00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, okay, honest, I want to do uh, like a war game exercise. Yeah, where like we act like I die like I'm dead and you gotta carry on the show, all right, But my dying words are um, I know that Spencer wanted to mention something and I had a lot of things to talk about. That's my dying words. And then Austin you jump in, uh and start out and you jump in here you are you not have to to start the show. Just start the show. Let me see. I just want to see what would happen. So all right, I'm dead. Damn guys, you believe that he seemed a pretty healthy fella, see, but that you're gonna start the show by small talking. You're not gonna come in like small talking. He just died. I can't just pass that by, okay, don't you think? But you haven't brought you haven't brought listeners up to speed. If if I killed over, wouldn't you mention it? Not? If it would interfere with the flow, I think they'd be I think they'd be interested. What do you think killed Steve and his age is probably her attack on that that's not gonna be what it is. Well, I guess that this is the number one killer now, Guys in the forties dropped dead sometimes her attacks. Oh yeah, I saw that yesday. Traumatized my kids. Well, got running errands to go to the hardware store, all these ambulances, some dude laying off in the grass along the sidewalk look dead and dead. Pat Maybe you'll since you're since you're a writer, maybe you'll write his obituary for us. That's a good pivot. Hold on, I'm not done yet. But before you get to thinking about that, and since you're here because you had a whole bunch of stuff to talk about, we also have with a Spencer new Heart who had one top topic in particular that he wanted to bring up. What was that? It is a call back to the wolf episode you guys did a few weeks ago where it was kind of brought up in passing but discussing why dear uh shed their antlers, Like we know it's photo period in testosterone, but the bigger reason as to like why evolutionary they did that? Okay, so why evolutionary? For evolutionary reasons do dear lose their antlers? So can I point out here we can't know, Yes, I was going to bring that up. Oh good, go ahead. So there's like three um trains of thought. None of them can be proven, none of them are widely accepted. Really, Uh, they're just all kind of kicked around the big why in the world when you just want them all the time? Right, Like like if you look at a bison or a sheep, why don't why did endear end up doing the same thing and just keeping those all the time their headgear all the time? Now, the first two reasons are pretty simple and they're probably the most widely accepted, But the first reason would be, uh, the energy cost it is to keep those things. If you're like a big moose and you've got giant panels on your head or a big white tail, and the purpose of those antlers is for breeding, Um, why do you need them? In January, February, March, April. The rest of the time of year, there's no breeding being done, so you don't need those antlers, so they just shed them. I don't know about that. Yeah, yeah, I'm just throwing them out there. So that's the first one, and I would guess that that is like the most widely accepted one. It's just pretty simple. But then it doesn't really explain like why bison and sheep and animals like that do keep your head gear. So do you any thoughts on that one? If they kept that, it would have to be living right, right, because the antlers like living and then like kind of dies. Right. If they kept that, it has to be living because it's gonna need to continue to grow, So there's gonna be blood flowing there. And I could see it being an enormous heat loss. They think that the sheep loses a lot of heat, really yeah, through its uninsulated horn, you know, through horn coore. I could see it being a lot of heat loss if that was alive. The energy thing though, in and of itself, I mean, how much more how much energy take to keep growing the sun's bitches? Oh yeah, I'd be like, I can't maintain my house, so I just burn it down and rebuild it every year. So yeah, go on. So that kind of brings you to point to you, uh, another theories that they shed their antlers so they always have a fresh set for the next fall. So during the rut, uh, we can be as specific as a white tail in October November. Uh, they're battling it out with other bucks. Uh. You'll see it as dramatic as losing like an entire main beam. Where come the end of November, you'll see bucks walking around with broken off times, broken brow times. Uh. Entire main beams lost that kind of thing. So they adjusted to that by having these broken antlers every fall to just dropping them and growing new ones. Yeah, is there any Is there any aquatic? Is there any fish or anything that grows a weapon and drops the weapon? Not that more of it's so like when you think about like that, it's so weird. Maybe thing that like grows a weapon and then drops the weapon drops it. Maybe this is helpful Like for thinking about this too, is that it's believed h dear grew antlers in place of tusks, like the most primitive deer have tusks, rather than that they got antlers instead. So maybe that like helps form your opinion of why they do this. Yeah, um, there's another one. Still, there's another one, And they say I'm gonna save mine because I don't want to do in minds like totally unfounded, but I'm gonna save mine. Ah, so this is my favorite one, but it's probably um like the least widely accepted. This is like you typed in the truth about antlers. Oh nothing, just running. This is the inside Joe. This is like a deep dark web answer. But we had a guy, we used to work with, a guy that always had these wild explanations for everything and conspiracy theories, and we felt that when he does internet searches that he must always write the truth about in order to get the kind of like he had, the kind of information that seems like it would be that would come up if you wrote like the truth about you know, like imagine if you're studying capitalism and then you wrote in the truth about capitalism. Do you feel that you would get the same search results as if you wrote in what is capitalism? Probably not. No, you're making me think of these magazine blurbs. I used to write the truth about the rut, you know, Oh exactly, how can I make this sound of the truth about hunting scrapes? Okay? Number three? So and and this is kind of deep, right. This is like when you talked about how mule deer came to be that time, and you're like, it's just a little bit too uh like cute and tidy to actually almost be that believable, being that deer guts separated by the glaciers. Glaciers were gone, and then black tails and white ties came together and made me able to right, it's kind of like that, And I think your hybridization event, yes, and your comment about that was like, it's it's just a little bit too tidy and cute. So the third theory is that um bucks dropped their antlers in the winter so they can then mimic a dough because otherwise predators like wolves, mountain lions, bears, coyotes, once snow was on the ground and it is post rut, they would recognize those bucks is being malnourished individuals and they would seek them out and kill more bucks than they would otherwise. So to combat that, deer then started losing their antlers to look more like does and not have these very obvious signs saying I am a weakened animal. Get me. Yeah, okay, I don't know. Are you familiar with the um Stephen Jay Gould, he wrote a lot about genetics, No is the turkey named after him? No? No, he has the thing where he's like, why is bark brown? Right? Right? Is bark brown because it's advantageous to have brown bark? Or is bark brown because it just happens to be brown? Maybe it's advantageous to have bark, it's advantageous to have a protective cover, and just so happens that protective covers such as bark tend to be brown, and there's nothing driving the brownness. But we'd look and be like, why is it brown? And then we'd be like, ah, I think it's brown because it's a camouflage, or I think it's brown, but it's just maybe there are advantages to being brown, but that's not the one pressure. It doesn't make any sense. Unny, So I don't know. I don't know. Uh so you're saying, I accept all these are all great things. I just don't know enough about like the early forms, you know, like the early like like what was the first thing that started to have a thing that shed What did it look like with the circumstances that it lived under? Did it live? Did the first served that was that began shedding? An antler? The first thing that he emerged as a servant and it began shedding an antler. Was it dealing with wolves? What were what was it dealing with in predation terms? What would like like, Yeah, so when there's a man that knows the man that would have a really good sense, Yeah, we're gonna have him on in here in the upcoming after a man named Yeah, Doug Emlyn, you're welcome to come. I listen. I like everything you're throwing. I like them all. Yeah. Uh but but but it's just it's difficult for me that third That third one is a lot of fun. But there's Dug Emlin specializes in animal weapons, Okay, and this is uh on topic with that. One of the things that you could be like, Nope, number three doesn't work is because in yellow Stone, after wolves were introduced again, Um, they noticed and there was a scientific study done on this a few years ago, that the wolves weren't killing that many males or we're not killing that many bull elk besides in the winter, and the elk that they were here killing, um, we're ones that still had their antlers. And then no, am I getting this wrong? So they were saying that, uh, in the winter when elk. When bull elk would start shedding their antlers, the ones that shed sooner got a head start on growing their antlers for the next year. Uh and and they were healthier. The ones that shed sooner, We're healthier. And predators would know this, that those ones were healthier, so they would seek out and kill the ones with antlers. Yeah, that makes a little bit of sense because I know that that the wolf researcher Diane Boyd was saying how elk don't really use their antlers against wolves, and that you are packing around a lot of extra weight and it is a signifier that you are entering the winner in a depleted state that you could pick up like you know what. The ones that these things on top of their heads seemed to be in not the best shape. They seem to be a little worn down. I might have butchered dead. Story. Come back to me on that. You want to check it out. I want to check that out. Well, that's why I said about white tails to at the fonts go first bucks next door was last winter starvation and predation that the you know they're getting preyed upon, that they like Diane was saying about hitting the young and the ones that given the opportunity, And quite often these bucks come into winter warren down and they're sitting away out and the friends of these yards sometimes the wolves pick them off. You know, they know they're running down. They they don't they don't have the stamina, the strength they had a month earlier, you know, so they those productors. I thought I was fastening to Yass's comment on the your your chickens and backyard stuff. How they start showing a sign of weakness, somehow they disappear. And there's things that these these produtors pick up on that we have no at least in the modern humans don't have that awareness. So funny you mentioned chickens because chicken egg shales have we touched on this egg shales have really dropped off. He came in all hot with a couple of dozen eggs and it just really tapered off. Um, Pat, where do you Spence is gonna do a little research. I want you to talk about the guy that found the dead people with his own ar machine a long time ago. But there's a bunch of other stuff we want to talk about. Which do you which do you care about talking about? First, let's talk about Rick Um. The guy's name is Rick Krueger. He lives in Madison, Wisconsin. And just a quick aside about Rick that how we came together, And this is one of the things that I like like about the kind of work we do, how you bump into people sometimes and meet acquaintances. Is I screwed up a story one time about a fishing exposition. Who was who the speakers a fishing exposition. I mentioned this guy, Rick Krueger, and I gave all his details and the start of Rick Krueger race to me and says, it's very nice, but that's you know, you got it all wrong. That guy's a fishing guide. And what I do is I run run sonar and the mass and lakes and I look for, oh, structure cars, anything that's been throwing the bottom the lake basically or ended up in the bottom the lake. Up. You're writing about a fishing exposition, convention or trade show, and you see that there's a guy Rick Krueger gonna talk, and you mix up and you think it's a fishing guy, but in fact it's supposed to be a sonar guy. Yeah, okay, so the sonar guy gets ahold. He says wrong Rick, and and I said to him, well, I owe you one. I I screwed it up. I I do apologize because now some people who wanted to hear him talk, you know. Anyway, I came which one I screwed up anymore? Anyway, So I met this guy that Krueger, like Freddy Krueger. Yeah, he spells a k r u e g e r and he's um he turns out. You know, it was one of the best mistakes I've ever made in my career, because I ended up being the most fascinating day I spent, like I in recent memory, where get on the boat and he was showing me around Lake Manona in Madison, and he started telling me all these different history historical stuff about the lakes based on stuff he had found on the bottom of the lake. And you know, like a hundred years ago, and people get toward fall if they had a work barge out in the lake. Rather than go to trouble bringing that barge in and holding it out there, they just think it out there in the lake. And they said, he finds all this kind of stuff out there, and just sunken boats and the most fastening with a regular fishing. Yeah, they're they're high end. He has he has two of them, at least he had two of them that day I was with them. He had one over here on the side and went up on the screen and then they can see off the sides. They can see down the down, straight down. He had them looking at all angles and these