Ep. 605: A Woman Among Wolves

This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening to podcast you Can't Predict Anything, brought to you by first Light. This week, first Light is celebrating its annual White Tail Week, where you can tune in for tips, tricks and tactics, as well as incredible deals site wise. Check it out first light dot com, f I R S T L I t E dot com.

You hunt Big Game two?

I have?

Yeah, Yeah, I've got a I haven't hunted big game in about four years now, but I've shot a lot of deer, antelope, elk, bighorn, sheep, you bears, and I just I train dogs and a bird hunt. That's what I do now.

And so that's podcast. Yeah, earlier this about in the podcast, I.

Might bring that pigeon down here in a couple of days. Let him walk around up here.

At home, build a little roost for him in here.

Pretty tame, extremely tame. Nice when you all it tries to do is get into the house. You're kidding me, because it knows people are in the house.

Did you raise it?

My kids did?

It's not going to be a shooter then, right, No, you got to.

Pass for forty of his uh roostmates went to bird dog trainers.

Yeah, but this was so what's his name?

Peanut butter? Peanut but because there was peanut butter and jelly but jelly, Uh, John had to get euthanized. Yeah, I had a health had a congenital birth effect as far as we can tell.

Come on, you really did euthanize it. You didn't train it?

Yeah, well it had as it started passing its own intestine. Oh my god, real buzz kills. Yeah, yeah, Brody is over.

Is peanut Butter aware of the windows outside and know where?

But it knows where the door is. It goes to the door.

Unbelievable.

Does it live outside?

Lives outside?

Oh?

Nice, it's at a bird sitters house? Right now?

Did he fly over there?

You got the pigeon Gooso comes back home.

This is the start of the show.

We're already rolling. Give me your book. There you go, Phil, where's a good spot.

That's a great spot.

That looks good. Yeah, we're missing the bottom.

Quarter of the book of the cover, but we've got the time.

That's better. That's better. Joined today by Diane Boyd, who came on the you were on the show.

A while ago, probably five years now.

Five years ago, way back in episode one, six six days. Okay, that was a great episode.

Thanks you made it great.

We did an episode called Hunting with Teeth with Diane Boyd lay out your can Can you lay out your your an abbreviated form of your resume so people know what you're all about?

Oh golly, yeah. I started working with wolves in Minnesota in nineteen seventy six. I was just a child prodigy, Not really, I'm just old. And anyway, I picked up Minnesota wolves. I went worked in Wild the Wolves in Northern Minnesota, and then I worked as a for one summer before I came to Montana as a depredation control trapper and research collar northern Minnesota. And then I moved to Montana in seventy nine to pursue a couple of

Got it? And reason I like the reason I like Diane Boyd and reach he's back on the show. Is you caught a lot of the hysteria and a lot of the on each side. If I don't know it, it's not right, especially in today's climate of an election season. I don't want to put it as the left and the right. How do you put it the inn and the yang? Now? Okay, if this can you see the book and my hand film, if this is attitudes of wolves, and this is what this side is that they're going

They're going to save the planet, that they're gonna.

Yeah, they're gonna save the planet, and and and and reverse climate change. Diane Boyd is, I don't want to have you be the middle finger.

That's a bad thing.

I'm gonna move this finger over where the middle finger lives.

Great because it's like diet.

Yeah, she gives the middle finger to the sides.

I like that.

Never that way.

And she's got a new book coming out, A Woman among Wolves, My Journey through forty Years of Wolf Recovery. When is it available? Right?

So it's coming out September tenth, it's being released and you can pre ordered on Amazon and Barnes and Nobles. It's up there now, got it.

My mom's husband, my mom got married. After my dad died, my mom got remarried. Now that guy passed away. You know he called Barnes and Noble. He called it books and Nobles.

Wow, makes sense.

Yeah, it was MacDonald's and it was Books and Nobles.

Uh, case you forget later. I think you should ask Diane. She's gonna read her own audiobook.

Oh listen, I'm gonna tell you the audiobook. Don't don't have them to do a person. Don't bring in a soap opera person. Who's going to do the audiobook.

It's got to be you. Do you want to start a little bit? So my Graystone Publishing sold the audio rights to a media company.

Ye, and that's how that's normal.

They hired a professional actress to read.

Did you really come in there and complain?

Well?

I didn't know that, And then when I found out, I just said, well, you know, I know the story pretty well, and I do a lot of public speaking, and I think I've got an engaging voice, even with my Fargo accent. So they had me send an audio edition and they wrote me back and he said, well, if you want to do the reading, we're going to have to basically train you and it's going to take a lot of time and blah blah blah blah.

So you know why they're telling me that they got these holsers that do it all the time. Okay, and they come in they know they're going to get it done in two days whatever. Don't let that happen. I let that happen before, and I've mentioned bunch of times. I let that happen before. I got the thing in.

That was an impossibility. I was married briefly, Okay, I get it.

You get it.

Picture that you were still married. You really liked him, and you had to watch someone else, right.

No go. But anyway, I the other thing was they're doing this. They wanted to be done when the book is released in September tenth, and I'm going bird hunting. I mean, I got stuff to do, and I actually just don't. At this point, I just threw my hands upisode whatever. Yeah, I'm okay, thank you though.

Next time, next time.

I appreciate the advice.

Yeah, I knew.

Whitetail Week coming up here at me Eiter one week only nine to thirty to ten six. White Tail Week's the best time stock up on whitetail gear with deals from first like FHF Gear, Phelps, game calls, Dave Smith, Decoy's at the me Eater store, plus a full week of white tail content we've done he's in the past. It's like, you know, there's a TV channel that has a they celebrate a fish all week every year. It's like that, but it's for people that like white tails.

Did you do captions this time?

Oh?

Yeah, great captions.

Oh yeah, I don't know that I'd say that they're all the worst because some of them are just intriguing intriguing, like you you'd want to give them a run.

Yeah, carved out a giant tree stumps. So like one, Yeah, one is sort of I don't know what. It looks like, a giant redwood or a sequoia or something. I don't know what it is, probably not. No, it's a cedar, a huge Western red seedar, that's what it is. And they carved a shitter out of a Western red seater. It's beautiful. So in the caption process, we sit around thinking of what would be funny, and we're like, something to do with e walks would be funny, and then

Are there any uh outhouses or ships that you wouldn't want to Oh?

Yeah, there are. I'd say the one I wouldn't want to do the want need of an upholstery job.

I wouldn't touch that thing until someone's mm hmm.

There was definitely something that made me lose my faith in humanity, like gross like stuff.

That didn't make the cut. There's nothing gross about the count.

No, no, no, we had some gross submissions, a lot.

Of gross submissions. There was none of our submissions has none of the submissions are like poor etiquette. None of the submissions. There's no there's no fecal matter. There were a.

Couple that you guys didn't see that.

We're being used the people send in.

Oh you cut those out. We have no people in it.

I didn't.

I didn't think they'd make the cut, so I didn't send those alone.

It's twelve months, that's how many months, or in a year, it's twelve months of beautiful photography of if you were wandering around out in the woods, or wandering around up in the Arctic, or wandering around wherever, and you came into a and you came across an old shitter, and you're like, gow the stories that old shitter could tell, that's what this calendar is all about.

And they're all shitters you'd tell someone about. Oh, you're like, you wouldn't believe what I found.

Oh yeah, If you were hunting with your buddy or whatever, and you went off to go check on something and you encountered one of these shitters and you came back. I don't care. If you saw two booner bucks fighting and stuck together, you'd run back to your body and you'd be like, you would not believe the shitter. I just saw it.

Oh.

Plus, there's two booner bucks stuck together over there. That's how that that's the quality of these shitters.

Like recently, I was was last hunting season, I was up on the Rocky Mountain front, and that Augusta showedo zone. You've probably Randall. Seems like you've been to every bar in every small town in Montana's you've probably been to this one. But in their bathrooms they have pictures of

It's gonna lift it off.

Yeah, or at least that was brutalized by the wind. Pretty good.

Yeah, just there's just you're looking down a hill and you can just see the the shitter blown off away. We also had a lot of tandems, and we only put one tandem in because I don't I don't really understand, like my when my little kids were littler, I could see them utilizing a tandem, but.

You wouldn't park next to you on in the morning.

They're not going to utilize the tandem, right.

I know of a use for a tandem out house at the pace. So my first year up there in seventy nine, got Giardia and there was a two seater outhouse and there was a moment one day when I needed to use both holes at the same time, just saying.

Yeah, do you know what the next installment of ft UP.

I want to do. It's a it's a photographic challenge. I want to do fish cleaning stations or just fucked up old fisher man. But I'd like to do fish cleaning stations, just the nastiest, grossest fish clean stations. But it's hard to capture the smell. Never scratch and sniff. When you were a kid, if you could scratch and sniff old fish cleaning stations.

Hit too nice. Now after the fix up joke.

It wouldn't even be good anymore. I know we got ruined for that. Yeah, I'm not sure, but this one is. This one is great if you know someone else appreciates an old out house. Oh one of these old out houses that got caught on fire and put out. And I was trying to think of a taco bell joke

What do you say, primes?

