff man like muskrats, sorry, mushrooms in trees like someone put it there, No kidding. So they're they're putting them up there,

and they actually manage them. So you guys have seen red squirrels, you know, they just they're constantly run and back and forth protecting this pile in the midden, and they're they're also is you know, anal about managing their uh there mushrooms. They will just pick them up and move them around the sun, you know, the sunny side of the tree. They'll put them there to dry out a little bit, and they'll move them back. But they

do the same thing with little rabbits as well. So we've we've seen them a few times kill uh kill rabbits. But the first time that we came across this probably twenty years ago, when I first moved to Arizona, I'm looking up and I think that there's a squirrel in this tree above me, because there's a big dark blob, you know, kind of backlit, and and it's kind of

blowing in the wind a little bit. So I thought it was its tail, and you know, it was a small rabbit that had been hung up there, probably to dry. You know, you've got to make good jerky if you're gonna use this man all winter along, so amazing. The next question was about deceptive cashing. Can you explain it and have you witnessed it? Yea. So this goes at

that you're scatter hoarding. You're not these nuts around, right, You're trying to spread out a resource that's concentrated under one tree, and you want to end up with as much of that as possible. So there have been a few cases that I've seen, and it's been reported a little bit in the literature that squirrels will you know, do the head fake and uh, you know, go in

and and fake cashing things. I've seen them pick up like a rock, put it, dig a little hole, drop it in, move a move a leaf over it, and then you know, go back and you know, grab an acorn and bury it somewhere else. And so there there's this thought that and it makes sense that this is such a competitive you know, if you don't get enough energy, you're gonna die over winter, So every little advantage, you know,

can can play out. So we've seen that, and we think that's due to different squirrels, you know, trying to uh, trying to be deceptive. But because squirrels can smell so well, you know that probably isn't a great technique solely to to reduce predation seed competition from other seed predators, but for birds that typically birds can't smell. You know, there are a few that do, you smell, but most birds can't, so they buy going in and faking. Here's where I'm

burying this, where I'm cashing this this seed. A bird is not going there. They're going by those visual cues and hey, he's you know that squirrels bearing nuts over here. I'm gonna go check it out and bounce around until I can find one. And uh so we think that it actually may be more advantage us for that kind of competition then within your own species, where you know you can you can pick up the smell of a

nut much more easily. I watched one. I don't know if he was doing a deceptive cash or if he just wasn't happy with his first spot I was. I was quite surprised to find I was on a maybe a hundred foot sort of null knob in an oak forest in Wisconsin, but a solid hundred yards from the

nearest stock of corn. I'm standing there just observing, and up up onto this null pops the squirrel with at least a half a corn cob in its mouth, runs along some logs, goes to a spot, sets it down, digs What I thought was pretty like put some effort into making a hole. I mean, he's talking about a half a corn cob and then just leaves picks up his corn cob, you know, goes ten feet farther, and then stashes it in there. But two things, Well, the biggest thing that struck means that how far he had

gone to go get get that. I'm guessing the color value of what he was dashing was worth that trouble and putting him away. But my, uh that what you said earlier brought up a question you keep talking about like near the same tree, Like how big is that stash zone for a squirrel? So it can be the size of the home range, the area that they're roaming really varies on the kind of the quality of the forest.

So if you're in a really poor forest, you've got to range more widely, and so the zone that they're burying them, you know, varies by those kinds of conditions. But typically you're looking at the home range of most squirrels is kind of a football field or two or talking just a couple of acres and you are although males during the breeding season rome you know times sometimes more than that, and they but within that they typically

will yeah, they'll they'll bury. If you're talking out in an oak forest, they'll be bry them in kind of concentrated areas. But they also, you know, it's it's energetically costly if you're you're going to going to grab an acorn, you know, if you have to run a mile to bury it, you're not gonna you know that that makes no energetic sense. So they typically don't go very far, but they're spreading them out, sometimes hundreds of yards away from the tree. And that's actually kind of the thought

to be that's to the advantage of the tree. You know that the acorn fall straight down. Now it's you know, it's parent tree is the competitor for sunlight and water. But giving this nice tasty tidbit that a squirrel is going to take out and bury, you know, is that really the advantage of the trees looking for out of the deal. So we have seen them there. They they're known when you get a walnut tree that's in fruit, you can actually smell it if you're if you're out there.

Squirrels are known to come from a couple of miles away to get a walnut tree that's a black hole nut tree back east that's in you know, in fruit, and just think they're smelling it. Yep, they smell it, yep, definitely, just like they find females from from far away. That

scent is really the way that squirrels communicate. I know we've all heard the same probably you know, even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes they don't use their eyes to find squirrels really technically should be even an anosmic squirrel finds finds a nut sometimes because you know, you they used smell to find these things. They used smell to find females, they smell to find food. They also used smell to communicate in clay. I'm really be

really curious if you've seen this. Uh, they use scent marking sites fox squirrels and gray squirrels. In particular, if you look at the underside of a branch or the base of a big cottonwood tree, you'll see areas that look like something's you know, and you know, maybe maybe a buck has come by and scraped along there. Uh. But if you look at it closely, you'll see squirrel insiz remarks. These are a set marks that all the

males roam by and mark there. Sometimes they'll sometimes they'll urnate on it, but they have glands in their cheeks and they just they'll wipe them. They got a little scrape out in the woods, a little buck yep, theys some big trees. Never never seen that, never never seen it.