screens he's monitoring. He he kept pointing stuff out to me on these screens and basically telling me, you know what he's looking at, because like my untrained eye can really figure out, even with that good on our screen, what he's looking at. Sometimes. But then once he showed it to me that I can understand. But he said, you're typically looking at it like a shadow. I guess althose sonar units. And but as we're talking and he's telling me some of the unique things he's found, I kind of said, well, what's the coolest thing you have found? What's the one thing he most proud of? Because this is stuff sometimes going down seventy ft into the water, and because if what he does is he finds the thing, tries to identify as best he can with the sonar, but that's still not an actual picture. So then he takes his underwater camera and lowers it down, tried to get a barrel look at it, and then brings it up. And if it's something he wants to really get a good look at, he'll either go home and look at it on the computer screen and see it in a bitter detailer also let's dive down. And so the story started telling me it was about a car he had found over on an our mass and lake about ten fifteen miles away called Lake Wabisa's Um. The mass and lakes is four him and Manona is the second biggest one. I'm not sure in terms of acres, but I guess I think manoticed by about three or four miles across kind of a circular type sheet bikes good good sized legs called Madison Lakes. Yeah, the mass and chain of legs are basically, you know, a generic thing. But if you're a mass near the real famous lakes Mendota, Manona, Wabisa, Ringra and their wings the smallest one, Mendota is the biggest one, the deepest one, Manona. I'm not sure the maximum death maybe sixty seventy ft In place that another Vick Kruger story before we gone the most famous thing never happened on Lake Mandona. That's where Otis Writing, the famous singer died. He was like twenty seven years old. Plane crash. Reading died at seven years of age. Yeah, yeah, sitting on a dock in the bay. And yeah, and then he died. He died in that. He died crashing in the Lake Manona in the winter. And then no ship, yeah, no ship, and and ricks Vick to this day, here's a guy that wrote sitting on the dock in the bay and recorded it back in the dding that he would then die in the water. Yeah, spooky stuff. Yeah, I was wishing he was on the dock if I make it to the dock. Yeah, huh Yeah, that's where Ordis Reading died. That's great. Yeah, I mean too bad for him, but yeah, yeah, I mean it's great. You know what I mean. It's it's costing. It's an interesting factory that a lot of people don't know about. Mass in Wisconsin, that's where Otis Reading died. And he died going into a lake. You know, for some reason, buddy, Buddy Holly, everyone knows he died in the crashed in the corn field in the middle of winter or whatever. It was an April or whatever. But um, for some reason, people don't make that connection with Ortis writing how he died and you know at such a young age, this band, and you know, I think it's like six seven people in that plane that went down. John Denver, John Denver two? What do you run out of gas or something? Died in there? You're playing? Yeah, came Mountain and Jim you probably liked that song because you lived in Colorado a long time. Rocky Mountain Jim tros too. So get get back to her career. So shopped a bunch of people up. So hey, when you get do a really suspenseful spot in the story. Yeah, and this is a good story. Yeah stop, okay, and we're gonna check back in with Spencer about his uh about the about the problem. I think I know it goods about to stop like a suspenseful spot. Okay, Well I think I do anyway, So there you guys, are you say to him, hey, man, what's the weirdest thing you found out in these lakes? Yeah? And he didn't even hesitate you start talking about um, he was wearing a lake wabisa and he told me about He's told me the story where he said, you know, two guys years ago when ice fishing, like two o'clock in the morning, and this is not sober, not probably not sober. They about partying most of the night there. Um. The guy's name is Um ron Wick and Carl Stults Rick was Rick. Ron Wick was Um twenty years old and Stultz was three years old. And they they were out partying, even had a girl with him for a while, and they asked if she's going to go out there walleye fish with him, and she, fortunately for her, turned them down. Instead of the old like do you want to come back and see my aquarium, You're like, do you want to go with me and my body here out ice fishing? So she she said no, she'd had enough for one night. But those guys, so I like these guys, they got their fries, very straight, admirable guys. And they so they after they dropped this this young lady off, they knew knew of a bait shop in town that had been of those all night things you oppress. You know this is one, by the way, one This story starts Um February one. They go to a bait shop, ring the doorbell, a woman answers comes in and she they want to win a walleye bait minnows and they've talked to her. Okay, I was picturing for a minute that you meant a vending machine, because that was the thing for like some period of time. But you mean a twenty four hour ring like like like ringing the bell out of motel in the middle of the night exactly. Yeah, you could summon someone to sell you bath in the morning. Yeah, I bet that place is not in business, not in business anymore now that those kind of places are long gone. But but you know, I remember those kind of places when I was a kid, you know, I was. I was in sixty when I was five years old. But I, um, so this all comes back, This all comes back to me at some point. But so they got this bait shop, and while they're in the bay shop getting their minnows, this woman woman, um was probably thinking this a little bit weird that they're here two o'clock in the morning. But the guy says to her, Yeah, I don't think a a little crazy to be going out fishing in the middle of the night like this, two o'clock in the morning. And I don't know what she said, you know, but that was a newspaper story. But anyway, these guys go off and leave leave her while she ended up being the last person ever saw him. And well Rick knew they were gone and back in the sixties and this is happening. This these guys disappeared. It was it was a local or that went on for years. They were gone, and there's series like they actually went out to west somewhere and started their life over. But one of the guys was married. But my wife never heard from again. Mother never heard from from them again, and all these kind of things. And I remember bought the bait. They bought the bait and commented on in order to like create a narrative. Yeah, they had. You know, there's all sorts of stories going around talking about what happened these guys and were they near to Wells No, I think I think there had been working till like um ten o'clock that night, whatever the job they had. They got off work, went partying for a little bit and then went went to the bait shop and on the way out. Well, the one thing you should know about the mass and lakes, and this goes back to that era, they had outlawed driving on the lakes with a car years decades ago. At the time these guys were doing this, these guys knew that it was against a lot of out in the lakes driving a car in the lake, but they they apparently knew of a spot on a lake Wabisa. I think I think a guy is either a relative or someone they knew had an access road that went out on this lake. And they've been going out there at night fishing, and so it wasn't the first time they've done this, and so they knew the spot. Tell what they're driving. Ended driving in nineteen fifty Ford Coupe and there's a eleven year old car and they Rick Rick had done enough research on these guys, so guy had some some knowledge of what the different theories were. Because now it's now we're kind of going back and forth between eras here. Rick didn't find their car. They went down in February one, one nine. They sat in the bottom of lake. Would be forty five years till Rick Cruder found them. Now, so Drick's operating theory was that, you know, different theories on where these guys went down. Some people thought it was like my Norman because they found oil popping up in weird places once in a while. They even had a site could come in and try to figure out where they where they were. Where did the psychic thing? Psychic thought Lake Manona, which was you know, refrict me based off what it's like. Who knows he's a psychic. Steve. He stood on the shore and god whatever vibes he thought he was getting food brought a psych again, well it was a family or or who brought it him out, had no idea. I mean, it would be an interesting guy to get ahold of. Well he's probably long gone but now but you know, well some of that stuff, it's not some of the psychics duty and once while, there's some weird things they do. So he stands on the beach. But I think I think one of the stories this is gonna be a long story, but um no, no, this story is not long enough. But one of the one of the things that the psychic um But they I think they actually went out and searched one of the sites. He was getting some vibe off and I think they found that vibe dead people throw off at the bottom of a lake. He was getting that vibe. Yeah, I'm not an expert. On psychics, but I think they actually did do a search based on something that he Um sensed, and I think they found like a steel beam up there or something or something. There was something out there, but it was just not not the car obviously. So Rick Um pat, I'm sorry, No, I appreciate you. Bringing up stuff like this makes me so gets me so agitated. I'm with I'm with you, because psychics and that kind of stuff, I just always And then they found a beam. Yeah, so you dive around the bottom leg loan Behold there's a beam, and the psychics says, oh, you know, I knew it was something, but well, you know, I thought it was a car with two young gentlemen in it. But it turns out it was a beam. But I'm guessing it's like like a lots of things when you screw up. He just kind of quietly disappear and hope no one brings it up again. So the psych this shows the mystery and desperation. Yeah, and and and that's another whole aspect of finding people after the long gone that rick talked about. It was pretty interesting. But so the psychic saw the picture. Rick Um always went back this idea that he thinks that they went on on Obisa based on the fact initially the police when they were because you know, these guys are gone for couple of days before anyone really realized, Hey, what happened to Carl and Rod? You know. And then then once the police got going, they went out and they found some tracks coming off of this one um access road, and so they'd find entire tracks. But what had happened in the days A couple of days um that went by before they were actually realized, oh god, these guys are gone. What happened to them? And then they finally started backtracking them and they gut and something. I think that bait woman notified the police or something. Hey I had two guys in here there night. Matchet description might have been them, and so so Rick. That's one tangible thing Rick had to operate on these tire tracks. But what had happened was after they if they realized they're missing, they start launching a search. Well, by that time that there had been a warming um spell going on, so the lake had been getting softer, the ices getting softer, sa is like you know, like I said, late February, and by the time they put airplanes up to go look for holes in the ice, that kind of thing. There's as much water on top of the ice, and people who live in the north know how that happened in spring, you know, late winter that they couldn't see anything noticeable down there, and so that this petered out. There had no no knowledge where these guys went tooth they went off on with Wabisa or to die on Lake Monona. But they're pretty sure they're probably out there somewhere. We're both guys married, not just the one. I think. I think the older guy, Carl stults year old think he was married. So it was the younger guy. Was the younger guy with was he court and the woman? Now Rick brought it up, and then that's where, um, there are some controversy there that never um it got kind of interesting, was that there was some speculation that this Carl, that the twenty three ye old guy, I was maybe not the best the best husband. You know, that there's some he was that basically he was hitting on her. Basically I think that was a story. And but again this is not you know here, I feel like I'm in the National Enquirer because typically as a reporter, you're not comfortable with this. I'm not comfortable with this because this is all stuff that that Um, it's kind of hearsay. I never got this from anyone besides just filtering down through the years. Another quick question, Um, and I didn't catch us when you and I discussed this over breakfast one day. Rick Krueger, the sonar enthusiast, I didn't catch that he was aware. I didn't catch that this is a personal mission of his. Yeah, was he did? He remember it from childhood? He has a long history in the man asked an area of looking looking for stuff in the bottom of lakes. So this story of the two guys disappearing, that was even I knew about it, and and the reason I really connected on the story with Rick after you know, I didn't know he didn't know he was the guy phoned until we're out in the boat that day. But you knew that I had been found. Yeah, I knew have been found. And I also had I have a bit of memory, Like I think I said to you in my email are day, it haunts the ship out of me because I remember when I was eight years old fishing on there's these four big stacks and on the Isthmus in Madison between the two lakes, and we were fishing bluegills out there and my dad I was telling my uncle about these two guys that disappeared. And my dad was a firefighter, so he was on these rescue or those ambulances in those days, so he knew all these stories that were going on, and probably and probably some of the stories I'm telling your stuff from her from dad talking about it, because he was involved in the search and stuff trying to find these guys and what happened to them. So I remember hearing this