Okay, so I'm gonna stick with the Pandora's box is that when you intensively select for those CWD related genes in captivity, you are also selecting for other genes that are close to them on the same chromosome. Genes that are physically close to one another on the same chromosome are inherited together at a higher rate. We have no idea what those other nearby genes are. They might be genes that lower reproductive rate, produce smaller antlers, a higher

Guero Canelo?

Guero Canelo very good, top ten and two sound number one in his opinion, But prices have gone up in a way that the exceeds the quality of the food.

He says, no, no, no, no, Guero Canelo is where I always take you. He's giving you a another option.

Yeah, we plugged Guero Canelo in a Trivia episode.

Oh, and he's saying, las cerrita del roro, h is a better Mexican hot dog.

I think it's La care delro but you're close. Is that as good? That's in Tucson as well, Yes, where the Snoran dogs are famous, and it looks way different. And I think he can didn't he read what goes on there and what is?

Or he wrote sorry, but yep, Jim, if you Jim's got his eyes on a good Mexican hot dog. Another rebuttal. This is a rebuttal from Bubbly Doug.

We're gonna eat him in January.

Half a finger. Bubbly Doug are sort of the main rebuttal generators and clarification generators, but.

This is from Doug's splash like a friend.

Doug's friend you. Doug's friend is very annoyed about something I said about c w D. And I've said this, and I've said it before. I don't love if I'll say it again. But there's a there's a point I often make, and and all it always irritates some people, but I just I say it because it's just it's a true feeling that I have in discussing chronic waste and disease in deer, I often say the thing most scary. This is not what I say, but I'm trying to say it in cleaner terms. What's horrifying to me is

All you gotta look at is like what happened with mad cow disease written right, they can imagine that across the entire United States.

Correct what it would do to the cattle ustry. And this person is countering. She's saying, I don't think they're not worried about this. I can't really do a tit for tat on that issue. I understand what you're saying about animal welfare. I'm just telling you a thing that like, like, for instance, when my kids out playing in the road, okay, and I get nervous that they're chasing there, that they're that they go to chase their baseball across the highway

Yeah.

I mean I read this as like the only thing you're concerned about is humans. But what I said, I know, but that's what it kind of sounds like she's saying here, like you can be concerned about humans and worry about the deer herds too.

Yeah. When I see a deer run across the room, I was like the driver I freaked out on. I was in the pastor's seat and I freaked out on. The guy'd be like, slow down, dude, how do you know there's not more.

I think that she's just I think it's a she. I don't know why it is because.

And the fact that he says she.

But I think she's pointing out that maybe there's a constant O middle when you talk about CWD, about that part, I always qualify that part.

I also think it's hard to I mean, the CWD is going to be a lot worse for deer if people get it from deer, Like, if you're concerned about deer as a whole, if it jumps the species barrier, CWD is going to be a much worse outcome for our white tail populations as a whole.

And if it jumps the species, yeah, if it jumps the species barrier into cattle, and all of a sudden, we have to have the same conversations about deer and CWD as we do about free ranging buffalo and cattle because of brucellosis. And people are like, hey, man, if the state owns the deer, keep those deer away from my place.

Yeah, it's a it's a much darker picture for not only people, but the health of deer as a whole if that were to happen.

And I don't omit. The other thing I don't omit the other thing the same way. When I'm driving, or I'm right in the car and I see a deer cross and I see that the driver that I'm with isn't thinking about how there's probably some following it, and I'm like, dude, so now come on. But if I saw a kid run across the road, my reaction is going to be even stronger. I'm gonna get out and yelled the kid.

Yeah.

I think it's perfectly normal to be more worried about your kids than deer. Then you are worried about like the welfare of a deer, or deer is a population.

I do worry.

Yeah, let me ask you this.

I think it's pretty valid.

If I could guarantee you that it would not jump the species barrier, but you could get rid of it by snapping your fingers, would you still get rid of CWD?

Oh? Yeah, I mean that's the course.

And let's say it's like you can you can be worried about one thing more than the other, but still have concern for cw D as a problem for deer.

If we could spend money and get rid of EHD in blue tongue, I'd be like, oh, let's go spend the money and get rid of HD. In blue tongue, Yeah, it's like it upsets any It upsets equilibrium and causes a lot of trouble for deer hunters when their area gets wiped out. It's like rags the riches on deer populations, where you get a lot of deer and all of a sudden you're like, well, we got a lot now, but now that we got this many, just wait for EHD to come through and then they'll be laying dead on

Wolves?

Me?

Where do we start? Let me ask you this question. Can I remind you of something you told me the last time?

Oh?

Yeah, sure, the last time you were on the show. And I want to pick this up and have you extend that logic. I want to see if you still feel that way, and if you would extend it to Colorado and just just run with this. You said something that surprised me when you were on the show before. You had said, had we never did we humans America's Americans? Whatever?

Yes, I still feel that way. And the only so wolves are expanding globally in Canada. They're all over the Midwest here in our west Europe, and the only place where wolves have been reintroduced was Yellowstone and the frank Church Mexican wolves, red wolves. But wolves have globally expanded without any reintroduction. There's wolves in the Netherlands. Now, there's wolves in Denmark. Nobody put them there. Wolves have been getting there on their own and the wolves did get

Can you mentioned the Great Lakes? Can you move over? Can we move over real quick to the Great Lakes? And you can touch on that real quick? Talk about that for a men like no reintroduction? Right, if we look at in the northern Great Lakes, we have Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, anyone else have a stable viable population.

No Ile Royal. There was a recent reintroduction to Ile Royal because the wolves are dying out other than that Michigan waters.

Yes, can you give a little crash course on how were they ever gone gone?

No?

Good question.

So when I left Minnesota in nineteen seventy nine working with wolves, there was just under a thousand wolves, nine hundred to one thousand wolves in Minnesota. There was a handful in Wisconsin, probably less than a dozen. There was maybe twenty five in Isle Royal that had gotten their late forties early fifties by crossing the frozen Lake Superior ice and that was it. And now there's I'm trying to think of the numbers of wolves in the Midwest.

They been extirpated from Michigan.

Yes, they're extirpated from Michigan and Wisconsin. They were never extirpated from Minnesota because the northern fourth or third of the state is too remote roadless, so there always was a stronghold. And I'm trying to think.

You're not calling me a liar when I say that I saw a wolf track in the eastern up in nineteen ninety four.

Are no, no what I saw?

I fight you?

No.

Absolutely, I'm saying viable populations breading reproducing established packs.

No.

Because my friend Dick Theo was documenting wolves recovering to Wisconsin starting and I think I think he saw his first wolf track in like seventy two or seventy three, they were trying and Michigan same thing. And actually there was a reintroduction into Michigan in the up. It's nineteen seventy, seventy four to seventy eight, somewhere in there. Seventy four you can read about. It's in my book. And they took four wolves from Minnesota and they transplanted them, reintroduced

What people guns, animal rights people.

Failing sorry for him in the Michigan winters. So that was actually the very first wolf for introduction that I'm aware of, and people don't.

Often who did that reinduction. It was like the state was it real hot politically at the time.

You you didn't know about it. I'd say, no, it wasn't right.

It's no internet, right, no.

Internet, no Facebook and on social media. So it was done. They were held a little while in a pen and then they were let go, and that was the model for how they were going to reintroduce to wolf seat to Yellowstone. So Yellowstone wasn't Yellowstone, Ido. Wasn't the first reintroduction Michigan.

Was they took them from Minnesota and put them in Michigan. Yes, I'm from Michigan. I didn't know that.

Google it.

Try it Michigan wolf for introduction if you're so, and look in the seventies, I think seventy four. So yeah, but none of them made it. And it wasn't that they didn't know how to hunter, didn't know how to find their way around because they're wild wolves, just that too many people with guns. So anyway, that was you asked. That was the first. And then of course our wolves were coming down into Montana from the North Country from Canada on their own.

What year were they so in the Rockies? So let's leave the Upper Midwest out of it. Yeah, so we'll go from like the hundredths of Meridian west or whatever. Kay, in what year can you say with some certainty there were no wolves south of the Canadian border in the whole west in the Yeah, in the whole West?

Well the statement so wolves have always trickled down, So I can't say there was never a wolf. But in terms of a viable breeding surviving.

Oh no, no, I want to hear about that a little bit.

Okay, So by they say generally by the nineteen thirties wolves were extirpated as a viable population in the West. But I know of individual people like what you just said, who saw wolves, wolf tracks a wolf. There was a wolf shot in Glacier Park in nineteen fifty three. There was another wolf shot outside of Bulbridge in nineteen seventy. There's individual shot, they get run over, they show up.

Okay, But since from nineteen thirty up until they will come to focus on when a vible population came Yeah, at any time along that there could have been singles that would come down from camp.

Yeah, and I hearing from people who live over on the on the Rocky Mountain Front, the Blackfoot Indian Reservation, Glacier Park, it's pretty remote, inaccessible, badger to med and people have seen wolves there more commonly than other parts of Montana. And then of course they don't survive in eastern Montana because.