Never never heard that. Look at some hickories, and look at some oaks, and especially on the underside of the lowest big branches, or if their trees got a little bit of a tilt on it where it's less exposed to uh, you know, to weather, where that scent probably stays. You'll see these things that Sometimes they'll get as big as maybe two ft by like a foot and a half or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you'll see them. They're all over I'm coming. I came here from Laramie where

we've got fox squirrels. They're all all over the trees there. So like, would that be a good strategy to sit that little scrape? So if you sit there that and I was going to say, if you sit there long enough, you'll you'll see animals come through, especially as you're approaching the breeding season. So in the spring it is a good place to go to to see squirrels and likely to hunt squirrels. And it's it's male biased, so you know you're you're not you're not hunting the big bucks.

You're getting you're getting the big one point two pounders. What are some other things like that that hunters are probably ignoring or don't know about, Like if if they're in the woods and they're trying to find a good place to hunt besides the obvious, like actual squirrels, what are some indicators that this is gonna be a good place. Well, if you put your deer stand up, you can almost

be sure that that's one of the best places. But so a couple of things those in the mornings, animals come out, and almost the first thing they do, if you're talking fall, winter in spring, is they'll bask in the sun. And that's when you get a group of squirrels. So you'll have you know, six, eight, ten, twelve squirrels all nesting together, and so finding those big old trees that have some cavities in they're not they don't like the incredibly decomposed one wind and we're going to fall

over kind of kind of tree. But if you're if you're in a place where you've got some pretty good older, large, older trees, they may not even produce they may be so old they're overmature, aren't producing any tree seeds, but they've got some good cavities. That's the place to go. You've you've all seen those den cavities probably and you can tell where squirrel has been gnawing it, and the tree keep kind of keeps re growing, so it's kind of a nice smooth edge. That's you know, that's a

good indicator. And uh. To to assess whether the animals might be there, I like to go out the night before because that's when animals are going back to the nest. And so if you follow animals back, that's when you get six or eight animals coming together right at you know, right before before sunset. So picking up an animal in the woods and following it back, you can usually figure out what tree or a couple of trees they're going back to, and and that's that's a really good indicator.

Uh uh. And then just the noise of them, and most hunters will you know, use that noise or the falling of you know, cone scales. If you're looking at red squirrels, you're looking at pieces of of nuts that are falling. Uh, that's always a great indicator. But these scent marks are something like Clay Clay sent I know Clay loves loves squirrel hunting. And most people haven't seen that. But if you go out and look, I guarantee that

you'll that you'll find a bunch of those. Red squirrels don't do that as far as we can tell, but all squirrels had these scent glands in their cheeks, and when they're going back to the nest, they wipe those. They'll stop every few feet on a branch and wipe their head back and forth. Called it face wipe, and their depositing scent that probably says there's an animal here.

This nest is going to be occupied. And you know, if you're a friend, come join me, share your body heat for the you know, for the night or uh, you know, be prepared to like that mink who won the battle, to be prepared to do to do get out there. I once did that by accident. Followed I was not just like following it to see where the dentry was. I was chasing this group of squirrels, and they got to the dentry ahead of me. I thought, well, by golly, I'm hunting tomorrow morning. I know where I'll

be sitting in the dark and waiting for him. Now. I had a very successful first ten minutes of the morning. Uh, am I doing anything? Uh? Like? Am I hurting the squirrel population by by doing that? I felt bad about, Like, just like, you know, getting close to three quarters of my limit in the first ten minutes of the morning out of that one tree. So spreading, spreading your your

hunting effort out would be a good strategy. Uh. Those groups though, especially if you're not taking all the animals in the group there, they're either groups of related females, and that that group of females, although they're not territorial, is you know, that's kind of their space. So if you're not taking all the animals, you know there are

some that are still going to be there. Or it's a group of males, and the males are typically if you're not a male youngster who's with your mom and your grandmother and you're you know, you know, maybe a great grandmother kind of in that spot then, Uh, that you're you disperse from where you're born and you're in a group with males, and you know, as we know, the really important demographic class is going to be those females. So you know, just being a little bit attentive and

spreading it around. You know, they have good litter sizes, they typically rebound from hunting pressure that's not you know, constant and immense without any problem at all. So, uh, you know, I think you don't have to feel so guilty, and I can see it in your eyes, but I think you're okay with all the raptors and everything killing them and all the other stuff that kills him. Is that have you ever seen where um where squirrel hunters have had like a localized impact on population that was

of note? So there's no I've never seen it. And because of the difficulty in finding them, I mean, you know, we've just heard from Yanni that he can only find him ten minutes out of a day, So we've got that kind of an aptitude. You know, they're they're they're always going to you know, going to be squirrels around. Uh, they tend to have good litter sizes, They tend to be able to have two litters a year if the

resources are high. So when densities start to get low, you see, and you have a good cone crop or or good mass crop, you have the ability to respond pretty quickly. There was a study back east in Virginia where they they tried to have an impact. They hunted them exceedingly high and it's something like Jesus should I want to say sevent mortality something like that, where they really were hunting an area very heavily. Then in that

case they showed some impacts of hunting. But what happens is you have more individuals producing two litters a year. You know, kind of compensate for that because now they're they're getting more food, they're in better shape, you know, don't have they're not being chased around by other squirrels as much, and they can squirrels. Tree squirrels can reproduce at about six months of age. So if you're in a time when you have a really good mask here

younger the year will reproduce really early. So you're born in February March and you can reproduce in that. There are cases where they've reproduced even in that second breeding season. So they're born in one breeding season and able to uh to reproduce just a few months later. So you know they're they're geared to be able to take advantage of these boom and bust mass crops. So a good year, you know a mask, you're going to get lots of young.

