Ep. 282: The "A" Word

What episode numbers were you in before? I want to look, I don't know, fifty four and nine, and then you missed, then you missed a hundred in some episodes, and now you're back. But we need to check in with you because I feel like we um I feel like, you know, we get all these questions all the time. People be like, how can I have a job in the outdoors? Or how do you be of this or that? So you're our case study. Okay, well it's not been any sort

of traditional path. But you've arrived now, I think you've arrived. Now I don't know if I've arrived. I don't know if I've arrived, but you trap animals for living man. Okay, I'll give you that. Yeah, I have a ton of fun. Do you have a year round position? No, really, we'll get to that. But you're still alive. You're obviously feeding yourself and you're clothed and whatnot. Yeah, markers of success. Yeah,

we make it work. Um, but it's a hodgepodge. Although I am starting a new chapter and hopefully this is gonna be a full time the rest of my time. Deal. Have you have you if? If you might, you might have to lie, bec I want just to look positive no matter what. But has have any opportunities, has this has coming on the show to explain your pro professional

path opened any doors? Don't lie? I gotta be honest. No, damn it really because I felt like I really like laid it on thick and that was, you know, so sweet of you. But um, I mean I've got I more get my jobs, you know, just based on my my skills, and no one cares about that kind of stuff. Our listenership back probably the last time Karmen was just trying to get those jobs. Yeah, so now you know

we have twice listenership. It probably made it worse for Carmen because a bunch of dudes are like, Dude, I'm gonna try to get that job. I'm gonna go into that. I'm gonna go into that line of work. That's good. So everything it's like a meritocracy. It's a meritocracy in your field things. Yeah. And and I've had I've been really fortunate to have some regular, uh field jobs for the last years. I mean, I think since we did the last podcast, I've been working on the same project.

And so that's been really nice, just not having to worry every season about what the next thing is going to be and where I'm gonna live. Um. So, so that was really nice. And now that project is just about completely wound up. And um, three of my colleagues and friends from that that project, well two of them, there's three of us, are starting a nonprofit doing independent wildlife research. That's the next chapter. That's good. That's the word right out of my mouth. Also joined by what

cows here? Hello, fresh off a babysitting my dog? Um, you honest is here fresh off big huge run this morning? Mm hmm. I was just getting up. I got a picture from a friend of mine who did he did you just run into him up on top of that mountain. We ran up there together, ran up there together. We hiked fast up there together. You guys speed hiked. That's good. We kind of ran down. Phil here, say something for yourself. Phil, you don't sound very thrilled in the room. Get pills here,

I guess for some reason. And then, uh, very special guests. Who Kathy Raven whose brand new book is out yesterday. Yes, I heard you guys sold so the books called Fox and I and my exposure to it is your publisher, Cindy Spiegel took um, you know, through me a real she. I don't think she would describe it this way, but through me a real lifeline. Many years ago I bought my second book I published with her imprint at Random House for a long time. They've gone on to now

start their own publishing venture. You're I think their first book, their first so Spiegel and Grow. It's with spiegl and Growl. Speagle and Grow used to be an imprint at Random House, but now it's a very exciting new venture. Um, you were their first book. I heard you guys have Uh, you've sold the book to eleven different countries. I haven't kept track because that's not my thing, but it's been a lot of countries. Russia picked it up, and Korea

and Italy and Germany and waiting for Japan. So does this if you can put in a plug A lot of good populations in countries, so you hear that, you people in Japan, so it'll be widely translated. Yes, even I'm really happy that even the English folks decided to translate it. And I don't know if the Australians and New Zealands have, but I think that's really helpful because

when I watch English, I guess Cindy told you. I don't have a TV or stream or anything like that, but I buy DVDs and mostly the DVDs I buy for entertainment are English ones, and I have to watch them with the you know, the close captioning because I don't understand what they're saying. So I think English people probably don't understand all of my vocabulary and such. So they hired a professional to translate it from American to English, and I'm really happy about that. Do you mean like

the print version. Yeah, yeah, that's a good question about the audio. Yeah, the spelling is different, and I think some of the slang. I might have used the word mother country at one point, and I remember they wrote and said, so when you say the mother I was being facetious. When you said the mother country, were you talking about us? I said yeah, And there was something

else that. Yes, some minor adjustments. So the folks over there, I hope they didn't cut out all my stuff about fox hunting, but I talked about England and the fox Hunters and Downton Abbey and all that. Yeah, they're trying to wash their hands a little fox The whole Fox Hunt made that look a little nicer. Yeah, that's good. It has been translated to a lot of different languages and different accents. That's great. So we're gonna talk about that book in a little bit too, But first we

gotta talk about then our thing. Now. Listen, I don't want you to take this the wrong way. I think everyone should go buy your book. But we're gonna promote like we have to promote a thing of ours. So we talked about a week ago. I don't know when the hell, I don't know a while ago. No, it's out right now. The closest listen. Yeah, if you listen to this show on a regular basis. You heard us, uh um getting all excited and explaining our audio book. Yeah.

I heard somebody say that an audio original like an immersive audio experience. It's not available in print. You have to listen to it six hours long. Um, but I just want to give everybody a taste of it. So this is like, this is the story. I heard this story? Um, I heard a version of this story, I think from Callahan. Did you originally tell me the story? YEA, some details wrong, cal That's because I never heard the story. You heard a story about Brody was like, hey, do you hear

about And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's this guy. It's like, well, do you have his phone number? I was like, oh no, but he used to work Pheasants forever and I know a bunch of folks in that organization. So I had one email tracked down his cell phone number, and and and and I still haven't heard the story. Yeah, so you still haven't heard the damn story. It's a guy

named Sam Lowery. He's a game board in Arizona. Before we we jump into this, you want to do a quick summary of what this is, what the whole project is. In case they missed the last and you brought it up. Are you gonna edit that out or leave that in film? I'm gonna leave it in your little comment there. Yeah, that's called direct fils big time producer. H that's going on with her. I would never take that away because because Karin's out of town. Now, Phil's gonna act like

big time Mr Director. All right, Phil, Phil's take him jobs away from the folks who answer listener emails. You know what my dad has a story about He was when he was a little kid, he had a job as a soda jerk, and when he came back from the war, he beat the guy up who had that job. Wow, that's unnecessary. Found out that the guy had the job, the guy didn't want to give it back. My dad beat him up. Do you what's your opinion on that? Do you think your dad had the right to take

his job back. He felt that you wouldn't that you would if a veteran was returning got it would very quickly step aside and not make a play to keep the job. What if you were in that new soda jerk's position and some guy came in and said, Hey, I want my job back. I just said, here's the apron that guy wants of vanilla soda. Point Man Krim might come back and beat your ass, Phil, But I'll take that little directing. I'll take that little directing comment

and I will Um. It's called meat Eaters, camp fire stories, close calls, and it is about. It's a it's a long, it's a it's a collection of a wide variety of different storytellers from mountaineers, game wardens, hunters, spear fisherman. I don't know who else is in there. My daughter has a cameo. Yeah, that's right, she did a great job.

Um about close calls and near death experiences and close calls in the wild, and kind of the way like the sort of the physiology that goes into it, the psychology that goes into close calls, the way close calls tend to live with you and haunt you. Um. And one of them, just to give you a taste, what this is all about, is the story of a game board named Sam Laurie who is operating in Arizona. And we described us before as he has a run in

with the sociopathic, suzy wielding elk poacher. So take a listen, and such thing the mud puddle. Over the years, I've had the occasion to speak with several game wardens on the subject of poaching. Among the most interesting of these conversations was my talk with a warden who studied what he called super poachers. Super poachers, he found, almost always

exhibit sociopathic tendencies. They commit their crimes very quietly. They don't show off photos or brag about the animals they poached on social media, and they don't tend to poach for material game. The real thrill for them is killing animals illegally and doing so without getting caught. The hunt for one such serial poacher is the focus of this

next story from Sam Lowry, a retired game warden. Sam told us that most of the time he was dealing with normal people who might have made a minor honest mistake, along with the occasional poacher who was deliberately flouting the rules for profit. In this case, though, he was playing cat and mouse with a dangerous sociopath. My name is Sam Lowry. I've held different positions with the federal and state wildlife agencies, spanning about a forty year career in wildlife.

Back in about three or so, I was a wildlife manager for what they called Unit one and three B in northern Arizona. Closest larger town would be Sholow, Arizona. Most people think Arizona is filled with sorrow cacti and desert, and yet in reality there's there's a beautiful high country element of mixed conifer and aspens. And that was the district that I was responsible for that held a very

very healthy elk population. In fact, you know, probably world renowned UH units for pursuing elk in that particular region of the White Mountains. So usually by springtime of every year, we were looking forward to Turkey season with spring Gobbler's goblin everywhere, and all the big game seasons were over in terms of elk and deer and big horn sheep and what have you, and things for the most part

started to slow down. Um with the exception of one evening I got a call and this would have been about in March, that one of our local outfitters who lives quite a ways out into the Boonies heard some shots and U reported it to Gave and Fish. We had a twenty four hour hotline where they could call, and of course that information came back to me that these shots were fired at night. UM sounded like small caliber and fully automatic, which is very unusual for the

area we were in. I knew that the caller, so I contacted him the next day and determined the location he was even referring to, and I went out there and sure enough I found two elk land down. They were both probably within eight hours, had been shot. As normally, you take your metal detector and look the carcasses over. You look for any places where the vehicle, the suspect vehicle would have pulled off the road. You want to

look for any shell casings in the road. You want to look for anything that give you any idea of of evidence to to link whoever shot these elk to a person. Unfortunately, there was nothing. Probably about two weeks later where we received another call shots being fired at night and general location but no specifics. I responded to that one the next day as well and found two

cow elk. One was alive was still kicking. When a game warden or a wildlife officer comes in contact with an animal that's been poached, what we rely on is evidence. You know a lot of times these violators are out there at night party and two and they'll throw beer cans out, or pop cans or you know, you look for anything that might be able to lead you to an individual down the road, and there was never anything on the on this particular guy's m O. The evidence

was always very lacking with this particular case. I was getting pretty bothered because if you think you found this would have been the fifth elk um. They looked like they were being shot with twenty two caliber as the projectiles that I was able to carve out of the elk, how many did we not find? So my my aggravation started to grow. I wanted to catch this guy, so I actually made a decision to call a reporter while I was going to begin performing the knee crops he's

on his elk. Told him we were again out looking at these elk poachings and hoping that an article in the paper would stimulate some folks to maybe step forward and put an end to who's doing this. The one that was still alive I dispatched, which is, you know, one of the duties officers have to do once a while, never pleasant, but you put the animal out of its misery. And the reporter showed up and walked out to the field. I remember he looked down at me. He looked like

he was going to kind of maybe get sick. And not that we're hardened that much, but to him, I imagine it was a It was a pretty spectacular nasty scene. The one that was alive had been kicking all night trying to get itself up, so it had had made this kind of circle depression of of soil around it. And so he's asking me, as I'm carving into these things about what I'm looking for, And sure enough I was able to locate a couple again, twenty two caliber

slugs that were mostly fragments. At that point, one might wonder, you know, how how did kill an elk? Well, when you hit him with two or three of them, and a couple of them probably in the spinal cord, it can drop them. So it it certainly does. I reached down into the the more of the gestive area of the cavity, and this again was in March and not

the do you sing in the world. I reached in and grabbed about a jack rabbit sized fetus from one of the cow elk, and I lighted up on the rib cage and looked him in the eye and said, you know, this isn't three elk, this is six elk.

And that's what really kind of turned him white. And by the end of the knee cropsy, I had three, uh you know, two ft long fetuses laying on the rib cage of this one elk, and I thought, you know, if that doesn't stimulate someone to come forward and help me nab the guy doing this or guys doing this, I don't know what can. And the article did come out, and all I got was feedback from the public that will do everything we can to help you catch this guy.

But no information ever led to that from that knee cropsy. You know, I can't not tell a little piece of a story that comes to mind about this individual poaching all these elk and and the first thing you want to do is a is a war and has catched the guy or guys. And an old mentor of mine, a warden, had been around for many, many years. We called him the herd bull, and we were referred to as satellite bulls. And he used to always tell us satellite bulls to walk to the dance and you'll finally

get to dance. Don't run to the dance. And so that message to me always said to me to just slow down and eventually the person is going to make a mistake. And uh, I kept going back to my old mentor, thinking, someday, somewhere this guy is going to mess up and I'm going to catch him. So after the newspaper article came out, nothing ever turned up. Things

were cold, and uh. In fact, there is a point at which I kind of thought maybe the person moved away, which could be a good thing, at least some more elk, we're going to get tipped over. My wife and I lived in a little town called Vernon, and it was about twenty miles from a little larger town called Sholo, and every once in a while, this was prior to us having any any children, we'd head on into the

big town for Saturday night. On one particular Saturday night, we took off to Bill's Bar, famous little tavern and in Sholo, whereas, in fact, I had another story where some old codgers back in the sixties backed up to the back door of Bill's Bar and let a mountain lion loose into a crowd of patrons. And uh, and you didn't go in there very often without probably seeing

some kind of fisticuffs and kirk. So you had to be a big, big, broad shouldered burley book aoroo work in a wide open wind with wilderness to get in there. So my wife I did and we we uh went had dinner and went dancing, and luckily that night there weren't too many cold beers going down the throat, but

enough to have a fun night. And we were heading home after closing about one o'clock in the morning, about a twenty mile drive to our little cabin, and uh about five miles from home, I could look up into the vicinity of where all the out poachings were and my gosh, there was a spotlight being thrown around. Spotlights are just very very distincting and being able to say

that's not your headlights. You headlights when vehicles drive, don't sweep across the hillside as if they're searching for something. It's kind of like a searchlight, if you will. And I could see that spotlight being kind of covering different hillsides and no doubt in my mind there was some activity going on. So I know my my little bride wasn't happy, but I decided to to hurry on home and put the uniform on and go out and get this guy. Um, I certainly wasn't in any condition that

would prevent me from from doing that. So I I made the decision, I'm gonna go suit up and and catch this guy. Too good of an opportunity. Jumped in my game and fish truck and notified the dispatch that I'd be out attempting to make contact with this potential health poacher or spotlighter, and took off. And I had about a five mile drive to get to where I

could see the spotlight working. And in those days, we had what you call a blackout light that would go to the front bumper your game and fish truck, and it would allow you to slowly proceed down a dirt road without any other lights on. It was a military device that we got for all the officers in the state. So I proceeded kind of in the direction of this spotlighter, occasionally stopping and listening, and I, you know, it was

difficult to tell. Sometimes I thought I heard rapid fire kind of automatic weapon, if you will, And sometimes it was more of a crack cracking noise, like more of a report of a rifle but nonetheless, I kept entering my way to where I thought this guy was working, which is a forest service road home to running in and out of that vicinity that time of year. So I positioned my game and fish struck at the end of that and thought, I'm gonna get him. He's gonna

come out. And now you start to feel the old adrenaline coming. You're going into full blown enforcement mode and you're pretty sure you're gonna make a stop on what was likely to be the worst poacher I'd ever encountered. And then all of a sudden, the lights changed and they went they went a different way. They were going back the same way, but they then turned west, which you know, when you're when you're responsible for these districts, you know that country like the back of your hand.