They got nowhere to hide.

They show up, boom, they're dead.

Got it.

So there's been a little bit, but not reproduction.

Okay, And then when did they start coming down and getting a foothold? And how did that? How did that work? They keep using toll holding foothold, which.

Is which is there's They don't forget legholds anyway, one of my better tools. Sorry, did you find it?

Yeah?

Go ahead.

A failed attempt by Northern Michigan University and the Michigan DNR to reintroduce four wolves to the Upper Peninsula occurred in nineteen seventy four. See Eventually wolves move from Wisconsin to Upper Michigan following strong prey populations in the early nineties. When'd you see that wolf track?

I saw a wolf track in nineteen ninety four?

Eastern up that that corroborates your your story, Try and trap right again.

That's not far from the final resting place of my dog, Duchess.

Wolves got her?

Huh Nope, two guys named Ben and Matt got her. Oh man, yep, well they were supposed to. Oh oh, I gotch she was crippled up. Oh god, sorry god, HER's not the right word.

Thank you for the back job, Brody.

Thanks.

So the question was oh from nineteen so nineteen thirty there's around nineteen thirty, there's no viable population of wolves left in the lower in the American West.

Yeah.

They even went in the parks with poisons and traps and rifles and killed all the wolves inside Yellowstone and Glacier and all the parks. Yeah, they were pretty well gone. Coyotes didn't disappear, but wolves did.

Why is that white coyotes stick around?

I think because they're smaller, they have a higher reproductive capacity, they breed more often, they're breeding in smaller units, and people weren't so focused on eradicating coyotes. You know, you see a wolf, by god, we've got to kill every last one coyote like well whatever, it just not doesn't it generate the emotional impact of hatred?

Gotcha?

What about Mexican gray wolves?

Were they always?

Were there always some north of the border or had they been eliminated?

Also?

It's interesting, so the Mexican wolves were basically eliminated except in Mexico, and there were a few into the southwest, Arizona and New Mexico right at the border area. They captured every last one. Then they could fund find out of the wild. Roy McBride went there and I think the last wild capture was about nineteen seventy early ninety seventies, and they moved them into captive breeding facilities to help build up the species, but their founding population was seven.

Yeah, I mean, what's that bird? Does that?

A coward?

Right?

They call them a parasite though, instead of an improvement.

Okay, so yeah, So.

The Mexican wolf, they were pretty well gone. And interestingly, one of my first years in the Northwark I think it was nineteen eighty, Chuck Johnkle brought up a Mexican carnivore biologist, Pepe Trevino, and he showed me a polar eight you know, photograph he brought up of a wolf. It was like in a barn or a shed, and

Yeah. But we played this on this podcast some time ago and it was some bird from was I think of some bird from Hawaii and it was the I can't remember some bird species and it was just down to one. It was down to a male or a female and this bird species with duet I heard it. Yeah, And so they have this recording of the last bird.

I heard that.

It's kind of terrors at you a little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you ever heard a guy named Frank Glazer.

Old Pilot, different guy Don, that was Don Glazier, No, I haven't.

He has a book called Alaska's Well, there's a book about him called Alaska's Wolfman, huh. And he had gone up to He gone out to Alaska very early and was a market hunter for people building roads and people building railroads and whatever, and eventually just became this very

Yes.

In his book he talks a lot about all the other stuff that would turn up at the bait pile, a lot of stuff, but it was so affect that he doesn't talk about its effectiveness with pois in this way, but it was so effective. He has some anecdotes in there where he gets them all and then someone will say, there's this part of it where an Eskimo tells him that he saw it's like seven come across the ice and it was like six white wolves and a black wolf. And a couple days later he goes to his bait pile.

He's a good predator, good at poison wolf.

Yeah, yeah, well, I mean poisonous. How they wiped the wolves out of the West. It wasn't so much traps and guns it was poison. How else are you going to get every last one? That's it?

Yeah, when they started coming down, what eventually what factors eventually led them to you know what, what factors led them to kind of get a toe hold? Was it ESA protection where you were where people were more afraid to shoot them because they'd get in a bunch of trouble.

Yeah, I think I mean Rachel Carson and you know, the whole wave of ecology and being environmentally a where it started in the late sixties, and then the ESA came about, the Act came out seventy three, I think the final version. Wolves were protected in seventy four, and there was just a little change of mindset. And the interesting thing was that they would find the north Fork

And I know because of cattle, yes.

And so they found this little zone and they were able to one came, and then two years later her male came and they made it. And then more wolves come down. But it was the tolerance of the local community that found wolves interesting and novel versus dangerous and threatening.

Where were you? Then?

I came to that valley in nineteen seventy nine, the first wolf that survived that we got a radio collar on Kishnina. She arrived in nineteen the fall of seventy eight. We put a radio collar in April fourth, nineteen seventy nine, and I trapped there for forever, just trying to catch more wolves. And there weren't other wolves until about two years later when this male came down and joined her. But the meantime, you know, she wanted her out looking

You tell that story in your book. Yeah, how did you get a collar on that? Or was it collers at the time or so.

The British Columbia Barry researcher Bruce McLellan's been up doing embarrassed. He's now retired, but he saw the wolves and wolf tracks and he contacted Bob Riem at the university and Bob hired a wolf trapper from Minnesota, Joe Smith. Uncommon name, but it was Joe Smith. And he came out and set traps and caught that wolf. And then I came out in September to replace the crew that was there and follow her, and I was a trapper and to try and catch more wolves. And that's kind of how

I mean, it's just all the stuff.

But that was how they got there. They walked and she had to come along ways because they poisoned off wolves in southern BC and Alberta in the rockies, just like they did in the States, because they were afraid of rabies. And they started poisoning wolves in the sixties, late sixties, and so.

There was a zone they were at it late.

Yeah, there was a.

Zone when there weren't wolves along the border. There weren't wolves in Waterton and vanmf. So this first wolf, Chrishtina, may have come from as far as Josper, but she came quite a ways. We didn't have genetic resources back then to determine where she came from. Of course now we could if we'd had a sample, but we don't have a sample.

Did you when you say you were a wolf trapper, then were you trapping problem wolves too?

Yes? No, I don't mind at all when I.

So or whatever word you want to.

Do well, you'll enjoy the chapter north Holm in the book, but did you like the North Holme chapter? So I started working with wolves as a sty eyed, waistlink blonde haired hippie wolf hugging lady and I.

Came from Niver want me through that descriptor now story.

I was a bit enamored with wolves. I was a university college student Dave Meach, who's like the wolf god. He's still working full time at eighty six studying wolves. He's published more scientific papers than anybody I know. Anyway, I got to work on his captive project and then I got to go to northern Minnesota and work, and I learned how to catch and collar wolves and track them. And then I was hired as a year after this,

The wolves, right.

I mean it was a hard roto. So that was my job and I learned so much that summer. It was so important to my career development and having me be in the middle finger as you described, of behavior of public wolves reaction on my part. So there were truly farmers, they don't call them Rochester farmers that had chronic depredation problems and there were some farmers that had none. I worked with both, but getting into that community was real challenging, and I could tell stories forever about that.

How would you generally handle those situations?

Okay, example, I try to use there's no point in feeding them a lot of scientific data. They don't care. You just have to work with them and develop a relationship. I use my sense of humor. There was like, for example, I was working in there and I kind of stayed on my own and I tried to stay away from people, just do my job because I was young in inexperience and I kind of didn't want them to know that.

Right.

Well, one day I'm at the gas station that a guy pumping gas. They've actually pumped your gas back. Then says, you know, you got to pick up the local paper and see what Bing wrote about you. I said, well, who's Bing girl. He's what he's like close to God. He writes our local news column and the weekly paper,

Right?

I'm twenty four years old. I'm like, oh my God, and knowing that how I deal with this guy is going to make or break my summer. So I thought about it really hard. I went home. I mate took out a bunch of cardboard and tools, and I built a perfect replica of a nun fourteen new house wolf trap, complete with double long springs made out of cardboard and a fake chain made like your kids make the Christmas

But yeah, that's good career advice for everybody.

Just be a pain in the neck.

When that was happening and the wolves were coming down, Let's talk about that scenario that you said. You know, we might have eventually landed where we landed. There's no way it would have been the same timeline.

Right, Probably not, But you know, once so once we had our first wolf in seventy nine. By nineteen ninety five without any reintroductions, just simply not trapping, poisoning and shooting them. By nineteen ninety five, just before the post wolves in the Yellowstone in central Idol, we had seventy seventy five wolves in eight packs with nobody reintroducing them. Doc northwest Montana Marion nine mile callous spell all through

One of my telling those numbers again, so the number of wolves, yeah, pre reintroduction.

So by nineteen ninety five there were about seventy to seventy five wolves in Montana in eight packs. And if you go back to the old US fish and Wilife Service website. You can find the data there. It's published. I'm not making this up. I mean I don't. I only talk truth and my book is Stories of Truth. So they were there. They had collars on. Sometimes this one pack was giving a guy at livestock producer problems, but mostly they were just making a living. There were

Creek fire you had gotten a Yellowstone.

