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I t E dot com. Join today by members of the Brooks clan, Wyatt Aaron and the novelist Malcolm Brooks. And we'll get to this in a bit, but what brought us here together is that Aaron's son, Wyatt's brought Malcolm. Your nephew, yep Tailing Brooks died in a mountain lion attack in California in March, and we're gonna discuss the circumstances around that, but first we're gonna talk a bit about your guys family, who's a big hunting and fishing family.
And after that incident, after that accident or attack, our good friend Dave Smith from Dave Smith Decoys was telling me of his great affection for your guys family, and I had I didn't initially put it together when I saw the name Brooks, I didn't initially put it together that you guys were related to the writer Malcolm Brooks, who I've met and who's here today as well. Aaron, you you knew Dave through competitive turkey calling.
Knew Dave through videoing hunts. I went up and video for DSD.
Oh you did? I don't know that you're in the wood business. Are you still in the wood business?
Firewood a little bit.
Let's see you got a log and hat toos?
Were you running a camera like a camera out for him?
Okay?
For Dave?
Yeah, well for colping it was actually through Ron Latshaw from Final Approach.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
I got Yes, I've known Brad and Dave for twenty five years. They come down turkey hunt with us regularly in California.
Yeah, I got it. I got it.
Dave's been there a few years, Brad's been there a bunch of years, and.
You be and you got into competitive turkey calling, you know when it.
Was calls around some lessons.
Do you do any natural voice calling? Nope, don't.
I did a podcast with DSD and I did a bunch of calling on there. I could probably look that up.
There you go.
So you got I'm looking at your I'm looking at your stats. You got into competitive calling in nineteen ninety two, the year I graduated from high.
School year I was born?
Is that right?
Chester cute? But good lord?
Really, yeah, I'm not that. I'm not. I'm getting old now.
Yeah. Now you are three time California state calling champion, two year Oregon state champion. So you kind of carpet bagged it down in Oregon and beat him down there, and then he came to Montana and carpet bag to Montana and beat everybody in Montana. What was harder.
Probably the Oregon one.
Those the best callers. Then he finished third at the Keystone Open in Pennsylvania. Then you're in the big leagues.
That was the hard one. Those are all the big guys.
Because then you got people that have been hunting turkeys for since the beginning of time.
Yeah, all those guys in Pennsylvania are the guys that go to and win Nationals every year. So I was called against some pretty good guys there. It's fun.
You still do that kind of stuff.
No, I just I probably like early two thousands, I just lost interest and stop doing it.
Did you lose interest in turkey hunting?
No?
No, turkey hunt a.
Lot in California primarily.
Yeah, yeah, but California stopped having calling contests too.
For like did they all have one outlaw?
They didn't. I that's probably next.
That is like when you bring up hunting and California right like then it's like how could he ever be a hunter and live there? And it's like, oddly enough, every time I go to California there's a lot of hunting and fishing to be done. That's typically pretty good.
Yeah. Did your dad get you intoup hunting, fish and white?
Oh?
Yeah?
How old? You know?
Eighteen?
You know how I get started out.
Just from going out with my dad since I was little.
What's your specialty? Man?
Mm hmm.
Waterfowl?
Probably deer hunting, because I don't know, I'm super patient and I'm always out there the longest.
You don't mind is coming right out and saying that.
And he kills giant bucks, black tails are yeah they'la Yeah.
Pretty cool.
So you weren't a big bow hunter, Aaron? No, how'd he get in? How'd you get him into it? Or how'd he get into it? On his own.
Yeah, mostly just from watching YouTube stuff like that, seeing it on TV.
Yeah, so you decided to get yourself a bow.
Yeah, well my dad's friend gave me his kids because his kid grew out of it.
Okay, then what happened?
I just started shooting it and then started hunting deer with it, and then I ended up getting my first one the bow.
Do you guys do a lot of tree stand stuff for the black tails in California?
Or is it mainly ground blind?
Ground blind?
Yeah you do.
I've never hunted out of a tree stand.
Do you guys hunt public or private? Brown?
Private?
Yeah?
Yeah?
So you had a second hand bow? Learn how to shoot it, yep, learn how to hunt deer? Your brother like the hunt deer?
Mm hmm it feels easy yeah, because he wasn't very patient, so he just liked going out and shooting one super fast.
So tell me about tell me about patience, man, Like, what is that when you say it? What do you mean? I mean? I understand what patience means. But you mean you were willing to sit all day?
Yeah, all day, every morning, every evening.
You just put in the time. Yeah. Yeah, do you got did you guys grow up reading your uncle's books and stuff. You ever look at his buttons?
Yeah, I've read part.
Part of one.
My own kids haven't read my books.
You're not a very big reader.
So explain all. Explain all your guys relationship. How are you guys tied in with each other?
Well, Aaron's my younger brother and I, you know, we grew up in the same region where these guys still live, Eldorado County. It's you know, gold Rush country, foothills country, you know, it's you know, within an hour of Sacramento, but every rural the southern part of the county where we grew up. So I was deer hunting and bird
hunting first before Aaron was legally old enough too. God, and then he he just he he had already been like kind of a maniacal bass fisherman, even as a real little shaver, so he just he just you know, segued right into hunting too as soon as he was legally able to do it. And he and I hunted together for years down there. Then I moved to Missoula in ninety five and I've been there ever since.
Did you move there to be a writer?
You will? Yeah, I mean I had lived in outside of Kalispell for about a year in ninety two, I guess, and then wound up in Willawa County, Oregon for a little while and then back home again in Cali. But yeah, I mean I I was really just enamored by Montana history,
Montana culture, you know, the outdoor culture. I mean it was, you know, really interested in fly fishing when I was in my teens, and knew that the writing culture was what it was in Montana that you know, it had these famous writers and I read all those books, you know, mcgwaine and Harrison and ab gu three, and yeah, I was just kind of steeped in it in general, and that's where I wanted to go and never did leave.
My buddies in Missoula used to call Missoula the Paris of West central Montana. Oh yeah, yeah, crag, Yeah, you were a maniacal bass fisher from telling you what that means.
Oh, just when I was little, like from when I was like four till probably around fifteen, I just didn't really do it as much.
But do you guys steal bass fish? Yeah?
Yeahlmet Halmmett back up when you you quit when you were fifteen, But you started being a maniacal bass fisherman at.
Four, Yeah, three or four, he was little.
Yeah.
Yeah. We had a pond behind our house and it had large mouths in it. That's just all we did was down there throw throw plugs.
So do you tend to get into stuff and get out of it? No, Like you got into turkey call and then then drifted out of it.
Yeah, that was just the competitive calling. I just lost interest in it. But turkey hunting was still just a bunch and.
You guys got good turkey still, right.
Yeah.
Uh, tell people what you tell people your books? Man?
Well, yeah, I mean, I guess the thing I'm most known for as a writer at this point, you know, is the two novels. The first one is called Painted Horses, and they would probably both books would equally qualify probably as literary fiction and historical fiction. Painted Horses is set in the fifties in this sort of like prior Mountain, Big Horn River region, and it just explores the archaeology that they used to do in advance of like the hydro projects in the fifties and sixties. I mean, that's
a very thumbnail. There's a lot in there about like you know, ice age cave art and yeah, there's it's it ranges pretty widely. Second book, cloud Maker, was inspired by these real life Montana teenagers and the Great Depression who were building and flying their own airplanes powered by
Model A Forward engines. So yeah, and now, as of about two months ago, I guess I'm under contract with Simon and Schuster to do a narrative nonfiction you know, full length book on like history of early debute Montana.