They're going to reproduce quickly and capitalize on them. Squirrel hunting is really so inefficient. I mean you realize that when you do a lot of squirrel hunting, how you may hunt this big block of timber and you realize how many times your dogs tree and you don't kill that squirrel, or how many squirrels you see that you don't kill, And so I mean you you have to You would have to hunt very very hard to be

able to knock them down. And there's there there. They seem to be a species, like you said, that just bounces back so quickly and the other way, I think about it as a hunter, and I'm trying to calm Janice's nerves here and bring him back a little more center here. Uh, I'm joking you honest um. Is that that you know, if you had a hundred acre track of land to squirrel hunt and you just pounded it and maybe you killed sevent the squirrels in there, which

you probably couldn't. The there would be a vacuum around that place. I mean, like there, you know, I've squirrels would just fill that in because think of all the land you're not hunting around that. Like so if you could like grid off and just hunt equally, like some huge portion of land, like maybe you could knock them down.

Does that sound about right, John? Yeah, exactly. The you know, prime sites are always somewhat limited out there, and you've got when you're having a litter size of two and a half, you know, three and a half young maybe a couple of times a year. Animals we talked about how long they can live. You know, there's not this massive turnover of adults, and so when when an animal

dies another animals moving in really quickly. Always have individuals that are are looking for quality spots with red squirrels that are territorial. Even more so, as I mentioned, you know, we put it, we catch an animal in a live trap and you know, just for thirty minutes and the neighbor knows that this spot is available, and you know we'll be over there in a minute. So, yeah, you're exactly right, Clay. I didn't want your honest to be too soft hearted when he comes to Arkansas here later

this winter. You take what you can get when you're squirrel hunting, buddy. Listen, I've put a lot of time effort into hunting squirrels and I've only had one episode like that. So yeah, I've I've yet to not bullet bullet trigger on a on a scroll opportunity. All right, vocalizations, let's do it like just the because I'm guessing fox and grays are pretty similar, right, so let's do then, because that's what most hunters concentrate on. I know, I

think that like red pine squirrels have interesting vocalizations. I've heard a lot of them, and I think that they can sort of be valuable to know, maybe to like an elk hunter, because you hear them in the woods and stuff, how it might be associated with you. So let's let's break it up. But let's let's kind of maybe go through all the ones that you know of what they mean and then maybe how we can use

them to our advantage. So it's there are a series of chucks, you know, kind of that cluck cluck cluck. That that kind of noise very good. Yeah, that's really good. That's very good. So uh that uh And basically it's it starts there and they become more prolonged, closer together, louder with the level of threat or you know, the y it no, I can't do it. You know, it's like it's like it becomes a home almost right. So,

and and that's it. You take these kind of you know, separate notes that are just cluck cluck, cluck, and then you push them, push them together, and it becomes a bit of a hum and then if they're really upset, then you get the wine at the end. So why why And that is and that's even worse than you. Yeah, but that's like a super agitated piste off exactly. And he's telling his buddies there's trouble bruin. We think that it's more they're telling the predator that I know you're there,

and I'm really piste off. And so they'll usually stand their ground things like something, Yeah, I was gonna I was gonna interrupt and say that. Usually when I hear that, I feel like I got a good chance of killing that squirrel. Because I feel like he's sitting there and like, I don't care if you're walking towards me exactly. So they're gonna sit there and they're just letting you know

that they know. And you know, that typically works if you're you know, if you're a squirrel against other squirrels, probably most predators who aren't gonna waste their time and effort, you know, if you're a if you're a bobcat or you know, a gray fox, and I've seen gray foxes climb trees going after squirrels. Uh, you know, you're not gonna spend all that effort if you've got something already knows you're there, like you're you're bust did and there's

nothing you're gonna do about it now. Okay. So it's just the fact that I'm aware of you that's gonna make him not go, not because he's like, oh there's a mad squirrel. I'm not gonna mess with that squirrel. And so a lot of ground squirrels that live in groups, there is advantage to alling and letting, you know, letting all your neighbors sometimes are related animals know, uh, and

so you'll hear those alarm calls. You've you've been walking in a you know, a meadow and heard a bunch of yellow belly marmots, you know, start sending off their alarm calls. That's those are often related individuals. They're alerting other members of their own species in that group know that there's a predator there. But it also lets the predator know that you've been recognized. And initially we used

to think that was altruistic. You know, that you'd have you'd have ground squirrels alerting everyone and drawing attention to themselves. Turns out that when you actually watch what predators do, they don't go for the one that saw them and is making the call. They're going for the one that's running for its borrow because it doesn't know where the predators. So now we think that that's actually kind of a

selfish activity. You call, Hey, watch all these other animals scurry around, and you know the hawks gonna get one of them, and they're not gonna at you because you know you've already identified that that you see them. Plus, those high pitch calls are really hard hard to locate sometimes, and that that's the thing the chucks that you hear those individual notes. The barks A lot of a lot of times you'll read about squirrels barking. Those are a little easier to locate when they go into that high

pitched mode. You know. It's those high pitched calls are really hard. They're harder to locate. So once they get to that level of agitation, uh, you know, they it's thought that if they're that level of agitation, the predators really close, then it's a little bit harder to actually locate. I know they're in this tree somewhere, but the squirrel is going to see him before you know, the predators sees the squirrel. I've seen them when they're like chased

each other, like rutting around. I've seen him do some amount of agitated chirping at each other. But one like when you're squirrel calling, Like my my understanding of this is eyes that you're making the alarm call when you do that noise, thinking that other squirrels are gonna wonder what the story is and come out to try to figure out what the problem is. It's not very effective.