Yeah, and one was filmed, yes, So that was like nineteen ninety one ninety two. So it's just like Colorado. Those wolves came from Wyoming and Colorado now and they found their way down and they began reproducing, and then the reintroduction happed on top of it, which is what happened with Wyoming. With a Yellowstone in central Idahole. So the wolves were starting to get down and the reintroduction happened on top of them. But the two that were

Uh, it's gonna sound like a dumb question because I know it's probably not too challenging, but uh, when they kill Kyle's what when they kill Kyle's how do they generally approach it?

You mean domestic cattle, not Kyle.

Sorry, yeah, kill cattle.

It depends on how many wolves are, depends on the experience of the wolves. But in every kill is different. I just remember in Minnesota I had to go skin a lot of really disgusting, maggotty carcasses of cows and haffers. If it's a calf, they basically eat at all, so there's not much to fined. You might find an ear tag in a pile of scat or something, it's hard to prove they were there. But the big cole, you find bites. They're pretty effective predators. It again, the hind,

Do they key in on calving season for cattle?

I have always wondered why they don't more? I mean they can, yeah, because.

It seemed like those wolves that were reintroduced in Colorado. Yeah, just this past Calvia, they really that's when they really started to get in some trouble.

Yes, and those wolves before they were transplanted, they were livestock killers. So yeah, if there's calves around and cattle wolves, you will know there are wolves there. If you know, if you're gonna have problems, you have them. But not every wolf is a livestock killer. And sometimes they might kill a calf or two and never have a problem. Sometimes they might come in and kill repeatedly until you

Uh. You just said something that I can't remember with the hell you're talking about, but it caught my attention. Oh, I know, can can one I guess what I was kind of getting at. Can one do it effectively?

Depends and if you're talking or can they kill it one adult? Coll effect?

Can one wolf kill one adult kyle? Do you ever see?

That'd be tough. The kyle would probably have to have something wrong with it, but it's usually more than one.

And then you just get a hold of it and hang on to it.

Basically.

Yeah.

Yeah, When did.

You say that Colorado put in known livestock killers. Yeah, explain what that means. And if that's like you're not in your head that is that behavior? Do you feel like it's hard to unlearn that?

What I would say is, if I wanted to reintroduce wolves with minimal problems, I would see wolves that have only had wild meat. It's like the wolves that were introduced to Yellowstone and Central Idaho were taken from Canada where they had never been exposed to livestock, but they had never been exposed to buffalo either. I mean, they're pretty good at killing bison now they had to learn it because they're very formidable. I wouldn't want to try

What is the I'm a little I haven't followed it as closely. What is going on with the ones they put in Colorado? Like, how has that gone? How many and what are they doing?

Oh boy, it's a big exact numbers. I couldn't tell you. I'm not that involved. But there's a male I forgot his number. They put him in and he's paired with a female. They had at least one pup, and I saw on my news fees this morning they've seen three, now three pups in this particular pack, but they had only documented one up until yesterday or whatever. And they were put in at the end of the year, like December or so, and they started killing livestock in April.

We loved him. He's a university exactly.

We call him Bloody Bart.

I can tell you stories.

He whatever he shot, he would kill. So he had the had permission to go shoot deer or pick up roadkill to supplemently feed those pups because they were fully in danger. This would be like nineteen eighty eight or so to do anything fishing. Walley Service was mandated under the essay to do what they could to keep them alive as an endangered species. So they got these permits to go do that. That male raise those pups without a female, and they all survived. So yes, the wolves

I can't tell you.

And you know, we talked about it at length. And starting with two wolves adults that have both been killing livestock, and then you're going to take one wolf away to try and hopefully minimize it, you might be causing more of a problem because the remaining parent now has the burden solely of feeding hungry pops, and maybe it's going to kill more livestock because of that.

And those pups are going to learn to do it too.

Yeah, this is the problem. So it's I just think maybe thinking ahead a little bit ahead of time may have headed this problem off. But it's amazing to me that all those wolves they put out, they only had one reproducing pack. You think they would have had more. But this is a problem.

How many did they put down?

Ten total? I think?

And then are all ten still alive?

One of them got killed by a mountain lion, which is kind of ironic. It's usually the.

Other way around.

Yeah, yeah, but I'm not there may have been another one that died somehow.

The mountain lion got one. I think I knew that.

Maybe I forgot it, but I think most of them are still.

There, and they formed one reproducing pack.

Yeah, it's surprising to me because they did it before breeding season and then they'll be reintroducing more wolves. And of course you heard Washington State is now refusing to give them more wolves. It's becoming this huge political.

But they got I thought they got him from the nets person there.

They got him from Oregon originally and one of the well not the state, might have been the nests person that originally said yes, we'll contribute to but that just got They just said we're not doing it right.

One they had from Oregon, I think state in the state, but I wasn't the new ones. Weren't they going to get the next batch from Washington? Wasn't it was?

I think it was it was a tribe where that whoever it was, just said Nope, we're out.

We're not doing What is the argument to not let them have them?

Politics?

I'm sure explain the politics. You know it's politics, but you don't know what.

She doesn't study politics.

So I'm just saying every decision made about wolves is based on politics. It's not based on biology.

So why of course, because biology is largely politics. When people say like I don't want to be political or everything's.

Political, everything is political.

There's nothing that's not political, right, I mean every decision is political. I know, creating national Force was intensely political. Yeah, Like, what's not political? I mean most actions are taken by elected representatives in this country or appointed appointed by elected.

Everything is I know, we don't have to go there.

No I mean, but it's like I don't like earlier, I had a headache and I took two ivy profen that are like two hundred and fifty milligram ibuprofene. The fact that you can go by two hundred fifty gram milligram ivy profen is I don't know the history on it. That's probably political, Oh, no, doubt.

So I would guess because there's I would guess that because the Colorado reintroduction has had a lot of problems.

The Native Americans say yeah, I'm sorry, and.

The Native Americans are probably saying, you know, we just don't want to deal with it. So I wrote A I was telling you honest. I wrote A was asked to write a document for the National Walley Federation about Wolve's returning to Colorado. And it's basically called less and is learned from everywhere else for the Colorado can use as a base as a template for reintroductions, and sixty pages long. It's on It's on the Colorado Parks and Wildlife website.

Is that in a in your book?

No, No, it's not.

It's stabled into the end of your book.

No.

Maybe you can read the audio version of that when.

God anyway, it laid out all of the problems that challenges people have had elsewhere where the wolves are coming back on their own or reintroduced, How agencies federal and state dealt with them, how local communities dealt with them, how conservation groups and and uh a DC or animal it's no longer that. Now it's wildlife services work together sometimes or not. Just all these things. There's a template. There's nothing that needs to be reinvented about wolves being

So this is pretty interesting. The Colorado things, Yeah, the they were going to get them from the Colville Nation fifteen of the moment, that's Washington, Washington. The Colville Nation said no because Colorado Parks and Wildlife wouldn't agree to give the Southern You Tribe like management over wolves on the Southern You tribes.

Oh, political out of tribal solid area.

That that's an interesting point. Thank you for clear that clarification. I knew it had something to do with people, and I knew it wasn't.

Yeah, I bet it had something to do always. I want to get back into some of this. I want to ask you another question that that Karin highlighted, it's a good one. Uh, you're familiar with the like with grizzly bears, you're from with the distinct population segments. Okay, that there's so they it's kind of like looking at part of this whole idea is with grizzly bears is being like, Okay, when we're talking about grizzly bears being on the landscape, where could they actually be? Like what

I mean ecologically?

Yeah, yeah, I mean there's a handful of everythings. But I was gonna bring up that there's a there's a distinct population segment that doesn't have bears, but it could where it's.

The bitter Well they've taken getting there.

Yeah, they're getting there.

And there was at a time there's talk of putting them there. Yes, Okay, so if you were gonna maybe I set that up the wrong way. Let me just let me skip all that crap about the DPS. Okay, if if you were going to make a map, if you were going to make a map of the United States, all of it, Okay, and and I said, uh, Diane, go in and and and color in the areas where you think there's a chance of having viable wolf populations, meaning there's enough habitat, enough wild food, low enough chance

Well, the last qualifier just put on is the deciding factor for everything. I mean there's oh god, yeah, I mean so historically wolves had the widest distribution of any mammal in the world except for humans. I mean they live from the Arctic to the desert. They live in every biome, every habitat. They can eat anything their habitat. Journalists, they're food generalists. They're like a you know, one hundred pound kayah that way. So they can live anywhere, I

You have to lay it dead one of those, yeah, on the trail.

So that's a hard question because they would live everywhere, So we don't have to color in a map because they just color and everything.

I mean, I get to that last qualifier.