And and I knew that he turned on what I assumed was this little dead end two track road, and I need to reposition myself to that road, and now I'll haven't blocked in. So I did, and when I got to that road, there was a a little dip

onto this other two track road. There was a dip with a mud puddle, and it was probably twelve ft across, you know, ten ft wide, maybe eight inches deep, and if a vehicle goes through that mud puddle, you can tell there's gonna be bubbles in it or wash out on the other side where water dripped down from the frame. And so I accided my game and fish truck, and I grabbed a flashlight and I just slowly approached that mud puddle and I got down on my knees and

I kind of muffled the light. I could see no bubbles, and then I I kind of walked over to the other side and looked on the where the vehicle would have driven through, and there's no tracks, there's no sign of any washout. I just was bewildered. I thought this guy didn't go down this road. So I was discouraged. And you know, this has probably been an hour now that I've been pursuing this guy, thinking I'm gonna get him,

and he gave me the slip. So I got my game fish truck and backed out and went back on the other side of the two road all the way out towards Vernon. Uh. I was done for the night. And the only thing I can remember is when I got back to the cabin that night, my wife was let's just stay happy to see me there, not necessarily excited about the fact, and running out to catch a bad guy at two in the morning. So after that happened, I was again discouraged. I thought, when when am I

going to get another break? I just don't know. But that that night I thought I had him, but he slipped away. So following that that evening where I felt I was the closest at catching this guy, things continued on. We we ended up getting a couple more calls on elk that were shot UM No again, no no leads.

And I do recall the vicinity though it was a very localized area, you know, all right around that road that I found the spotlighter on um and those elk would soon be moving out of their winter range up into the north range, up into their their summer country, so we kind of felt things would be be slowing down. But after an elk or two more, it just stopped.

And while I thought maybe it had to do with that migration to higher country, there was still enough elk in that lower range to warrant some shooting at the guy was still around, but I felt like it it just stopped and pretty much kind of stamped at case case unsolved. We couldn't put this one behind us, and there was a lot of a lot of people trying to to make this case work. Never did, and I just felt it was it was. It was on onward to the next one then that that's gonna be one

for the books and other blue. One day, our investigator called me and said, hey, we got a weird call today from a narcotics agent up in Holbrook, which is a town about forty miles north of Vermin, and he said, we have a guy in custody that is being held on some pretty serious drug trafficking charges and attempted homicide charges, most likely going to be moved to Albuquerque, but he's in our holding facility and during interviews he mentioned something

about shooting a bunch of elk in the Vernon area, and so this UH narcotics agent asked our investigator if we had any interest in interviewing him, and of course I jumped at the opportunity. I thought to myself, if this is if this is the guy, I can finally maybe get some closure to this. And it's not going to be a citation for killing fifteen elk this season. It's this guy is going away, probably too much, bigger house. So yeah, I want to go. I want to go

visit and I want to go talk to him. And an Arconics agent relayed to our investigator that he's a pretty strange duck and you might want to bring him a Baby Ruth candy bar because he likes candy bars. That if you bring him that, he might might be willing to talk to you. So we did. I've stopped the store, got a Baby Ruth candy bar and or civilian clothes, so I didn't intimidate him at all with the uniform and drove to Hoolebrook and checked in with the officers there and let him know what I was

there for to to interview the suspect. His name was Okay and uh. Other than that, I didn't have any more details other than the fact that he was being held on pretty serious charges. He was running a little met lab and some some involvement in a murder case in Alburquerque, something to do with a past girlfriend or or something of that nature. But he was being held

on on both narcotics and homicide charges. So they led me down this you know, kind of sterile hallway and got me into an interrogation room where I sat, and then five minutes or so past and the door opens up, and here's this straggly looking character in a orange jump suit. He had what we call a transport belt around his waist with his handcuffs on attached to that transport belt, so you can't swing your arms at all. He's he's he's confined, kind of looked at me like, you know,

absolute careless. He didn't have any regard for you know, what I was there for, obviously, But the officer that led him into the room explained that, you know, I was with game and Fish and I just wanted to talk to him about some of the unsolved elk poachings we had in the White Mountains. And he reluctantly sat down, and he kind of just stared at me like he was looking through the back of my skull, and he

had these kind of dark, steely looking eyes. He just you know, which was kind of rang the old socio path in my mind that this guy doesn't really care much about me or what he's about to tell me. So I introduced myself. Okay, I'm Sam Lowry. I'm with there as a and Fish and I. I know you're in here for things more serious than I want to talk to you about, but I really wanted to visit with you a little bit about something you told the

officers about your help poaching in Vernon. And he kind of let out a little sigh and sat back in his chair, almost almost relax a little more. He looked right at me, just again he's cold, shark like eyes and yeah, that was me that So what do you mean it was you? I mean what I was the one I have shot probably thirty elk up there, and you guys, you guys can never catch me. And I kind of leaned in and I wanted to find out

why and so what was the cause? And and he stopped me and looked and said, I'll tell you one thing, though. You got a warden out there with angel wings. And I kind of paused myself, and I thought, what do you mean they're okay? What what do you mean by that? And he said, well, one night, he said one of your guys was was after me. He darned here had me. And he said they played cat and mouse for a

little while. And he came down this two track road where there was a big mud puddle, and he said, I was parked probably fifty yards from that, behind a big juniper tree. That dumb bastard got out of his truck and walked up to the mud puddle with his flashlight like he was some kind of hero. And Uh, I had made the decision, if he comes through that mud puddle, I'm gonna spray him. Yeah, I had to pause. I mean he probably saw my face. I said, spray him?

What you know? What? What? What do you mean? He said, I have a newsy That's what I was shooting those elk with. And whether he came across on foot or in vehicle, that was going to be his last night. But strangely enough, that guy got in his truck and turned away. Maybe you knew I was down there, and I have chills on my neck telling you guys that story. I can remember just walking out of that room that

day thinking, holy mackerel, that was me. Uh, whatever reasons, And I can't explain it to you why it didn't look like he had driven through that mud puddle, but he had, and he was fifty ft or fifty yards from me, ready to take me out. So we had talked a little more, you know, I was. I was. I was pretty much shot, no pun intended. I thought, you know what, I just want to go home and hug my wife. But I tried to end the interview. There was no doubt in my mind it was him.

He was on meth. He told me he was cooking meth up in a little cabin not far from where he was doing all the shooting. He was by himself, and he just liked to kill stuff. As he told me, I like to kill ship and no remorse, no, no, nothing. And I never did recover the coozy to match those

bullets with, but I'll never forget them, you know. Walking him back down the hallway, and he kind of looked over his shoulder, looked back at me one more time, not knowing that I was at Angel was that game warden? It had wings at night. I never let him know that anyway. But he walked away and that was never to be seen again. Old Loki. Oh he ate the candy bar too. Okay, there you haveing ladies and gentlemen. That's just one little sampling, one little sampling off of

the Broader project. Again, like I said, it's five six hours long, sixteen stories. There's one of them. They're all good. So go out and get that's available now. That's for your listening. Cathy Ravens Books for your reading. That's for your listening. Yeah, well it's available for pre order right now, tomorrow, it's available. How it works, Yeah, it's a pre order now and I'll just magically show up mm hm as a download as a down one. Um, we're gonna continue.

So when you hear that story and you go listen to the broader story, let us know about your crazy stories. Because when you send an email and just send it in and says like a crazy ass story as a subject line, and we might hunt you down because we like that kind of story, like you just heard. Yeah, we liked working on this project. That was fun. Yeahs

tracking people down was great. It makes you think about things all the time, though, because a lot of these stories involved like very micro like incidents and like just small things that happened that you know, make the whole day have a much different outcome. And so I know, when I'm out in the woods and just taking a step on a rock that's might be over a precipice or something, it makes me think twice. After hearing some of these stories. Yeah, it was Yan Yanni's in the

Yanni's in the project. Because the people that listen to this show are familiar with may be familiar with a couple of episodes we had called the Meat Tree Part one and part two. We revisit that story and some

aftermath issues from that story. And if that day hadn't happened, if that minute, that minute hadn't happened, where we had a very close encounter with a with a brown bear that Yanni smacked in the face with a set of track and polls um this book, this audio project wouldn't exist like that set me down the path of like being haunted by that day, set me down the path of kind of exploring what close calls due to a due to you and how they live in your mind.

What do you think, Phil, that was great? We're good to move on? Where Korean standing? I'd say, yes, do people? Oh order this audio prize and feels not cut out for this job after all? To get it, you gotta go to Audible, You can go to Amazon, or you can go to our publisher, Penguin Random Houses website to pre order or just order whatever Meat Eat camp Fire Stories, Close Calls comes out July, but secure it now again.

You can find it on Audible, you can find it on Amazon, you can find it at Penguin Random House website and get it Meat Eater camp Fire Stories. Close Calls fully available July twenty, available for pre order at any point. All right, Carmen, Um, do you do you have any close calls you need to make us aware of for our next project. No, I have not had any what I would consider close calls. But I do sometimes think back on ways that I've done things in the field and and know now that that was pretty

stupid and not not very safety minded. So you mean in dealing with animals, Yeah, in dealing with animals, but yeah, mostly dealing with just getting around on the landscape. Like I think about the first job I had UM where we were using four wheelers a lot. It was in Alberta, Canada, and um in the Alberta Rockies, so super rugged terrain and people just kind of blast all over the place on a t V s there and so it kind

of feels like I can go anywhere. But um, I mean I was, you know, flipping a TVs and we were doing some really not smart stuff, just just stretching when an ATV should be doing with more people on it than should be on it. That sort of thing. Um, snowmobiling too. I learned a snowmobile in the Northern main

Woods and winter. So I was working with two guys who had been doing it their whole lives and basically learning on the fly, you know, blasting around at sixty miles an hour and again wrecking and flipping snowmobiles and all that. So so so the machinery's more expensive, more dangerous than the animals, oh, I would say, so yeah. Yeah. My other, my other not smart traveling thing was m hitchhiking between our our field camp and town. I look back on that, I was like, I think I was

nineteen or twenty. You're going in town to whoop it up ORGI groceries. But yeah, yeah, going into town all your days off and we just hitchhike. And um, I remember this one guy pulled over. It was me and a girl I was working with, and he just one of those instant creepy vibes out kind of h come out standing on the side of the road and he's trying to not think at all. He is a couple of biologists going into town against groceries. No older, older fellows.

Here are some people that want to part. I've never told my parents this. I don't know if they'll listen, but yep, stopped, pulled over. I started to get into the front seat, and there were various things you'd get in a truck stop bathroom, like different colored condoms and loops, just thrown on the floor and in the backseat as my friend was getting oh, I hope knew, I don't.

I don't remember that still in the package. And then as she was getting in, she she said, she told me there's a gun on the floor here, and there's a pistol in the in this car, on the floor, and just that combined with his vibe ready to go, ready for ready, yes, ready for any number of directions. Yeah, so we um, you know it's Tuesday. Go on anyway we did. I refused to get in, and he tried to convince us, but we waited for the next car. Um.

I want to role play for a minute. Hold on, now be a good time to uh, let Carmen explain what she does. I want to role play real quick, too far? Okay, you want to cleanse the root words role play. I'm Carmen and she's the trucker. Yes, okay, ready, I'm not going to get in. I've changed my mind, he says, just get in. Oh okay. So not being swab No, no, no, no, no, he was. He was strange and creepy. Okay. Yeah, that's all. That's It's just

very quick roleplay. I appreciate keep it. Thank you. Yeah, it was what you I wasn't going to do what you worried. What's gonna happen? Okay, fill people in now moving on. So, uh way a million years ago when you came on the show, you were getting engaged. You were not getting engage. You were engaging in a long project. I think way back then. Let's see the second time I was on, I was I was starting on what

is the Washington Predator Prey Project. Yeah, okay, break that down. Okay, So I am like I said that projects winding up. But it was a a project between a cooperation between the University of Washington and Washington Apartment of Fishing Wildlife UM basically in a nutshell, looking at how re colonizing wolves could be affecting a number of other species. Dear Elk of course, and then um cougars as well. And then the component that I mostly worked on was meso

carnivores so bobcats and coyotes. Um, with sort of the explaining the word meso carnivores medium sized, medium side, what's the word for? Like what what's a little teeny one called one of the little guys? I don't know, smart cardiores? Smart car um? All right, go on, okay, so bobcats

and coyotes so um. Basically just just looking at the premise, uh that with the return of wolves and with other any larger predators that are taking down larger prey, they could be creating This is kind of the theory behind the study. They could be creating um. Either food opportunities for meso carnivores because they can scavenge the deer carcasses, out carcasses, et cetera, and so that could be a

benefit to the meusic carnivores. But it could also be what they call a fatal attraction because these music carnivores could be attracted to these spots and then they themselves get get killed by the bigger predator. Yeah. So basically it's interesting. Yeah, so is that the true definition of fatal attraction is that what that comes from. It's a movie, dude. It might just be applied to this, to this ecological uh theory. What's that movie about? That was Glenn Close?