It's very like at a certain time a year, making the distress noise seems to get females out, but I don't it's squirrel calling is not like a great thing. I don't think. Yeah, the squirrel calls to Penny. Which ones you have? You know, the ones that I've used to when we're trying to locate them. You know, you're it's it's a percussion kind of instrument. You know, you're pound and it's the chucks. You're getting this little plunger yep. And and that makes sense because that's one they're easier

to locate. So and usually use them when the squirrels in the back side of the tree or a big branch and they kind of look around, you know, that's that's where they're effective, is actually getting there, you know, getting their attention. Rarely do do they can you draw them out of a nest uh? And so so you

use those for research. Per We use them for research if we know, if we're trying to check on is this individual live and we don't have radio collars on all our animals, you can go in and use that chucking call or use my really lame chucks. That's enough for a squirrel typically to to peek around a tree, and so you'll hear them, you'll hear them skirting around the tree a little bit that you know, running against the bark, um, and that's it's a great way to

locate individuals. And oh yeah, it's ready red right ear and green left ear kind of thing. The other call that you'll hear during those mating chases is that it's kind of a snorting of males and as they run along, it's a great way to locate. That's how we locate mating chases in kind of natural forest that's not a park land like I was describing before. So we work on endangered gram red squirrels in Arizona and really dense forests.

But during the breeding season you can hear this kind of sneezing or snorting um as all these males are chasing the female. And it's thought that one there's they're trying to clear their uh, their their nasal passages so they can pick up scent and figure out where the female is as quickly as possible. Um. So it's thought that it's related to that. The only other call with a couple other really rare calls, but um the probably the the other one that's similar to some of these

that high pitched wine that we talked about females. If so, during these mating chases, the females will avoid males um and kind of incite this chase so that the it's thoughts, so the most, you know, the animal that's in the best shape, has the best ability to locate a limited resource can find her, and so she'll run through shrubbery and things like that, and then she'll just sit at the base of a tree and and it's usually the first male that finds her that will get to mate

with her. So the success is a little bit on dominance, but it's on your skill in locating the female. If they don't find her, she's now you know, she has to meet. She's only in heat for six hours. If she doesn't, you know, then she's not going to repridase. So she'll actually issue that alarm call, that really high pitched call, and it will attract all those mails again to the site, and then she'll mate with the first one if they find her before the other males do.

So the same calls used in a slightly different context. Are you familiar with I'm sure you are. When when they're sitting there doing that piste off call, that their tails moving it and that's what gives them away. I heard someone suggests that they're using that tail to to trick predators, because when the hawks come to slap them, they hit that tail because they see the tail moving, and then the squirrel skinnies out because they got him

by the tail. So a couple of things. One that flicking the tail also kind of correlated with how piste off they are, so the more worked up there about something,

you'll see them flicking that tail more. People have tried to see how much information is really conveyed in that, you know, is there a hidden squirrel language, and uh, you know, there's not at that level where it's like, oh, here's a you know, meaning of that flicking the tail, but it does, uh seem to be correlated with how risky the situation is, so that perhaps the predator sees that, but other individuals may see that as well and recognize, okay,

you know there's something really close here that's you know, that's bothersome. But that tail itself has a couple of different functions. One is that it is used for dissipaining heat. So if you if you watch a squirrel during the heat of the summer and clay, you know, in Arkansas you probably see this sometimes, but you'll see them splaited

out sometimes on the ground in some moist soil. They'll flick their tail up and if you look at the base that if you look at the base to the tail, they actually spread the hairs and you'll see blood pulsing through there. So it's a way that they dissipate heat. And you can in Arizona some of the squirrel species that we have down there, like the Mexican fox squirrel, you know they're they're in a hundred and ten degree temperatures and you know, if you're out running around, you've

got to get rid of that heat fast. And you're wearing this, you know, this fur coat. So they literally sit there and use that tail, so they'll flip it up over themselves, send blood through it and sound blood through it. It's just a surface to get rid of heat. It Also, we know that they'll use them during the winter. It's like kind of an added layer of insulation that

so you'll see it laying over their back. Some of the kind of classic squirrel pictures in the winter are usually just here's another another blanket you're throwing on, or they use them like an umbrella. You know, they're I've seen them with you know, half inch of snow on the on the top of the tail and they're just you know, kind of huddled down. So there's that advantage

as well. But if you're going to have if you're going to be attacked by a predator, you know, talents in talents in the uh you know, in the tail are much better than talents in the rib cage. So they do. You do occasionally find tailless animals. Some of that maybe due to predators, but really if a predator gets you, you know, and you're that close, predators are

really good at making sure they know seal the deal. Uh. More often we see these broken tails and clip tails are actually the result of battle between animals, so they don't they don't clip each other. He's going for the nuts and gets the tails. Gonna say, they're not going. I don't want to go back there, Steve, I thought we were past this, but uh, you know, we can revisit if necessary. Uh. So they don't go for the for those but the testicles, but they will go four tails.