Yeah, then then you have to constrict it. So the wolves has shown us now in Montana. Anyway, Let's pick Montana because they're all sitting here and thinking about Montana. So wolves basically live in the western one third or one quarter, and they've been doing this for decades now because that's where we tolerate them. But they keep showing up at Miles City and I Galaca and they get shot and they don't make it. That's not an ecological

Well they did under different circumstances. Okay, let me let me requalify. Okay, let me requalify, because it's going to throw out. Did you say Cleveland earlier? Did I make that up?

I didn't hear Cleveland.

You said something Missouri, she said, Let me let me read. Let me read you my qualification and not live on that. Somehow we make this deal. Humans can't kill them, but they can't eat any human generated food sources. Cool, now.

Hit me, there would be nowhere. No, I'm serious, because the only pack that I'm aware in Montana that has never come into contact with livestock is the one up in northwest corner Glacia National Park. And there is livestock in his southern portion of the Norfolk or there was Ladenburg sold this stuff. But other than that, the can always come into contact with people who are raising sled dugs,

Happened at could they make a go of it without causing too much trouble? And like Maine New Hamps, like the Upper.

Yeah, I'm not going to give up on this map idea.

I can.

It seems like main they could. There's certainly plenty of white.

Tails there, right, they'd have to get there.

Yeah, Okay, stop being so obstructionist. Somebody you understand what I'm trying to ask.

No, I don't. Actually, I'm not.

Steve coming semi full of wolves loose and Maine where can moose?

Okay, let me let me say this. Okay, I'm not trying to I'm trying to color in the country of where however you want to put it? Man, where could you visualize? Where do you think when the dust is settled in a hundred years, And don't don't hit me with like, well, you know, is there a zombie apocalypse or in a hundred years? Where are wolves?

If they lived where there weren't human conflicts?

No, no, no, forget all those, OK, meaning new direction? Yeah, meaning it appears that it wound up being that northwest Montana was a suitable place for wolves.

Yeah, it is right.

It wound up being that the northern Great Lakes, Yeah, the northern third of Minnesota, the northern third of Wisconsin, the northern third of Michigan wound up being like a pretty good like it is from the wolves perspective, a good place for wolves.

Yeah.

What are the chunks that are probably like that that don't yet but could.

It's it's hard to answer because I'm not Anvoidum. I'm just saying they go everywhere, and they get shot, they go to eastern Montana, So I would color in eastern Montana. They don't make one hundred years from out, They're not going to make it either.

So I met him.

I'm at a lost kind. I'm not trying to avoid. I'm at a loss how to answer. They would live in Illinois, they would live in Missouri because there's plenty of places where there's enough habitat for them. They just for habitat all. They needed someplace where they find large hooftungulates, they don't get shot by people, and they have a secure place to raise pups. There's plenty of places throughout the country like that.

Do you think we've reached, like we've filled in the areas that people well, that people are going to tolerate, Like they're where they are now, and they're probably not going to be in a lot of new places.

I disagree.

No, I'm asking like, like will there like are they where they are now? And that's probably all the space.

I think there would be more wolves expanding across Montana, certainly. I mean they're showing up in the Snowy's and they're showing up all over and if they can get a foothold and have a pack, then at some point, if you're hunting and trapping them, there always be a few remaining. But this stronghold is the western portion because it's mountainous, because they're not seen because there's less road access, because

It's funny you say that. It's funny you say Utah because I was at an event. I was at an event this winter and Utah's governor spoke at the event, and Utah's governor made a pledge to the audience that there would be no wolves in Utah. And I remember thinking, I don't know that that's your call.

What he mean that he means.

He was saying and addressing the audience, which was an audience of of uh people that do a lot of work for big game habitat improvement, right, big horns, sheet mule deer or whatever, putting it, putting ungulates on the ground, putting game animals on the ground. He made a pledge that there will be no wolves in Utah, and I remember thinking.

Like, don't worry hunters.

Yeah, but I remember thinking, well, the way it sits now with federal protection, that's not really your call. And I don't know what. I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't know what tools you have at your disposal.

So I get that what you're saying, but that agrees with what I say, because wolves have made it to Utah. And we had a wolf go from Yellowstone, go all the way to the Grand Canyon and started on its way back, a colored wolf from Wyoming from Yellowstone and they got shot on the way home. They get shot. I don't know how to better tell you, but they just get So maybe.

He said that he was just saying if they come, we can. Wasn't that he's going to do something, that's just someone's going to shoot.

But I think that's what he's writing.

Yeah, people will kill them.

I think what you're saying too, though, is that I mean there are areas of the country that have other than Northwest Montana, that have sufficient habitat security, like you in a hundred years, you know, I would imagine all the way down the spine of.

The Rockies right.

Over maybe the Cascades down I don't know that they go down the Sierras, you know, like they have Like that's what.

I question is California. Yeah, California would be maybe a little more tolerant. They have they have six packs or something.

And if I asked you my question twenty years ago that you're trying to like dodge and obfuscate, I'm not if I had asked that question twenty years ago, would you have said, would you have said Lake Tahoe.

I think wolves have a good chance of being in Utah except people kill them. So I don't know if that's a yes or no, that's a yes, okay, And I'm really trying to it's not I'm not squirming, I'm not uncomfortable. I'm just saying I have lived with wolf killing for so long, and where they're going to be tolerated is where they're at. And wolves getting in California's great, but they're going to start killing people's pets and they're going to be not tolerated as well.

What about like the wolves? If the Colorado plan goes, is they some people would like it to go. They're they're gonna push into New Mexico, Arizonah. Yeah, So my question is what happens to those Mexican wolves then?

So I love this question and half a finger and I will disagree on this.

So okay, can you guys, can one of you make the question really clear for people? Because I think a lot of people aren't to understand.

What they're I think she's probably the better.

Yeah, do you mind, like why we're even asking that? Like what we're talking about.

As I explained about the Mexican wolves there, they are a unique subspecies. It's the only population really that's got its separate subspecies classification for protection other than the red wolves, which are a different animal. So they come from a very unique gene pool of seven founding members. They're trying to protect that gene pool. So if you read I mean every time a Mexican wolf starts to go north,

One of the Mexican wolves out of Mexican Wolf area, they fetch it and bring it home.

Yes, it's a defined zone and so and so because number one, that was the promise early on with the plan. But they've expanded the Mexican Wolf Recovery area slightly, but they don't want those wolves to mix with other gene pools. And those Colorado wolves will eventually make it down to four corners and come down and they will approach and get in. I would soon get to the Mexican wolf population.

Because historically the.

Right but it was it.

But even though there was all connected all the way to Mexico to Central Mexico, they were still had unique genetic markers because they have a different habitat than the rest of the wolves. It's a different habitat, so they're been isolated on their own way. But that's my humble opinion. I'm a lumper, not a splitter, and I think it would behoove Mexican wolves to have some new gene flow. And I am not in a maybe a majority opinion, but I think people who have genetics background would agree

It, well, sounds like they will maybe try.

They will try, They're already trying. They do move all these wolves back every time they go out of the.

Rescoveries are they getting them?

They catch them everyone, everyone of them collared.

Just about so they have no idea.

And also when a wolf is in an area, you do.

A little baby and like you put the baby in the mill of room the while it crawls away and you go get it and set it back. And they thought about it. Get an invisible.

Fence, right, I mean, that's how we deal with dogs wondering.

I don't think that would work for them, but anyway, And when wolves go to an area, they leave scatt they kill things. People see them. Everybody's got trail gameras everybody and the brothers all looking for the biggest delcor water. You see them, You see him, right, you know they're there. They're not small and sneaky like lions. They're just not. They instead of sneaking around and hiding in a rock crevices, they come into town in Harley's I mean wolves animals.

That's a T shirt. That's a T shirt. There's two I want to talk about, just to give you a little taste of what's common. I want to talk about mountain lions, Okay, difference mountains and wolves. Yep, I want to talk about why wolves don't kill people.

That's a good one, But first I.

Want to talk a little bit more about Colorado. Okay, crystal Ball for me, and you're totally excused, like like this is just crystal Ball land. This is if you had to make a guess. Yeah, what is Give me a timeframe. What's going on in twenty years in Colorado? Just take a wild stab. I'm gonna known. Diane Boyd is taking a wild stab. This is not an academic exercise. She's taking a wild stab. Twenty years what's the wolf land? What's the landscape in Colorado? What's going on?

People will still be fighting where their wolves should be or should not be there, And despite our human intentions, they will continue to expand their populations and fill up appropriate habitat in Colorado, and they will have to kill some for killing livestock, and the other ones that aren't killing livestock will continue to find habitat and reproduce. And I think there'll be more wolves.

So it'll be Montana twenty years after nineteen ninety six.

What about the hunting season? You see that happen eventually hunting for wolves?

Yeah, I think that when you get enough wolves to create social tolerance. Season is a good idea. It's probably not such a good idea for individual wolves, but in terms of creating tolerance on the landscape, and I think you have to give the tools to livestock producers that they can take care problems themselves. I mean, that's what they did in Montana early on. I just say follow the model that worked in Montana. It's worked pretty well.

And then in your crystal Ball can you extend that crystal Ball scenario to the Mexican gray wolf. They're all making love and they're just mixed in together.