Oh that's my pills here? Come on, Bill laid down? I don't know's the sharing stone one? That's basic instinct? Thank you? Glenn Close gets very jealous and uh, you know it goes out the deep end, got it? That's the quick it's not about it's like not like a David Atton Burrow Navigate narrated. Um. You know what's interesting about the creating more food resources? Uh. We have a friend who likes to run his hounds, um, and he

runs mountain lions mostly, but he also runs bobcats. And he was telling me that in December, when the season arts, you don't cut a lot of cat tracks, he says, because there's too many. There's still all the deer and elk carcasses from hunting season on the ground. Interesting, Yeah, because you kind of his theory is you kind of wait and as those deer and elk carcasses from late November get mopped up, then you start seeing cats spreading out more and they're not just stuck in one place

feeding on some you know, carcass and gut pile. Yeah, no, I mean that that makes sense doing going to on on various other projects. Um, wolf clusters is what we call them. It's basically wolves that have had GPS colors on. They're taking a fix every two to four hours, and so you can then download those those GPS points on cheer computer run an algorithm that pulls out spots where GPS points have been sort of clumping up within a certain you know radius of you know, something like two

hunters within a certain time frame. So basically the wolves were hanging out in this little spot for a while. So that's you guys have figured out how to do that automatically. Yeah, because it's gotta be every fifteen minutes. It's gotta be like an enormous amount of every two two to four hours. I mean you can hold did

I word fifteen minutes come from? I think? So every two to four hours, So every two to four hours he like makes it drops a pin basically yeah, yeah, and you can set that that fixed rate is what that's called too. I mean you could do you can some projects just depending on what question you're trying to answer. You could have a really really fine scaled movement path of an animal because it could be getting a fixed

rate every fifteen or thirty minutes or whatever. But for kill sites, they've they've done the stats and every two hours is is what you want? Really? And so does your does your program or wherever the hell just start It just starts spitting out way points where there's a cluster of activity. Yea, yeah in the morning. Um, you just download the latest batch of data you run. It's just a computer algorithm. It pulls out those, um those clusters and then you you put them on a map

and you see, Okay, they spend time there. They spent time there, and they spent time there, and so there's my day. I'm gonna go out there and investigate these and it's this is um yeah they you know us this for cougars and and it's a common So how many days a week to get to go do that? Well, when I've been working on projects where that's been my full time job for some projects, it's going to going to kill sites just every days. Pretty lucky. That's one of my I would trade you jobs in a second

man I'm not gonna lie. It's do you bring a lot of that? John Colem Are you trying? Not supposed to? Um? I got a lot of junk in my house. I've I've I've definitely reined it in a bit. But I've always been like that. I've always been picking up diction. Yeah, because all that walking around you probably finding shed antlers and deadheads and oh yeah yeah, yeah, lots of cool stuff. So what do you when you go to all these kill sites? What are you looking for? Where the data

points you're picking up there? Well, again that sort of just depends on the question, but usually if you're going to kill site, it's one of the main things you're you're trying to figure out, is okay, what happened here? Well, let me back up, because one thing is for for wolves. I know, I don't remember what the rate is with cougars, but with wolves, it's about the clusters that you go to have a kill at them. So you might go, you know, to lots of clusters and they were just

taking a nap. I mean, they sleep a ton, So you end up going to a lot of betting spots um, and so you might have just spent you know, half your day getting there, and it's a betting spot. But but you start to kind of put together a picture, especially if you go in order, and you're like, okay, m this this clusters. It's winter and it's up on a sunny you know, south racing slope, up up on the ridge line. Oh, I bet that's going to be a betting area. Sure enough, you go there and it's

a betting area. Usually then you see a cluster and it's down in some gnarly, thick looking uh you know, canion a hell whole, and you're like, oh, that's that one. I'm exciting about it. Oh yeah, because a lot of times I think what happens is the deer elk are getting chased and where they get hung up is down in these bottoms. So for example, I was um at

a really cool killsite this winter. It was a really deep canyon just um you know, creaked down in the bottom, and I could reconstruct what happened just from from tracks in the snow. Another sign and there had been a moose that was fi on a willow um and kind of betting and whatever, and then you could see the wolves came down this really steep mountain side, and and there was a short sort of chase where all tracks

came together. You could see where the moose had sort of leapt and been up to his belly in the snow heading down and it hits towards the bottom. And you know how when you're snow shooting in the winter and all of a sudden you stepped too close to a log and you sunk into your hipped. That's what

happened to the moose. So there was a blanket of snow from the mountain side to or you know, from the ground to this big, huge log, and it looked like the moose had just stepped in the wrong spot, gotten mired, and when the wolves overtook it, and so anyway, bloodthirsty killers. Do you think the moose knew at that point that the jig was up, like lost a wheel? It probably? Yeah. Do you find do you do you find um? Do you find where they ever like surplus

killing events? Do you ever find at near searches? I've no, I've never seen that. It's not like when like when a mountainin gets into like a sheet pasture and just don't know at the bedding sides. Don't you also collect you're collecting fecal matter, right, so you can see what they've been eating in the percentage of alpha. Right, we got to collect on um. Yeah, I mean you can get so much information from collecting scot. You can do diet,

you can do genetics. That's a lot of what we've been doing, and the status, the percentage of some high status. You can see who's getting the meat and who's well. And a cool thing about scott is you can see um from the type of scat. So if I'm arriving at a place where I think you can't it's not always easy, especially at wolf clusters to find the kill, especially in the summertime. In the summertime, because the clusters is too big, because they kind of go all over

the place. They'll go and eat for a while and then they'll go sometimes the ways off in bed I don't know, maybe I mean two. And if you're in a thick, broken up terrain, it can be tough. And so knowing that there's probably some amount of remains of an animal within a wide circle round a lot of scrounging and crawling and just looking for any sort of sign but um. But when I arrive at one of those clusters. And I see, I don't know what. I

call it a carcass early carcass scat. So when they're the um, when they eat the organs first, and the breeder male and female usually get to eat the organs um because they're higher nutrition, and that then when they take a ship, it's really nasty. It's black and running because it's not bound together by hair, right, it's black and running, and so you know, okay, that's that there's a there's a decent chance that that's the breeder male or female, and that's they just ate the organs. So

it's an early carcass scat. So we're getting close. And so then I often won't get excited, like a breaking car gets here somewhere and we just got to find it, like it runs right through them, it goes well. They I mean, they're usually there for a while. I don't know how lony long enough. Yeah, human babies have similar poops the first week of their lives. Yeah, it's even got a special name. It's not even called. My pet

theory about um the organ the organ consumption. My pet theory is this is that I understand that there's like a nutritional load. Right, But I also liked the idea,

and I think I maybe invented this. Uh, if you can eat it fast and you don't know when you're gonna lose it because someone else is going to show up and beat your ass, right, I think that's what makes so you're like you can just inhale the liver, that's correct, and then all of a sudden, then all of a sudden, whoever else shows up, here's a grizzly. They don't get meat drunk from eating that. That's really that's I haven't read that, and you might be the

first one. That's a good hypothesis. You should write that up in the senator. You watch like there's very few animals that are comfortable on a carcass, like the amount of energy they're expanding, whipping their head around and investigating every sound and every smell, like it's not like, okay, time to relax and eat. Carmen, do you ever show up on the when you when you're on the clusters, how often do you show up and bump them out

of there? Well, we try, really really are not to do that, but we don't want to be affecting their behavior. Bumping them off a kill and if especially if you're doing a kill rate studying, need to be well, you always need to be really careful about that. But you wouldn't want to accidentally affect their kill rate by following them so closely as they go around the woods that you're bumping them. So what like when you show up, usually how many hours have passed since they've moved on? Days? Yeah,

for and and there's for different species and states. I would imagine there's different rules on how really you can go in. It would never be that you'd wake up. You would never wake up and see that there was

a cluster from midnight and run out there. And by design, you don't do that, right by the design, it's it's always I mean, if we didn't have to worry about affecting their behavior, be really nice because very quickly, um you know with scavengers and that sort of thing, the longer it's been since the the kill event, the harder I gets to really accurately assess what's going on, because, um it, killside analysis is kind of one of those things that, um, it's easy until you start learning more

and then you realize it's easy, except for when it's not because you don't really ever know if they are the ones that killed it. No, that's not true. Sometimes you're you're really really confident that they killed it, your animal of interest killed it. But there's a lot of scavenging that goes on out there, and so there's a lot of just weird stuff that can happen to any animal you know, to die, and so it could always be a scavenging of it. When you to get to

the meso predators, Um, are they often there? Mm hmmm. Trying to think if I've ever come up on a kill and seen I've heard a cougar once, Um, I've seen bears coming up. I don't. I don't think I've ever come up on a kill. I mean we're usually kind of you know, on a snowmobile or we're crashing through the woods stuff like that. We're not we're not trying to sneak in especially summertime and bears are out. So relate the relate the work though to how to

how do you then roll in the impacts on Kyle's bobcats. Okay, so we have so it's not just so going to kill sites for for that question, the um putting up cameras was was one of the main goals. So we get to a kill and and put up a trail camera and um and leave it there at least a month trying to capture different different interactions between uh apex or large carnivores and music carnivores. You set it on video. No, it takes too much battery and memory to do that.

But um, do you do like the clusters? Three three shot clusters shot clusters? So we usually have thousands of photos and that's that's always like a little just opening up a treasure box. Do you have software that sorts you all that? The project is going to use software? But um, I mean whenever I collect a camera, I certainly go through because I'm excited to see what's on it. So can you get in there and look at all those images? Yeah? Yeah, And so the other the other

part of that is that we're trapping and collering. We were trapping and callering coyotes and bobcats so that we could and then the wolves and cougars are also colored in the area, and then um, they can use those different movement patterns to see how they might be avoiding each other on the landscape or not that sort of thing. And then also collecting scats for genetic analysis for some different population demographics and that sort of thing. So and

you were you were involved in putting the collars on them. Yeah, yep, so I was in charge of So my job on the project. I don't work for the state. I don't work well, I work for you dub. There's um some wonderful graduate students that are heading each section of the research, various research projects that are under the Washington Predator Prey umbrella, and you can, you know, look those up online. There's a website. But um, I was hired by you dub

to run the fuel component of the Music Carnivore project. So, um, every season, our our our main goal was in the winter trapping bobcats and in the summer trapping coyotes. And how are you catching the bobcats with cage traps? Yeah? So it doesn't fly, No, it doesn't unless they are a very desperate kyot. I think the project we've got to study areas, and not in my study area, but

the other one. Um, we were working with some trappers, so they caught a bobcat that they didn't want to take, they could contact us, we go over there and put a collar on it. Well, they contacted us once with a kyo that had gone to a have been super hungry. And are you guys, when you're rigging up those cage traps, are you guys using a like an audio element, like you put like a call, like a bird bird squawk mechanism or anything like that near it. I have used

those before. Um, we didn't use those on this project, though. We were We were using visual little teddy bears, and not little teddy bears, but shiny stuff basically cat toys. I mean seriously, I've had cameras on on traps and I like to So I set my trap, I cover it with branches, get it all tucked in, real nice, and then just outside the door, I'll hang just a little ball of shiny uh you know monofilm. No, No, sorry, Um,

what's that called bird tape? Really shiny bird tape? Yeah, that sort of thing, basically hanging that from monofilment so it can kind of blow in the breeze and hopefully catch the moonlight or whatever. And I have pictures and videos of cats playing with that, like a damn house cat before going into the trap, and what are you baiting the trap with order or use any meat? All kinds of stuff we use, uh, lots of just you know, lures and baits that you can get from fm T

fur trappers or whatever. But you guys haven't done that because you see a lot of guys that use those cage traps will take little stuff to animals, but get really high quality eyes pull the pull the bad eyes off and put good eyes on it and place. Yeah, now I've seen that. Um. And then well in the back of the trap. I usually then hang some feathers to kind of catch the wind too, so I use the visual in the trap as well. And then whatever smelly stuff you know, and then um, what do you

doing to mitigate your own scent with cats? Nothing? Yeah, they're not. I mean you can just look at their skull and see they're not. They're not built for super super smelling like a coyotes. That's very judgmental, Yeah that is. But you know what they got squashed faces. You're the type of reads book title knows all about it. It's just physiology. When you're trapping cats, you're setting on signed Is it pretty important? My yeah, because we don't where

we're trapping. It's not like there's a Bobcat around every corner. And so you can best case scenario, you see fresh sign, you set a trap, and they're still in the area for the next couple of days and happen. You know, to go buy your trap and detect it and go in. But sometimes you you see sign you set and they're not back for two weeks. They're cycling over in some other area of their their home range. We're fine that the bob cats have really big home ranges and made

crazy movements. Um, it's pretty incredible. But yeah, so setting on sign is really important. So basically you just get to go out tracking and when you see something good, Yeah, I get the log a lot of hours out there wanting around. Are you by yourself mostly? Um, depends on the project. There's some some work that I've done where I'm mostly alone, um, and other's where I'm not doing this. We were, we were worked in teams. Yeah, and then um, when you run into people, are people kind of like

curious what you're doing? Do you bother to explain it to them? And you try to act with you doing something else? No, I mean I'm yeah, No, I'm always happy to talk to the public if they come up and have questions or or whatever. And people do, and um, sometimes they share their stories and sometimes they're really out there. But I wanted Yeah, no, I definitely talked to whoever.

And at the starty you've been working on is there do you feel that there was a um meaningful stuff came out of it Now that it's winding down, like, do you feel that like actionable meaningful. I'm trying to use the word data and my results. I was trying to get data. Data is great, Yeah, data data, but I didn't finish I didn't finish the sentence. I said data.

You know I'm talking about that. Yeah, it's getting I think that this this UM, the group of grad students that are and and wdf W employees that are working on this study are I'm really excited to see there. There's still in an analysis phase and um, you know, the results are not mine this year. But I'm just knowing these people. I'm they're going to do a great job thinking about the data that they're getting and being really thoughtful and and throw and and answer me important questions.