And so every time I see a squirrel of the broken tail, I make up a mind movie where the fox gets him by the tail and he busts off, and I'm like certain that that's what's happened. I never thought it was like squirrel on squirrel violence. It's usually squirrel on squirrel violence very rarely. I have seen probably thirty or forty predation events by by mammal predators and never once had they've grabbed him by the tail. But never once have has that tail broken off before they've

got the kill shot in there already. But when squirrels, especially during these mating chases, when two males are fighting, they'll often grab the other one by the tail and literally kind of fling them around and throw them out of the tree. So, uh, that's where we think most

of the broken tails come from. And you see them more commonly in males than females because exactly that kind of biology got any more calling questions, Johnny, I mean, I guess if you think there's something interesting there with the with the red pine squirrel chatter that like ice always walk this, uh the irrigation ditch. You know, it's a great way to sneak through the woods, and it kind of cut through a piece of woods separated some agg fields these elk fed and and up above it

was where they where they betted. And I used to just hate it when up ahead of me or near me, boy, you get one barking atch it and I just felt like matt every elk within you know, hundred fifty yards, just like I know, yohn, he's coming down the ditch. Yeah.

But what what I like is when you um are aren't doing anything and you're being real quiet or whatever, and you hear one light up, you hear a piste off pine squirrel, and then you're like, there's no way he's mad at me, Like there's no way he knows about me. Then I get real curious over in that direction, like what is mad about? Because I think they'll bark it. I think they'll bark it anything coming through the woods,

you know, So is that true? They will bark it anything elk walking through the woods, they'll bark at it because they're annoyed by it. I have seen him bark at elk and deer before they tend they use it for uh more often they'll use it for other animals, their squirrels, same species. So it's it's a territorial That's why I should have pointed out that I have never heard one light up and then lo and behold, here comes like here comes an elk. It's always like I

never could find out what he's mad about. So they'll use it. They used the same kinds of calls that we were just we're talking about for fox squirrels and gray squirrels. Typically for like a predator, that's that's come through. But they use that territorial rattle call. It's that that kind a call. Okay, that's that's cool. I'll take that,

take whatever I can get. You know, I think I think having that call when you're when you're hunting some other animal other than a squirrel, I mean, you've got to be paying attention to a barking squirrel. Like what I've seen is there's some percentage of times that squirrels gonna bark at a deer, and they love barking at bears. If you're hunting bears over bait, be listening for squirrels. They'll bark at a bear for sure, But but then you know, some percentage of the time they're gonna be

barking another squirrel. So it's you know, not relevant information. But I mean lots of good woodsmen are listening for squirrels barking in some percentage of the time, maybe of the time they're barking at, you know, a target animal that you're after. Yeah, I would agree class, especially those Eastern grays and fox squirrels, they very often do that. The rattle calls that we're talking about with the red squirrels are uh those are a territorial call that tends

to be focused on members of their own species. Although they had no idea, man, that explains so much. So you can blame your lack of success on well, no, I just I mean, I'm like, I'm like, I hear one, and I'm always dissatisfied of like that. I could never find out like what it was he was mad about. But I know he's just mad at some other squirrel, because if I saw two squirrels sitting there, I would be like, oh, he's mad at his buddy. So it

really is an indicator that the space is occupied. So during and especially when when you'll see it most often is the fall, when they've when they've built these new piles of cones, and it is letting their neighbors know

that there's somebody there that's there. That's their pile of cones where you do see it used is you mentioned earlier, you know that bears will go in, you know, grizzlies like to go in and rip open these and uh these middens and sometimes eat the little bit of meat or mushrooms, but they're mostly going for, like, you know, some of the larger pine seeds. Then that will be stored in there, and that's where you will hear those rattle calls, that territorial call of of red squirrels. That

because now you've got another competitor for seeds. So we tend to see that call used against competitors, mostly other members of your own species. But you know, grizzlies like to go in and rip those open for for food. This is I didn't write this down on our little list, but I'm gonna hit someone else's question here. Whose question is it about how to get him out of a

dre I put that in there. Check this out. Let's say you're a squirrel biologist and you're trying to observe a squirrel and you see him running across the forest floor and you're like, I spooped, and then he runs up and goes into a dre or goes into a hole and you're just a biologists trying to do a friendly squirrel study short of like smoke bombs and whatnot, Like how would you be like, I'll show you how I'll get him to come out. Tricks of the trade.

You're asking me for tricks of the trade here. But let's say a friendly squirrel biologis is a situation. So in those leaf nests, those dreys that you know, the basketball sized ball of leaves, really hard to get them out of those. They typically are going in when they have young, they're almost always in cavities. They the whole you know, the tree cavities that the old rotten hole um. So once they're up in those balls of leaves, it's really difficult to get them out. That's what I've found

to be true. But in the in cavities, uh, you know you you mentioned this with the with the mink, that the animals seem to know that that animal is. You know, there's an animal outside and just like you we've all heard a squirrel walking up bark and kind of how noisy that is. The animal in the den cavity knows that you've got something. An individual coming up.