Should have hefelfinger here too?

So well, yeah, but this isn't what you want to have. Yeah, this is just your guess work.

People will still be fighting over Mexican wolves, and Mexican wolves may hit I'm just trying to think, they may hit a critical mass where they're not all colored, and then some of them will escape beyond the the geo fencing of their their loud recovery zone and began going elsewhere. But if they continue to heavily, heavily handle and manage the wolves and collar everyone that well, they're not all collared,

I feel like, you know how there's sports betting. I think there should be a way that you could like that we could run like a bookie thing and have uh Colorado wolf betting. H I mean you got them.

You can bet on anything though, Yeah, I mean I wouldn't be surprised if you could get odds on Colorado's wolf population in ten years.

Yeah, and people could make like bets and you could win money and lose money.

I think to the more the more radical people get, I think it will cause more people to feel sort of moved towards the metal. Like this fellow over in where was it Daniel Wyoming who ran over the wolf with the snowmobile this winter? You must have And he crippled it so couldn't get away, and then he ties it up and brings it into a b All of this is illegal, which is a minor thing, but it's really immoral. And he brings into a bar and people are laughing with it and getting their pictures taken in

Why don't wolves kill people? Because they do it Romania, I've wondered that for a long time.

Well, sometimes come on, So it's not more common there, No, But there's all those like crazy old stories about.

That's not None of that's true.

So in my book, I could read you a little paragraph about statistics, but do you want me to find it. I'll have to look for it for a moment when you're talking. I'll look for it. But wolves have occasionally killed people in modern times. Documented Kenton Carnegie was killed up in northern Saskatchewan and in the eighties early nineties by He was at a remote camp and these wolves were coming into the dump. So think of think dump

That's what I mean.

And there I think it's an interesting question because they could.

Oh absolutely. I look at any of us in this room. If one of us was out in the woods by ourselves and a pack of eight wolves came along, we'd be toast.

Yeah, I could handle three, but eight probably.

Domestic dogs kill all kinds of people, Yes, but they could.

Right, So what what is your hypothesis as to why not?

My thought about that is, well, we, first of all, when we domesticated dogs, we changed the gene pool. They have the dogs here, but he's on my foot right now, Okay, I'll make sure doesn't pull any cables. Over the course of time we have When we started domesticating livestock about eleven thousand years ago, we changed our relationship with wolves. Prior to that, it wasn't much. There was no reason

I was gonna just wanted to weigh. In episode four sixty six Dire Wolves and Ancient Hunting Dogs, we touch on some of what you just mentioned Kith Angela Perry and what does she say that same thing we talked about that?

Okay, I'm gonna have to look that one up. I didn't hear it.

Whe do they fall? Like maybe this is a weird question, but where do they fall on the intelligent scale scale compared to like a bear or a mountain lion or like like would that play a role and they're like understanding of how to interact with humans, like, are they smarter than.

A bear or Ah, the bear researchers would say hell no, right, but I can tell you. I mean I've trapped a lot of animals in my life, everything from weasels to grizzlies, and the wolves are the hardest animal to catch. Bears are not hard at all because they don't need to be. They're the top thing and they eat everything. Wolves have had to learn to sneaker on strict nine baits guns, and because they're a social species, they have to communicate well,

That's really interesting, man. That's to say that a wolf is smarter than your pet dog.

Oh yeah, they don't have to be smart. We feed them, we house them.

They don't need.

To be smart.

They don't have to kill an elk every couple of days, right, and yeah, it's.

Like a wolf with a restrict plate or something.

Our dog is not an exceptional dog. It's totally fine that everybody lif loves it, but it's not exceptional anyway, used to for whatever reason, would like to chew on rose bushes and chew on raspberry bushes. It like the for whatever reason, the thorniness of it. And I have one time just took my kids out and we put a bunch of cayenne in the dirt around a rose bush and she went up to it and got a nose full of that. Right, has never ever gone.

Near same thing with you know e callers and training and no dogs are.

Sorry when you think about how getting hard to catch the dog's like, dude, you know, to make that connection, right, So you think it's something being hard to trap, like you sting its toe one time, and there's just something about that situation.

Yeah, I mean the old timers when they're read the books, the Last of the Loaners and the last renegade wolves and guys trying to catch them, the stuff they did to try not smart these wolves. Sometimes. Well, one of the worst things I read was they've been trapping this this, this couple of wolves, the last ones in the Southwest, and they just couldn't catch the male, and so they ended up catching the female and then they took her and used her for bait, and the wolf went in

And Cormick McCarthy's the Crossing. He's trying to catch a Mexican gray wolf, which he then brings back across the border, but he winds up he can't catch it, and eventually makes a set in his fire pit because he would see that a wolf now and then come and sniff around. So instead of making sets normal sets, he made a set in his fire, let this fire burn down, cool off, and then made a set in there. I think that's how he catches it. That's how he gets it, gets it,

Wow, that's a cheerful story. Well, I mean, when it comes to wolves, there's no good ends for any large carnivore in the wild, you know. I mean, they don't end isn't good for them, no matter what it is. But they try and live a really full life, and most importantly they dry and leave their jeans behind. If they can do that, they've succeeded.

But you're saying they don't move to a golf course. Watch a lot of network telling there.

Was Okay, this is not in my book, but we my last couple of years of working, we got a call from somebody living in a gated community between Whitefish and Callous Spell and called up said we've got some wolf pups in our driveway. And it's like, oh, okay, great, thanks, I'm thinking it's got to be skyotes. Yeah, they're living in this gated community in an urban area. So anyway, I said, I said, we took some videos. I said, great, can you send me the video? So they email me

These are what reasons did you want to catch put a collar on it?

Oh, I want to know what happened at the end of the summer. Okay, So what happens what's going to happen when they leave this? You know, ten square mile gated community. We couldn't catch them. They were so smart about people. We had them on trail cameras, couldn't get them to step on the magic pan the size you

That wasn't by accident.

I don't know how smart is a wolf.

I don't know, yeah, smarter than Can you contextualize that a little bit more about how there's no good ending for a wolf because I think we all in this room understand what that means when you say that, but I think that a lot of people out there are When you say that, it almost sounds like you're saying, oh, they're all going to end up getting shot. But that's not what you're saying.

No, I mean, a wolf is an apex predator, top predator. It's always hunting to hunt. It's always having to compete for food, so they get In Yellowstone Park, the largest cause immortality is wolves killing other wolves protecting their territory. They trespass and they get killed outside of the park, even when I was doing my work when they were still protected. Eighty five percent of mortality is caused by humans. They don't live very long. Take a guess and how long.

Four eighteen months.

I'm going to go six months, four point.

Three, four point three.

Did you read that? No? I didn't.

You're right on the money four point three.

I was gonna go with four point six, but then I hedged my bets and you thought you were going to surprise us.

Randall for the four he gets the trip four point three years.

Oh, it's years years.

So they most of them don't live long enough to reproduce what is the like to randal ding ding ding.

A doctrine he does, and are you out? Like so do I?

Not including Yellowstone perhaps, but like, what is the survival rate of say a litter of six pups, how many of them will reach sexual maturity? Is that a pretty high survival rate if.

They make it to the till like the second year, they do pretty well. The first year when they go between a year and two years, when they're starting to dispersal and they're starting to look around them, the pups themselves,

Do they ever do that thing that bears sometimes do where a male come in and kill No, they don't do that.

Nope. Yeah, I was gonna ask other than humans, what's killing wolves?

Deer elk avalanches? The first wolves? The wolves kill each other? Yeah, I just said that in Yellowstone, So like the first mortality, Recorded Mortality and Yellowstone Park I was told was a UPS driver killing a wolf when he ran it over. I thought, could you imagine being that ups? Turf's like, oh my god, I just killed the national icon about it.

I hope is hiring.

So yeah, and they get killed by lions, they starve. I did have one wolf dining an avalanche.

What about bears? The bears get after him.

They can if it's one on one, but when you had a whole wolf pack. Yeah, wolves kill, wolves kill black bears. Wolves will kill a grizzly cub if they can, but usually they can't. But one on one, I think, Well, wolves are pretty fast.

Do they go way out of their way to kill coyotes in places?

They do? Yeah? In Yellowstone Park they filled them digging up coyote dens and killing the pups. Pretty gruesome.

Do they got it in for Red Fox too?

No? So there's this yeah in the book, so trophic cascades we're going to get in a little bit. And I just want you to know that before I wrote this book, or while I was writing this book, I ended up working with Jim Hafflefinger, Dave oz Been. I mean, it was really a hell of a good team. I was asked to be the senior author for the latest. We did an update on everything known about wolves in North America. We ended up being forty thousand words long

He's a wolf sees that kyote and he just recognizes it as a competitor.

You think something to get rid of, and.

He sees a fox and he just doesn't get too worked out.

It's kind of a nuisance.

It's a difference.

That's funny because I've I feel like I've heard people make that observation just in different parts of the West, like in Idaho specifically, people say, the coyotes have really dropped in numbers and we're seeing foxes now and we never really saw him before.