And we've got a ton of data from this project. So are you doing that science e thing right now where um, you're not saying what happened because you guys got go with your little process and everything. I really don't know. I mean, it's it's hot. You can't really look at first of all, I've been involved heavily and all the other facets of the project for the Meso

carnivores stuff. I mean we've just been out there busting it and collecting and collecting data, and so without analyzing it or at least, you know, visualizing that data with graphs and stuff, it's hard to say what kind of trends you might be pulling out. You gotta wait for the paper to come out. I think Steve was trying to ask you, are you doing one of those government science things where they give you the conclusion first and

then they hire you to get the data that. Yeah, I've done all that show us that wolves are made of rainbow. Whatever they want, that's what they are you

to do. Yeah, no pressure, No, absolutely not. I I've um the integrity of the science that I've worked on, I think is a always been really Yeah, it's just good scientists just out there trying to answer questions that they're interested in do you feel that, um, but do you feel that people are like they want to demonstrate that that wolves will bring us these beautiful trophic cascades, like they want to show that. We recently talked about

a paper someone put out that was my goodness. Here's one thing about wolves is they really reduce car dear vehicle collisions. And in reading the paper, you're like you said, man, here's an interesting thing to do. I should show that it reduces car vehicle collisions because that'd be helpful. Yeah, smelled like that. Yeah, I totally get what you're saying and getting it. And I've you know, seen that in papers and stuff, but my my has been I don't know,

really solid good projects. So that was very much one I was going in with this assumption when I was reading this paper by this fellow, Jonah Kim, who looked at the advantages uh predators get by traveling um roads, uh you know, clean trails things like that. This is in Canada, so there's all sorts of like oil pipeline roads and and cut line roads and things like that. And so he put together the study where he looked at just the efficiency of travel in these areas and

how that impacts the um pray species. And it was all very good stuff, but you kind of had this feeling that he was coming down to, so the solution is not killing wolves. It's make the country harder to travel, like putting up impediments on roads and trails that we make for to make life easier for us UM. And I was like, yeah, well yeah, But then at the end he's like, however, this is not, uh like this

golden solution to a complex problem. And he laid out the complexity of the issue and then came down to saying like, and if you're in a scenario where your prey species are so reduced that the predator species population UH has a distinct advantage, this is not the only thing that you can do the like, there will have to be some sort of lethal removal on your predator population. So in the end, it didn't feel like you were reading cancer research sponsored by the tobacco company exactly. So

that's a shout out for lead author Jonah Time. I hope I'm saying your name right. That was a good paper. So Carmen, UH, two questions for you. Two more questions for you, UM, talk about catching the coyotes, like how you catching to put a collar on them? And then then I'm then I need to hear what you're doing next now that you're doing this, um, catching coyotes. That's probably my favorite kind of trapping, just because of the challenge.

It's also in a lot of ways my least favorite, just because of um, well, it just kind of makes you feel bad on a lot of days. It's like you can't wait to get out there and check your traps, but man, I don't know things can foot Hold trapping is just it's kind of, um, it's a little harsh. It's a little harsh, and so we're we are foot

hold trapping for coyotes. It's really the only practical way to catch canan's because they're so smart and they're so wary and um and so in that regard really fascinating because you're just having to, um work really hard to get to know the animals that are in the area that you're trying to trap, and you never really figure it out. They're always, you know, just throwing something new

at you. Um. And so it's really interesting in that way, just I mean, from exactly how you set your trap to where you put your trap to what area of the mountain that you're you're trapping on? You gotta there's just so many different variables that you're trying to trying to figure out, and it's so frustrating. Victor's number three for coil, and then we use um they like the laminated jaws. They've got a rubber offset jaw. Yeah, so

I mean I could, I've could. You know, I often got my hand stuck in it for whatever reason, just not being careful and stuff, and it didn't you know, it doesn't feel good, that's for sure, But it's not like it's breaking scanner. And then you do you ang kurt with like an earth anchor? Or do you use a steak? Um? We so we'd we'd use well, we used lots of things, um steaks. But in our area it's so rocky, the soil is so bad. It's really hard.

You see these YouTube videos of guys catching coyouts and they're out in you know, corn fields where every single rock has been picked and the ground is so soft and loaming, and they're just like punk punk punk, you know, punch in a trap and two minutes we're out there in you know degree whether because we're having to trap in the summer because you can't do it in the winter where we are, so you're trapping in the summer, which is a whole another set of um difficulty because

because we are trapping for research and so are our

ethical standard for how we're treating these animals is different. Right, We've got this professional turn it out in a healthy condition, right, and so we're trying to do we're trying to especially on this project, I wanted to really raise the bar on our both of our well the capture element, so so making it as humane as we could, which is difficult with foothold trapping, and then also the handling part, so when you actually come up to an animal in

the trap and then drug it and and do the handling, Um, those can be pretty rodeo ish and there's been a lot of kind of just um, I don't know, cowboys culture around those handlings traditionally not I mean, that's not across the board by any means. But I think that that um, we're getting better at being really thoughtful about not only just getting our animal to live through that experience, but to um have it be as least stressful and painful for them as possible. So so we've been working

really hard to raise the bar there um. But back to the different types of anchors. We so we tried steaks way too rocky, use earth acres, but the main the main thing we use is UM a grapple hook on a long chain which you buried down onto the trap. Yeah, usually or sometimes just kind of bury it in the bushes, under leaves and stuff behind it. But basically, what as you're selecting your exact trap site, there's a lot of things you got to think about. Aside from just is

this a good spot to catch kyo? Is there is it a likely spot? You've got to think about is there a drop off somewhere, because they could then you know, drag the grapple, and the grapple could get hung up and then they're off off the you know, cliff dangling from the trap. So you're thinking about that, You're thinking about shade because it's summertime. UM, You're thinking about human traffic,

is this road too busy? That sort of thing. So there's a lot of safety variables that have to come together. UM And so most of the time, what what ends up being the preferred um steaking method is to use a grapple, because then they can get off the road, get hung up in some shade, be a little bit away from from the road of people come by, whatever, and then you don't have some motor is freaking out or hurting the thing or calling the cops or whatever

the hell exactly. And we're out there super early checking traps, so hopefully before people are there. But yeah, and then you work them up like you tranquilize them, put a collar on them. Yeah, take like biometric data off them. Yeah, take biometric data off so, um, we call it body measurements. But yeah, I went overboard, you went over but that's good,

that's good. Um. Yeah, so you come up on the trap and um, with the grapple, it's always even more exciting because you sometimes you get to the trap and you see, oh, it's just not there. It doesn't look quite like I left it. And so then you're looking around in the bushes and it can actually be hard to spot the animals case they've usually just they're usually just frozen with fright and so you're uh, And our traps have a little transmitters on them, so if we

have to, we can radio telemetry to find it. But usually if you just sort of follow the sign, you can find the animal pretty quickly and they're tangled up and they're um having the worst day of their life probably yeah. Yeah, And so we we work again really hard, just even with our body language and how we carry ourselves, um, to be as non threatening as we can be, but

also confident. You don't want to it sounds kind of out there, but your body language matters in how they're going to perceive you, and so you want to be confident, but calm, you know, no big movements, certainly, no talking

that sort of thing. Um, So keeping them as calm as possible, and you just um, we get um are drugs pulled up and we use what's called a syringe pole and so it's basically a syringe on the end of a long pole so that you can uh you know, from a little bit of a distance administer the drug and uh yeah, wait for them to go to sleep, and then remove them from the trap and do a medical check and you know, get there their vitals recording

and start putting the collar on. When you guys get by catch doing that like a skunk or whatever, do you do you have a way you release it or do you do you have to drug as well. It depends most bycatch. I try to just release um. Skunks are tricky, but I have found with them again, if you're really slow and calm, we hold up a charp in front of us and just slowly, calmly, if you can't walk up to the skunk. And then at the last second, this is where it gets kind of a rodeo.

But you you throw the charp on it and then grab it, and then somebody takes it off and they spray, and if you get any of it on you, it's like getting When you do the throw, he's gonna he's gonna call it. He's gonna yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And so you get oh. Man, I always say it smells like getting punched in the face. When it's that much, it's just the rest of your day. You just got a headache. And I stopped smelling it so much after a while, but I know other people could smell it on.

It gives you a headache. Yeah, it's powerful. Yeah, it's nothing like the sweet, pleasant smell of a road kill skunk. You just drive by it sixty and you go, oh, a little skunky today. Yeah, I got I got two ounces of it in a jar in my fridge right now. But it's in a jar in a vac sealed bag, which is in a vac sealed bag. Is it pure? Pure? Pulled it out with a syringe. Oh yeah, okay, And so you know, it's like it looks like a cartoon

skunk spray. It's like bright green. Yeah, yeah, that's crazy looking. Yeah, well it's yeah, be careful with that. Yeah, I don't know. I'm can use it as a joke on someone. I thought about injecting it into the pholstery of someone's car, but yeah, most like a call, do you know, I don't know. There's a cool uh study done on breaking

down skunk smell, like exactly why doesn't snake? And one of the interesting like chemical compounds um as as, like the sulfur um hydrogen bonds breakdown, they actually release more smell and their water soluble. So the harder you try to wash something out, the more intense the smell gets. And the theory is is that is to remind whatever came in contact with the skunk that they do not want to come in contact with another skin's like less you forget ye yep. So it's it's a multiday process

for whoever comes in contact. But like eight different chemical compounds and two of which like very very rare on the planet. I want to get this when you when you approach it with the tart, you're you're holding up. So so if he takes a shot at you, Yeah, what's the farthest you've ever had him take a shot at you? Not very far? They don't I don't think they want to waste that that spray. Give it to

me like feet, I don't know, maybe ten ft. Yeah, but you've never been in a situation where you've been able to like try to pin his tail down, because that's supposed to work, right, They got to lift their tail to spray, is what everybody says, all the old old man wisdom. I mean, have you talked to anybody that's actually done that, because I don't see you being able to get close enough to pin the tail down.

And I mean when we sew the tarp on it, we're trying to it's kind of chaotic because then you can't see it, but you're trying to pin everything down. But it's just it's just kind of it's just gonna go now, and like in fur trapper lore of old, it would be that if you could pull off heart shot with the twenty two, he's not going to spray,

but everybody knows a brain shot he's gonna spray. But now guys use those like people use those big long poles and oh yeah, to try even to try to kill it, like damage Like people that are doing like damage control work and stuff, they give it an injection with a big long pole. I haven't seen that or done that. Yeah, it's dicey work, it is. Yeah, you gotta handle those guys with care. And then when you go home, Um, is your husband like you smell like us skunk? Yeah? I say you got you got a

skunk today, didn't you. I'm pretty sure I go home smelling like all kinds of stuff because I've been living, you know, using lures and everything all day. So what's the most you ever walked in one day? Oh, I don't know how far. I don't really keep track of that. It's some pretty good tracks. Yeah, for work, Yeah, yeah, I don't know how far, especially doing wolf clusters and cougar clusters. You're hiking all over in the mountains, ma'am. Jealousy job. I like that job. UM. Okay, what's your

new thing? Okay, so the new thing is UM is something we could be helpful with by promoting the business. I don't know, I mean we're it's it's I don't want to help you. I just don't know how well. I'll explain it what I'll explain what it is and then you can see. But it's UM. We're calling it Home Range Wildlife Research and it's a nonprofit that uh that we're starting, and it's UM going to be sort of three different prongs. So I'm in charge of the

research components. So that will be just doing either research that we feel like it's important and want to do UM and we're really UM driven to do research is going to be applicable and is immediately uh needed, so UM not just sort of what's interesting but UM. So

that's one component. Then a workshop component for for young biologists just field skills, because we have found over the years, you know, having UM wildlife texts come, a lot of them are maybe just fresh out of college and and maybe even grew up in the city and don't have those sort of basic technical skills that they need to a feel confident be be focused on collecting good, clean data and see aren't gonna be rolling for four wheelers

and costing projects money. Um, So some workshops based around that and doing some you know, hopefully some tracking workshops animal track and sign and just various skills that that people might want before they start heading into the field. And then a community science um field because we live in a place where we feel like if the community is invested in your research, you're going to have better outcomes.

But also we have a lot of um, you know, hardcore recreators in the area, and so I say there's somebody going out to um hike in the wilderness or whatever, and where we need a camera out there or something we can be using community science to that kind of community science. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And where were you guys out what's what's the name of the outfit? Going to

be again Home Range Wildlife Research. Yeah, and you're going to operate out of where you're currently at Winthrop Winthrop Washington,

and you'll start local there and then who knows what'll happen. Yeah, I imagine that will be local for for quite a while where we've all been working on that landscape for for a long time, and we're invested in it, and we've spent so much time in the field there that UM it feels like that's a really good foundation for for our research because UM, I think there's a lot of value in having scientists that are good naturalists and that are out there UM and and noticing changes over

time on the landscape and picking up those patterns of what's going on out there. When will you get started? UM? We are. We're still in an early phase of figuring out and and UM pulling together the nonprofits so the just the sort of structure of it UM. But we're all we're starting to write curriculum and write I'm working on a proposal for UM links in and Wildfire project UM.