story while we're fishing bluegills. But these two guys that disappeared falls to the lake on a in the car and they're illegally out in the lake and it fell through. And so this is always in my head that what a hell of a way to go. You know. I was a guy who ice fish is a lot driving across the lakes. I always have that back in my mind, these two guys that when you put on that fast you're not getting horrifying. I thought you were gonna talk about being afraid of snagging into him. No, No, that don't really crossed my mind. When I was in high school, dude I went to high school with got drunk and stole a boat and crashed into a buoy and they couldn't find his body. And then my other body, Craigs uh uncle was out fishing and was just working the shoreline and saw an ankle because see like an ankle in a shoe and the rest of the body was all obscured by weeds. Yeah. Yeah, he didn't like that one bit. Spencer, I now have my story straight on this uh research project. Did you care to relate your earlier perform to rate your earlier performance? Um, I don't remember what I said now, I got so caught up in pat story which signor what I said before? So this kind of contradicts that third theory saying that bucks would shed their antlers to blend in with dose and not stick out like malnourished critters to these predators. So this was published last year by university by researchers from the University of Montana and it was in Nature, Ecology and Evolution, and this show the evolutionary tie between wolves and wind elk shed their antlers. Okay, so they discovered and they noticed this that in Yellowstone National Park, since wolves were reintroduced that wolves hunted bulls who had already shed their antlers over those that still had them during late winter. So this suggested to them that the antlers were a great deterrent to wolves, that they used the as weapons to keep away um the wolves. And so, which is like a little that's intuitive. Do you imagine you're you're like, how effectively the elk wields them or not? Like how is that a how is there an upside to attack in something with twelve daggers sticking off the top of its head? Right? And but I think this explained to them, like you know, oh, we thought that they grew antlers to court females, but this show's no, there's actually like great benefit to deterring predators. One of the quotes is we believe elk evolved to keep their antlers longer than any other North American deer because they use their antlers as an effective deterrent against wolf predation. Yeah, you know not. An interesting thing about elt um is the window in which they drop as a very wide window. You know, you can be outspring bear hunting and see bulls carrying their antlers from the year before. In April, yep, and so this kind of goes against that third if you believe that this doesn't really work for that and so these elk are kind of uh like, since the introduction of wolves, there's a you know, pros and cons. So if you keep your antlers longer, you can deter wolves, but you don't get a head start on growing. If you drop your antlers sooner, you get a head start on growing and courtship in the fall, but you're more likely to get killed by wolves. And so they think this could maybe play out long term, you know, change the things that uh, elk in Yellowstone noticeably keep their antlers longer than maybe you know, the areas just outside of there that don't have wolves. That's good stuff. Yeah, interesting to track over time, really interesting, and and that uh like I had written an article a few years ago on you know, talking about the evolutionary reasons of why deer would shed their antlers not just the photo period into saccer on thing, and uh it was always real cool with that third theory unless something came out that went against it, because, like you said before, this is really hard be like, yep, that's why or even to you know, I think that we're ever going to know, and this pretty much goes against that third theory. Yeah, it's it's what you're looking at um, things that would would influence timing size right, things that would like reinforce that are not reinforce. That a thing that the things that I think about with with the antlers is um. They are a reflection of um. Like proportionately, they get so much bigger, right, proportional to the dearest body size. They get so much bigger each time by growing new ones all the time. Never mind. So it's it's so far, it's so puzzling, like when you said earlier that maybe bark is brown just because it's brown, Like there's no reason. I feel like this is so unique to serve it that there has to be like reasons behind it. This wasn't just accidental that the antlers dropped off this winter. You know. It seems like huge family, this huge family of animals all has the same strategy and it's still specific to them. Like you said before, like you can't think of aquatic creatures that do something like this. And then you get into the weird one. We're gonna get back to these drowned fellers in a minute. You get to the weird one, which is how a female caribou we'll grow as at antlers, and it hurts that they're not synchronized with the males. She has her own time of years. She grows in her own time of year that she sheds, and it's not in alignment with when males grow and shed. And so if it's all sexual display, right, it's not meant to time out. It doesn't time out with rot and she keeps them for a different time period. And that's how that story starts to make some gravy. Yeah, when's the handler exp We're gonna be here soon, hopefully. Let me now, I love to bug him, Folks who want to prepare for the animal expert being on um He his new book. His name's Doug Emlyn. His new book is called Animal Weapons. And guess what it's about. NI take a stab anglers and teeth and claws. Yeah, good job, yuh all right? So Rick, okay, Rick, it's curious. Freddy Krueger's cousin, Rick is curious about what happened to the missing ice anglers, who may or may not have been fooling around. It depends. We have to get the woman on the show to find out who she was flirting with, if anyone, if anyone, That just goes to show us how our minds work, that we assume there was a flirtation happening in that car, in that coup. But it could have been that they were just buddies. Why isn't that possible, Pat, Why does it have to be that they were flirting? Well, the time, time of day, men flirt. I'd like to get around the show. So, so where'd you leave us off? Okay? So can I stop you? During my research? I think I missed an important details to you said that they were out there illegally. You were you were not tracking because you were reading right. So I feel like I have parts in Yeah, but what was the illegal part? That the illegal part is that to this day you cannot drive a car on the mass and lakes that you can you can go out there if you have flotation stuff rigged on your a t V. Your No one brings a car with flotation because it's a refuge y no, Because I think I think I think they did have um probably enough accidents for people are going on to the ice back in the forties or the thirties some place back in the er because as long as I've been alive, you cannot drive in the past some lakes and like these days, most people have flotation devices for the a t V or something and they im limited to that. But yeah, I don't think there's one area of Lake Minona where it's open year round because the power company has an outlet there. But um, it's on all four the lakes. You can't do it. Um. So so these guys, you know, they're they're missing now, they've been missing for forever and it's basically a local legend by time Rick is investigating it. In the early two thousands and Rick brick up this time. One thing we were starting to talk about I think was he had um he was connected with the massive mass and police department, the Sheriff's department because he was always with all his great expertise and soon are and underwater stuff and you know, all a different technology is he was a he's a radio tech guy, so he's always into all the stuff for um, electronics for fishing. But as time when out of this fishing and the electronics, he started to have more fun finding stuff on the mob and the lakes than investigating stuff and he's a diver, so that kind of stuff would intrigue him. He got he's at the point now where he spends much more time still sleuthing on the massive legs for hidden stuff, and he's falling, like, um, oh gosh, just I have a whole list of stuff in this article I wrote about it. But so if we get back to the idea that what's the most intriguing thing, He told me, stick to me that story, and right away that I'm he's telling me the story in the boat and I'm you're the guy that falling those two guys because I was shocked. I had had no idea who I was sitting the boat with. And now he's my hero because I thought, what a hell of a thing to solve a forty five year old mystery. So we're talking about he said, yeah, he he new they went into that lake. I figured that's still the best possibility out there. But still, even when you have tire tracks going out off the landing, who knows what they want the psychic think? He thinks that like, so Rick Rook's pretty sure it's it's it's on obsa because that's the only physical evidence it was. Those tire tracks. So he he starts. He he's he's methodical. He just started laying tracks with his his boat. And this is like, this is now like I think it's July twenty two of two thousand and six, forty five and a half years after the fact. He comes along on one of his passes and this is just blind He's just out there blindly searching a quadrant out there. Yeah, he's just you know, doing And he's got all the GPS stuff too, so he's probably pretty well locked on knowing not to recover ground because that's he's doing this whole all over the mass and lakes. He's out there on these grids all the time. So he's back in that corner of this this big end of Lake Wabisa, and he comes across on a screen he sees something big on the bottom at forty five degree angle, and he's looking at it and thinking, what the hell would that be? And he's only thinking think because he said I had had enough of a shape looked like could be a car upside down on the bottom lake, upside down, upside down. Yeah, that's because it was the bottom of the car is flat, and he saw this degree angle things. Oh yeah, yeah, and so he so he um he gott I think I think when he dies, I think he always gets his wife with him. So I don't know if his wife was with him the time where he went back and got her. But he he dove down. It was thirty five ft down down there, and um he he um. Of course went straight to the license plate, and I think he he said he wasn't supposed to bring up the license plate because you know, basically it's um he supposed to be tamping and stuff from the lake bottom. But he thought, well, this is pretty exceptional, so he brought the license plate up and he's got got the numbers off. But in contact of the guy from the de checked as he knew in the mass and the Folice department or Sarty from my kitmeer which wish department was now. But the guy ran the numbers out, you know, from the back of the back in the sixties to figure out that was the car. Sure enough it was I think it was um. I think it was the guy um uh rick it was. It was um Ronald Ronald Wicks car, I think, the twenty year old guy. So then they know they had they had the car now, and so, of course, being a morbid guy, I am. I asked Rick, when you're down there poking around in that car, could you see skeletons inside the car? And he said no. He said it was just he was smuch silt down there and smuch silted filtered into the car. He couldn't see anything in the car, you know, So it's not like he did, you know, try to look in there and figure out what you could see. But he said it was a gooeymoky mess by that point forty five years in the bottom of a lake. So then, um, that was like the twenty one to July. I believe it took him about two weeks. They're out back out there with a salvage barginal with a crane and everything, and they there's a center picture this morning on email of that great picture. Yeah, this old rusty coop when she was cracked. But they had it all and harnesses, and I think they used and then might use some flotation devices to to lift it off the bottom. And I'm pretty sure I got this right where they didn't find, you know, the remains until they got the car up on the surface and then to do um at that point it becomes an investigation. So they they found they followed the two skeletons in there, and the one guy's hand was stuck in the door like you've been trying to get it open. Yeah, And and so that's that's the story. That's all Ron Wick and um Carl Stultz met the end, you know, while I fishing three o'clock in the morning. And then they're only bought in the lake for forty or five years, and all the legends about them disappearing to start a new life is all evaporated. And but for me, it's just a great um story of a guy with a hobby who um the police used, you know, used him a lot, his help a lot over the years to find John victims and and even did for a while diving. Helped him dive and find Drawning victims. And he's it. It was um really hard emotionally because you he said, at first when he was doing this, he never wanted to be on the site when the relatives would come out and identify the body. He just didn't want to deal with the emotions of that. And he said one year though, Um a woman wrote to him after the fact and thanked him for giving her closure that she could she now knew what happened to her son with certainty. And Ron, I mean Rick sudden when he got that letter. From that point on he was no longer um. He always would hang around them and you know, aid do the aid and comfort routine with these people because he realized, you know, it was hard for him to pull a body out of there, because it has to be hard to be in the water like that, and it's not exactly clear water usually, and all of a sudden you're face to face with a body. You know that's gonna be hard. But but Rick was doing that for a number of years. But then but like a lot of things, you know, he's now in his sixties, and when the police for using him the almost in the shift permans using him the most is back in an era twenty years ago where that you know, all these different police