Right, Yeah, that's that's interesting too, because in Michigan where I grew up, it was always fox like, you know, trappers targeted red fox. That's just when coyotes came in in the early nineties when they really exploded in that area. I mean, the fox vanished.

Man, do you need more wolves?

What's sounds like.

A mutual friend of ours likes to use that as an analogy to humans, where he's like a wolf likes to go around the landscape and go that ain't good for me and mine getting rid of it. And we're on a landscape going, oh no, let's bring in more wolves. We might have less elk or less this or that,

You know, that's a good point, like like wolf a it's wolf lovers love all these things about wolves, but they don't like to see it in people.

M M.

You know, if you're like man, that could be a lot of competition. I don't want that here, just thinking like a.

Wearable I have a question for you. So when Krinn called me, she said, you have experienced increased enthusiasmic excitement, hatred, whatever wolf issue has been building still, like we see it all the time in Montana.

I've seen this.

Well, well we talk about this, we talk about right now and then on the podcast and then yeah, people right, I mean the feelings.

Are feelings are running higher about wolves now than they were twenty years old.

Well, no, no, no, I would say that. I would say that feelings, whatever high running feelings there are are high running only because of what's going on in Colorado. And then that reignited the entire debate. But I would not say generally, well, okay, there's a there's another hot area. Another hot area is in Minnesota, Wisconsin, my home state of Michigan. I just came from and got a lot

So what are what are this? I mean, Wisconsin had a huge wolf season and they really kill a lot of wolves, And what is the wolf season in Michigan?

And well there's none because they got put back on the.

Sea to protect them.

Yeah, so an their back.

They've closed it. They've had it, they've closed it.

So we've had this discussion about should should wolves be listed or not? Right everywhere where they've come back, all of them in Western states, Midwestern states, some of the western states, they have exceeded way beyond expectations of delisting criteria. Yes, four years on end. So what is the value of the Endangered Species Act if you don't follow the rules of the criteria.

And I'm not saying I can tell you what it is. It's not anymore. It is my favorite animal protection Act.

It's very valuable to the people who that's how, you know, create lawsuits.

They don't want to talk about the numbers. They don't care about the numbers.

I've had lots of people ask me when I do public texts, do you feel wolf should be relisted? And I say relisted like in Montana? Do you feel wolf should be realisted? They're delisted in Montana? Yeah, And I say then I say, okay, geographically which area Montana? And I say, well, you know, I don't like to see dead, bleeding wolves hanging off of tailgates, but they have exceeded recovery standards. There are approximately a quarter million of wolves worldwide.

We've talked about this before, like in the case of Montana or Wyoming or Idaho, like it would never be in the state's best interest to knock them back to that point because then the FEDS would come back in and exactly.

But what I'm saying is people are the pro wolf public. I sit in the middle, but I'm obviously passionate about wolves. So the pro wolf public thinks that by increasing all of these parameters to allow more take I don't like the word harvests more kill, that we're going to put them down one hundred and fifty. I think you can't do that without poison.

Because you're right that's the point you're is it. Even as liberal as it is here for six months out of the year, we're still not able to knock them back that much.

Right, We've caught them back some, and I mean, like this guy in Daniel's Montaneo, Dianuel Wyoming, it just is disgusting. I just you shouldn't do that with an elk, with a bear. With a wolf, should just behave like that with a wild animal. But with the liberal seasons we've got, and this year they did increase, their harvest is up to I think two hundred and eighty six for the last license year, which is a little more than the year before. But we've had years where there's been three hundred.

Did you say it was to eighty six that were killed or it was two eighty six was the quota.

No, that was what was killed between shooting and trapping. Yeah, I think that's the current number. You can look it up and it just that was just released. But there's many things to look at. But what I can say is there's there's adequate wolves, and I'd say there's adequate prey.

Fifty thousand five.

That was that United Property Owners thing.

Right back, BHA YAH and BHA.

And Montana Sportsman's Alliance and all these hunting groups said no, you have to create access. And I think if people are really concerned about elk numbers, because if you look at the tables the statistics, there are more elk in Montana now then there's been in a long time. And in Wyoming they're issuing unlimited number of elk takes in twenty twenty three, I believe, or twenty twenty four. It seems from my perspective, you would know more you guys

I mean, I think that's the in some areas that's the biggest conversation around elk numbers is you have just you have elk that are learning over time. Elk are learning safe zones. There are big acreages where hunting's not allowed, and there are big acreages where people have an objective of getting a couple of big bulls and they don't want something to mess up those big bulls. They don't want people to push them off. They kind of like

They need more wolves.

Just kidding, I'm just kidding on that.

But you see the problem again, it's always humans. But if you look at the species keep responsible for killing sheep and cattle, it's number one. Grizzly bears kill almost three times as many livestock animals as both lions and wolves, and lions generally kill a few more than wolves, but it's hard to confirm totally.

Because lions kill more livestock than wolves.

The confirmed kills. The hard thing is when a wolf kills a cattle or a calf or whatever, there's six or eight them feeding on it, so there's often not enough evidence less to determine which predator responsible. So there's a lot more probables for wolves than there are lions, but confirmed it's more lions and wolves.

Where you got wolves and mountain lion overlapping, what's killing most.

Of the game lions. Do you look at the Bitter at Elk study. Yeah, so it's surprising to me. So there's been three studies that Fish, Wildlife and Parks has done. And this is an agency that's not real pro wolf, right, let's just say so, they do these studies. And when I was looking at the research study plan and the results, I was shocked because I thought wolves would be the primary predator. But you can go on the FWP website

That had no effect.

And the more they were just lions killing everything.

They thought the same thing in Idaho. Wives your way out.

Killing wolves, yes, and when So when they did the moose study, what do you think the number one killer of moose was it was grompy.

What you think lions?

No, black, No, it was tis.

It was climate and habitat exactly they killed like it was fifty six percent of the most mortalities documented. The rerelated to climate. That would be ticks, uh, mostly probably ticks and things related. Predation was a very small section of the pie, and I was surprised of the predation section. So you beans killed almost the same percentage almost as the predators a little less of the predation section. It was wolves first, I think bear a second, lions there,

The habitat Milder's got way lions was lions.

So why do people want to keep increasing.

Wolf because the lions were because the lions were always here. That was kind of the thing that we talked about with Idaho. Is you had you had? I don't. I'm gonna butcher not. These are not the right numbers, but it paints a somewhat accurate portrait. It'd be like prior to wolves coming into the Idaho Panhandle. I don't. Again, this is not the exact number, but it's not crazy. It'd be that lines are killing thirty out of one hundred elk calves. Let's say, yeah, okay, something like that.

So you're saying, all the wolf coming back is the additive, none of its compensatory mortality.

Man, I know the terms you're using, but I can't answer that.

So you're not seeing lion populations diminishing down to twenty percent of the elk caves say instead that the oh that the wolves are now taking ten percent that the lions would.

Take it must have been additive, because how else can you explain the map. I mean, like, this is the thing that that people have to accept, Like the really pro wolf people have to accept that this is true. And when they're when they're kind of being honest, they acknowledge it. Meaning on one hand, they like think hunters blow it out, everything out of proportion, and hunters are like, oh, we're gonna lose all of our dear and l right,

They collapsed.

But and the.

Panhandle Idaho elk numbers just like there's no other word for what happened. They collapsed.

But do you know about the winters that the wolves came into. Idoh is the heaviest winters ever recorded. The wolves came into Yells and twenty thousand elk on the northern range of Lamar is not a normal range of numbers of animals that should be there anyway.

Okay, I mean you know all that.

I think we talked about this last time. But the winters of ninety six ninety seven, that was the second winter they put in. I thought that you can sit there, maybe you can, but tell me that thirty wolves are going to kill ten thousand outs.

No, it wasn't. I don't think that it was. I think that it was very long term. Yeah it was. It wasn't that year. It wasn't like the ones they brought in. Yeah, yeah, I mean, but correct me if I'm wrong. Like you know it better than me. But is it not fair? Is it not fair to say that, let's talk about the Idaho Panhandle.

I don't know about the idol Pana. I can talk about the lamar pretty.

Good, Okay. Wherever the lamar.

Yeah, Yellowstone, Northern Herd.

Okay, bad winners or not? I mean, come on, that had unless I'm wrong, that had the incoming wolves and the expansion of wolf populations. Elk had a big change on elk because that's also if we remember, we're all supposed to celebrate them for bringing the beavers back, which has now been walked back and not true. So it did something to elk, right.

Yeah, and you could pull up the table. But the elk, the alk numbers fell off really fast in that hard winter. And like in Montana in ninety six ninety seven, Carolyn sim was doing white tail deer study in northwest Montana and forty percent of the white tail died win or die off and had nothing to do without Okay. So I'm just saying with wolves.

It couldn't like And in the case of the bitter, the way someone described it to me, I can't remember who was Like the elk, there could sustain like some certain level of predation and maintain a certain r number. But when you put it the wolf on top of it, that was like just enough to be a tipping point to push.