And then we've got a community science project that's going to launch this this summer looking at UM natural food availability for for bears coupled with UH how that the whether there's good natural food ability or not a season, how that affects human bear interactions getting into trash stuff like that. That's cool. Yeah, and then you're gonna do that project I was talking about where you go and see if bobcats like to eat on gut piles and that's why you can't find them in early December, right,

the importance of hunters the bobcats. Yeah, I won't test the hypothesis that you got to eat the organs quick. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So with this new thing, are you gonna have are you to like have like a You'll you'll be a full time Yeah, you'll be a full time salaried person. Yep, that's the plan. Just took ten years. Yeah, here you are, ye arrived, hopefully almost forty and and you have some grant writing in your background. Yeah, yeah,

we've all got Yeah, for sure that'll be Yeah. My question when I when I heard about this is how comfortable are you asking people for money? Yeah? Comfortable? No, not me, no, no no, but hopefully our board will be comfortable. You're gonna have a board. Yeah, you legally have to have a board as a nonprofit. Yeah. Yeah that's cool man. Yeah, that's great. Full time job, make

your own job. That is the moral of the story, and that is I think what's going to be needing to happen for for wildlife Bilo just more and more because it's just it's the field is really flooded and so it's hard to get jobs, just from a competitive standpoint, and also, um, because there's so many people wanting to do that field work, there's um, well it's hard to get paid. Well, they'll do it for nothing, Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

I don't know if I mean, it's just pretty intriguing. Oh. The folks that I worked with on the Grizz study there in Idaho, it was just like they created their own jobs and then had to recreate their lifestyles in order to do those jobs. And it's yeah, it's it's a passion passion deal for sure. It's it's not a it's a tough way to make a living for sure. So it's not a meritocracy exactly. That's just what you

said at the beginning. But it's not at all. You have to have you have to come from a family with money, don't you, Yeah, basically, or just oh to be able to be able to that's interesting points can't do that. Yeah, it's it's I think it's being talked about more ever, and it's just your podcast is rich, are they? I'm assuming not. I know a lot of people who's but I mean, you know, my brothers included, I know a lot of people who are. We're certainly not rich who slugged it out and pulled it off.

But it's like becoming a writer, you gotta commit yourself to spending a bunch of years living below the pot with like living below the poverty line and not be seducted by a plan B. So yeah, I think that that's a gravy way to do it. I had someone explained to me one time that like to be an

Olympic skier. They're saying, it's it's in large measure, it's a function of your family's finances because either can ski six months a year, or you go live in New Zealand and you ski twelve months a year, And the people that can ski twelve months a year have a leg up on the people of the ski six and the people that do that are people from wealthy families.

And it's undeniable. But I mean, I don't want to like, I would hate to say that point and then discredit people, many people that I know personally that slugged it out and tell us about your brother. I missed that part. You said something about your brother, just that they most certainly were not coming from a wealthy background, and and did it you know, starting out doing like creal surveys

for a dollar an hour whatever. Yeah, and then eventually through like sheer will, sheer force of will got there, but it takes forever. Yeah. Yeah, and so that's that's kind of what is happening in wildlife for sure, And there are definitely people that slug it out, but um it does leave a lot of people out and we're missing out on on attracting the best and the brightest. So do you think you're gonna approach this from a project standpoint or you're just going to try to have

a fund that people can apply for grants to. UM. I think we'll do some just general fundraising to start out, especially UM like we need to raise money to UM, you know, just start up costs, that sort of thing. But then definitely for different projects, be applying for different specific grants. Identify a project, try to rally some folks

around it. Yeah, and then you guys can use your expertise to say why this is exactly so let project worth preson, right, So just sort of like for the benefit of all mankind, yeah, exactly, and in the wildlife, Yeah, I like it. Yeah, best of luck man, thank you. Let's know, we'd be helpful. I don't know what we do if something comes up. All right, exactly, Okay, we're

gonna talk about Foxes for minutes. Everybody talk about Fox, Fox, Foxes, Fox, and I okay, get uh, Kathy, give us you can you give us like a kind of your bio, a quick bio. Sure. I was one of those who tried to leg it out. I guess. I have my undergraduate degrees from Missoula and my doctorate in biology from Montana State University. Here I was a part granger in a wildland firefighter for many many years did firefighting. Yeah, long time, and even after I finished my doctorate, I was on

the lines hard to give it up, like like seasonal firefighting. Yes, absolutely, And I was just living by myself, trying to use my PhD, trying to find one of those just piles of job applications to fill out for getting a university position. I had started at the University of Montana, but it was a part time. It was a contract, you know, like a post doc. In fact, it might have been called a post doc, but they called me it should have been called a post doc. I guess they called

me an assistant professor. And I was looking for professor ships. And then five did you do graduate work in bald eagles? Yeah? I did. My doctor was in bald egos. That's right. What at looking at? So throughout this term evolutionarily significant units, which is the scientific term for species, what we casually call species, but species is right, it's not a dynamic process. Species are constantly changing, their hybridizing, and they're moving, they're becoming.

They're on a pathway, they're on an evolution nine pathway. So technically they're The Endangered Species Act is about the species are defined in that Act as evolutionarily significant units. But nobody wanted to call the Act anything that had the word evolution in it for obvious reasons. Right, all led up, rowled up even today, and also it sounds complicated, but the evolutionary significant unit is how species are defined

by scientists. So it's looking at the pathways of the bald eagles and is there just one species of bald eagles in North America? And no, of course there's not. Because they mate according to size, so you can figure and you know that a female won't mate with a larger male. I'm looking at Carmen because she knows this, but maybe you know. I've heard that, but I've never understood the signal males from Alaska, so a female and

smaller in the south West like Arizona. So a female from Arizona is not going to be she doesn't have the opportunity to mate everywhere in North America because those boys up north are going to be larger than her, and she will not mate with a larger male. So they are on a separate pathway. Of course, the size, So size does make a difference. You guys already knew that, but we've been telling you it doesn't. But it does. And so females absolutely choose their mates based on size.

And if the sizes are separating distinctively, then then yeah, there's a point where they crossed, like a threshold of incompatibility, correct, and then they will they will eventually. Then eventually, if you took one from Arizona, if you took a female from Arizona and put her in Southeast Alaska, she might just she might never reproduce. Yeah, that's right, just Aaron, huh, just because the size differences, she's not gonna make Yep,

that's right, that's right, that's right. So she doesn't want to. You notice that's true of all the hawks. You see hawks all the time here. You're probably I don't know, I didn't know, you didn't haven't noticed the size differences. So it's like falcons. You've noticed that the female is much bigger than the male. And then when you start looking at hawks, like red tails of females bigger but not much bigger, and eagles so a little bit closer.

But the more ferocious of a hunter they are as a bird of prey, the greater the differences size difference between the sexes. We need your hypothesis on that because scientists don't really know the reason for that, and there's a lot of hypotheses. But eagles are understand that. So eagles are a little bit probably the more ferocious. Certain So what's the most ferocious bird of prey that you

can think of? The ones that really go after meat versus just dead stuff on, yes, exactly, the falcons, they're just only going to eat meat, live things, fast things, big things. So golden eagles, falcons, they have a huge size dimorphism diameting two and morph meaning size. So there's two different sizes, one for the males and one for the females. Humans are dimorphic. Males are bigger than females. Because humans, the males are bigger than females, and because

scientists tend to be humans. We look at the world human centric, and when animals have the opposite, so that the females are bigger than the males, we call that reverse dimorphism. So the bird of prey have a reverse sexual dimorphism. Females are bigger than the males. In humans, males are beta than Have you ever read that Neanderthals didn't have sexual dimorphs as much sexual dimorphisms as we did,

that they were like, oh I didn't. But I am reading and shocked at how much we are prejudiced against Neanderthals. And you know there was a time they were just I mean just data just came out a week ago showing that all those things we said about them not engaging in art and not having a sense of a statics, that's all just crap. I joked, We're gonna someday soon find out that they had laptops. They keep getting like, they keep getting it, they keep getting better and better

every every day. It's like out Neanderthals had bicycles. It's like every day. It's like, oh they were into art, Oh they were poets. Yeah right, you are right, but they they hung out in Europe for six hundred thousand years. Man, like everybody's like older dumb. It's like, dude, they had a long run. They were so diverse. Prejudice against off the land in every way imaginable. That's right. So clam diving exactly, the Neanderthals with swimmers here, that's how much

time they spent the really advanced. Just because they're extinct doesn't mean I mean, I'm totally with you. I'm glad you think that, because you're right that people thought they were just a dumb mass caveman because they're Neanderthals, and we use it as an insult, but it's really they like European people, but Americans maybe, I know my European graduate students didn't think Neandertal was an insult, especially if

they had more respect for him. Well, because they're named after the neander Valley, so that's where the first and they were kicking around in the same round. To them, it was like it was like their ancestors. Yeah, yeah, that's right. To get back to the bird thing a little bit because it's cool. I want your hypothesis Sundays. I have one, but I'll make sure i'm getting it right. Um, Okay, as you go up, So if you go look at what's in't that family? That would be like a like

a not for give me a not. Eagles are the least ferocious ones. They can survive just scavenging technical I mean, just hang out at the local look at the look at the salmon that they eat. I mean they're not really fishing like an osprey very much. I mean they're they're getting the salmon that are sort of slow moving dead after they've already spawned their bright red they're on

the surface. So they're not for as hunters, so they have less sexual Maybe define like ferocious because it seems like it's it's no no, But define it as like as the way you're using it's kind of coming out like as in the more energy they'll expand to get food. Right, Oh, I don't know about energy, but I mean they're taking

the most difficult targets. So peregrine and eagles are real hunters. Technically, a bald eagle as a scavenger, they don't even have to physiologically, they're not obligated by their genetics or by their physiology to hunt. They can just like you did. You say, hang out at the dump. That's right. They can hang out at the sitting next to the stream

and eat the dead salmon. That's right. Is going to catch live fish, Yeah, and then they wait till the osprey brings it to its nest, and then the bald eagle steals it from the osprey nest when it's already dead. That's what. Yeah, you know, Ben Franklin didn't like eagles because these guys are really good naturalist. He knew. I

read the letter that he wrote to his daughter. I wrote to the museum there and asked him if they would send me a copy of because I was tired of just hearing the rumors about it, and I wanted to read the whole thing, not take it out of context. Yeah. So he was kind of joking, but he was also serious. I mean, he was sort of joking about the turkey, but he he wanted he did believe, and he knew that bald eagle's scavengers. I mean, he knew that although it was beautiful, it was not a bird that was

really capable of hunting. It wasn't really a bird that if we wanted to use a symbol of a really fierce nation of people, it was a good symbol if you were going to like head people across to the west Land that you didn't own but belonged to Native American nations and you were going to steal their land, then the bald eagle was a great, great symbol for that. And that's actually what the I sis did, right, So bald eagle ended up being good, but they didn't want

it to be that. They thought it was going to be like the big fierce hunter, the noble. It's an real noble. Old eagles are, I guess more noble you've ever tried to mess with one. I think bald eagles got a lot of their most recent cache because they were it was for such a long time, it was rare to see one. And I think that's gonna wear off now. And I think that you know, because growing up and be like you know, so it's so sorry, it's like tree right there every day for the last

what ten twenty years? Yeah, I think that it's like it's cache. It's cache will be diminished by its success. There's a bald eagle that lives essentially right here, right here at the office. Like it goes from. We have a little cut hay field here just to the west of US, and there's some power poles right there, and it'll sit on those power poles. And then I'll jump across to the north side of the interstate and sit right there too. Yeah, it's I would assume, yeah, it keeps,

but that you know, the speaking of their caches. So in the seventies when they got covered by DDT, the United States and a lot of nonprofits, they spent so much money. They're so trying to help the bird recuperate. There are so many graduate students in this country that you know, we're just like this huge club. We belong to people who got their doctor. It's working on bald eagle because endless a pot of money to work on bald eagles endless, and the osprey got like nothing, and

they ended up recovering faster anyway. I mean, the the osprey is just really a well suited bird for this country. I mean, they're amazing fisherman. I mean, they are just amazing fishermen. They're talented birds, and they have really great common sense. I mean they don't waste their time fighting with a big a bird that's much bigger than them. If the bald eago wants the fish, baldigo can get the fish. The ospity just goes and gets another fish.

I mean, it's easier to just go there. Just that talented, they'll just go get another fish rather than fight over Like you see all the birds fighting at carcasses, but osprey don't hang out of carcasses. They're like their own the ones that fish that well, So they just fish. They've done really really well in this country, and and they don't eat trash or scavenge like and they have high sexual dimorphism or how Yeah, they have a degree

of sexual dimorphism. That's right, but it eagles still will have. Uh. I think eagles have a little bit more. Even osprea are only eating fish of course, and not chasing down mammals. So the ones that are chasing down mammals and big mammals and golden eagle will take a deer. I mean, you've certainly seen them chasing after I've seen them chasing after deer. They chase me, and but I'm not quite as all the time they hate me um, So they have a lot of sexual dimorphism. But you never noticed

that the females were always bigger than the males. I've heard that, but no, I haven't noticed. And the first I think, if I was looking at him in a nest, I wouldn't be able to tell you who is who. Probably my problem. But because they don't have they don't have the remarkable differences in coloration that like most birds would you most birds that you know that there's a male and females because they have different colors and they're

the same size. So it's good. You're looking at some English sparrow eating your crumbs from your scone underneath the table at the cafe or whatever. He's got a big black throat patch. You're like, that's the male. But but I'm not looking at size, right, because they're just looking at coloration at tweet birds are pretty much like the most extreme version being like a pheasant, right, like everybody on the planet can tell you a male peasant from

female peasant, well by coloration. If you're hunting at least, we hope you know that. You know what I'm saying. It's like it's not color. That's true. I hadn't. I've forgotten that because because I don't spend a lot of time looking at tweete birds, because there's so many hawks where I live, and there's not a lot of little birds around very long. But blue birds come in. But then the castrels clean them up boom boom boom instantly, which is so much fun to watch. Oh yeah, incredib

castals are so amazing, aren't they. Yeah? Yeah, But I don't put out bird feeders or anything to attract birds to come there, so that because you just learn them into their desks, learn them into their tractions. You know. I gotta email the other week talking about big bird seed, like you know, like big pharma and how big bird seed big the big birds seeds in conjunction with Autobahn to keep the perpetuation of feeding birds out there, even

though it's it's providing this endless death cycle. Don't even Bozeman anymore. You must know that even when I was a grad student here we get a great what I'm saying, but I get a lot of value. We have a little bird, We have a modest little bird feeder way high up in the air, so it's not adding to the bear problem. And whatever in My children get a tremendous amount of We get a lot of education opportunities.