agencies weren't weren't at that stage in the development of technology where there as good at good using that stuff as he was. So they really used him as a tool. You know, they call him Radio Rick. He's always out there looking at this stuff. And it's it's a cool story too, because to this day is still doing it. You know, he's he's always he's been trying to trying to get the nailed don with some certainty Ordisruddings, you know, flake flight path going in the lake. You know what's still out there. And he's still wandering through the other piece of the plane that haven't been following yet. And then he's also got he sells um fisherman his way points like he has always wipe. He's got like I think four hundred four thousand way points of things like underwater rock piles that no one knows about. Um, you know, people building in the old days illegal fish cribs and dropped them into the lakes. You know, if they're going he sells that information. He says, he basically gas money. We're for twenty bucks and you want my way points, I'll tell you. You You know what what they represent and what's something what's at that at that spot. Is he a good fisherman? I think he is, But now he says he just soon go out and um look for stuff. Yeah, we're talking about someone to talking about his reluctance to be around the victims families and and uh, we discussed something on this show one time that prompted a first responder to write in it's really touching, kind of dark story about him finding it was a nine year old boy who drowned, and finding that boy and getting him up on the bank of the river and sitting with him for sitting with the boy's body for a long time, waiting for someone to come. And it was just like like a life altering experience. You know, this is the way it seemed like the boy could just sat up. Yeah, the only time, only time. People have asked me a number of times for some reason, um about my day when he was a firefighter. No, they'll make these assumptions that dad had a lot of traumatic things he had to deal with as a firefighter. I said, you know, he might have, but the only one I remembered was one when he was on the ambulance crew and had to pull an entire family out of you know, head on collision, you know, with her in a station wagon like the kind of we drove. And he had six kids, and that's in to haunt him, remember him, this kind of you know, talk to my mom about you tell it. I shook him up. You know, I'm pulling these little kids out of the car and I'm sure, man, that's just hard stuffed, you know, I can't imagine doing that. Okay, so what should we jump into next? I'le Royal. Yeah, I like it. Wolves. We kind of jumped off the early introduction of Steve's death, you know, and he was right back in the game pretty quickly. Yeah, but I was just curious about this. He just wanted the intro the game out and I thought, and then he did so good once he got rolling, I got jealous. I came back in hard. So I was like, a, but you you admit your ferilties. Always always amire of that. I was like, man, he's kicking the ass. I'm gonna get back in here. Well, I have to say that the Ile Royal story, um that you guys, Um Spencer I talked about back in February, and well, the one thing I have to say, Stevid, I like working in the articles of more working out for meat either this kind of stuff that um, you know, Scott got some stuff. It's got some depth to you know, where you get people on the phone, you watch and read different things that have been written about these things. And the Ile roy one was thinking one of the more complex things I've worked now where you um, we should probably back up a little bit, and it's basically I think that the table try I'll try to not I really struggle how to how do you even start writing this story? But um, the way way I talked about getting into the story was back in October the UM Park Service trapped for wolves, dropped my Royal, and then in January we got a pullar vote Vertex and I'll Royal and if you have for people who can't picture this, it's up in the very top of Lake Superior, kind of the northwestern corner using my hands here in the studio until you can't see it closer to Canada, owned by Michigan. Yeah. Yeah, it's like forty five miles from north of of Holton County, Michigan, and only about thirteen fifteen miles depending on where you look at it off of Ontario and in the corner of Minnesota up there. And so it's in the national park. It's National Parks since nineteen forty and it's been a National Wilderness areas since um, I think since the Wilders was past I think sixty four. So it's a really remote, remote island in a spot um, I think it's about two hundred and one square miles or yeah, and then it's like about nine miles long four and a half miles wide, something like that. But for a comparison size wise, it's the same size is Zion National Park, and it's twice the size of Arches National Park. So maybe that helps for reference. As Pad tells the story, and the best we know from history is that wolves were never on the on this island until until about nineteen and the moose were out there they think in the nineteen tens, nineteen really nineteen hundreds of the first decade of the nineteen hundreds, and the moose pretty much for like fifty years just you know, went up and down in the crashes, over browsing, all those kind of things. When the wolves came out there and the wolves peaked at a bought, I think it's the nineteen eighty I believe is that wolves some thing it was, and they're crossing on the ice, and the wolves and the moose severe winters. That's that's that's the theory that they crossed on the ice. And you know, because we had much more consistent winters, you know, a hundred years ago, fifty years ago than we were having these days. These days, we're not getting those consistent land become essential ice bridges between Ile Royal and the um Ontario on Minnesota region and Dell. Be out of your pet that the wolf population peaked in fifty wolves, the moose population peaked in at fifty God, is that many about there at one time? Population is not that anymore, and I think I think right now they're back up to they're they're pretty high again right now. The most recent census I've read about third day up there and when the fastest things I just thought about this was that, Yeah, this one guy made a great point that we don't know for certain how the moose got out there. That's he's I think he's a National Park archaeologist type guy. There's lots of stories that back in the early nineteen hundreds that Minnesota was moving moose all over the place, and so who knows for certain that they put some moose out in the island. You know, people are doing that kind of thing years. But was it that is it well known? And uh, is it well known that in the historic record there was a period when they were not there, when wolves were not there, yeah, yeah, you know, they have no records as far as I from the reading I did and interviews I did, there's no record of wolves being on the island until I and Moos moost too, Okay, so we know that it was absent moose. Yeah. And what what What the island was famous for until basically nineteen hundreds was links and caribou, and the cariboo disappeared aud the links, as they always say, blinked out in the nineteen thirties, you know, for God. But but you know, I happen to be doing a story about it about six months ago on the Aposta Islands, and some of the research has been doing there on the on the little predators that populate the Appassa Islands. And it's not uncommon for these islands. They just have some small ecosystems. Uh, stuff comes and goes. They get out there and they overrun their habitat and wherever. They just realize they can't sustain themselves for the isolated population, and they go out. There's enough wolf on an island called Stockton Island off on the Apostles that was there and people saw it a few times and then they found found this body one day if you're that presently wolf that was out there halk out there, no one, no one really knows. So so that's that's kind of those weird things in nature happened in the you know, in the area around Puget Sound in the time that I that I lived out there in the Pacific Northwest. You'd have just think like, oh, a bear showed up on an island that historically doesn't have them, and it kind of runs around and gets in trouble vanishes. Elks show up on the island that they didn't hasn't historically happened, like it swam out, you know, and they'll be in the news like, oh my god, no one's seen the elk here in seventy five years. But then the elk swims off gets hit by a car, which is constantly happening where like small little populations of things or single animals will will find these places. So you can imagine the right situation. Yeah, just too Yeah, as well as you get to show up out there at the same time, you could create some highly volatile, you know, a little population of animals in a in a weird spot. So that so they had these um, I think what was one of the things I found kind of fun about the story was that right now here we have a real scientific debate going on over the re established this wolf population on an island that really had no record of wolves, um, you know, sixty seventy years before, and and yet that humans have a much longer history on the island that than than wolves do, and that moose do you know they have these archaeological findings of people making copper tools, you know, thousands of years ago out there in the copper veins in those islands. Yeah, that kind of kind of interesting stuff like that. And plus the voyagers all came through there, and it says, and there's been mining and more until it became a park. There is all sorts of cool stuff going out there, as far as logging, you name it. People out there, you know, exploiting it somehow, and we're as I think, the big question is, you know, it kept coming up a lot in these different debates, is you know, if wolves and moose are meant to be out there, why did it take until basically modern times and to cross those on those ice bridges When I went out there earlier, you know, I never heard that theory that that when Minnesota's moving moose around and doing various introductions reintroductions, that there was the idea that maybe someone turns them out as soon as unprovable, might might be a wive's tale. And I mean that's you know, I think you and I and all of us in this room have been we have tried tracking on the wives tales. Is just you know, they're they're they're plausible given the given the era of what people are doing. I mean, I was to get Anacosti island off the Quebec for the guy in this big turned into a deer um sanctuary basically now animal taste tool. I'm sure there's still hunting deer out there, but they're moving, moving fish around, you know, dropping fish out of airplanes, and the moultin lakes, doing all sorts of stuff a hundred years ago that you know, these days we just wouldn't do unless we really know. I have a pretty good sign, but we think is a good scientific justification for it. Um So, and so they peaked. The wolves peaked in nineteen eighty and then they I think they're tapering downhill pretty steadily. And then about um a male wolf showed up apparently, and it's just a good job breeding the wolves that were remaining out there that there's basically he apparently his jeans got every wolf that was out there. Old Greg guy, what's his name? And it's great having this this this expert here shows up and just starts breeding his ass off. He was responsible at one point for fifty six percent of the wolves on the island. Those were his offspring. Yeah, it was, it was something. There was some stay like he had hugely possible for like forty five pups, and then his forty pups were responsible for like forty pups or something like that. So good details. Yeah, done by um by last fall. So I think they had I think Diane said this and um she talked about how it came down to just a male and a female offspring of his. I think, I mean he's left. But in the meantime, as this was going on over the last twenty some years and the wolves did this, said, these things are inbred. You know, they're they're turning up with you know, being born blind, web feet, messed up spines and some of the congenital stuff from the predetory stuff that like in the spinal problems you know, like I think Dave meets this famous wolf BALLA just said, you know, it comes to parlo virus and some of other things they were trying to say might have caused the wolf the wolf population to come. Di said, well, you know that was that goes That goes on the mainland too, but not this in the White Mouth. The way we're thinking out here in the islands. They're quite sure how all these things happened. But but the final conclusion was that they it was they were inbread. There's not that the population couldn't be saved. They show up, they first show up in the population peaks thirty six years later at what number wolves, and then dives off until recently when it was down to just two. And they don't know the founding event. They don't know how many wolves moved out there for the founding event, if there's just two individuals or I don't. I couldn't find a thing that I actually put a number on that, you know, And that's which is um, you know that's now that now they have these four alter last last last winter, and then um, that's all this discussion about what we gonna have the ice perges anymore to get new wolves coming in, and so you know, should man step in and intervene here and re established that wolf population? And it's been up debate going on for probably close to this this whole dec people fighting about this, you know, in scientific circles, in the whole philosophy of it. You know it should man be out there tinkering with mother nature now, you know, because they because chances are we didn't put the we can't start wed not not put them out there. So should we now go in and supplement them and supplement them and re established something that um was that naturally was coming down, going down, backing up a little bit. I remember if it was you that presented this or if it was someplace else. I read it, But they said that after the war, a bunch of trappers came back. I reported that it was. It was from It was really really people want to go online and read watch a really