Oh really, Yeah that's good. Yeah. Have you read I don't even want to say the name of the guy, but have you read Pennies from Hell?
No?
This is an article I don't even know if I've heard of it was.
It was an article in Harper's a long time ago.
Oh, was it was? It was? Yeah, it started a Yeah, the initials are ED.
This was the first name, yeah, Ed. Yeah, that's a good idea.
Yeah, well I did. I'm a carpenter by trade, and I did a restoration for a friend on a row house on Mercury Street over there, summer before all the COVID stuff started, and I just like deep dove into the history and there I got really super interested in it. And my initial initial impulse for it was to try to make like a dramatic television show out of that, like more of the Copper King sort of era. Man, So I wrote, you know, when COVID hit and I had a lot of downtime. I actually did write a
tentative pilot episode for that. But you're probably aware of this, but the publishing industry has just been so turbulent in the last say, six seven years.
Oh they're gonna say the last six seven centuries.
Well yeah, but you know, worse for sort of cultural and political reasons in the last So I realized that my odds of selling another full length novel in the same vein that I had written the other two were
probably not great. But I was like, well, I've done all this research for this tentative TV show on mute, and what's really By doing the research, I realized that nothing had really recently been written on the early history of the place in like fifty sixty years, and I just like, wow, I mean, I should just turn this into a narrative nonfiction proposal and see if I can move that. And it took eighteen months to do it, but it did happen. Finally, No congratulations man, thank you.
Yeah. Yeah, tell me about how old was Taylorm.
When he died twenty one, twenty one.
He was a musician. Tell me about your brother, man, or tell me about your son, whatever makes sense.
Oh yeah, he was super into music and well playing guitar, and he was really good at.
It and bass fishing. It's like all he did. Yeah, let's go f.
That's a pretty good combo.
Really, So he was a bass fisherman.
Yeah, big, super into it.
Letting him god making them late for something.
Yeah, yeah, anytime he could, that's what he's doing.
And and what's up with the music?
Mm hmmm, I don't know. He just always liked listening to music.
Did he ever record anything?
Just like on his phone? Got you like, I don't know, Yeah, but he wasn't big into recording.
What was he what was What kind of music did he play? What did you listen to?
Mostly metal type of stuff?
He was a head banger.
Oh, all kinds of strange bands. I don't even know.
But he would dip back into some metallica.
Yeah.
He was like one of those like intuitively just gifted guitar people where you know, it's like if you take like I was, you know, to take guitar lessons when you're a teenager and you think you're like coming along with it, and all of a sudden you meet some kid who's never had a lesson in his life, and you just completely blow the doors off of you know, even professional musicians to agree one of them to.
Your right wing guitar virtuoso.
All right, I wouldn't go that far.
Least that's how you introduced himself.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah?
Uh? Did he did he want to be a musician? Like? What was his aspiration? His long term aspiration?
He's only played music by himself in his room. I mean, he never played with a band or played with It's just all he just loved playing guitar.
Was he kind of a loner?
Yeah?
Kind of Yeah, I don't know.
You get good at bass fishing, get good at guitar. That makes sense too, stay away from the ladies.
What line of work was he going toward?
He didn't. He hadn't really figured it out yet. Yeah, but well, I mean he always talked about wanting to do like bass tournaments and stuff like that.
But did you guys have like a did he go out in a like a bass. You guys have a bass boat like rigged with electronics kind of stuff and like bass master classic kind of fishing.
No, we just have an old John boat.
Got you.
Yeah?
Cool?
So he thought maybe he would get into that.
Yeah.
Did he go to college at all?
No?
No, are you fixing to go to college?
No, I'm not going to go.
Had you thought about it at a time?
Yeah, Well my plan was to go, Okay, but I just decided. No.
When did you decide?
No, like after my senior year, before the next year school was going to start, like during that summer.
Yeah. Yeah, what do you think about doing instead?
Well, I was going to go to be a firefighter, and then I ended up going a different route that didn't require college, and so that's what I do. I did wildland firefighting good last year for a private company out of Georgetown, and then my plan is to just get my EMT so I could work full time instead of seasonal.
But you still want to be a firefighter?
Yeah, okay for the most part.
Yeah, I'm going to introduce someone. I'm going to volunteer him as a mentor because he's a Sacramento firefighter. Okay, they'll tell you what's what's what I can tell you one thing, I know, it was a lot better to get in a long time ago.
I'm thinking about something like playing with fire, Like what about being a welder, make a bunch of cash, great stuff, always have a job.
I'm not really wanting to be a firefighter.
If you like to hunt and fish, firefighting is the way to go. Yeah, But a lot of firefighters because you go in and you work, you know how it goes. You go and you just live there for days and work around the clock and then you get a little bit of a chunk of time off. Yeah, and it's it's like a predictable schedule. So you like go through hell for four days or whatever it is, and you kick it for a couple of days.
Yeah, Or you go through hell for like eight days and then you kick it for a lot more days. Then sometimes you're like, I want twelve days in a row and then I'll see you in three months.
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good hunting fish and suit. But a lot of firefighters I know start a second business mm hmm because they're too ambitious. That's not how you want to do it. It's not how you want to do it. You want to have. You want a second business of hunting fishing? Did you and your bro spend a lot of time in the woods.
Yeah, a decent amount.
Yeah, Like what would you guys go and do?
Mm hmm. Mostly we would just turkey hunt together.
Okay, So he liked that.
Yeah, that was his favorite turkey hunting.
Yeah, you guys did obviously did some shed hunting.
Together, which he wasn't very into that because of all the walking.
I was gonna ask did he have patients for turkey hunting? Turkey hunting, you gotta have some patience.
Yeah, but that was it only turkey hunting.
So he didn't like no walking, no waiting, not really. No. Did he get some deer?
Yeah he got two?
Okay. Yeah, and you guys went shed hunting for dear antlers or what?
Yeah?
Did you think of it like scouting or like you just wanted to find the antlers? Mmm?
When I would shed hunt spots I was gonna hunt. I'd kind of scouted out while I was looking, but mostly just to find the antlers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, can I ask you a question about your area? There? Are you susceptible to poison oak? M?
I don't get it very badly.
I don't know how you guys can live in that area.
You get it bad, dude.
That's all over my hands right now, just because you walked in the room. He's got a poison oak on his hand.
Do you get it worse than anyone I've ever seen?
The man I had to quit hunting California. I've been in places in California where the primary vegetation is poison oak. It's like the primary people. It's not like watch out for poisonous, watch out for vegetation because the primary plant species it's like, you look, it's a poison oak mono culture.
Yeah, it's all over.
Oh my god.
I fell asleep in an orchard in California one time hunting black tail deer.
Yeah, and I woke up.
And I simultaneously had a tick going in my nostril and in my ear canal to the point of like just barely being able to grab him. And I used to think about that in like a PTSD style nightmare for years, because I I it was just on the edge of being able to clamb out of my face and it was happening in two vents at the same time. Wow, that's California.
When you guys are knocking around in your area. So, so how far when you and your brother got attacked? How far were you from your house?
It was like a thirty minute drive.