We keep a running list. We keep a running list that we constantly update of what we see in our yard, see or here from our yard. So there's things on the list that we've never seen what we heard it from the yard. And I'll give up my bird feeder when they pry it for my cold had hands change. So this winter the modest little bird feeder. You look at your modest little bird feeder, and you can tell me, or you can tell Carmen about the hawks that should be in Florida for the winter but decided not to

go because they're hanging out at your bird feet. Are they're not at my bird feeder? Are you sure you're not seeing red tails that didn't migrate, Well, they're on my list, but that's not what they're doing. They're riding the thermals on the hill behin they're supposed to have migrated though. Well, I can't tell you that they they're in the winter. I just know around my list. If the list is going to get which will be fun. You want to set up a science study. I got

a science study for you. I'll pull my bird feeder down and you tell me that that caused birds the leaf. It's just like, like it's a lot of value. Very modest, little high upbird feeder. Um. I think there's a lot of value for the kids, just as them to the list. I have problem with people feeding birds, But what's funny is that everybody used to feed birds a long time ago, and put a little food out for foxes and things too. It suddenly became like we're not supposed to be feeding animals,

and the birds are the last ones, right. I mean, everybody like a fed bear is a dead bear. And yeah, they just say that mostly because it rhymes, but I think maybe they also think you shouldn't be feeding bears. There's a limit to that though. I mean, obviously, if you live in the middle of nowhere and there's not any other houses around you, what different I mean for a hundred miles or bears aren't going to go more than twenty five. Does it really matter if you let

bears eat food on your property? Probably not. But if you're in Yellowstone National Park at a campground, you don't want bears coming around where there's food, so you can't really be attracting bears at a campground. It's trouble, but it depends on It's a very individual thing. But you talk to your grandma and I bet that generation they used to feed squirrels and stuff like that and chipmunks. And I think in England you're not even supposed to

feed birds anymore. I'm pretty or about that. I think I read that in Hella McDonald's new book Vesper Flights, and so, yeah, they're coming for your bird feeder. They are coming for that. Until they finished meeting my thought. I don't know if you heard. It's modest. It's a modest.

It was way up high. Feeding animals is not in vogue for sure, But it seems like the stuff that makes the paper are the folks that have gone that are making up for a lot of their neighbors not feeding right, Like some lady in Florida was getting like truckloads of Costco chickens to feed alligators in her back and stuff and barrels of feed. You know, we recently had on our website. I don't know if you've seen it. Um it's really something. There's a white tail fawn swimming.

He's got himself in a lake. Some hunters the sea wall, so it's like the fawns out and you can't get up on the beach because there's a sea wall, and so he's swimming parallel to the sea wall. And a bald eagle combs down and very like, very deliberately, like it's done. It knew what it was doing. It comes down and lands on its head and drowns that thing. I mean, it knew it wasn't sitting there and it happened to drown. It came down and drowned that fat and then drug it up on the beach and ate it.

That's interesting. It was really interesting and definitely not saying like, oh, that's very normal, but it was very deliberate in it, kind of like it knew that it was drowning something. Yeah, and I knew you were going to say it sat on its head. So I do think it's pretty expected for a because they're large birds and they throw their weight around. Think about again and think about a pagrine falcon. They're relatively small compared to a bald eagle, and they

don't throw their weight around. They have great eyesight, they're talented. They're fast, Prairie falcon, nothing's faster, but throwing the weight around thing fits perfectly with your fierceness. They're not fierce, they're just they're slow. Their eyesight isn't as good as a foul. Yeah, paragan foul guns are fierce. Like that added mass when they do the steep or the stoop, you know where they drop out of this guy on

their victim. That's got to be tremendous. And you think about it like hunting, So you hunt if are you going to use are you going to go for knockdown power? If let's say you've got a two seventy, are you going to go for knockdown power and put like one eighty grain white in? Or you're gonna go I'm going to get something. Maybe it's not legal to buy it, but you're going to load your own. And you know that you're a straight shooter, and you know that you're

a great shot. You know that it's going to be a long shot, so low down to like one grain weight so it doesn't kick the hell out of you when you shoot. That's what I mean by mass, but weight, like somebody putting in one eighty grain weight in a two seventy because they need knockdown power because they're not going to make a good shot. That's the word, thank you, that's the word. I need it. It's vanesse. Doesn't with like the physics of something dropping out of the sky

super fast. Don't know if you know, No, so U Red Tails picked up a skunk on my property the other day and I wasn't really thrilled about it, and she dropped She did come back and get it in case you're a Red Tail fan, but she dropped it right. And it was a baby. It was just a few weeks. Yeah, she killed it though. But I picked up the carcass from the ground because she dropped it on this little trail and I thought that I was going to bring it over by the dan so the mom could see.

I wondered how they would react to the baby, the dead baby skunk. But anyway I saw with the I wondered if she would recognize that that was hers orf there would be any kind of reaction, But the Red Tail came and snatched it back from me before I got to do anything. But anyway, the skunk, it was dead right she dropped it. She had managed to get her claws right through its head. I mean that's talent she doesn't. You don't need any weight. If you've got

that much finesse, it's dead like that second. If she had tried to grab it from its mass, it wouldn't have been dad. Maybe having extra weight would have helped. But red tails are really good hunters. I mean you see them pick up snakes. They're really good. That's a good point. That can't be easy. So she redtails have finesse,

so it doesn't matter how much weight they have. A bald eagle that doesn't have finesse because they're used to killing things that are road kill uses their bulk, their mass. They're the one eighty grain weights in your two sevent day basically excusing their book. I know you guys don't go for knockdown power because that's not what you advertise. Probably I like things that yeah I should big, Yeah, I should, I should what would be regarded as a

heavy rifle. Yeah, but it doesn't. Yeah. I used to load my own, and so I would always load down, down, down, lower than what I could buy in the market, because I don't want to if it hurts me more than it hurts what's dead. You don't want to lose your ba thing? Yeah, why hunt? If you're like arms going to fall off? I want to keep Can you take it off? Can you take it up? Offline? Arguing about the birds because I want to keep moving and what

am I supposed to do? Saying if you got If you want to argue about birds more, you'll have to call Kathy up later. Oh yeah, no problem, I know where she lives. No, I'm am I arguing I don't know, all right, So, uh that's a big digression. Valuable. No, it's my fault, not my fault. I'm glad I did it. It was prompted by me, But I want to keep moving forward. That was just Cathy's bio. By the way, that now you know who I am? Yeah, um, okay, walk me through and whatever way makes sense, walk me

through how we got from that? Here? You are studying bald eagles too. You got a brand new book about about not foxes, but a fox based on a fox. It's really important to distinguish between foxes and a fox. So scientists do research, gather information so that you can enlighten us. Staring up Karmen again about foxes, just like sociologists are studying about humans. But when you write a book, a novel, you're not trying to show us about your You've got a protagonist who's one human. My book isn't

about foxes in general. It's not encyclopedic information about a particular species. It's about one particular fox. But it is important for us to start realizing that we shouldn't just generalize. We have tended to generalize animals and put them all in one big clumps, yet it keeps us from empathizing with them. I think you'll feel the same when you think about other groups of people. But when we when we put people or animals in a big group, when

we generalize, it keeps us from empathizing. And when we empathize, then we can really understand and accept and respect them and understand that they're a little bit closer to humans than we thought that they were. So my book is about an individual fox, and it is important to understand the difference between the generic generic fox. For I mean, there's lots of things that are true about foxes that

I believe are true. I've read them in in in my textbook that I use in my classes, and so Foxes do have an instinct to evade, for example, something flying overhead, like a golden eagle, but my particular fox didn't. I mean I would watch him run down the hill and I've got a bald ego nest on the cliff there, and he just would just be bouncing around and I mean he just you know, animals do have individual personalities

like that was a blind spot for that fox. Yeah, exactly. Um, but that's not I'm not trying to change how you feel about all foxes. I don't want you to think that, oh, it's not true that foxes evade. It's what's true of the generic fox. It's important that we have when we

get in scientific information. We're talking about, you know, the ones under the high part of the Bell curve, and we assume that people know that there's outliers, but some people forget that their outliers and think that everything is the same. We know that humans have outliers to them in the room with like four outliers or so, so you know, humans are outliers, but we forget that's true of other species as well. Outlines humans like humans are

kind of generally monogamous. They generally reproduce. But that's certainly, you know, not the case. I think humans scientifically speaking are hair and harem breeding species, Isn't that right? I mean they're harem breeders, but Mormons are monogamous, maybe, I guess, but not humans in general, we're harem breeders. Signed I mean biologically that I know what you mean. You mean, regress is like a sociological like a sociological overlay, a

cultural overlay. Yeah, you should read EO. Wilson's socio Biology another but yeah, but I don't know, man, I was reading this thing about how, um that doesn't apply in your house that human in human females, Um, there's no outward visual. There's no outward visual to tell someone that they're in heat. Okay, if you just if you want to talk like like purely, like a million terms, there's no outward visual and it's not like a seasonal thing.

It's not like once a year females. Yeah, like yeah, so viable, like it would be like a human female would be sexually viable twelve times a year, not one time a year like some wild animals. And at higher latitudes and then um, the temperature changes. You know that. But it's not outward I'm just telling you. I'm not telling you my of the vaginal fluids. Can you say that on your radio show outward visual displays? Yeah, but baboons Yeah, But on baboons for instance, there's like an

outward visual display. So someone was saying, like I just read this thing time explaining monogamy and and staying at home. Okay, And it would be that you couldn't like a bull Elk. Let's take a bull Elk. Okay, he knows as long as he shows up in September around the cows, he's not missing anything. If he goes off into his own zone in November and stays out there and has no interaction with cows at all, totally antisocial, hides out, antisocial, he's not like he knows, he's not missing out on

breeding up. You're right, But with a human it want to be in that that you could be missing out and in your absence there could be things going on that you don't want to know about. So that compelled people to spend their entire time together. Wouldn't that just compel one guy to like Genghis Khan, to have more females around him. When I say that we're harem breeders. I don't mean in the last two or three hundred four.

Humans have been on the planet for hundreds of thousands of year, so I mean the history of home sapiens. And I'm not even telling I'm just saying, like a thing I read, the thing I read, So never mind. What was I saying? There's a there's all sorts of fun stuff we can tell. Oh, you're talking about outliers and I was trying to say. I was trying to make like some general things about humans, like, sorry, I forget, sorry forget that there are outliers. There are outliers and humans. Yes, yes, yes,

you're right, and sorry about that. So we start talking about monogamy and you were just because you picked a weird thing as to be an outlier, and actually, let should have picked something different. But like marshmallows, Yeah, we generally like marshmallows. People like sweet things, and then there's some people that don't like sweet stuff. That's safer, good shob.

People like a certain kinds of food, and then every once in a while you run into people that don't like that kind of food, or people are basically all the same sizes and then there's like some people born that are like seven or eight feet tall, some people that are very short. So are you holding out? I want to I want to help out here? Are you holding out? The fox? And fox? And I could be like a wild outlier? Oh he's yeah, he's an outlier,

not super wild outliers. I mean, you know, there's a research that was done in Rush over fifty year period and shows that um Dr Balovs research, and so far it's not a huge outlier. I doubt he's even one in a million. It's just that in my experience, in my very short life, and I've always had foxes on my property for for a long time anyway, I've not been able to get this to work with a relationship like that with another fox. But I haven't seen a

million foxes, you know, a couple of dozen. So maybe he's one in a thousand or something like that, but he's not that that kind of personality. Isn't that rare? Yeah, he could be one in twenty four because the research shows that foxes are relatively easy to domesticate, almost as easy as dogs. So Dr Baliot was able to do it with about fifty generations that's pretty quick. Okay, lay

out the fox, lay out the scenario. So the scenario is this little fox starts coming around my house like all the time at the same time, and I had right he was it was four fifteen. He was watching the sun. He was. He's really sensitive to the sun and kind of jerry manders whole life routines around like he doesn't like the sun in his eyes, but he does like the sun on his body when he's sun bathing, and um, he doesn't like to walk into it, so

he does things according to the sun. First. A little sorry when you say little was was it a young No? But he was certainly a run I'm guessing I was guessing about six pounds, and um, you think he is at a run of a litter? Yeah, absolutely. I mean

the fact that he couldn't talk. And then when you see when you go and see like a certain rock that he used to stand on all the time, and I have photos of all four ft on that rock, and then you go and look at how small that rock is, and you just, yeah, yeah, he was a real small fox. Foxes are smaller in the in the Rockies, then they're going to be in England and probably even in a more moderate climate than in in Washington State.

Organ they're they're small in the Rockies. Everything smaller here because the growing seasons and they can't is short and they can't eat as much. So he was a small fox for sure. Um and he planned his life around the sun pretty much. But I think that he had decided he wanted me in his life. He wanted a person.

There wasn't any other choice around for him besides me, and I didn't really want to have anything to do with him, but he wore me down, and eventually I really believe he became what I would call my best friend. We were together every day every day for years. I mean just I read to him and we walked around together, and then we played games together. But it took a while to get to that. No, but I do keep um egg yokes outside, not very close to my house.

But when I was just eating egg whites in the days before you could just buy the whites, I would separate them out so I wasn't eating egg yolks every day. I would put egg yolks out by a tree about three from my house, and so he would eat those once in a while, but not many he would come by and eat like one. The magpies ate most of them, And I don't think that he ever associated those egg yolks with me. Um. So no, then I don't think. I was pretty careful not to put things in my

mouth in front of him. Even if I was just drinking tea while I was sitting on the steps with him, I wouldn't even drink it while he was watching. I didn't want him to see me put stuff in my mouth, So there was as food with me. But there was a day, like a day when you first took note, like you first registered his presence, the first time that I realized he was odd and something was going to happen when he wasn't just like some air and animal.