good Suminar. There was a Suminar done in two thousand and thirteen. They had these guys um Dave Meach and Ralph Peterson and similar um Well that the anthropologist guy, that historian really a good thing that had the things they did in Minneapolis. You can go online and search it. It's worth a two hour set to watch that. Um So, where was I here Wars? Yeah, so, so one of the stories is that they think, you know, it's it seems plausible that during the war when all the Canadians and Americans were over um whiskey whiskey to World War two, World War two, you know, thanks Steve um. During World War two, you know, every able bodied man was over in Europe basically were out in the Pacific fighting, fighting the war. And so I think a lot of these guys that would have been trapping wolves in that region, we're all off at war. Well in their absence, they think, you know, when the theories is that well, under absence, these wolves probably started coming back up in numbers and started dispersing. And if there's always consistent Ice Bridges Price got out there from that region of Ontario and in Minnesota and got this population rolling out there. So that's kind of what what the what the theory is. But I guess from those stories that it's plausible, but no one really we had no where like track the kind of stuff, So it's it's kind of speculation. But um so, when these wolves are transplanted, then from. I can't remember where they came from. The first four they brought out there for miship Picton Island off to the east, or really got them one of them after all this debate about ice bridges not being um happening anymore if you're not getting consistent ice bridges anymore. Well, as soon as they put some wolves out there to supplement to start bringing re establishing things, one of them takes off across the ice bridge home runs home. Yeah, because he was that one. I think they were think they may have been from that part of Ontario, and so he basically runs home. Another one tried to get home, but they think it encountered prior bat was breaking up again and just came back to the island. But I thought the irony of it all. You know, you're trying to re established me and you dropping them into the happy hunting grounds man. Yeah. Yeah, but then the homing instrict and I think, um, I think Dave meets seven. You when you try to transplant wolves from that close to their home range, you know that they know, they you know that it's another trying to They've been going out, you know, farther away and picking them off. Other places I think they've been. They've been talking about the next group they'll try to get, probably from the up of Michigan to bring them up there, and you get that diversity from around the whole region, not just from a couple of a couple of wolves that came onto the is Yeah, the first ones they pulled, they pulled them from an island that's owned by you know, an island in Ontario. Oh yeah, are you asking me? Yeah, I think that's correct, right, they pulled Well, I think then the first flour something I think. I don't know what they I don't know. We're all four came from. For certain, I'd be just pulling out my asp. I tried to say that. I don't remember offhand. Maybe Spencer can look it up, but I know at least one of them was that one that went back to the Ontario, but that was only about fifteen mile john to cross the ice there and then as home range is probably farther inland, but apparently that's where it was last headed. You know, when they were tracking it, they think it was going back and then once it got back in this home range and started doing what wolves do, just you know, doing there they're they're hunting, and so that one's gone. But then, um, I think right now they're at fifteen wolves. The most recent come they brought They brought Marit and they brought someone from this I can I can never pronounce the island's name, but it's um Misia pick a ten or something like that. Yeah, it's off the east and that's a whole another story. But um it. So now they got it back a fifteen and now you know, now it's gonna be an It's basical an experiment, you know, because now you have you're getting any wolves from these different regions, while how do you get along? Now they form packs with different strange wolves from different areas. It sounds very with being the national parks. Are you know, expected to be a little bit hands off, or that you're trying to mitigate human car like like the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction. Right as you're saying, well, we know that they were extirpated from human activities, so we're putting them back as a way of rebuilding from our own impacts. But this is um, this is not that right. And some people are trying to make the argument that well, humans are causing um the climate change that's causing us not to have the ice bridges. They're trying to make that argument that still human caused. And the point Dave Meach brings up is, Okay, tell me all that lack of ice bridges, it's actually hurting the island. Though, can you really make the argument what exactly is being heard out there? And and you like one thing they're they're looking into, I think it would be part of this whole interesting develop materials we watch this unfold is well, the moose and ile royal are doing very well compared to the moose just a few miles to the to the west and uh no, oldn Northern Minnesota. Yeah, and places where you have white tail deer currying brain worm typically cause a cause problem for moose. Well, the moose aren't having brain worms out on an ile roll because the deer can't get out there because you know, if they wanted to cross some the ice pridgel has but no icebridge, so that the absence of an ice bridge might be benefiting the moose by nothing coming out throughout across the ice that could could kill them. So you make that argument, So it's really hard like the moose population benefits there ye. Maybe someday it'll be a great sourceer for moves could be. But you know, so you have a hard time making the argument that's human caused and that we're now, you know, fixing a human caused um situation. Well as being the guy who grew up in Michigan, we took like a lot of pride. It really informed the the Michigan mystique knowing that we had this island, they had a bunch of wolves and moose on it. Like you, you grew up very aware of that. And there's an element of look, how wild and cool our state is because we got like the up and we got this crazy island's got these wolves and moves on it. Isn't it cool? So I could see that losing that would make people sad, that it would feel end of nature ish, Yeah, and that that would wind up motivating you to find all kinds of justifications to maintain just the spectacle. And there's been um I think meat started this research back in the sixties. You're staying the wolf and moose in your actions and how those things, you know, fluctuate, and so they have a good along running research going out there. And I think is that Michigan Tech University. So it's a lot of cool stuff that's come out to the island. But then you get back in the whole philosophical discussions of um, well this a olderness area or not? And should man be in there? You know that, you know, you always get that great quote um about you know, land should be untrammeled by man's and no interference basically for man that let nature nuts course out there? Why we let we always have it thrown at us all the time? When should let nature take its course? Well, when it comes to the wolf, you know a lot of people don't they want they want that wolf out there. That there's something about wolves that people really are intrigued by them. They protect them. It used to be a little bit like zoo keeping though, Yeah, exactly like that. But it harkens back to all these too. The we always talked about it, how a hundred years ago, like the Maryland stick of beer, right, like back in the day that was just a thing. People did shift animals all over the world and introduced species. Um, your favorite my favorite quote of yours, Pat is that deer make people stupid. Dude, Yeah, wolves make people crazy. But I've always in my years of reporting on the outdoors, I've always thought the two jobs of at least like would be a wolf be a wolf biologist, to be a dear biologist because everyone you know, everyone who doesn't doesn't agree with to you just just too much motion. You wrapped up on that stuff. The other night, we had a conversation where UM, the US Fish and Wildlife Service just put out a jaguar recovery plan, which you know runs from Central America open into Arizona, and they had in identifying like habitat, usable habitat, or historic habitat, they put this cut off marker where when looking in the United States, UM, places that were that they know as like jaguar habitat, they put a caught off at nineteen sixty two. So it's like, from nineteen sixty two on will acknowledge where jaguars have been, but anything prior to that is dismissed. Okay, because it winds up being this very small sliver of Arizona for for suitable jaguar habitat in the US, And if you extended pre sixty two, it gets much bigger and you have jaguars up into central Arizona West Texas, New Mexico, and so they're kind of like proposing a very limited version, of very limited scope of what jaguar recovery might look like in the US, and now they're effectively extinct like now and then there's one, possibly two up in Arizona, but typically like at this particular second, maybe zero or in Arizona. Um. But it brought up this conversation about when we start to apply dates, like here's what nature should look like, it should look like, and that's what we'll strive towards. You get into this funny space, especially with the Ile Royal thing, where here we are like really striving hard to create. Um, we're trying hard to like recreate the splendor of which is not that which doesn't resemble eight If we're chasing eighteen eighty, it sounds like we'd be trying to put links in caribou on Ile Royal, But we're chasing something that occurred in my lifetime. Archaeological records show that caribou and lynx were there for the last years, so that wolves moves to the last hundred years quite a bit different, is it? It's just because it's wolves, man, it feels something else you're the caribou getting no love. No we just want we just let the last We just let that last carry were heard in the United States, blink out, largely unnoticed. No one cares. You can't get people to care about it. The Purcell Mountains used to drift down into Idaho Panhandle. They're gone, people, but in the helicopter and wolves are damn plates. I I really liked this um comment that Tim herber Land made that you know, it will never be a headline in the New York Times that says let wolves die for science. You know, we just don't do that. You know, if we don't let wolves die for science, and I I think it would be fasten to see and track and research what really happens on an as overall, if you just leave the moose alone and see how they go open down. I mean, if the if the if the trees get over browsed, they get over browsed, and that they've done that before, they'll do it again. At some point they'll probably eat themselves a house, a home. Well, then the island will will self correct and they'll probably a new new era. But yeah, trying to I guess you make it make I think my favorite point is that why would we always want to make it look like what we have right now? But that's what we do. Can't answer it. And and if you let the wolves die and be gone, maybe links will come back. There was one links documented that showed up there in uh ass the ice from Canada, but that's been the only time one links there was one sided out there. And so maybe if the wolves are gone, we see links come back. And I should to be um to get the other other point of view. Though. One thing that is different now is that you know, they think the wolves they came out there originally work came from basically one source area, where now that they're bringing them from these different areas, and assuming they can form packs get along nat to work together, that there will be enough to diversity to sustain them for a while. And then like when I asked the biologists up there, well, but what if twenty years from now these guys start going down here and you try another transfusion basically where it's all going to end. And he said, well, you know that we'll just scutts step when we get to that point. But but it's a to me, it's plausible that maybe with this these new different genes trains coming and they can sustain themselves longer out there. But yeah, I have to agree that for on the factor of wolves, we won't be doing this. But but even that isn't um like natural, like trying to create a diverse population, because I think I read somewhere that every wolf on that island descended from one female that was out there and like came from old gray guy. And so by creating this island population that has wolves from like Canada, Minnesota and the up that's not even what it was like during this era we're discussing trying to replicate now they want to make damns or they stick this time. Ka patas jump gears, change gears. You don't jump gears, uh, grind gears sometimes, dude, I'm looking to get the picture of the car getting hoisted out of that Oh my god, it's haunting. Man, that's wild. They'd be sweet refurbished that car. Pat we should point this out. And he wrote that article on the Ile Royal Wolves back on April twelve. We published it. I told him at the time it's one of the best things we ever ran. So if you want more on this, go to the meat Eator dot com. Type in Ile Royal you'll find pass piece there. Give it a read. It's a great piece of writing, really informative and entertaining. Thank you you getting feedback people mad at you. No, No, I really didn't. Um. I heard from Ed Banks, you know, the wolf biologist, to the Rocky Mountain Wolf Free introduction. I try to get ahold of the story, to get his perspectives, I thought, And he's always a thoughtful guy, and but he was done fishing in coose to Rica or someplace and then get back to me till after the fact, and and his comment to me was he kind of agreed, however, aligned that let's let's see what happens. And he says, he said, now he said, I'd like, he said, now, I'm in a point where I