And I would say, what was the what was the kind of describe the area to me? Is it rant like cattle country? No?
It was more foresty type area.
But it is it an area you'd spend a lot of time in.
No, that was our first time going to that lot.
What brought you to that spot?
When my dad told me about it and then told you what that they used to find sheds up there? Okay, like turkey hunting and stuff, all right, So then we just decided to go check it out.
Is this the area you got? Do you guys see do you guys see a lot of lions in your area?
Like?
Is it common to run in the lions?
On the trail camera?
We see him a lot, see him driving, see him across the road.
Yeah, Aaron hit one in broad daylight with his pick up one time.
Whoa, it's like ten years ago. Just jumped out right in front of the truck, just ran it over. I thought it was dead, but it managed to get up and limp off the road. And I don't know what happened to it, never found it, But yeah, people are everyone's seeing lions everywhere.
It's does that feel like it's increased a lot in your lifetime?
Oh, it's it's increased in the last like four or five years, just like snowball increase. Yeah, like like escalation to like a degree that is like pretty clearly indicates that they've just become completely habituated to the human you know, population residential zones down there at this point.
Yeah, you know what's on a different subject, it's about wildlife biology in California. The last time they had a the last time California had a black bear management plan, they did it in nineteen eighty nine and they had estimated population of twenty thousand black bears. They just put a new pop They just put a new management plan out for comment. The comment period is closed, and like if you go down the middle of the range, the middle of the estimated range is sixty five thousand.
Yep, jeez.
They did. They looked at something with they were looking at the relationship between black bears and mountain lions and some research there of the collared mountain lion. So when a mountain lion. And this this was this work was
done in Mendocino National Forest. If a mountain lion kills a deer in Mendocino National Forest, there's a seventy five percent chance that they will lose that deer to there's a seventy five percent Sorry, the mountain lion kills a deer in Mendocino National Forest, there's a seventy five percent chance that a bear will come to that carcass site.
There's a seventy six percent chance that the bear will take the deer from the line, which greatly ups right, which greatly ups the amount of work the lions are doing to be on the landscape as the bear, as the bear numbers come up, like it's it's sort of it's sort of had this this cascading effect that pow lions behave and how lions utilize the landscape.
Well, I mean, you're kind of pointing to like one of the bigger contextual issues that involves this whole thing, and that's that California really doesn't have good but weird regard just like North American model based comprehensive wildlife management, it's just a it's a much less traditional. You can
hardly even call it a model at this point. Like the lions themselves were, you know, by ballot biology essentially thirty five years ago they were declared especially protected species in the state of California.
Was that under Reagan.
No, what Reagan did was it was done for more traditional management reasons. They were just trying to get there. Like a lot of hound guys back in that era in the late sixties and seventies were concerned that maybe they had taken too many lions back to whoring the bounty era, and then it was a free for all. The bounty system ended in like sixty two or sixty three, and it was a literal free for all at that point. There was no management objective or plan in place for
nobody knew how many lions there were. Nobody had really studied them very you know, effectively, you.
Can make cash killing them year round.
You could yeah, well yeah, I mean, and you could merely pursue and kill them year round. So I think what happen, and it was a lot of guys who liked to run them were realizing that maybe they were tipping too far in the take direction. So Reagan signed a kill moratorium into effect in nineteen seventy two, but that didn't that did not prevent guys from being able to run them. They could still run them trium tree and free. And the kill moratorium was in effect until
nineteen eighty five or eighty six. It was fourteen years long. So at that point they had collected enough data and realized that the population was was definitely stable and.
The Housett they hadn't killed them in fourteen years.
Hadn't killed them in fourteen years. So at that point they relisted them as a game you know, as a game species, and they were going to manage them comprehensively with everything else well HSUS and an outlying foundation and you know, basically like you know, animal welfare, animal protectionist NGO's got completely up in arms about it, and they managed to, by popular ballot measure, have the species declared especially protected again for zero science. There's no scientific basis
to this at all. It was strictly, you know, the ability to appeal emotionally to a population.
They they they they didn't come in and argue population dynamics. It was more like, we're not here to argue population levels. We're not here to argue sustainability. Right, we don't want people to legally be able to kill mountains, right. It was not a conversation about how many.
Exactly strictly an ideological or philosophical you know, impetus for that, yep.
But divorced from any conversations totally, totally exactly. Yeah, and that really led to a lot of increase.
Yeah, and so there, I mean, there's I'm actually I mean, this is another thing that's going on, and I just signed a contract with the New York Times magazine to write about this entire issue and like really explore like through the lens of what happened to the boys into you know, our larger family as a result of it,
and then really the entire region. I mean, this really impacted that Foothills region hard because so many people had been had been increasingly nervous about the you know, the the behavioral changes in the lions that are just palpable to everybody. You can. I mean, you just people see them everywhere. They're jumping into people's backyards and taking dogs, they're breaking into chicken coops. They're totally blase about, you know,
just being seen in broad daylight. And it was certainly not that way when we were growing up around there.
Right, It's no longer this thing that if you spend enough time outside mm hmm or driving in like the twilight in certain areas, you get really lucky you might see one exactly.
But when we were kids, I mean, we knew when they were there. We knew guys who had hound kennels and who ran them, and we would hear lion scream from time to time down in the canyon behind our house. Everybody knew that they were around, but if somebody saw one in broad daylight, it would make the local newspaper because it was just such anomalous event.
Do you remember a few years ago? Can you find do you mind looking up what yurtis was? There was one summer a few years ago when Washington had its first documented mountain lion fatality. Yeah, and then Oregon had its first and ninety years and that happened the same summer. Yeah, And I was talking to a friend of mine who does a lot of work. He'd done a lot of depredation work for the state of Oregon yep. Twenty eighteen. He done a lot of depredation work for the state
of Oregon. And was to him, I'm like, how much does that just freak? Like how much is that it's freak coincidence? And how much of that is something different? And to paraphrase him, I mean we had a long conversation about it. His take was, there's a huge freak element, right, there's a huge freak element you can't discount, like in the same summer.
Right.
But he said also, like in my career, I have seen a major change in the management attitude around lions. Where it used to be one lion kind of came up against that human threshold. There was serious pushback, like you know, if the lion was too aggressive around livestock, was too blase around people, we would kill the lion.
Yeah, just too apt to be seen.
Yep. Yeah, And he said and since then it's been pushed and pushed him, push to not take action, to not take action. So he felt, as much as it's crazy than the same summer, we'd see that. Yeah, it aligns with what I'm seeing, which is a great reluctance
on the part of the state agencies. Yeah, for fear of public pushback, right, often coming from people who aren't dealing with them, For fear of published pushback of being too aggressive around depredation issues, too aggressive around hazing lions, too aggressive around taking any kind of control measure. Yeah, so he like wasn't shocked, right, did it happen?
Yeah? Well, when you break down even like the state in California is a ground zero for you know exactly what you're talking about, because the degree of like public sentiment that can be steered, you know, both by just
a sort of hyperbolic sensationalistic you know, media reportings. I mean, they'll report that there are an estimated four thy five hundred lions and the state of California, and people hear that raw number and they automatically are like, holy mackerel, they must be on the verge of extinction, which is not the case. I mean, the state of Montana has between five and seven thousand, right, and the State of Montana estimates that that is within twenty five percent of
the pre European contact number. So I mean, if you've got this apex predator, the just are not that that are territorial and there are not that many of them saturating as a rule a really large land space. But I mean in California, because you have you know again animal welfare and animal protectionist NGOs who are ideologically committed to a certain outcome, right, and they've got very deep pockets.