So the way we if we were doing a survey as friend leave squirrel biologists, we would you just take a stick and you work it up the side of the tree like an animal that's a potential predator, an animal that's coming up. And if there's a if there's a group of squirrels in particular, they'll come out right away to kind of defend the turf. So let's talk

more about there. There's so many there's so many cavities that don't have squirrels in a few that's gonna be your soul stretch as you see of go in there, you know, always get a bad feeling. And then I always think this, maybe you can answer this. Uh. I always think I'm gonna sit here until that some bitch comes back out. But man, that could wear a fell out. Well one out of ten times, yeah, he comes out

in less than ten minutes. It seems like the other nine times you sit there for thirty and he hasn't showed up. Be like, all right, it's more efficient to keep walking. So those those cavities are limited resource for squirrels, and and so they'll go in and just explore to kind of you know, likely see what their options are, you know, are they going to upgrade and move into

this this cavity? Uh? And and then females when they're pregnant will often go around and start exploring these more protected cavities where they're gonna where they're gonna raise their young. And so either get there. This is you know, a quick visit and you know we've all gone looking for a house or an apartment. You walk in like, no, not for me, and I turn around and come back out.

So sometimes you'll get those kinds of experiences. But when you spook them in and he runs and you're like, it's obvious he knew where that hole was, he ran to it to get away. How long do you think on average it would be so he's going to naturally

come back out again, it will often be ours. So it's it's typically so yeah, well, you know when we're doing our research and you're following animals and you're like, okay, what you know, I'm trying to find this animal's nest for the night or you you know they're kind of in this area. You want to, you know, see if

they're still alive. Uh, And then you spook them by accident, it often is hours, and during the heat of the summer, you know, they'll they'll go in and they'll spend sometimes three or four hours in the middle of the day keep cool to cool off, and then females with young go back and usually nurse for a couple of hours.

So if you just happen to, you know, catch them on the way back to the nest or uh, you know you spooked them in and they're close enough to the nests that they ran in, they're not going to come out for for several hours. So the stick trick though, like diameter of the stick and then is it like a tapping or you more of just like like making some friction by rubbing. Do you have to get a ten ft long stick so you can actually make it

work all the way up towards the whole itself. It really just depends on how far up the hole is, and it doesn't always work, but you'll have pretty good success rates with it if if there is an animal in there. How is that not broken into the squirrel hunting world? I almost think it doesn't work so well. Oh, so now you're calling me a liar. I spend a couple hours of my day with you and then right at the end comes out damn still feeling a little

salty about the squirrel. Testical questions and we will report back guarantee. Yeah, but I know, is it more of like a tapping or just like are you just like like a rubbing. It's a rubbing. You're trying to imitate an animal coming up if you watch so, I would encourage you to go out sometime in the evening and follow animals back to the nest, especially during the colder seasons.

This is what fox and grays and what red squirrels are pretty solitary, although in winter sometimes they'll nest together the but and you'll watch the animal. It'll it'll typically come in from the side. It won't typically come straight up the nest, but it'll it'll come in through the canopy, jump on the main stalk and and go up to the cavity. You'll see animals inside just kind of peek their head out just a little bit. And we know that they have ultrasonic calls to um and they haven't

been very well studied, so we're talking about vocalizations. We can't hear the ultrasound, but we know that they can hear in that range, and so they're probably and those ultrasonic calls don't travel very far, so they're good for that really close use, you know, really close distance, so we think that they're actually communicating you know, friend or foe,

you know something there. Sometimes you'll see that they'll they'll they'll get chased out, they'll run down, pick up some leaves, like some warm bedding, and try to use that almost as a gift to get in. Sometimes it works, um, but the uh so you're really trying to imitate something moving up, you know, maybe a predator that they all need. If it's if it's a you know, if it's an animal that could a member should be part of the group,

those ultra sonic calls are probably gonna work. So you really want to imitate you know, you're it's a raccoon coming up where they're all going to jump out of the nest and and um, you know you'll be able to see if that's you know, if if it's occupied or not. But it's more just a scratching, a light scinching, And so I think I think that's something most people won't be familiar with. But if you watch the animals

in the evening, you'll you'll you'll see that. And then the other thing is the scent marks that we talked about that can tell you if if if the area is occupied, can actually if you smell enough of them, you can tell here's one that's really active and that there are probably a higher density of of animals that are in that site. So those are those are a couple of tricks of the trade. This is my last question.

Then these guys can ask their last questions to My last question is in your in your field as an academic, Let's say you got curious about squirrels falling. Okay, when you consider the limits of animal ethics, could you ever, like, would you be allowed to propose and execute a study in which you took squirrels and dropped them from various

heights to see what happens to them? Or would that just get shut down as being like just sort of like the reward wasn't there wasn't enough to like justify it, right, And I think that's it. It's it's the kind of weighing the benefits and the and the cost, you know, the ethical costs of doing that, so you know they're in that case, you'd want to know. You know, I do the study of looking at museum bones and see you know how many are broken? Is you know, does

that seem to be an issue? There may be other

ways that you get there. And you know, while that's while it's interesting, you know, learning about their mortality, uh, that may not be you know, in my mind, that wouldn't be enough to sway it to let's drop squirrels from you know, a bunch of a bunch of different heights, Uh, to learn the little bit that we might add to just like the pain and suffering doesn't warrant the But for instance, we we've worked on some squirrel removal projects where you've got an invasive and non native species and

that's in a place on Mount Graham. We have federally endangered species of red subspecies of red squirrel there and there's introduced abert squirrels, and so we've done some removal studies because because the real conservation goal is let's make sure we still have the native species here. And in that case, you know, we viewed it and so did our Institutional Review Board UM and the state with their permits viewed it as a reasonable trade off this species