think the wolves may surprises again if you're just left him alone. Yeah. And that's what made it, I guess that's what makes it kind of magical. Um, is that you had this island with a bunch of moves, and these wolves found it. Yeah, right, and they kind of ran there whatever their little courses. And now you're like, oh, yeah, they're out there because we stuck them out there. It seems a little artificial for National Park. And if you'd ask the wolves that they wanted to be moved, I'm guessing they're gonna tell you they'll pass. Okay, you're you're you admire your your obituary hunting, obituary enthusiast. Oh yeah, yeah, Um, obituaries one of those things. I don't know one of this, Steve, But all my career as a writer was the newspaper back in the eighties. If some important died in town, the newspaper coming to my desk and say, I'm pat, could you do a feature? Do a feature obituary? And this guy I became this kind of this obituary writer of the uh for famous people. You know, how do you approach an obituary? Um? Why phone calls? You know? I start when my dad died, I had a guy called me from a newspaper and um interviewed me about my dad. Of course, then when when the thing came out, it wasn't these days and newspapers you can't get in the depth that we used to be able to get into when I was writing newspapers back in the eighties. But I, UM, I like to think I'm an empathetic person, and I I'll read about I go into they call them morgue, and I'd find them more in our newspaper. For these guys, read read as much as I could about them, try to get a good feel for them, and then call like a son or a daughter or or a wife. Might being just interviewing for for a half hour an hour, but they're still a fresh dead and you're calling the relatives. But but if you do it sympathetically and especially condolences and that you know, tell them you want to you're working at a piece you wanted to just man a final final honor, woman, a final honor that um people are pretty pretty good at talking to it. And you realize you're not. You're not calling there, you know, throw dirt on the guy before he's you know why he's being lord in And yeah, so I I feel that kind of stuff fascinating. But when I when I was mutioning you is um it was this um guy over and I don't have in front of me now, but it was a cool, cool thing about a guy that died vice hunting out there and people so often I get this at Deer and during the magazine. A lot people would die and then the sun would be talking to his dad on the deathbed. Is this what you're talking about, Steve? People come into the man's room and he's dyeing the hospital and asking him, Hey, next fall, when I'm out hunting, could you send a big buck pass me? Is that what you're talking about? Or are you talking about the Sweden guy with um that we had a heart attack out in the woods and it was otherwise was the otherwise good hunt? This is what I like. All this what I'm thinking primarily about the the other people that described it as an otherwise success. Could you read that line because I don't have it from me, you don't have in front of you. Um, it was about jeez, you're right, Remember I said that you said if I died, you said it would be a heart attack. Yeah, okay. There was an article about a forty four year old hunter who died in the woods and it says on November eleventh last year, his heart suddenly stopped during an otherwise successful hunt with his friends, and that it made me think about all these different things that during my career that I've stumped onto of um because it's people on the death that wishes and the other story that came up today. I was shared with you that I'm sorry um that I shared with you that I thought was just I great commentary and maybe thinking when we started talking earlier about you dropping them in the set here what we do well back in this I think it's probably in the nineteen forties nine. No, No, I had to be about nineteen sixties, because I'm not there. Writer in Wisconsin named Don Johnson he died. I'll pry about just you know, but ten fifteen years ago now. But Don was a great storyteller, great writer. If he told the story of he was out covering opening week, opened day of duck season Wisconsin. Back it must have been in the sixties, and he went to this boat landing and he has duck hunters would coming from the day of hunting because they had a neon opener. I'm not sure we have a neon open anymore in Wisconsin, but back then as a neon opener. So late in the day, this this this duck boat comes in and he's starting to interview the guys, asking how the hunt went, that kind of stuff, and well, here's the a dead hunter lying in the bottom of the other boat with a bunch of ducks problem, and they're having this conversation about, well, you know, what do we do now? Should we called it? We have to kill the sheriff department. We got called the more we supposed to doing. Don's you know, pretty baffled by all us. You know, it's a dead man in your boat, you know. And well apparently the guy died that morning while they're putting out decoy, setting up the blind and stuff, and they knew he's gone, so they just putting the bound the boat. And they had a little discussion and they agreed that well I came to the guy's name, Well, Fred would have wanted to keep going, so we so we did. We kept hunting, and when they got their limits or they got done hunting, they came in with this the whole time, like probably four or five hours, those guys lying dead in the bottom the bound the duck boat. Now, I thought that was just a classic story that you know, what would you do of all these days we up, we would just feel you know, like obligated to, you know, probably come in and do it, because you'd probably you know, looke dawn upon by everyone in your talent for a wee. Yeah, I think so could just be like how careless can you be? But then on the other side, I think I think it's kind of cool. You know, if that happened me, I want to take I want to take offense, you immediately agree with it. You would feel like sort of guilty into immediately doing something about it. It wouldn't be more like a legal issue. You know. If I was out hunting, If I was out dug hunting and all of a sudden, someone that I'm hunting with dies, I would, uh, you know, I can't really say him in that situation, I feel like I would wrap her up. I feel like i'd wrap her up. I'd say, guys, we're gonna wrap her up and take our our dead friend here back into town and and notify his family and pulled it. Yeah, I'd go so far as to say that would be mine. I wouldn't even pull the decoys because I would also be wondering, Uh, how did they know he wasn't I mean, did they administer CPR? You know what I'm saying. I mean he must have been just stone. Like, let's say you let him off and he's in his blind and you come back and he's just so dead that he's chili. But like, if if you were to fall over and seem pretty dead, how would I rule out that there wasn't a thing that could be done After I administered CPR on you, I wouldn't run back to see if perhaps they'd shock you back to life. So that's where it also gets tricky. But if it was be that You're like, hey, I'm gonna go take a whiz or whatever, and then an hour later I go on, there you are cold and stiff, and I'd be like, there's no chance of resurrecting him. I would still wrap up that gut reaction. But then I think if like Pat or Spencer were like, but you know you, Steve really like to hunt. It's the opener looking all the ducks flying. I think I could be pretty easily persuade. Let me put it in there. Let's say this. Let's say I was in the autumn of my life. I'm in the autumn of my life, and we all know I've already had three open heart surgeries. I'm like, Yanni, if I could just get out one last time. You know that was a hypothetical. Steve hasn't had an open heart surgery, but yeah, like like like I'm an old, old, old old guy, and and everybody he can't believe I'm still alive. And I'm like, if you could just get me out in the marsh one more time, yeah, you know it could that calm my soul. And and that's how I dream of passing. You probably would have prefaced the hunt at breakfast being like, hey, and by the way, if I kill over, why you guys shot, just keep shooting? And I couldn't picture, you know, if I didn't say that, and I could picture there, I sat and I'm like, oh, Yanni, just to be back out, like I don't ever want to go home and all sudden not going to the eternal slumber, right, I could see how you guys white, you know, shoot a few volleys, work a couple of flocks and in a largely symbolic sort of way before boating me back into town. I can see that. Well. No, here's another another factor. Would you consider um going taking Stee's advice and getting off the lake, knowing that if you didn't, he has a wife back home that would just hate you the rest of the rest of her life. For not immediately pulling that body off off the lake. You're not probably gonna talk to her that much more anyway. It's like you know what I mean, like it depends on how much you planned on hanging out with her after your body died. Good point. It seems like irrational confidence from these duck hunters that were probably made up of like a banker, a welder, and an insurance salesman that was like, yeah, he's gone nothing. We can do what we do about now. I'm not pulling decoys. That wasn't how Don Johnson described him, but um, you know it's plausible. Okay. Uh. Another you had another final observation about your time exploring obituaries is that you find that people we'll hope when sending off of a loved one into into death, that they'll hope that the person does what in the afterlife big buck their way. I never heard that. I'll tell you if I mean he's he wrote about it. That was one of the well, you know, Steve's favorite quote of mine is you know, do you make people stupid? And that was one of the things that used to just amazed me how many times I gotta got queries and manuscripts over the transom out of the blue from people with that kind of storyline or that you know, Dad's on the deathbed and you know Junior is in there knowing this, this is it and and hey Dad, you know if you had a chance, send a big buck man waiting this fall. And like I always think, yeah, that was my last chance to know to ask for a favor that once he's on the inside like that, that's fine. I think it might be a little bit more ingest than no. No, the stories I got you, honest, the stories ever written a sent to me that that I never published. These were, um, those guys, heartfelt sentiments. They were pitching you this while you read. Yeah, and and and some stories you can get from deer hunters along those kinds of themes really are touching there. Some of them were really well written. And maybe something can pull that one off and make it. I've well written requests, but the guys I heard from I never I just never quickly could quite buy it. Yeah, but you know you can't be like, uh, you know, have him send world peace my way. Rights. You can't have to be like a huge thing. And you remember the hunting times together it's not gonna cost you know, it's not a not a humongous miracle. It's like in the scheme of miracles, it's pretty mild to be like, you know, I don't want to over ask here. I don't want to be like a prima donna. You know, I'm not like asking for wealth, great wealth and and and fame. Just if you could, you know, just a nice buck, like a nice buck, I mean, how bad, Like you know, how bad could that be? You only got these querries if dad followed through and sent him a big buck, right like, it was never that son of a bit like, no big book. I don't think we were. You know, I don't recall that anyone who actually had had the big ultimate buck come by. You know, these are typically just wishes and stuff. I think I don't recall it ever being um I got I don't. I don't call anyone ever attributing a big buck that got to that to the deathbed wish. That's helpful. I thought you were getting like a follow up. No, No, these are just I think that there's trying to be a sentimental story, and I thought it's the kind of story that say, if Steve Ronella were to write the castory, I think I'd probably buy the story because I thought i'd probably pretty well written. But typically the stories I got, you know, they weren't they weren't that, they weren't convincing, so I never never on bought any of them. I was listening to a Elk calling instructional tape. I just switched. So now when I drive around, I have an out call my mouth, the turkey call my mouth, um, And there's a peculiar passage man that I'm getting into it this early. Yeah, turkey SE's not even over. Yeah, but I'm moving on in my mind, man, moving out of my mind. That's what I got. Are you frustrated by the Turkey's calling? Not at all. No. I just was like, it's may man. I mean, yeah, you know, before we know it. Yeah, it's like before we know it. Um. In this instructional thing I'm listening to, there's a there's a there's a thing that the man. There's an audio recording of a of an actual hunt. And you hear a guy kills a bull oh with the bow, and you hear him talk about how and he names the bow the bow manufacturer names the bow manufacturer by name and talks about the lightning speed with which the bull died, and he says, I couldn't have asked the Lord to help me kill it any quicker, which I thought was like, a uh, just a strange observation that you would like that that would be a ask, Yeah, that you know, like I couldn't even if I had, like if I had asked the Lord to kill it faster, he couldn't have helped me. Like this bow killed it so effectively. The even divine intervention couldn't have added anything to this bow's power. I don't know if that's how he meant that to come across, but just struck me as a's like, yeah, I just remember it's like it's it's like I appreciated the acknowledgement. But then the more I thought about, Mike, that is a weird commentary on your perception of the Lord's power, that like this bow is very swift killer. That person did not think that far, didn't think of that far through. But I think that's one of the fun things of writing, and that the thing is um when people racing like that, when you realize kemmy red in a way that might not make you look like you want to be viewed, and so yeah, but I think that makes it in the print. No patters, Well, nice thing we wanted