They're very well funded, and they're very able to manipulate the sort of you know, the media sensationalistic dimension of things to achieve ends through non scientific means and non official means. I mean, you put something on a ballot,
you can get enough. You know, people who are just probably perfectly well intentioned with the way that they vote, they're just they're just naive or you know, under educated, underinformed on what the you know, the actual boots on the ground situation is for others who live in more royal areas and actually have to deal with the fallout of restricting traditional management policies.
I hear that, you know, like people say, like uneducated or informed, but also just different. Yeah, just different, sure, a different set of like a.
Different different different values. It's different worldview, yeah for sure.
Yeah.
Now to get you know, come a little bit full circle here talking about you know what your buddy was observing. It was doing depredation work and Oregon I'm in contact with it. You know a bunch of people federal trappers and whatnot in California who are fighting a totally uphill
battle on that front. But if you look at in twenty twenty, the Department of Ficient Wildlife in California decide again and partially in reaction to public outcry over one of the celebrity lions, you know, the well known lions around you know, Santa Monica Mountains or whatever that was collared and you know, wound up being taken on a
depredation basis. Because of the hue and cry from that, the state Department Officient Wildlife decided to implement this universal three strikes depredation policy where the actual depredation language in one ballot won Measure one seventeen, which is what put this opened this Pandora's box in the first place, you know,
thirty five years ago. It does have reasonable depredation provisions in it where it basically says that if a livestock producer, pet owner, whatever can you know, can demonstrate that there was a single instance of depredation by a lion, the state is supposed to shoe a lethal shell issue language depredation permit to be able to you know, get a you know contract with the trapper or whatever to go
ahead and lethally pursue that animal. Well, they change that again because of I think just cosmetic reasons, like wanting to appear to a certain set of the California voting population. They changed that in two thy twenty to a universal three strikes policy, in which now a single landowner has to demonstrate that multiple incidents of depredation have occurred from the same lion before they will issue a lethal depredation permit.
So it's like the thing with the felons, like three strikes, like three felons, you know. Now, I don't know when that was fashionable. I remember that being coming a thing in Michigan. Yea, when I was growing up. Yeah, they had the okay, like your third felony, you're out.
Right, yeah, like it's a baseball up until then.
Yeah, just try to calm down.
Yeah yeah, so you've committed, that's enough.
Yeah. Yeah.
Let me just like close this point with this, because this is really critical. Between nineteen ninety five and twenty nineteen, there were a dozen lion attacks on humans in the state of California with no with one fatality. In two thousand and four, I believe a mountain biker in southern California, Orange County or right, I think so. Yeah, between twenty twenty and now after they changed that depredation permit policy, there have been nine attacks on humans, with Tailing representing
the single fatality out of that group. But I mean, if you think about that, you have a twenty five year period in which they're doing, you know, the more traditional prescription for depredation permits, and you get a dozen attacks literally the same year that that depredation policy change. Is that put into motion of four year nine attack tally on humans? Yeah? So I mean is it anecdotal, Yeah, to a degree, But is it like difficult to sort
of argue with them, you know math? I mean I don't think it is, especially when again, I mean the just the number of daylight sightings and livestock and pet depredations has just skyrocketed during the same period.
Yeah, it's in California, mounta lions kill mountain lions, vehicles kill mountain lions, and secondary rodenticide poisoning kills mountain lions.
And that's about it except for the playing that.
Well, a lot of landscaping golf courses in California, and so they use a lot of rodenticide, and then the foxes coyotes eat the squirrels that have died from rodenticide, and then the mountain lions knock those guys out.
Is that a thing that has the happen from long term exposure or is that a one Can that be a one and done deal?
It can be a one and done deal, but it's not going to be like the single factor from all the all the stuff I've read. I'm not an expert here, right, but it is it's a compounding condition because a rodenticide is an anti coagulant and so like also it's like how much is that cat getting from eating something that's eating something?
Yeah? Right, So there's another thing at play I think when it comes to California and public perception of predators, and it's it's for for expecting the public to have the kind of mental elasticity to understand that different places have different situations and to and to back out on that and use another example to illustrate what I'm saying on a broader scale, it would be that that elk Okay, yeah, elk have only been recovered or let's say elk only
exist on fourteen percent of their native range in the lower forty eight Wisconsin, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee. Like that was elk country. Oh yeah, everywhere was elk country.
There's buffalo country from.
The hunter, yeah, from the Yeah, there were western Minnesota. Okay, yeah, so you had the like you had eastern forests with elk, like and Daniel boone day the hunted elk. Yep, they're not there now. But you're able to have conversations about there being too many elk in Colorado coming from an agricultural perspective, and no one says, well, how could that
be true. They haven't been recovered in Tennessee, right, But you're able to say, well, because it's a different place and there's a different thing going on, and what's happening
in one place isn't happening in another place. So I think that when they had the the when they all that, that that excitement for years with the guy that got the picture of the lion by the Hollywood sign, and it was just this lion that was you know, isolated and boxed in by highways, and there was this big, like outpouring of empathy for this cat living in this
unexpected landscape. Socially isolated, soul, full of risk. Right. You hear that, and hear that, hear that, and it creates in your head a image of something that is desperately imperiled, and then that's in your head, and then it becomes hard to understand that you can go a few hundred miles away into a different range of hills, a different mountain range, and have a completely different situation on the ground.
Sure, and along with that, I mean the you know, the more urban and suburb urban population down there, they're assuming that the entire state. It probably unconsciously, but there's there's a presumption that the entire state looks like they're swimming pool and you know, yard fans six houses to
an acre southern California track development. But it doesn't. I mean, the the rural foothills where we're from are still I mean, there's so much of that is literally undevelopable just because of the geographic nature of the terrain.
And then the brush situation in California, just like we talked about the poison oak, you can hide a lot of animals.
In that stuff.
Oh absolutely, just are not going to get seen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I recently did the drive from uh, Sacramento to over by Fort Bragg.
Yeah, the Russian River area, dude, unbelievable.
I mean just the country in there and the ship that you would not want to I mean not not want to, but it would be like hard stuff to go through.
Oh, totally. I mean even if you go down your country, go down like Highway one by like big sur or go the whole state is Yes, there were huge dense population zones, but it is a massive state with a lot of a very wild land in it. Still, Yeah, for sure.
Why how how comfortable are you talking about the day you and your brother were attacked?
Uh? I think I'd be fine talking about it.
Can you tell me what, uh kind of how the morning went whatever, Like what you guys, what your plan was, what you guys did? Yes, So how it came to be that you decided to go out with your brother?
Like, well, we were just sitting at home board and so I asked them if you wanted to go, and so we both decided just to go try a new spot. So we drove up there and there was a gated for a service road, so I just pulled off the side and we just decided to walk that road.
Had you seen other folks around?
There was one one other car pretty close to us because there was like a walking trail that they were stopped at, and then but we pulled up past them.
Were you doing the classic Hunters mental gymnastics of like, is that somebody looking for sheds that's parked at the hiking trail or is that some old lady walking her poodle?
Mm?