Them over the edge or push them on a private land where people don't allow them. You're hunted. That's what's happening in.

The bitter But like in the case of like a bad winner, you stack wolves on top of that, maybe the elk, yeah could have you know what I mean, Like it's just one more thing they've got to deal with.

So I mean, I just read the scientific literature and I'm a hunter too, But in Yellowstone there are so many factories. It's really I would say it's unfair to say one is to blame. It's a huge puzzle with many factors. And since the wolves come back, the olk numbers have definitely decreased. But I think they're actually had a better sustainable lever. I mean, do you know in the sixties they're in their gunning and killing elk because there were too many elk and there were not enough predators.

Oh my god, what is zoo in the eighties.

Yeah, because there were too many elk they had to do that. Well, they don't do it anymore, and people are pissed off about it because I want to go down there and get my late gardener hunt. Well, that is not a sustainable population to have to have people go in and kill starving elk in February. I mean, we can look at it anywhere you want.

Can we go back to our crystal ball in Colorado?

Oh?

God, yes, was it a twenty year? We were talking about ten ten twenty years. Okay, let me hit you with this. Yeah, let's say there are one hundred deer in elk in Colorado today? How many deer in elk are there in twenty years.

Due too?

Because of wolves?

Oh, because of wolf.

There's one hundred now, Yeah, one hundred deer elk are in Colorado now. And you do your twenty year crystal ball. Where has that population settled out?

Eighty or ninety maybe might be one hundred. The other is people population. We keep growing in and building. Well, it is part of it because people build an elk winter range. Look at the Paradise Valley, for God's sakes, they've destroyed a lot of elk wind arrange where they elk used to doing.

Well, that's where the wolves could do that tipping point there. Yeah, get because like Colorado's elk or like in places, their numbers are already crashing because of black bear predation and elk calves. And then you get like development of winter range and then a huge amount of recreation like hiking and biking, and then you throw wolves on top of that, and it's like you could look at it that way, you know what's going to happen.

I just look at what's going on in Montana, where we had wolves for forty years. In Wyoming they've had wolves for years, and elk numbers are higher than they've ever been, So I don't know how. I mean, you could look at whatever end of the scale you want to look at. I'd like to kind of come to the middle. There'll be places where wolves can impact populations. Lions certainly have, bears have people have Because we're building

When I when I encounter rapidly anti wolf people. Yeah, right, Yeah, and then they'll tell me how they want to go hunt in Alaska. Yeah, but you wouldn't like.

It, buddy, because.

Because it's ninety seven percent of historic wolf habitat is occupied by wolves, you wouldn't like it. There's no hunting there wolves. What's the hunt in Alaska?

Does that what you tell them?

Yeah?

Is that true?

No, of course it's not true. Okay, I'm demonstrating absurdity by being absurd. Thank you, Steve.

I'm shocked. Okay.

It's my favorite. I mean, I love it. It's my favorite place to go. But I'm just saying I point out to them, like, don't lay it on me that they're incompatible, because tell that to right, That's that everybody dreams of going on hunting Alaska. It's like, well, let me tell you something wolves while something moves there. A couple of years ago, we'd watched how many do we see one night? Fifteen pretty much every evening fifteen to come through.

Wow.

Right, So I'm just saying it that that perspective, and every time, like every time we talk about predators and every time we talk about wolves, I always feel the need to clarify like my perspective on it, I think it is. I think it's immoral to remove native species from native habitat. I just think it's like playing God in a way that, however you want to conceive of God, it's playing God in the way that God would not agree with. Right, It's like it's immoral, I think to

They they had like a doctorate degree and pushing that ship down their throats down there. I couldn't believe when I read that stat of like Grant County is where they released the first group, right, and I think that was one of the few counties that overwhelmingly voted against it. It was like a sixties high sixties, maybe seventy percent against it, and that was the county they chose to here you go, But they couldn't.

Reintroduce him into Boulder and Denver.

I mean that's where the boat was while we're on

Obviously you feel strongly one way. That's a quite loaded question, but I the way you put it, I you'll read in my book.

Well, the reason I'm interested is because I feel like you do sit in the middle and you connect with a lot of people that I would like to connect to, and I feel that we would probably land somewhere on the on the same end of the spectrum and want the same outcome. So I'd like to hear how you talk to people about this.

So I I've never been in favor of wolf for introductions anywhere because they come back on their own and there I feel strongly we can never now test it because it's too late. But I feel strongly that there's a better social tolerance just what you're saying if they come back on their own, like they have done most places in the world and in the Midwest. But now

Well, I guess as someone that's worked with wolves, like did you like having in your toolbox. I don't know. Did you ever consider yourself a manager of wolves?

I'm not, was never up at the top level I've managed. I've done some going out and putting out propane cannons and hanging flattery. Yeah, I've done some of that.

But you advise people that sort of set management strategy.

Yes, And I've come and asked to be a anonymous commentator on various federal plans.

Yes. So is it nice to have in your toolbox hunting as a way to manage these animals?

I think socially you have to have it. I'm not a wolf hunter. I have no desire to ever have to kill a wolf. I don't It's just not who I am. Is it a socially acceptable tool? Does it creation social tolerance? That's that's what people are pushing and believing, And I think with reintroductions that may be true. It's a tough one. Like I said, I don't want to shoot wolves, and I take lots of dead wolves on tailgates. When I was working for fishwallfe parks, they come in.

They did.

They put quite a bit of information out, but that's fade ay. The wolves are still killing all the Elk. It's like, way, did you.

Read the article?

But people are biased because of their culture, so I but I just think enough information helps helps calm down the flames on both ends. I am a believer in that, and I hate the term edgy. I hate it say we need to educate so and so about that. It's like, oh God, can.

We know what that means? That means I need to tell that person what I think.

That's right, that's right, but to exchange information, that's what well, the public needs to be educated.

No, I don't.

I hate that term, and I heard agencies promote that all the time. But anyway, cuts of your book, my book, I want to hold it up, doctor Diane boy I'm teasing about randall.

Have PhD written out there?

Of course not, but it's in the back under the bio because I don't want I don't want people to see doctor Dian Boyd and not buy it because they their biases. They just see it's diyanboid. There you go, that's a bias. Definitely.

They'd be like, oh.

That one.

They'd be like some Berkeley egg ahead.

Telling me about please exactly, Diane K.

Boyd not a doctor. There you go, she's a doctor back here, Yeah, Diane K. Boyd, a woman among wolves. My journey through forty years of wolf covery. I haven't read it. Uh, I will read it.

I'll give you a personal copy.

I will read it, read it and again.

Uh.

When we talked before and I loved it. It's so good to hear your perspective on these things. I think a lot of what you're saying, I think you're gonna what you're saying is going to be is going to be very challenging. Two people, no matter what how they look at wolves. You you offer a very challenging perspective because it doesn't fall in line. It doesn't fall in line with the narratives that you would get depending on

Well.

Thanks.

Help people find your book and read it.

Thanks. When I wrote it, I was not allowed to put in scientific references or footnotes. I have my list at the end of suggested readings. But I wrote it so that anybody can pick it up, whether you like wolves or don't like wolves, or don't care, regardless of your outdoor experience. Anybody can pick that up and get something from it. And I don't preach. I tell through stories and I wave science and let the reader come to their own conclusions about certain aspects of wolves being

Yeah, let's close with that.

Close it the opening introduction.

Yeah, we're going to close with this. So she's gonna get done. You're gonna go buy the book. We're just going to end the show. Phil's gonna turn the machine off when it's done. But this will give you a taste of how it's written, and I'm looking forward to it.

This is probably thirty five years ago. My pickup banged and rattled along the potholed inside road in the northwest corner of Glacier National Park. Boxes of wolf trap and jars of bait slid across the truck bed. I was in a hurry, my mind focused on the wolf cotton a trap somewhere ahead in the Lodgepole Pine Forest. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed motion in

Honest.

You got to keep your shoes on during this podcast, I'm still recorded.

The koyas away wone shooting start with shut swell being sign of breakfast, and we laid down the bed it's been on day and nin.

Windyll them cotting with trees lost step lesly every breeze.

Master footsteps that I took.

You on.

The noise was wide like a live Brian.

Learn more from namn trees before.

Everybod than ever made shiver shoot swept.

Waves up in.

My reading up here. Sometimes you're burning up. Sometimes you're going with because you mean you're the fever.

Ragon, don't you Mainer.

The fur Bagon.

Go on through the plain still called Basbley in greens.

Gets there all out in them wield.

You smileings the you rye all and your minds be surprised.

That old river.

Minyl fever makes you shiver, That fever makes you sweet, wakes.

You up in babing permade of you. Sometimes you're burning up. Sometimes they're gold man with because you Mainer fever w only you anger the fer bging that fear macey shiver, that fere amazing sweat wis you have and min be pernain unjust. Sometimes you're burning up. Sometimes you're colding w because.

You made yourr feeder cry.

You may you may CA, You ain't time.

You wait.

Turded favor, domag wait fav