to talk about. If you're into it, into it? Um the wrath of bird watchers, yeah, um as an audience when you write about wildlife. One of the fun things of writing an outdoor column all these years, you know, you start figuring out there's certain different groups of people that they're reading you. And I learned a long time ago that birdwatchers ain't me right about a cool thing about birds you've observed they appreciate it because I think they don't. They probably see a whole lot of things written about different birds. So one thing I've always liked doing over the years is just writing basically backyard observations about birds I see, and then getting into how wood peckers are hammer away all day and not how their brains get rattled, and look into this kind of stuff. And so anytime I write about birds, always get really nice feedback from bird watcher. You'll throw a little nod of the bird world. Definitely, yea. Probably every couple of months typically I'll write something about birds that's good as an outdoor columns because another observation. I like you your quote about how dear maybe people stupid, but you had another observation about being a naturalist, being a hunter and being a naturalist, and you were observing how in this day and age you can have great hunters who are horrible naturally well, definitely, and you're saying that some of the best deer hunters, you know, I couldn't tell you what kind of tree their deer stand is hanging in. Definitely, I can. I can name names, but I can't do that, you know. Um, So it's admitted, So so mitigate that or to counteract that, you'll now and then write up you'll write a piece about birds. That's the only reason I read about it. I don't want to be like one of those guys, because like you got your game and you got your tweetie birds Steven Ella, see's right through the bullshit. No, actually, um, Growing up, I had a grandmother who lived with us, who was in the birds, and so I learned I could identify a lot of birds, feel like a young age. But then I kind of peeked out and so anyway I learned over the over the years. Writing my column that ain't me right, about birds and the natural stuff about birds. The bird watchers adore you. I get these nice, nice emails and letters from different women that older women typically and other birdwatchers love me. But then along the way, because I'm a hunter, a number of times I've written about um three things that I learned piss off birdwatchers, really piss them off on the first one is to suggest something like, why don't you guys paying your way on conservation on the conservation front? Why don't you Why don't you tell those back their companies that they should be getting a front exercise tax and other braoculars that they sell for bird watching, why don't you put an exercise tax on bird feed these kind of things like the hunters have done and the gun owners have done to try to build into the conservation fund. Why they don't like that. They really come after you and what is there? What is there? What? Why do they find that? So? Because they aren't Typically what they'll say is they they don't think they're harming anything out there, so why should they be paying extra for it? They're not consumptive, they don't they don't use that term, but they look at themselves as being we're just um observers of nature, and you guys are takers of nature, so you should be paying something for it. Didn't think that's been Yeah, I'm sure there's other gut things that just bug him about the idea of a lot of twos. I don't want paymark anymore any more. Like, yeah, I could, I could, I could, I could counter that argument, but that's a that's a fair argument to throw out there. So so that's what. So that's one thing that pisces off bird watchers. The earth that pisces off birdwatchers is is um Wisconsin. Until the year two thousand, their boats to not have a hunting season on morning doves. And so we had a big fight, and eventually we um we passed a morning dove season. And because I'm a hunter, and I wrote about why I thought was very biologically easy to have a bird season hunting season on morning doves. Why not you know we hunt? Wait, the thing I always would point out is that name one thing we hunt that's isn't pretty? Because I say, well, had it's such a pretty bird that hasn't it's a beautiful call. I think, well, what do we hunt that um isn't pretty? And how you saying that if you want to kill ugly things, that's kind of elitist, you know, just killed the ugly stuff. That sounds pretty rotten. And so I never never bought that argument. So anyway, they didn't like me for that, and I get a hate mail about that. And the one that's still going to this day in Wisconsin and parts of the country is, um, you know, any to me talking about having a hunting season on Sandhill crane vicious stuff that comes in, you know, just the kind of stuff that Um, I thought, Man, I thought these people love me, and and now they're calling me names and and just um just beating the crap out of me and I but the thing is, as as a outdoor columnists, I'm kind of used to people taking shots at me, So it wasn't that big a deal. But that'sought. It was really interesting how the same people who will love me forgretting about birds will turn so quickly and just really come after me. And yeah, I'd say, just as viciously as as the most harappy deer hunter. You know what I came to real venom. I think on the morning dove and say, because on the morning, dont sand Hill crane issue why you get a lot of resistance. It tends to be very difficult for people to accept um the onset of hunting for something that you weren't hunting previously, no matter how short the window that you weren't hunting it. So sand hill cranes are once abundant. Hunting was ridespread. Due to unregulated hunting and other habitat issues, we had like a great diminishment in sand O cranz and now we're coming along and recovering them pretty effectively. But it was that period when you couldn't That just gets fixed in people's minds. So when you point there's a perceived scarcity. So when you point out that, like you know, now we have as many and we're going to add it to the list of dozens of things, dozens of species of game animals and fur bears that you're allowed to hunt. We're gonna add it to this big giant list you probably couldn't even make. It's so many of the unbable list them all we're gonna add to that big list. People get real upset, Like morning doves in my home state, these too don't have a morning dove season because it's like it's like it's just this thing where you know you don't And even states where that they take up, there's like a gap in hunting. You might hunt black bears for a long time, numbers get down, they end the hunting season, numbers come back up, they go to reinstate. It's very difficult to overcome that um more soul than people that wanted to take things that can presently be hunted and make them not able to hunt. It's just hard to get things up and running and hunting you really. People talk about it with the elk reintroductions in the East, it's it's a thing that that that they want to make very clear, even in the onset of the reintroductions is that we're going to do this and when numbers get high, we're gonna hunt because they've had resistance. Were also there's this new animal on the landscape put there with the intention of that it would be hunted, and then later people are like, oh, man, what right. They weren't involved in the reintroduction, They didn't spend any money on it, but now that it happened, they're kind of like what it's like, No, no, we spent the money to put them there. With the intention that we would hunt the elk that we put there. Well, you know, when it comes to our situation with Sandy Hill Crane's, I'm I'm never expecting it to pass in my lifetime, but I think when I can have a good conversation with some bird watchers who opposed the hunt, I asked him, well, really, have you seen anything different in the morning dove situation in the last twenty years since we started hunting morning doves? Even have you an't seen anybody hunting morning doves? Because typically, you know, hunting is not a weren't for Blaze Orange, most people wouldn't even know that, um, there's a hunter out there during the deer season because it's just you know, I mean, yeah, our guns make a lot of noise, but how many people are like notice? And so I'll just that's my point to them is that you know, if you had a Sandy Hill Crane season, you wouldn't't notice. It would just be would be so well regulated, not gonna endanger the species, could just be Yes, people like me could go out and enjoy a good meal from our Samuel Crane, enjoy a new kind of hunting experience, and you know, so what's the harm. Yeah, most people do not Most people are not realized that the morning dove is the most harvested game bird, most harvested in anything in this country. I think that American hunters kill around ten million mourning doves a year. But here's the thing. The numbers. I don't want to say that the numbers are artificially inflated, but we have a lot of mourning does because of human activities, like our agriculture, like our agricultural crop systems have I mean that we have far more mourning doves than we would have in the absence of people. It's one of those species that really wins, It really wins around human manipulations on the landscape. So we create a giant is that recently on some of the haunts we've been on where who were are we maybe in Texas recently? And what else? Have we hunted turkeys recently Montana? Where you just see like a pair here, pair there, you know, and there's sort of just like part of everything else. But if you go to like a place that was like known for it and where the birds are really working the sunflower crops, you know, you're talking about thousands you know that. Really that really makes that example true. When we were kids, we would hunt them. You weren't allowed to hunt them, but we'd hunt them on power lines because you could look down the power line and see morning doves way down. You'd kind of mark how many posts you had to go. This was the pelicons. You'd mark how many posts you had to go. Then you'd go in the woods and parallel the power lines, counting down the posts, and then you belly crawl into the edge of the cut, hoping to get within pellet rifle range of a dove on the wire. Did you get me in that way? No? No, But then my brother in law had a real souped up pellet rifle that was very hard. It was a tent pump and by the time you got to the tenth pump, dude, it was hard to pump. And that offered like enough a little bit of range over our plastic stocked once and so that was a little bit helpful. But no, it's not a very effective way to morning doves. Um. But we were raised to believe that it was a great injustice that Michigan had no morning dove season, and so it was almost an act of civil disobedience. My father viewed it as like like you know, yeah, civil disobedience. Uh, that that you would that you would pursue some doves. My my dad had a real problem with the American robin. You know, it's our states, our state burd in Wisconsin. But Dad always hated the robin because it was pretty strawberry patches more than any of our bird, because it's such a big fruit eater. And he and he don't, you know, I don't recall you remember shooting because he shot a lot of birds off for strawberry patches. But I'll let me call himber shooting a robin. But he did not like them. Oh it was man, we would have gotten killed if we touched a robber. But my father had a lot of h wrath for blue jays, which he identified as being robbin killers. So in honor of the our state bird as well was the robin, and in defense of the robin, which he liked a lot, it was in his mind there was a perpetual war against blue jays, which for robin killers. And he felt that the ruthlessness, ruthlessness with which a blue jay would go in and eat baby robins, that the eggs, but killing eat the baby. Robbins that um no punishment was too great for a blue jay, and he would devote a lot of his winner to um ridding our yard blue jays and they would melt out of the snow in the springs. I know, I just like I don't let my kid. I don't let my kid get any kind of stuff like that. Yeah. I think there's a famous um Autobu painting of a blue jay rating a nest. It almost looks like one of those um dark War scenes were there's the evil person killing the babies, you know, and that kind of what's the imagery? No? Oh, yeah, you get you. You know, everybody gets excited. You watch a robin setting up shop and it's like the eggs and then one day there's one and they're ripping him apart. But you know where I realized a few years ago where I was not meant to be a wildlife photographer was there's a low hanging orioles nest with my driveway and I went out there with my nice camera one day to get a picture of the bird's nest because it's a beautiful orioles nest hanging down only about fifteen ft up. Well, I'm focusing on the basket to that Oriels nest. I also blue jay hop onto the branch about ten feet away, and I'm kind of thinking, what's this blue jay doing up on on that by that nest? Just stupid not thinking it through the blue jake hop stone, and I like, my camera is up, my cameras focused. Blue Jay reaches into the nest, pulls out an egg, and I, instead of snapping the picture like a photographer would do, I lower the cameras, like to look at and awe and what the hell did it just do? And then when I finally realized that going on, it was too late. It was gone to have a picture of this blue jail, you know, focus off on the side as he's hopping out, and then when he actually grabs the thing, and my fingers should be pressing the button, I'm too busy looking at him to trying to figure out what he's up to. Remember the old days, people would have, you know, like roadside attractions where you had animals. It's kind of more common than like we were going to a place where guy had just a couple of bears for some reason. Definitely, definitely he had a couple of bears in a fence, and when you're on a road trip driving around, you'd like you'd have a I'm like, come see the bears. I remember being at one of those places, and I remember there's because he my dad had pictures of it. He liked it so much that there's a big like don't feed the bears sign. But