I don't know. I don't care. I know what Cal's saying because I have the problem. I could be out doing the most esoteric thing on the planet, like I could be. Let's say I wanted to find a railroad spike for some reason, and I see a car park I'm like some of the bitches looking for ver, Like every car is doing what I'm trying to do in my head.
Beat me too, Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
Sons of bitches are looking for more else.
Yeah, anxiety walking their dog.
Yeah.
So you guys get parked and you start walking it up the for a service road.
Yeah.
Then we get like one hundred and fifty yards away from my car and I'm looking up to the left because the right side of the road is just steep, so I wasn't looking down there so as I'm looking to my left, I see something like out of the corner of my eye come up from the steep side up onto the road. At first, I just thought it was a dog. That was the first thing that came
to mind. And then that's when I turned and looked and realizing, and so I told my brother to look, and but it only it came up like ten yards away from us.
And you feel like you're one hundred and fifty yards from the car from where you parked further from the gate.
Yeah, we were walking for like five minutes, like yeah, what time of day? Mmm, like one one thirty, just midday, but.
The heat of the day, I would say it like that.
So yeah, so I look telling my brother to look. He looks, and then so we both just start putting our arms up and yelling at it. But it doesn't care at all. It just looks calm, and it's just
walking towards us slowly. And so we're backpedaling down the road, which the line was above us because it was the road was heading down, and so it's just walking towards us, and the only thing I could think of is to throw my backpack at it, because I had a backpack on, so I sling that off, throw it at it, and it hits the left side of its face, but it kind of like it didn't even really flinch, like it just closed that left eye. And then the backpack hit it in the left side of the face and then
just skimmed across its body. But it didn't care. It just kept walking at us.
And then were you guys still yelling or able to stay calm or hmm?
At that point it was I guess like the adrenaline was kicking in.
This is so bizarre, so bizarre, middle of the day, one hundred and fifty yards from the truck. I've called in two kats in the last two turkey out and sees in like places where I really had to walk in. Yeah, and both of those cats were more than happy to get the hell out of there.
When I stood up and looked at.
Them, once they made looked made eye contact, those cats were gone. Yeah, So hitting it in the face with anything is just insane.
And it didn't care. And then so yeah, my brother's like I'm on the left side of the road, he's on the right, but he's a little bit behind me, and it's like me and the line are just locked eyes with each other, and so it's just walking towards me. But I didn't want to run, so we're just we start to speed up, back pedaling, and there's a there was a stick in the road laying sideways, and so I'm back pedaling and I start to speed up and then I step on that and my foot slips out
from under me, so I fall down. But at that point, the lion's already like, I don't know, six or seven yards in front of me. So I fall and then I just remember the line comes around my left side, and then that's when it bites me. So I kind of put my arms up. And then after it bites, I grab it and I flip it over and I get on top of it, and I like have my arms on its neck pushing it down. I imagine it doesn't like that, no, so then it starts clawing at me.
It is it big, the lion? Yeah?
Uh, it seemed big to me, but it was what like ninety pounds?
Yeah, I mean I think it was. It was like a juvenile mail basically probably approximate little a little over like a half the size that they can't actually get to yeah, so.
Yeah, so I flip it over, I get on top of it, and then that's when it starts clawing me, so I kind of release my grip a little bit so it manages to spin out from under me. And then but it all happened so fast to where my brother couldn't really even do anything to help me. So he was still standing behind me to my right. So when the lion got up and spun around, like, my
brother was right there. So then the lion ran at him, jumped up on his back legs, took him down, but it just went straight for his neck, so there wasn't much he could do. And then so I get up and like, as that's happening, I remember, like I just stand there in the road and I touched my face and look because it felt like a dream, like didn't It was weird, So I kind of had to I like told myself, like, this is actually happening, and so I have to, like I like snap back into it.
And then that's when I went for my brother. So I just grabbed the lion and kind of tug a few times, but that's all I really did. But I couldn't get it to let go and at that point, I was feeling kind of weak because I had been losing a lot of blood.
And then.
So after I tried tugging, can't get it to get off of him, trying to think of what to do, and all I can think of is my car, because I know that they're scared of vehicles. So at that point, well, the reason I did that is because the whole time my brother had his arms like I could see. I could never see his face because the line was in between me and my brother's face, but I could see
his arms doing something up here. But as time went on and they ended up like almost off the side of the hill, but I could see that by that point his arms were just like limp now, not holding yeah, not holding it anymore, and he wasn't moving, So I pretty much I just knew there was like nothing else I could really do. So that's when I thought of the car. So I reached for my phone to call nine one one, and my phone's down in my pocket.
So I'm looking around from my phone and I find it in the middle of the road, so I grab it and then I head back to my car. I'm jogging to my car, and I pulled my shirt off to hold on my face stop the blood, and then A said, I'm trying to dial nine one one, Like the blood kept dripping on my phone so it wasn't typing. So eventually I got that off and got it to work. So I as I'm running to my car, I'm on the phone with nine one one, and then make it to my car and then I have to drive around
the locked gate. So I'm driving through like small trees and rocks, and then I get onto the road make my way down there. But by the time I drove down there, they were both gone. So I flip around and I'm looking out the left side out the window. I'm looking down the hill.
But sorry, so your brother and the cat are no longer on the road. Yeah, and but you have a good idea where it all happened. Your backpacks laying there or something.
Backpack was in the middle of the road. Yeah, and I knew right where it had happened. But so yeah, So I so I'm looking out the window down the hill, but I still don't see anything. So then I just asked what I should do to the dispatcher, and so I just went I drove to the backside of the gate, and I just parked there and waited for someone to show up.
Did they have any sense of what you were talking about when you called? I mean, did they have any like did it seem like an inform Probably not like an informed opinion about this?
Well, what do you mean?
I probably had never dealt like the dispatch. Oh yeah, no idea? What yeah, no idea how to deal with someone?
Yeah, no idea.
So it was probably just okay, stay calm, somebody's going to be there type of stuff. M m.
Yeah.
Like it wasn't really helping much by telling me what to do.
But did you have to direct then when they came? Did you take someone to the area?
No, I didn't take them, but it was like a star volunteer car was the first car that showed up, and they had a dog and a pistol, and so they just came up to me and I told them right where to go. I said, like you'd see the backpack in the road, and then so they went down there and then I was just waiting still.
Then they shot the lion. No, No, that was later.
That was later on.
Yeah.
I don't even know if that person saw it, because it had it had drag tailing quite a ways down that hill.
Yeah.
The Star volunteers are like a community watch type, you know, volunteer outfit. They're They're really not like L A O or right.
Yeah, that's horrifying.
Man, Wow, it sucked.
Yeah.
I don't know, like you know how much this is like within the protocol of this. But last night why It talked to the first responding paramedic for the first time or two nights ago, I guess, but he said, wyat pictures from the field of what whyatts of his injuries out there and which I mean I looked at
him last night. I mean, do you feel comfortable showing those to these guys just so, because I mean it really is highly illustrative of exactly how like crazy this whole thing was, of your of your injuries of me.
Yeah, do you remember because you have some some scars on your face. I assume that's from the cat. Was that when he first whacked you, like right when you fell or was that from clawing when you got on top of the cat or do you remember it all?
I remember, No, it was just the first It only bit me once, and that's what the scars are from.
Oh, so that that's teeth. Yeah, wow, that's wild.