I mean, there's always foxes and badgers and skunks around in Deer. That day happened when I was hanging out outside and I have I always have scabby knee, so I have the scab knee, and this huge house fly was playing with my scabs, sucking all this blood and playing with the blood, and I was like blowing it to try to get it off my knee. Falling off

the cliffs, climbing up the cliffs. No, no, no, climbing up well, that was from a fall when I was jogging, or I shouldn't have been jogging by myself, and took a little bit of a role. But climbing the cliffs are jogging on trails that I shouldn't be jogging on. So I was playing with that fly and then I

just kept playing. The fly wouldn't give up, so he would just get off my knee when I would blow really hard, and then he would take a few reconnaissance laps and then boom right back on my scab again, start pulling up the blood again. This nasty little arms, so to speak. They don't really have arms, I know, you know that. And I just got totally obsessed with his fly and forgot about everything else, and I was

just staring at this house fly. Then I looked up and there was a fox like two like arms length away from me. It was him, and he didn't even know I was there. He was like staring at that fly on my knee. He was just obsessed with that fly, and I was obsessed with the fly. And at that point I didn't know what to do because he was so close. So I just said fox and then finally

he looked up at me. And when he looked up at me, he turned his nose down, so that you know, the snout will be in the way if you're trying to look eye to eye. He turned down and then we were totally eye to eye. The width of six pound animal. His eyes are just about the same with as ours are. Another reason I don't think it's one in a million for fox in a human type. I mean their eyes. You know, I have a skunk that's almost the same size, hanging around all the time, almost

the same size as as that fox. But there are there's no way you'd ever look eye to eye. I mean you can barely even see the eyes on a skunk or so small and their heads so small and there, and their eyes are so close together. So fox, when I'm sitting and he's standing standing on all fours, his eyes are the same height as mine and the same with this mind. So we were just eye to eye for just the longest time. And that moment, that was the moment that I knew there was no going back. Really,

I mean I tried, but there was not. When you're that close. I mean, he could have reached out and swatted me. I could have, you know, reached grabbed his little neck and strangled him. But we we were just that close, just staring at each other, and then I locked him in. He locked me, and I think he knew he had me and I had him. At that point, I started taking stuff out of my pockets, tapping them on the woodsteps, like geodes and feathers, every mostly all

natural things. I had some brass because I keep I don't just let my brass hang out, so I had some brass in my pocket. I took that out too, told him I didn't use it to shoot the dear, let's hang out the walk. I had that, so I took that out and tapped it. But you know, brass is pretty if you roll it in the sun, so I did that. He liked that, and he liked the rocks. He really liked the feathers that were in my pockets.

And then I just moved away and let him did show well he's not He was really curious about them. I eventually moved away a couple of meters and just let him knows everything that was there, and he just I kept him coming back for days, just putting my little trinkets out in front of him and letting him

show his interest. Then I worried that, well, it was getting boring for me, and he had a very short attention span, so he would look for a little while and then he put his head up, can themselves yes. So I started reading to him after that, and then he was really good about that. He liked it absolutely, he stayed. I mean I timed him quite a lot, and I he averaged eighteen minutes, so that he didn't like it a lot. I mean he wouldn't sit for

a very long period time. At eighteen minutes is pretty long for that's about as long as a person can say, okay, explain like I understand reading to it, but explained it just of that I was making it. So the reason it's noise, I mean, the reason I was reading is because I just wasn't used to talking about just myself telling stories, and that's boring and that's hard to do.

So I got something that was easy to read. And then you talk for a certain amount of time and look hold up the pictures so he knows you're trying to communicate, and then you stop and then you look at him. Count to fifteen to yourself so that he realizes that you are trying to communicate. If you just make noise, he thinks you're just ignoring him. That you know, it's just a person who's making noise. I mean you you have to do it in that pattern as if

you're trying to communicate. And I kept up that pattern and he got used to that pattern, so he knew I was trying to communicate with him. And he had every reason to want me hanging around him because I have hands and big, bad tools. And he knew I hated feral cats. I mean he watched me chase them away. He didn't know about the bad words I was saying to those cats, but he knew I hated Ferrell cats, and he hated Ferrell And there was protection there, reduced predator.

He got to hang out in the sunshine in the middle of the day because I was there. Normally Fox wouldn't be able to just you know, not with dogs and feral cats around and eagles. So he got a huge advantage from being my friend. Huge. Okay, but what is he eating all this time? Oh, he was a great hunter, So he's eating lots and lots and lots

of voles, mostly voles. That's I think that's Chapter three of the book is called Vole Forest, and it explains how I accidentally he got a huge forest filled with voles on my property. I didn't mean to, but I was just to make a long story short, I just wasn't paying attention to my property and I had this massive, massive amount of voles. I mean they run over my

feet while I was walking. I mean one of them gave birth on my boot while I'm not kidding, just because just because the grassload and there was so it ended up just growing too high with the weeds those kind of woody things, and then it lays down and creates that kind of like that sort of buffer between the ground and the animals that hunt voles from the air aren't going to go in through woody things that are thorny, and animals that take skunks take bowls, foxes

take fowls, badgers, animals that come in from the side, especially animals that pounds like a fox, they can't get in either. So the voles just start proliferating and proliferating and proliferating until this is huge amount of them. I mean, they were just everywhere so that really attracted him. But he was a good hunter anyway. Even after I figured out how to kind of limit the vols a little bit, he was a terrific hunter. There were days when he had five bals piled up by my front doorsteps. He

would wait, he would hunt. Yeah, I thought that he was giving them to me, But he wasn't. But I thought he was. Was it just the same you feel it was a safe place to portal. It was just because he figured out the only place the magpies wouldn't steal them. Magpies were really aggressive, and they'll come to my steps, but they won't come right to the door.

That's like the limit for magpies. So he would put them right up the door so that the magpies wouldn't steal them, and he would keep hunting until he had so men enough to fill his whole mouth. Then he would gather them all up and run them up the hill to where the kids were, because he was helping feed them. But if he had to just run up and down, up and down every time he killed one,

it wouldn't be very efficient. So he liked to pile his dead things up and then grab them and then bring them up the hill, so he wasn't giving them to me. He was just he was just leaving them there because magpies wouldn't eat anything on my doorstep. You knew that, but I didn't. Yeah, you mentioned it was how vain I was present from the fox. You mentioned how short lived they are. Yeah, yeah, I was a little bit if I think if you'd I came here with what you said, But it's like it's like a

few years, right, Yeah, like about a guess. I don't know, I would have I would have thrown out seven or eight years. I don't know why, probably in his do But they're wild animals don't live very long. Yeah. I think that's probably one reason why their personalities might be a little bit different than human personalities. You think back to what your life was like when you were a twenty year old. You were talking about crazy things that you've done, but and how you think about those near

death experiences. But you think about those near death experiences differently based on what decade you are in your life. But they don't have like decades of their life. They it's short lived animals, But for us humans, a twenty year old human has a little bit different person. I mean, you don't change the person's genetics. It's the exact same person, but your personality changes when you're twenty versus when you're eighty.

Probably your idea about what a near death experience is, even your idea about the passage of time exactly, exactly exactly. And I read somewhere with someone who was trying to capture when we hear that of whatever, a fly or whatever, some aquatic insect has a day or two days right as it emerges, and and someone's describing, though I can't hear who was talking about this with their talking about when you go to swat a fly, right, So in your mind you're like it's fast like right, but the

flies mine. It's like there's this um, there's this thing that's that's coming that I'll eventually but I'll eventually need to take into consideration and avoid. You know, it's just like it's tripped like who you know, who really knows, but like it's it's like it's comprehension of time is thousands of light years away, there's up there, it's going

to hit the earth. Yeah, that's right. You look at trees, you know, you look at trees that are hundreds of years old, like is it you know, not that it's regarding time, but just whatever the experience is, isn't you know? We're sort of built in. I think that we're born, and we pretty quickly get a grasp of kind of

what a year is. We quickly get to grasp of when people die, and we start to measure because we have a like there's a fair sense like if you're live right now, you know you're going to be around eighty and you start taking that stuff off, man, I know, and then you realize that it's it's unavoidable, and there comes this awareness of things are things going by time going back differently and you're burning a fuse and I don't know what you know? Maybe you know now better,

but I don't know what a fox. I don't know if a fox is aware that it's it's taken, I don't, but it seems like it would be innate. I think it's one of the reasons why humans have often set themselves apart from other animals and always forget even your even your students, even your undergraduate students in the middle of a biology class, forget that humans are animals and there's only six kingdom of life, and there's an animal kingdom and where in it, there's not a separate kingdom

for humans. So we are animals, but people forget that. But one way that we have been different from most of the animals that are around in modern America is that we're so much longer lived. And that's that's even more drastic because maybe a hundred or two hundred years ago we lived maybe sixty years, and now it's eighty. But maybe it's going to be even longer than that. But the lifespan of the animals hasn't changed, so we are separating ourselves a little bit in terms of our longevity.

Bears can live for years, grisly bears, large animals can, But we're wiping out the larger animals because they threaten us. So there aren't a lot of large animals around. But you know, bison our large animals, and they probably don't live more than a sixteen years. So we do live a lot longer. And if the length that you live changes your personality, then it would give you a reason to believe that humans we have a little bit different

personality than foxes. It doesn't mean that other animals don't have a personality, and I think that I don't believe that humans are the only animals that have certain personality traits. I think that anthropomorphism is just been mischaracterized and it's based on assumptions that just don't make any ense anymore. I want to talk, Well, you got to define it, but I want to talk about anthropomorphism, but first I want to talk and maybe you answered it. Uh what

what's the fox's lifespan? Just a few years? Yeah, So you get into this routine with this thing and it's like you know that it's no, it's won't last, that's right, And I and I thought that was really stupid. I remember I was jogging and thinking to myself, this is really really dumb. Why am I spending all this I was spending a lot of time. I mean, my whole life was pretty much geared around you have to be

home at four or fifteen. Um, that's just insane. An animal that's just going to be gone on the blink of an eye. But you know, in Paradise Valley there's all those rainbows out there, and double rainbows are really common. And I was jogging on this trail and suddenly this rainbow came up and then it doubled and you can see end to end. You can still see Ndan from my house, but I could see Undan from where I

was jogging because it's so open country out there. And then I really lies that a rainbow, I mean, how long does that last? And I stopped to watch it. I mean I didn't just like, oh, it's I'm not going to waste my time with a rainbow because because it's short lived. And I just and that that made up my mind. I thought, that's so stupid to worry about how long something lives when a rainbow doesn't. And I'm not the only one. When you're up in the mountains and you look down you can see cars, I

mean they just stop. People that are like going ninety miles an hour to get to the airport and they're like, at whatever, miss people just stop when they see the double rainbows do that and these you know, people have seen hundreds of rainbows and they just stop. Anyway, it doesn't really matter how long it lives. How does the fox? Can you tell you? Are you afraid of ruining those story if you tell how the fox dies? Yeah? I am glad you asked I'm not telling you how the

fox died. Listen, we got real numbers here. And these people is reading the book right now. There you go, thank you. Yeah, Carmen is reading the boat. Do you want to I'll find out. I don't want to know how the thoughts did the talk about anthropomorphism, because that's what everybody's gonna say. That's what a guy like me is going to say. They're gonna say, oh, you're anthropomorphiz Yeah, I know everybody. I mean, I've heard that so many times.

I mean, that's your unapologetic of course. I mean as a part grinder, as a professor and you know, students, and that a word is a really it's a ward that a lot of people in the public like to say because they think that it's really pedantic. I think, but it's only just now becoming pedantic. I think people think it makes them sound sophisticated and pro science if they accuse everybody of being anthropomorphic. But I think we need to first, you got it, You first got to identify.

You have to if it means that you are crediting human traits to an animal that's not human, so human human trait might be for example, this is. One of my students gave me this. Um. She said that Adam and Eve experienced or exhibited modesty, and she said, that's a trait that we think only humans have. You mean when they covered themselves with leaves. Yeah, I never I needed one of my undergraduates explain that to me. And I really loved that. It was part of it had

to do with sort of like Neanderthals. But it's a question that I used to ask. They were introduced to shame Bible person, so maybe it's shame, but um, yeah, they were. They were made to feel shame. Okay, they're made to feel shame, and so that's a human trait. And then if you see two little chipmunks mating, um, you say to yourself, they're just out there mating and they don't care that all these people are standing around watching because they don't. They have no shame. They experience

no shame. But really, but that's voyeur. I'm a part of the humansitionism. Apart the voy is you're the voyrus for watching the animals or exhibitionists between the and role play and exhibit. This is the most risk ay episode of the Medior podcast. Will go walk out and protest. He's like, I did sign up for this kind of stuff. I'm a family. Now this is what I want. You all went to the University of Montana, finally going to

direction that Phil can get on board with. Yeah, the uh the giant red squirrels that overran the campus on the University of Montana. That exact scene you just described played out many times during my stamped at you m you went to You have m too, writing, you studied writing them good school, you went to them. So now I don't know what that makes. It makes us grizz

because you're wrong to the undergraduate school. So even when I'm in my regalia, maybe I shouldn't say this on there, my regalias from the University of Montana, my own to graduate school instead of my PhD. Because I just think you always belonged to under gradgate school, don't you. I don't. I don't know. I never I don't look at those institutions in that way. I felt. I felt it was very transactional and like I don't have any sort of

when they call about fundraising, do you just help everybody? No, I just have things I'm dedicated to. But it's like I just viewed it as a transactional relationship. Like I I you know, I go to Whale Entire here in town. Okay, um, Like I don't imagine Whale Entire calling me wanting me to send them extra money. Like we engage in a transaction and the transaction is done. Don't call me later and be like, hey, you know you had your oil change here and bought tires here. How about now just

sending us money for nothing? It was I feel it was very transactional. But I want to get back. When I dropped out of the University of Montana, nobody ever called and said, hey, really missed you in class. Did you go back? I never did. No. No, Mom listens to these two and so back. You know. Okay, anthropomorphism, so you know what it means. So you get what it means now where you're sorry, Yeah, I just want to make sure everybody. I want to make sure everybody's tracking.

So if you pretend that an animal has a certain quality, a certain personality trait, people think you're pretending that it couldn't possibly Then they say you're being anthropomorphic because it's not possible that an animal could possibly feel loyalty or pain. I mean, I think I give an example. You are at about Buffalo, so you'll know this example from my book. Are you familiar with Dr Hornaday's work? Okay, doky, So I've read Horniday's journals. I love them. That's another plug.