that wasn't supposed to be here. Um. And so what we've actually done is the state of Arizona increased the length of the season, bag limits, all those things as a way to kind of control that non native species. So I think that you know, in that case, you say, Okay, you know it's a lethal method. We're removing these individuals, um, and they're you know, they're being hunters, are taking them

and helping with conversation conservation. Um. In that case, you know, we we thought that that the balance, uh, you know, they're the cost versus benefits warranted. You know, they're doing that kind of lethal removal to try to have an impact on a species that you know might otherwise go extinct. You've written multiple books and like dozens of papers on squirrels, right, I have that, right, hundreds of papers. Okay, okay, So, like I know it's not a secured Olson Award when

it kind of I've done my homework here. Do you do you prioritize like studying squirrelds in wild areas or would you do a study in Central Park and be satisfied with the observations. It really depends on what your question is. You know, if you're what you're trying to accomplish. And so, you know, if you wanted to know, uh something like social behaviors and some of the things that we've talked about, being able to observe animals is really critical.

And although some of their social structure might change, some of the basics, you know, are they willing to nest with other individuals? Set marking those things are thing that things that would be almost impossible to study with radio telemetry or you know, with with observations in a real natural woodland with you know, lots of different layers to the canopy and uh, you know, it just would be very difficult to see. Uh. But but we can learn

a great deal in those kind of open areas. And we can also by comparing the you know, an urban area and urban park land and a more wild natural situation, we can also learn something what might change and how habitat might be influential, how human impacts, you know, might work. Squirrels are just to me, there are a great indicator of change, uh, you know, things that we might not

even yet see. Squirrels are able to pick up on those things, and and uh, because they're common enough, we can see changes in density, we can see changes in behavior. I've mentioned a couple of times, things like the size of the home range changes based on the quality of the forest. We go in and we look at a forest and say, yeah, maybe, you know, maybe not enough mature seed producing trees here, but it looks pretty similar

structurally to other places. But squirrels, you know, that require enough food energy, enough of those seed producing trees will let us know that there's a problem. You know, beetle kill, huge problem in many of the forests here in the West. By the time we often even notice beetle kill, we've seen squirrel decreases and squirrel numbers in those areas that they're already responding to those changes. So in some ways, you know, a lot like the canary in a coal

mine that you know coal miners would take in. Uh, they're kind of an early warning system, and they're common enough that they can that we can learn relatively quickly, and because they don't live that long, they respond pretty quickly. Their numbers respond quickly. You have in your notes that uh,

noise can impact them. Yeah. One of the things that we've all been down, you know, dirt roads with lots of red squirrels on each side of the road and thought, ah, you know, not many people go down this this road,

probably very little impact. We've actually done some studies where we've mapped the noise in so we we've gone out in the forest with a bunch of noise detectors and mapped, you know, had a map of the amount of noise, and then we've just driven a single truck through there and looked at how that noise level changes and and uh, there's enough of a change that that squirrels can avoid

those roads a little bit. And uh, and and red squirrels in particular, they won't build middens near the near roads. And it's not the structure of the forest, it's actually the noise that's there. So they are really sensitive. And I guess you know that makes sense. We're talking about all these vocalizations and if you're trying to listen for predators all the time, you know, you're kind of a

bite sized morsel for lots of things. Then you know your ability to uh to detect predators has probably decreased a little bit. So they're they're kind of a good

they're a good indicator. You know, if you have the occasional vehicle moving down the road, that's not problematic, you know, but if you've got if you're hitting a point where there's so much traffic now that's going down down these areas, squirrels are kind of an early warning system that, Okay, something's changed, traffic levels are getting a little bit too much here, So you know, maybe we need to to look at how we're using the forest, how we're using

those roads. If if you google squirrel expert, your name comes up right, like, that's that's how we's That's what I'm gonna get at here. That's like how we tracked you down right like you are North America regretting that

right authority on squirrels. Okay, this this is gonna be an ignorant question, but like, how how does someone like yourself the squirrel expert, end up at Arizona and Wyoming That that seems to me like the nation's elk expert being in Nebraska, or like the white tail expert being in Washington State. It just doesn't really fit in my mind. Uh, And I think many people would say that initially. Uh, But for instance, the greatest diversity of squirrels in the

US is in Arizona. So you know, we we've talked about when you think of that kind of basin and range landscape where you've got you know, mountaintops that are forested where you're gonna find squirrels, and then you've got ground squirrels first of all, in the you know, open grasslands, the kind of seas in between the these mountains. Uh. In many places in the West, you may have different

species and this is the case in Arizona. When you just move move fifty miles between two different mountains, you've got a couple of different species. You know, they've been most of those mountains in Arizona been isolated since the Ice Age and uh, you know, from a squirrels perspective. So it's just it's really fascinating for diversity Wyoming. Uh, you know, just the the wonderful, wide open kind of wild and working lands that so many of us value

about the West. Same here in Montana. Uh. You know, the ability to have species like this that are great indicators of change, ability to go in and you know, uh, really helped manage these these natural areas really really is critical when you have you know, a species like this that can be wonderful indicators, be an early warning system. You know. The opportunity to make a difference here, you know,

is is really wonderful. So I've I've enjoyed living in the West and and having moved to the hobb School of Environment and Natural Resources, you know, just in the last few months for exactly that same opportunity to have an impact. And that's why you guys are as much fun as you have in these kinds of shows. You know, you want to make sure that we have these opportunities in the future. And and that's that's the same for me.