Yeah, went like through my nose well.
Before we go on. Man, it's horrifying. It is brutal, and I'm so sorry you and the family had to.
Go through this.
Thank you.
Yeah, it's all I can think about. Man, that's very, very hard.
But if you guys want to see the pictures.
Yeah, I guess that's the other thing that it kind of demonstrates has hold brilliant. The plastic surgeon who worked on him was.
And there's one more picture you can scroll.
So did you how long roughly how long before any any sort of emergency services chill up?
There was some deputies who showed up within like fifteen minutes, i'd say, and then the medic came shortly after, like twenty minutes. It took them to get there.
But but I imagine even with the deputies there, it was probably just up to you to keep holding your shirt to your face.
Yeah, they didn't really help.
I'm sure they didn't want much to do with it.
Yeah.
Yeah, But as soon as the medic got there, though, then they started helping.
Was your brother? Was your brother pronounced dead on the scene.
No, we didn't find out till that night in the hospital. It was pretty late when we found out, right.
But earlier.
The share the deputies and the sheriff had figured it out right before we knew.
Oh so yeah, well there was nothing they could do to try to help them. I mean he was no, he was dead when they found him.
Yeah, if you had to guess from the time you saw that mountain lion till the time you know, you had to go back to the truck, Like, was that like within a few minutes.
Yeah, like just like a couple of minutes. Yeah, it was really fast, gotcha. Yeah.
Man, this is gonna be like a dumb question because I mean this will you already know this? This is good, This is will be the defining experience of your life. But you're already aware of this, right Yeah, it never goes away, You'll it'll impact you in all manner of ways for as long as you're on earth.
Right.
Yeah, So, just like looking at a small detail that do you do you've like, do you feel this will transform your kind of like your relationship with with nature? Do you still feel drawn to go out to go hunting? Do you still feel drawn to be around animals or did it sort of kill that in you.
No, I actually went turkey hunting like just a couple of weeks after it had happened in Gotlin. So I still feel the same about hunting and all that stuff.
Mm hmm.
So yeah, I didn't really have an effect on going out.
What are what are the things like from a daily perspective? What are the things you kind of remember most or will miss most about your brother? Mmmm?
Just hanging out because we always shared a room together, so now it's just kind of empty. I guess you guys shared a room at the time. Yeah, yeah, we've shared a room like our whole life.
Do you feel a different when you're out turkey hunting? Do you feel a different fear in the woods?
Yeah, it's I'm definitely a lot more scared being out there, but when I'm with people, I'm fine.
But yeah, Aaron, how is this Has this changed your desire to be out your relationship with being out a little bit?
I didn't turkey hunt at all last spring season, which is super weird. Yeah, usually we hunt every single day of the entire season, but I didn't hunt at all. I went with Wyatt just a handful of times, just to go with him to try to get him one, but just feels totally different. Constantly looking over my shoulder and it's kind of scary.
Yeah, you know, do you feel that you'll find your way back in it in time.
Yeah, It's just this happened right before Turkey season open, so's like.
It was pretty raw.
Yeah, I didn't have any motivation to go hunting of course.
Yeah. So man, I'm sorry that happened you guys man. Thanks, Yeah, I came picture, uh having that happened to a brother. Do you have all the siblings.
I have a half sister, but I was calling my sister. She cool, Yeah, that's good.
You passed the task.
Good job.
Yeah, it's one of it's one of those things that you know, it's like, oh that that'll never that that kind of stuff would never happen to us, right, Yeah, you know, we're we're out in the field all the time, and you know, I have had experiences that are definitely scary.
But like, for instance, my buddy, I'm not going to mention his name, but a couple of years ago had a mountain lion while he was el hunting, called it in and it was about ten yards from him, staring at him for a few minutes, he threw sticks at it, yelled at it, shot an arrow over its back, and it just continued to stay there. So eventually he did have to shoot it. But you know, he was like lucky in that situation. You know, you just never know.
Yeah, oh yeah, I mean he's like he's out there with the intent to kill something much bigger than he is already.
And he had a traditional bow that I built him, you know, so that cat decided he wanted to.
So you knew the bow was capable, is what you were saying.
Yeah, yeah, that's but I mean, it's just it's just crazy. It's unbelievable.
Well, this situation broad daylight, there's two of you, there's one cat. Like it just it does not make any conventional sense from all my time in the woods.
It's just historically just kind of unprecedented.
Hitting it with something.
Yeah, yeah, it's just.
How when when you run it through in your head, when you like, how much does it feel to you like what happened to you was just such a freak occurrence, you know what I mean, Like it was it was just something that could never happen again, should have never happened? How and how much of you, does it feel like it was a like a like an inevitability or the result of broader things going on in your area?
Uh? Well, yeah, I just never even thought that would ever happen.
Really, Yeah, So you don't you weren't You didn't walk around prior to this with a sort of an awareness of fear of worry about mountain lions in your area.
No, I mean yeah, I always had the fear of them because I knew they were there. But I also always had a gun on me, But in that situation, I didn't.
So was that that road that was one hundred and fifty miles or sorry, one hundred and fifty yards away? Was that a busy traffick road or no?
No, it was just the old forest Service road sor service road and it was behind a lockgate.
Oh no, no, sorry, the mainstam Steve's referring to. I think, like, how much traffic's on the road that connected to the forest service road that you guys hiked. It's still not real.
Still not very much, no, but very little?
Yeah, well kind of Oh sorry.
I was gonna say, yeah, I think where the attack happened is within like less than a mile from some residential housing. Yeah, and so it's not super like off the beaten Path or in the boondogspoon Ducks.
There's a little.
Development.
Yeah, there's houses back there, right on the edge of private where it meets for service. So, but it's the same lion that you said, the lady with the girls on the bikes.
Yeah, I mean I went down to California within four or five days after this happened, just to help these guys out. And while it was down there, it was you know, Plasterville, California is our hometown. They used to call it Hangtown. It was like, you know, ground zero for the gold Rush. Sitting in this little cafe and talking to the waitress and it's somehow, I mean, it became a parent to her that, you know, we were
the family that this happened to. And she told us, you know, my parents lived less than a mile from where that happened to the boys. And she said, I can't even tell you the number of times I've sent my eight and ten year old girls down that road on their bicycles by themselves, just to go for a
bike ride. Yeah, she said, now I can't do that anymore. Well, I mean the County trapper, in conjunction with the County Sheriff's apartment, will wound up killing two more full grown toms within the city limits within two to three weeks after the attack on the boys, and both of them were within one hundred yards of an elementary school in broad daylight on a paved hiking trail. We're just off of a paved hiking trail, and you know, the level of awareness was so high in the entire area at
that point. I mean, they went back and forth with the state, you know, what do we do? What do we do? And the Lions had both treed and sort of different circumstances on taking each one, but ultimately they euthanized them. You know, the county sheriff just ultimately made the call and said, I have to regard these things as as a safety, you know, public safety issue.
Has there been any like, was that cat territorial? Was it famished? You know, was it hungary? Any sort of theories done on that.