Dr Hornaday's journals are fantastic. And so he emerged as a very controversial figure. He did. But you know, his family called me when I finished publishing an article about him. They said it was the best piece they've ever It wasn't just about him, it was about Buffalo, but they said it was the best piece they've ever read about him. And I was not trying to be complimentary. I was very objective. I mean I talked about all his warts. There were many of them. He had a lot of prejudices,

but he did a lot of important things. Anyway, Buffalo cows, the females were getting when they were getting shot a lot in the late eighteen hundreds. When one falls from a bullet, then the other ones just all kind of stand around. And Hornaday said, these animals are complicit in their own I mean, he wanted to save them. He was furious, but still he said they're complicit in their own extinction because there. He called them stupid brutes because

they just stand around and one's gone down. The hunters, probably on the Tutu train, are just going to keep shooting, and they're going to shoot all of them. Yeah, and the hide hunters would even manipulate that. And so how and why don't you believe some of the stories that

say that they simply had loyalty. Now, when that character was his name Custer, when Custer um did his last retreat, unning retreat, everybody tried to turn that into his They call it his stand, even though he was doing a running retreat because it was considered honorable to stand in the face of danger. It makes you loyal and brave because he was a human, and that's a human trait. But if an animal stands with her comrades, she's an idiot.

They're foolish, you see. He Hornaday wasn't able to see that. It's possible that buffalo might have other characteristics, that they might just be simply standing with their comrades because they're royal. I don't know the answer, but Hornaday doesn't know the answer either. I mean, both Horniday and I are working from a bias and from very limited data. And there's really no way to know. I mean, sometimes science doesn't have an answer for you. You just have to use

your instincts, in your common sense. But neither Horniday nor I know what's going on. Really, we could both be wrong. I don't know, But all I know is that he didn't consider it, and I I just throw that out as a possibility. That's what I mean by anthropomorphism. So if I were to say those buffalo aren't stupid, they're

just they're there because they're loyal. They're standing with their comments because they're loyal, then you, if you're pedantic, would say to me, so anthropomorphic, Raven, get the hell out of here. But but couldn't you Also, because we often talk about um and teacher trying to teach our kids that, you know, the animals not being stupid, that's like this human thing we want to we want to attribute to it.

It's just being an animal. So is there another version where they're not they're not being anthropomorphic, but they're just being buffalo? Yeah, I think that, Well, go ahead here, But you wrote a wonderful book on buffalo. By the way, that's another plug I want to put in this. One of the books I own it's great. I rebel against Okay, one, I discourage my kids from like outrageous anthropomorphism. I discourage that. I also even more vehemently discourage them from describing animals

as stupid. If something doesn't run away, I'm like, well, how is it benefits You're not a risk. Why is it beneficial for it to expend all kinds of energy and put itself in the in the way of potential harm by running headlong into some other area to get

away from something that's not risky. So when you say, like the turkeys in our yard are stupid because it does stand there, um, maybe be really stupid for it to run away from something that's not threatening it and then it lands in the neighbor's fence and gets eaten by the neighbor's dog because it's retreating from something that pollses no risk. Anyways, maybe the turkey is really smart and doesn't run away, and that's perfect. I mean, that's

the first step that we have to take. And in Hornaday's time, animals were always considered I mean, if they had a personality, even those stupidity is not technically a personality. It was always to negate the ability the animal and to say they're stupid and that they're dumb. And I agree with what both of you guys are saying. We need to get people and kids, especially away from the idea of constantly calling animals dumb when they you see skunks,

uh getting run over by cars all the time? They're so dumb? Why are they? Because they can't evolve fast enough to realize that humans used to walk and then drag dogs with them, which are a little faster, and then horses, and in like a hundred years, we now have semi trucks do in a hundred miles an hour on the same trail that humans used to walk on.

Skunks can't evolve fast enough. We can't either. It's not that they're stupid, it's just that they haven't evolved with semi trucks coming across the highway like this at these outrageous speeds. But we do have a bad habit of calling animals stupid when um, they do things that we don't Underlike you just explain to your kids why would it make sense? But I mean, how could they possibly know that that's something like a semi truck even exist?

How could they possibly know that anything could move that fast on the road, so we should stop calling them stupid. So if you as an academic, like I don't know, what do you do you call yourself an academic? I don't know. Yeah, I've had trence, Sure, I know what you mean. I mean I I don't generally identify myself with labels because I generally prefer to identify myself with verbs rather than nouns. But yes, I teach at the

universe the anthropomorphic. The anthropomorphism accusation being that you're training. Um, I don't know, like it's one animal. It's just one animal. I'm not accusing you of going against your training. I'm saying that, well, to do a work like this, no doubt, people from your world, from your professional world, we'll look at a work like this and maybe without reading it, but at the surface examination, it would be that you've gone over to the other side. Of course, of course,

do you care that they think that? Um, I just expected it. I knew from that. I mean, I hid my relationship with the fox for ages and ages and ages. And I remember starting conversations with people that worked in the academy with me, and I would say something in the middle of a conversation, I might slip in something like oh and fox and I and then someone that a colleague, a close colleague, would say, just just as long as you're not being anthropomorphic, go ahead with your story.

And you're like, gosh, oh, oh, absolutely a dirty secret, secret secret. Absolutely, I mean it's a taboo, it absolutely is. So yeah, I mean, I'm ready for it. But I understand that I've been listening to that complaint for a long time. But you asked if there's a middle ground, and of course there is a middle ground. It's just to say that there's a less of a separation between humans and other animals than we previously believed. I'm not saying that Whoman's and other animals have the exact same

personality in the same emotions. There's so many animals. A worm is different than a beetle, is different than a bird in every bird species different. I'm just saying that we have this huge separation. Humans are way over here and all the other animals are there. It can't be possible that with the little differences in DNA that there are between the humans and chimps, it can't be possible that all of these traits that we think only belong to humans, and that chimps just simply eat and sleep

and defecate and have sex. I mean, it's just not possible. Some of the things that we believe our only human traits, those have to recruit to other animals as well because our DNA. I mean, we're all related, as Darwin has told us. And if you guys haven't read Darwin yet, I there's a lot of plugs for him in my book. And I do try to explain as it fits in and very gently because the book's not encyclopedic and it's

not like lecturing. It's a story. But I do have to mention Darwin once in a while because I have been trained biology and I think Darwin's work is amazing. Uh. One way to describe your book, would you say, like, oh, it's about a woman's relationship with a fox. Okay, okay, what um? What do you like? What did you want to accomplish with it? What would be like the deeper

explanation of what the book is. It's really about how humans should fit into nature, how it's part of us and we're part of it, and we should stop using that old fashioned term mother nature as though it's some authoritarian figure. Um, you don't like mother Nature. Nature is a community. It's not an individual that we should revere and be afraid of an honor. We are part of nature.

We fit into it, and if we fit into it as a community, of course we have responsibilities, but it's not something that we should revere and hold up over ourselves. It's our birthright. We're animals and we should fit ourselves. Let you run this by I'm working on a new tagline for you know, just my general Brandon what I do. And it goes like this, Mother Nature is my co pilot. That's good? You like that? Or is that too much reverence for Mother Nature? So how about um, how about

God isn't my co pilot, He's the pilot. That's what our piloted Voyagers. When I worked at Voyagers National Park. That was that was on the airplane that we We had to take ships everywhere because we had Voyagers and Apostle Islands and Ile Royal So of course that's how you got around. Um, Mother Nature, are you seriously thinking about doing that? It's okay, I just I think Mother Nature kind of scares I mean, so your mother is

probably some sweet little old lady. Right, but mother Nature does make it seem like, keep in mind, you're honest, is pagan? Yeah they are. They on the soulstaces. They drag logs around their house and whatnot. What's your business a tagline for what? Oh? Just my brand here within the meat eater, brandy brand, my personal brand. Oh but you're totally within meat eater. Oh yeah, he like yeah, he like, um, mother nature. He's like he makes materials.

He's he like content producer, he like produces ideas and materials. You guys use that word mother nature a lot, huh. In the book I'm currently writing, which explores children and nature and how they relate. Um, I spent a lot of time talking about the perils of looking down at nature, and I talked a lot about the perils of looking up. And I tried to explore what I'm not a master at this, but I try to explore ways of how to encourage your children to see it like an idea island.

And that's so right, that's the book. I mean, that's a more important part of the book. Are equally important part. I mean, obviously, friendship is really important, friendship in general, and then inner species friendship. But yeah, I want people to feel like they fit in with nature, that it's not. I forgot about the fact that some people look down in nature, and that I don't know very many people that do. But I understand that's so Really that comes

from something a little bit. When I described looking down at it, I think that it would be it manifests more is very willing to be dismissive of it, right, and that where the most important species in the world, and we're in charge of everything, and we have dominion over everything. You don't find me people who would say, like, I hate nature. No, but an action and action uh, And an outside observer might look at certain actions and

be like, man, that guy is not like nature. Sure, all the development that's going on around um Bozeman and then the valley and all over Montana. Some people, if you say, can we have a little bit of regulation here so that we keep a little bit of open space, so that we don't kill every living thing that's not human or dog or cat, And then people would say, would accuse you of not putting humans first. And so I understand that. I mean there are people and you'd argue,

oh no, no, I am I'm thinking about humans right now. Yeah, yeah, that's what you're trying to teach your kids. So that makes is it a kid's book? No, it's it's for growing it's for growing ups. Yeah, but that's right, it's for it's for growing ups who have kids in their lives. Yeah. Yeah, and my book is that doesn't need to be your kids, but like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's that

would be perfect. I mean, that's that sounds a lot like what I'm what I thought I did with Fox exactly, helping people to realize we're part of it and don't look down don't and definitely don't look up at it either, because I mean I have to revere it. We are it. Okay, give people the big plug, how to find it, how to find more about you? If you don't, do you want any found out about I know you're I know

from from Cindy, you're publisher. I know you're very private. Yeah, so you don't even like to do this kind of stuff I have, right, this might be my first pot I think I've done some pods. This is my first big studio thing. Now I have a website, but it doesn't have but it won't help you. I mean, I like, I just paid for the domain name and it just

sits there, so there's no point in me giving you that. Um, but you can buy the book at Barnes and Noble if you're in Bozeman Country bookshelf, and if you're not one of those people that wants Jeff Bezos to stay in space, you can get it from Amazon. And I think, um, I do want to say one more thing. You can be really diplomatic. No, I want to say one more thing. There's a way you go what you say anywhere books

are sold. Anywhere books are sold. I wanted to say one more thing where you can if you just want to listen to it, you can get that audio. It's called you can get an audio book. And I just found out yesterday you can. Did you do your own read? No? But I listened to the girl who didn't read, and I listened to they did. But I I a few of them. You know, winding wind finally are the same words. Yeah, I know, I listened to it. She got windy and windy mixed up. Don't you're spelled the same? Don't let

some person you know I don't. I don't like your publishers a dear friend of mine, and I owe a lot of my I owe a lot of my career in life to her. It was her decision. If it was her decision, I'll fight with her about it. If they should not have loved that, you should that should not have happened. You should read your own damn book. You need a professional studio, though, I thought that was the deal, and so it was the time of COVID that was the problem. It was taped during COVIE. I mean,

I don't think that was the only problem. M I think they never considered having me made it, but we did have to hire a guy with it who had a student. You might have needed to practice for a long time and had a studio. No, I know you have to practice because I make videos for my students, and you have to keep going over getting repeating everything over and over because you noticed you said something wrong or there was too much of a pause there and whatever.

So it takes a long time. No, wait, one more thing audio and and the download onto the little machines that you can read from. You can do that. I just found that out yesterday. So anywhere books are sold, anywhere books are sold even Amazon, Amazon, And so that's right, No, thanks everybody who buys it for sure. Yeah, I think it's more so, Um, you're becoming uh, all of this is making you become less of a hermit. Well, do you think you're gonna go back into hiding? Not you're hiding.

Do you think you're going to become do you do you imagine? Now I'll being more. I just have plug about hermits and such um and you'll read this in my book. Also, people who live away from other people. We're not trying to hide from people. We don't dislike people. We're not trying to get away from people. We just

love the things that people get rid of. And that's why I want to live in a place where I can sit outside and watch the badgers and the skunks and the eagles and the foxes, and where it's quiet and I can hear what I want to hear, like the wind, and I don't have to see trucks coming by all day long. It's not because I don't like humans. It's because I love the things that humans get rid of. And if I was really misanthropic, I would live in

a city. Because if you really dislike humans, then you want to live where there's a lot of humans so that you can torture them and whatever the hell you do around. Yeah. So the bad guys who don't like people are the ones that live where there's people, right, The people that are really I don't like people, they live in cities like the country. Yeah, that's a seed. Yeah, it needs work, but that's a good seed of an idea. I like that. There's your tagline, n't but I've been

working on that idea. There's something there, man, I think there is for sure, don't you know. It's a compelling point. Gonna I'm gonna like land bed and unpack that one. Good. That's a good one. I've never thought about humans getting rid of silence, but it's true, getting rid of silence. It's one of my favorite things about where we live is the silence. And there was like a death metal band that covers the sound of silence, No Sound of

Silence Disturbed. The name of the Kathy Raven, the title of the book, Easy to Remember, Box and I, Box and I and then Carmen van Bianci third appearance on the podcast. Her new company will not a company. Her new nonprofit will be called Home Range wildlife research. How do you How do you do you want people going and looking you up on social media and stuff? Or do you hate that kind of stuff? I don't have any of that. Good for you. Let's competition for my account.

Um do you care to have people find you? Well? Uh, we do have a website home range dot org and that's the way to go. You don't want them like emailing you and stuff like that. Oh they can email me, and not so badly that you want to give out your email address. I wouldn't do that. Yeah, probably not. There's got to be contact us at home range dot org. True, Yes, I have a home range email. Oh there you go and you check. So someone wants to reach out to

you and say, hey, I got a study idea for you. Yeah, I'm a budding young biologist on your job. Yep, I got a wolf story to tell you about. Or I got a good jillion dollars and I'm looking to put it in a nonprofit especially those Ye Yes, home range dot org. Okay, fox and I home range dot org two very different things, but both worthwhile checking out. Thank you everybody,