So that's that's what's brought me here. I can't speak for the elk biologist in Nebraska, though, Clay, what you got? You got your final, final questions, final thoughts. Man. You know, my only question was about squirrel meat. Just real quick. I'm trying to fuel this narrative that we all have that squirrel meat is like rocket fuel and like this great meat. Um, do you have any info on protein and nutrient content and squirrel meat as compared to other meats? No,

I don't, Clay. Um, you know it is very tasty. Yeah, you know, I I've enjoyed squirrel but I don't I don't have a comparison. Um. Sorry, yeah, you know, most people, a lot of people have the have kind of a stigma with squirrel meat. You know. I was just thinking, you know, their diet is just so much plants, fruits and nuts. I mean, they're that's a really clean animal. I mean when you skin them and eat them, it's

it's it's really a lot of just mental stigma. But well, since you don't have that data, I'm gonna go ahead and just keep telling my story that it's like the most healthy meat in the world. That's all Steve Well I Clay, I will say that. You know, I think I think you're right that that squirrels get a bad rap. It's probably back to the tree rat kinds of things where we started today. Uh. You know, there's a bit of a stigma. But they are they're they're omnivorous, they're

eating a variety of different foods. Uh, and so in that sense, you know, they are a good meat. The other thing that I think, you know, from a hunting perspective, it's a great way to get kids involved. Um, you know early it's one of those species they see enough of. Uh, and you know you may not you may not have to have great luck in the day, but you're out,

you know, moving through the woods, appreciating the forest. Lots of sign to teach, you know, kids about You can see those, you know, the hull nuts, you can see some of the diggings, you can see these scent marks. It's just a great way to teach, you know, teach folks how to how to really enjoy those natural areas. Okay, what do you got, Yanni, wrap it up. I don't

have anything else. I'm just gonna throw to John and see if there's anything that we uh, that you wanted to add that you feel like we missed a big squirrel conversation. I've thoroughly enjoyed this time and and and hope hopefully everyone's learned a little bit about things. Uh, we're filming this on the twenties. We're taping this on the twenty second of January, the day after Squirrel Appreciation Day, so I know it's probably hard for any of you

to pull yourself out of bed. And Appreciation Day. That's my brother's birthday, so so it is every year January twenty one. It's it was just designated as Squirrel Appreciation Day. So we're kind of in the high holy days of squirrel biology because I'm very second Groundhog Day coming up. So this is you know, you're lucky that that I was willing to drive here on squirrel appreciation because appreciation day. Appreciate, right,

and so I really have appreciated the discussion. But uh, you know, it's it's just, uh, I really feel that that squirrels. We've talked about them, you know, as a as a resource for us to enjoy, uh, you know, as hunters. You've got folks in urban environments like me growing up, really the only mammal that I could, you know, could see and enjoy. You know, their teachers use them for you know, for projects and biology early on, and then their their indicator species of you know, of forest change.

So to me, I really appreciate. You know, anyone can appreciate the beauty of an elk moving across you know, a meadow, but to have the finer level of apprecia, it takes that special level of appreciation. How does someone find your books on squirrels? Uh, They're they're all on Amazon. Uh, you've got Squirrels of the World. Is the is the one that we uh that we're most proud of and we're working on a new new edition of that. North

American Tree Squirrels. Uh, there's a book on the College of Endangerment in Mount Crme Red Squirrels, and and most recently the book I shared with you is um International Wildlife Management that looks at things broadly, but there are a few squirrel mentions in there. I wouldn't mind getting me a signed copy of North American Tree Squirrels. We can make that happen. I just read that book, but I need to read that one. You think hunters can

learn something from your squirrel books most definitely. I think Squirrels of the World is kind of a compendium that shows everything from chipmunks. So when we talked, we've talked mostly about tree squirrels, but you've got flying squirrels, which are mostly nocturnal. You've got prairie dogs, you know, groundhogs, marmots, chipmunks, all of those things are are squirrels as well. That covers all of them. North American tree Squirrels a lot

of these uh topics we've talked about. One of the great things about writing a book like that is those few those observations where you only have a couple of cases of them, you can weave them into a book more than you get a scientific publication out of it. So North American Tree Squirrels has has a bunch of these kinds of things. Talks a lot about the scent marking sites and nesting behavior, social behavior. So it would be a good one to to learn a learn a

fair amount from. All right, John, once again, John, lad you do the last name Kaprowski. That's not that, all right, John led Kaprowski, Dean and Wyoming Excellence Chair at the Hobb School of Environment and Natural Resources, and a squirrel man. I'm proud of all of this. Doctor. Thank you for doctor squirrel. Thank you very much for coming on. This is great. You answered a million questions for us. Uh

thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks. You know, hardly anyone wants to talk about squirrel, so when you have the chance, you guys are lucky. I'm not staying an extra day. I Uh, it's great. It answered a lot of lifelong questions. I'll look at him, um differently now and I can tell you that, um, I am going to start trying to find some of those uh, those buck rubs those squirrel rubs, which is fascinating. I can't believe I didn't know about it. So if you find some, send me some pictures everyone

out there, of your buck rubs squirrel rubs. All right, thanks a lot, Thanks Sean, thank you,