Yeah, I mean people have kind of like thrown it. But again, because of the just extraordinary anomaly of this, I mean, there's really no standard of comparison for this particular incident. The cat was healthy. It did not have rabies. They established that why it initially had to go through like preliminary rabies you know, medications, but they determined ultimately that it did not have rabies. They I believe they
said its stomach was empty. But other people have you know, who understand lying behavior, wildlife biologists and whatnot, have also said, well, it wasn't really acting predatory per se, more like territorial, you know, or maybe because it was a juvenile cat, it really didn't know what it was doing. It was just a young, aggressive male and.
He knows he's not wanted in all these other places, right because of adult males. Yeah, well, they had had predation on sheep and goats and right in that same you know, general area, within the prior couple of weeks. So there's also speculation of this was the same cat doing that. Although they are seeing so many lions, and they're seeing lions that are you know, even like as many as four at one time, which is also really
bizarre and anomalous. Usually, I mean, if you see two, it's usually a mom and a kitten, or if you see three, it's a mom and twins. But to see four together is also sort of unprecedented a little bit. And a lot of this stuff is documented on like phones and ring cameras and you know, trail cameras. And I couldn't remember the name of the college, so I had to look it up. But Pepperdine. They're in the
Santa Monica Mountains. Yeah, was that last year or two years ago that they were shutting down the campus because of mountain lion activity? Yeah, on camp And this is a fancy pants school.
Oh big time. Yeah, that's like West Coast Ivy League level. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, I mean I guess that's
the other thing I should kind of note here. I mean, this happened in the foothills, and you know that that you know, gold Rush Foothills region is a real hotspot, but honestly, it's all over the state that the stuff is happening, like just increased lion presence in you know, drastically increased depredation, problems with livestock or pets, and then you know, since twenty twenty, a real increase in attacks on humans. Almost all of them have been kids under
the age of like eight. And the reason none of them were fatal is because you know, it was typically like on the periphery of a like a park setting or something where there were a bunch of adults around, who could you know, present enough of a you know, enough of the presence. Yeah, just a presence, you know. And and the cats ultimately didn't kill any of these kids. So that's another reason why this one is so strange.
You know, it's most of the attacks are on juveniles, not on a pair of adult sized males.
Would it take a it would take an act of God for California to reinstate lion hunting right.
Well, they can't because because it was passed on a popular ballot measure, the only way to undo that is through a secondary popular ballot measure. So what the state can do, and whether it'll be willing to or not, is I mean, the first thing that they could do immediately, just by internal policy is returned to the original provision
for issuing lethal depredation permits. They can do that. There might also especially after that study that Bart George did in Washington, the Holland hazing study to determine the effectiveness.
No, he's publishing on that soon, I know, and I've.
Been in communication with him also been in communication with the guy who used to be the lead predator biologist for California for seven years. He now works for Wyoming. His name's Justin Dellinger, and he's like legit wildlife biologists PhD North America, totally like very much and adherent to the North American model in terms of his own, you know, personal philosophy for how you go about doing this stuff.
But he also grew up in western North Carolina in a hound hunting family, and so he was hired by the state in twenty twelve or so, I believe, and for what he did for seven years was go all around the state, almost every county in California, tree lions in Colera. I'm trying to put a data set together. So he told me on the phone that he has
since been sort of pressure. He was pressured to leave his position because his, you know, his management philosophy was so at odds with what the President administration's you know, department is really you know, wanting to the direction that
they would like to go or are going. So at any rate, I talked to Dellinger and he told me that he tried to design a very similar study to what Bart George did in Washington, you know, just to mathematically, quantitatively, you know, scientifically, demonstrate the effectiveness of kind of preliminary hound hazing on behavioral conditioning for lines to keep them away from you just make them more evasive, the evasive as they used to be when you know there was
consistent hound pressure put on them. So, I mean, these guys who run hounds and understand you know, the psychology if you will of that, you know, apex predatory, they already know that, Like this is what works. It's not necessarily you know, listing them as a game animal and killing a sustainable number every year. What really works is when we get to like pursuit train our dogs on
these things and tree and freeum. So at any rate, justin Dellinger put together he told me a very similar study and was about to get it green lighted and funded in the Mountain Lion Foundation, which is you know, primary NGO down there that's responsible for a lot of the ballot measure and whatnot. In first place, they caught wind of it and they were able to put enough pressure on the State Department of Fishing Wildlife to have them pull the plug on his study. So long, I
mean a big roundabout way of saying. They are like myriad complexities to this in terms of like how do we get some meaningful management protocols back in place in that region.
I want to explain to folks real quick. When we're talking about work Bark George was doing with.
Cattspell tribe, yes, north of Spokane.
So he was working on this project where they have lions that are on the sort of suburban rural interfaith and they have collars on them so they can tell where the lion is at any given time, and they'll go and play audio of human voices.
Much of it was your voice, I believe. Yeah.
They used yeah for a long time. I don't know if he still does. They use the Mediator podcast. They play the podcast out loud, and then they run the lion with dogs and give it a bad experience to get intrigued, right, and trying to see if you to what degree, what degree to being chased and I don't know if they paintballed them or something like that or
whatever they would do to them. If you could get if you could monitor an individual lion's behavior and see if it getting bad experiences when exposed to human voices, would make it less wanting to be around human voices and then watch how it would behave in the presence of human voices.
Yeah, once they have, they're.
Public they're publishing their research about is it possible. Basically they're trying they were trying to set out to validate or refute the assumption that negative experiences will condition lions to stay away from yards.
And people, right, so like, And they repeated the same process multiple times with this established set of lions that they had collared, and what they basically were able to do was track at what point, at what range the lion would decide it just wanted to get out of dodge and not encounter people. And like initially, like in the like say, the first encounter, these guys were able to get within I mean feet literally maybe.
Him saying, get fifteen feet totally.
Totally, and they're just you know, and they're bo you can tell they're both just like, I'm not going any farther, but that thing's right in there. So then they tree that lion. They then call in the houndsman, he trees the lion. Well, they go out again. A couple of weeks later, pinpoint the same lion through the you know, telemetry and do the exact same exercise again. They approach the lion while and this time the lion is much less inclined to let it get twenty feet from it.
So they do this exercise a few different times, and by the end of it, the lions are like one hundred yards away. They hear a human voice and they're just like, we're out the back door. So yeah, it's really I mean, that particular episode that you honest did is really fascinating and I've sent it to a lot of people just to try to, you know, get people to understand what the missing link and the management chain is here.
Bill. What uh what kind of service did you have for your brother? Have you guys had a service room?
Well, yeah, celebration of a life mm hmm.
It was big.
Yeah, a lot of people from the town a ton yeah.
Play some Metallica.
Was there.
Yeah. I had a lot of music that Taylor liked.
Yeah, yeah, yep. Man, I appreciate you coming out and talking to us.
Yeah.
Is there anything you want to add?
What? Mm hmmm, I don't think so.
No, anything you want to add.
I can't think of anything.
Nothing. We didn't get to that feels important, Malcolm, what do you.
Think, Well, I mean, I guess there are two sort of two prongs to this really. I mean, there's the personal family part of it. But then it's also because we've been involved in outdoor stuff, you know, our entire lives and have had to sort of observe the management deficiencies that have led to you know, an array of things in California. It's not just strictly limited to lions. I mean, there's a lot of problems with bears down there. They have problems with beer, with beavers. They you know,
they completely outlawed trapping again. You know, I don't know if that was a popular ballot measure, if that was an actual like legislative you know, endeavor or what. But just having observed what happens when you stray from you know, these established management protocols that were invented by geniuses one hundred and twenty five years ago and responsible for restoring the pronghorn antelope and bringing back you know, Canada geese maybe a little too much, you know, preserving the last
of the American bison. I mean, and when you see that whole that whole successful model just jettisoned and the immediate like after effects of it culminating in something like what happened to the boys. We all just got really committed to the idea of attempting to you know, stop
the domino effect from going you know further. Like now we're you know, Colorado is now staring down you know, a very similar ballot initiative, and this happened to happen in advance of that, and we're just hoping that you know, like appearances like this or the writing the I'm about to do about it, will you know, reach multiple audiences and lay out a logical case for why it simply does not make sense to see wildlife management to public sentiment,
and you know, hope that we don't have to that California, Oregon, and Washington remain the only ones that we have to actually backtrack on and undo, so that nobody else going forward has to get even deeper into the muck of you know, worst case scenario land.
I find that on some of these bills and some of these bailed initiatives and other you know, congressional activities, there's a real lack of crystal ball. Oh yeah, if you go back to the Wild Horse and Burrow Protection Act, Right, yep, no one at that time could have ever imagined.
No, it's true.
Right, it was like there's sort of this fading population of wildhorses and burrows either way, and they're like, we should do something to permanently, right protect them, having no idea that in decades to come you'd be creating a conservation and humane animal treatment disaster.
Totally exactly. Yeah, it's the law of unintended consequence.
So doing these doing these really radical, impossible to reverse policy changes which sort of like codifies a certain management strategy and perpetuity strips agencies and citizens of any ability to have like adaptive management. When something's in the hands of game commissions and state agencies, they're able to take this really nuance not only year to year, but oftentimes throughout the year, constantly evolving changing needs. Do you know
what I mean? Like lion populations get kind of alarmingly low, Well, there's steps we can take to bring them up. We're getting a lot of conflict, there's steps we can take to mitigate conflict. And they're able to go in and surgically administer something like meaning a lack of animals in Los Angeles does not mean a lack of animals north of Sacramento. So let's do what's necessary there, and we'll
do what's necessary here, and we'll be fluid. And all of a sudden, you make it that it's a one size fits all, sledgehammer approach to management, and me saying this isn't going to change the perspective of anyone who would like to see these these these these like writ large edicts about wildlife management. They know what they're playing, right, they know what they're playing. They like, they're not interested in management. They're not interested in the concerns of rural peoples.
They're not interested in the concerns of agricultural people, right right, Like it doesn't cost them anything to have no management.
Man, God, I mean, in a way, they're not even interested in the concerns of other animal protectionists, you know organizations, if they're more of a conservationists bent rather than like
an outright you know, animal rights bent. And the easy way to demonstrate that in California is the Sierra Nevada bighorned cheap population is crashing down in its southern range, and the biologists who work with that population down there are like legit biologists and they're like lieon depredation on these wild sheep is the number one contributor to the crash that's had and that's an endangered species listed animal.
So well, when the when I was down in the Santa Monica Mountains probably five years ago, I got to run around with a state mountain lion biologist and attempt live trap mounta lions down there. Super fun, super cool. This guy's very invested in mount lions and really that specific population. Some of the stuff that we mentioned, but the statewide ban on foothold traps in California, right, we were packing around giant cage traps, live animal cage traps
for something the size of a mountain lion. So this guy could do research to benefit mount lions.
They didn't put a research component into that band. They didn't. They didn't.
We talked a lot about that really.
Yeah, so there is a research component in one point seventeen relative to hound pursuit, which is one thing that I really hope and.
That's what this guy was like, he's never hunted mount lions, Yeah, but because he gets to work with houndsman to trap mounta lions, particularly like the nuisance ones, so they'll go in dartham, collar him, relocate him sometimes stuff like that. He was like, yeah, I don't care if he kills some mountain lions. You know, these guys seem great, you know, yeah, yeah, And then that is something that we should should ask, like why, what are your thoughts on on mountain lions?
Do you feel like you'd add him to the hunt list if you had had the chance. Do you think they should all go away?
Where'd youammed up?
I don't think they should all go away, but I think you should be able to hunt him or at least do something to bring the population down, I guess, But I don't think they should fully go away.
Mm hmm.
That's how I think about it.
That's a mature that seems pretty level headed for in your situation. That's a mature perspective, I'd say, yeah.
But if you bring up Colorado like we talked about, right, Like, guy gets swatted while he's sitting in his hot guy gets attacked on his front porch, kid gets attacked in the backyard, lots and lots of dogs, all within the last four years, right and still right now, there's a citizens initiative to ban lion hunting completely.
Yep.
Right, So it's like this type of stuff, this like horrible tragedy that you and your family have had to go through, Like it doesn't move the needle apparently.
Right, Well, I think it could, but it's going to do that with the sort of like middle of the road fence sitters who maybe are not don't have particularly strong feelings about it one way or another, but could be pretty easily swayed by an emotional appeal to them and the animal you know, animal rights and goos are really adept at producing what I would refer to as straight up propaganda to appeal to you know, and otherwise generally just not particularly well informed voting, you know, public.
And that's where I think we have an opportunity here and what I'm attempting to do by again writing about it for something like The New York Times magazine, because that's going to reach a readership that otherwise really wouldn't get a well laid out, you know, clarification on what the actual stakes are if you go down this.
World may not be layered in the mailbox with Bugle and bu exactly exactly.
I mean, I mean, let's not calves. I mean to a degree. I mean this is, you know, sort of preaching to the converted right, and I'm glad we have the opportunity to do that because you probably knew as many people in the Zoula back in the day that I did. Who you know, they go there and they you know, enroll in the environmental studies program or whatever, and before you know it, they're interested in ungulate hunting. But they still just can't wrap their heads around you know,
predator hunting while you know, lion hunting, bear hunting. And I remember having this argument with people in the late nineties, you know, after having watched what happened around northern California even in that era with the increased lion presence once they prohibited hound pursuit from houndsman. So this has been a long time coming. It's been a very long road. It just happened to strangely land in this family.
Yeah, how long is the article you're working on gonna be?
I pitched it as five to seven thousand words and they came back at four thousand words. But I have a feeling that that might wind up being kind of elastic once I get into it, because there are so many different layers of complexity to this.
Well, that's a lot of complexity. Yeah, that's good chunk. That's good chunk of writing.
Mm hmmm.
And people, uh, people will find it the New York Times magazine.
Right, Yeah, it's the magazine that's put it. It's somewhat independent, as I understand it, from the actual print newspaper, but you know it's a yeah, it's on a par with you know, Harper's or The Atlantic or The New York or whatever. It's kind of that type of you know, high toned think piece sort of.
Yeah. So well, the Brooks family, thank you, man. I appreciate you coming on to talk about this.
Thanks for having us.
A tragedy and I think an important issue for people who are interested in and wildlife and natural resources in America and how those questions and policies we make have ways of coming around and impact and people's lives and and and thinking through decisions we make in a way that gives us the ability to stay fluid and adaptive. So I appreciate you coming on, man. Yeah, thanks, thank you. What Yeah, thank you appreciate it.
Buddy, Thank you, Steve. Really yeah, I really appreciate what you're doing, appreciate the opportunity, and I knew that this would be a terrific way for Wyatt to tell his story to a community that cares about him.
Oh, definitely, thank you man. Yep h