he reached in and gave a bear a tipsy roll, and the bear got the tittsie roll stuck on its teeth, And my dad took a bunch of pictures of this bear trying to dislodge a Tutsi roll on the fence. They just tickled him endlessly. But like his what he saw when he looked at animals is just different than what I see when I look at animals in some way. Yeah, you know, like I just don't feel that impulse when I see its like don't feed the bears. I'm the kind of guys like, oh, you know, if it must be a good reason. But he'd be like, well why not. Maybe if I feed it, I'll find out why you're not supposed to. I told you before, but I've told you and I've told me Anny Newburgh how much. You like when you talk about your father's and the stories of your you know, the observation and they would make and the things you would hear as a kid, because I think I have those with my dad where I think, what the hell is he thinking? You know? But but but it's it's fun stuff because it's different eras and your different ways of looking at life, at life. You know, I enjoy that story. Oh man, I sit around Onener all the time. I'll say something my kids now and then, or we'll do something now and then I'm like, someday you'll say, you know, it's so weird one time my dad, Right, they'll tell those they already have some well definitely just say my my my son's in law already have Pat Durkin stories things that they I have a little sign at that end of my driveway. It says, um um, deer Hunter's pointed some kind of sign that we picked up somewhere and then needs it just the Durkins, you know. And and so my my son in law Matthew, refers to deer Hunter's point as d HP. And every time something comes up for his little um you a disagreement in the family, he'll he'll kind of look at Miller's sons in law like James and say, that's not how we do things here at d HP. I'm the patriarch of the family now, you know, with thirty two stuff dear in your house? Yeah, I and an elk in a couple of prong horns. So pat you mentioned earlier like how you get feedback from burgers or fishermen or hunters. I would fall out of my chair if someone sent me like a handwritten letter on something that I wrote for the meat eater or wherever. I imagine that's not the case with you, though, Like do you get a lot of handwritten letters? I still do. Um, there are really old people, you know they're eighties. Like how frequently you know when my newspaper column wasn't was that's mass circulation I'd getting pretty pretty regularly. Yeah, And and I never knew what to I never knew what to expect from that. I had an envelope come in with that with that, Um, you know when they're getting really old and that their hands aren't shaking or shaking now, and you never knew what being what's going to be inside? But um, the thing I can say that's true now, is that it was true back and I started writing, you know, forty years ago, thirty five years ago. Is that you get more good feedback than bad. You know, you get you get some overall or through handwritten notes. I've never gotten a negative handwritten note. I've gotten some really nasty handwritten ones. I think some of my nasties for back the nineties. So you know, that's one thing. One thing I've noticed I'm watching my writing workshop. But one thing I've noticed in my in my writing careers, as I've gotten older, I've gotten less of the vehement, hateful stuff except from burders. The burders just going they don't care how old you are. The deer hunting no restraint. Yeah, the deer hunters are a Wisconsin. I think the ones who've read my stuff kind of know where I stand and stuff, And I think I think I've kind of stood the test of time where store writing after all these years. So I think they might just kind of say, well, he's I don't agree with him, but I read them. And but you can you can find threads a lot of those, especially like bull hunting sites, they are just basically bashing me. I'm various issues in Wisconsin forms you know, and I used to have. I would say I thought you were my friend. People send me links to that stuff as if I want to read it. People bashing on me are friends to do that? Yeah, they'll send me nice screenshots of people like ship talking. I was like, thanks, bro, Yeah, it's good to know. Made my day. I think I'll sleep better to night. Yeah, I'll sleep better at nights. Other my my wife won't. My wife won't read, won't open my um. She like, she won't open your mail because someone's gonna put some that could be too yea. If she sees a letter come in without a return address label, she'll never open it because those are the ones that usually are the worst. There's gonna be a level of passion involved to like sit down and write you a letter about something you wrote, but it's it's um, it's I can't predict when I really can't. I have a big envelope where I used to put because you used to get a lot more of it, and I had a big envelope where would stick letters into it. But that's kind of slowing down down because now you're just like there's so many ways just really quickly tell someone how much you don't like them. Yeah, people like people are excited to tell you that they don't like you. They don't want to wait. They don't want to imagine you being sad days from now, when they can make you sad right now. Like dude, I'm I want like lightning vengeance. Man, I'm not even be mad in a week when he gets the letter. But I can just feel now that I can lash out well. And that's that's the thing that I think. It's always intriguing about that is that, Yeah, you know, most people when they get they really ticked off about something, they'll write it down. Then, at least for me, when I started getting that way, by the time I got got got down where I'm gonna be sending it, I go back and I delete everything. I think, why would I why would I want to just keep this thing going? You know? And and plus there's there's a guiding thought, and I really at times drive it into myself. I don't forget it is that this I quoted all the time with Samuel Johnson, great philosopher, writer wrote no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money. So when you take time out of your schedule when you're a freelance writer to write someone some stupid response this long that's something that he sent you. You're killing yourself. You're taking money on your your pocket. You should be putting that time into something that pays your bills. You know why you have trying to change this guy's mind. And so I was thinking, No, you're a writer, don't you know, don't don't waste your writing on this guy or this woman. It just doesn't make any sense. Okay, Getty final thoughts. That was a good one right there. That's your town path that that doesn't conclude. I'm telling you that that was a good concluding thought. I like that. We'll come back around you, Spencer. Uh. Con If you like Pat's contributions on the podcast, I like this man. This is great. Like the connections you're drawn, You're gonna like him even better. On the website, go to the media dot Com click on contributors. Pat writes an article every two weeks for us. It's some of the best stuff that we've put out, Spencer. Check out his work there. Uh, you'll be entertained. You will not be disappointed. Thank you. Yeah, good research based stuff, man, Thank you. You guys make a lot of good phone calls, and you have an ear. You have an ear for the counterintuitive, and I've never been told that before. Thank you. I think you kind of like things where, you know, you like things where everybody sort of makes an assumption about, Oh, that's gotta be what it is, and then you'll be like, you know what, I know that it sure seems like that's what it is. But the truth is a little different than what you think than what you come to an immediate conclusion. And you know what's fun about when you going to research type stuff and watch researchers present their stuff and read about their thought process. So often they're really these are typically smart people, but so often they get into the research and realize their assumptions were all wrong and they've they've proven it themselves now that that didn't turn out the way where I did it. I UM, I can just think of it. It's this, um, I keep going back time hover line. But he wrote a whole book basically about his his research as a real sociologist, different things, different assumptions he had about different topics. For there's wolves, something the up or people flooding victims out in Western States, how they would be responding to different things, and so often you're his his um his his hypothesis was just you know, shattered by the by the actual results. And I think that's that's where, like, you know, I don't care who it is. You're talking about people and people's motivations. You get into people's motivations and why they did something. Man, you're playing a fire there. You don't know. Most of us can't explain our own motivations why we do certain things. When you start making those assumptions about people in the public eye or whether they're they're scientists or people saying you're pushing a genda, think heck, most of us we don't know. If you're in a gener we don't know what it is. You know, we just we can't operate that what we do and who knows where that ship comes from. You think people are make assumptions about people who are in the public eye. Yeah, people like you know what people like a good story about. They like a good story about what an asshole some famous person. Yes, they like that better than what a good guy like you could tell someone. I can tell you a story about a celebrity who turns out there, pretty good guy. I can tell you a story about celebrity who's actually an asshole. Nine out of ten people are going to take the ladder, and people can't wait to tell you that shitty story. Yeah, and it's I don't know what it is, but I looked away all these different people in history. I don't care if you're talking about presidents or obscure senators. Look at and you think, yeah, but there and that. The net result is they're pretty cool people. They might have had their their their problems here and there, but you know, I look at my own father that way a lot. You know, where I grew up really just puzzled and scared him at times. It's, you know, really wondering what the hell is this problem? But then as time goes on, you look back on his life and you know, you give a eulogy like I did when he died, and you realize, yeah, it's I think I think that's a philosopher, the Pascal. I think it is pscl don't fres a philosopher named Pascal. I think he said, I think it's him. I might be misquoting, getting the wrong guys saying this, but he said Amanda is not shows greatness of being at one extreme. He shows greatness by being at both extremes at the same time. And I think that's that's my dad. You know that you could be this just um borderline a physically abusive and then an hour later track you down and have a real heartfelt conversation with you. We're later in life, you've figured out you know, he lost his temper. He realized he lost his temper, and but he's he cares enough about how what he just did to you to come out and track you down and try to smooth things over a little bit. I hope my kids remember that, like the three times I did that this weekend. That's why I'm always telling my kids too. At the day, I'm like, take note of the expert parenting I'm doing right now. Someday you'll you'll like to talk about this definitely. Uh. One time, this is my concluder. Uh. I had just moved, we'd moved my family, and I was in a we were in a house. Yet we're just in a hotel and I'm there with my just me. My wife's not there and I'm just there with my three kids. And then and then we're leaving on a long trip for work. So I wake up and my kids are all sleeping in the hotel room and when I'm on the floor and to her in bed, and it's very sad for me, like could we just moved there kind of in all this there in this uncertain space, and I need to like slip out to go to the airport, and our babysitters like waiting at the door so that at four in the morning, I can walk out and she can come in. And my wife need still hasn't gotten in to town yet, and I'm like feeling very conflicted about leaving my children right just like that, that we had invited this chaos and how they might perceive this. And Yeahning and I go to the airport. It's early five, six in the morning, and we run into a buddy of ours whose friend has just fallen to his death in the mountains. And a guy comes up and he wants to take a picture. He's like fan of the show. We do the picture, and then it's not an hour later, get a letter, get an email about what an a soul I am? How really let him down and seemed like I was distracted, but the Yanni was cool. Ye, dude, you know you're walking in on a life and progress at six in the morning. You don't know the context. I'm sorry that I let you down. I have a friend. I'm sorry that I was distracted, but the loss of you know what I mean. It's like I have a friend that as I I like, um, Gordon Lightfoot's music, not just the famous I've seen him live twice. Yeah, and I like I like his stuff and but one, but you don't, of course you do. Are you telling me this person out there who could have a problem with the records? But I tell you a guy who was a problem with Gordon kick his ass, would kick his ass. Go ahead, Yeah, this this my friend Tom. Why actually my friend that that Tom is now deceased. But Tom one time when he heard that how much I liked Lightfoot? Um, he says, Okay, I'll keep talking. While while Tom was on this pier and Sturgeon Big Wisconsin, and a lot of people come sailing off the Great Lakes in the Sturgeon Bay. Well, one time, Tom's on on this pier in Sturgeon b Wisconsin, and who comes walking down the pier toward him but Gordon Lightfoot. He had you know, he's a sailor and and Tom. Tom's on front who works the marina, knew like for enough to where he could introduce him. And as he's coming close, this guy starts talking to Lightfoot, want an interest in to Tom and like for just watch right by him without you and acknowledge him, and and Tom to this was dying day. I didn't like the guy because of that. And I said, I said to him about Tom for all you know, he was just in the bar. This is back in days of a pay phone. Maybe Si is calling someone died in his life, maybe his wife cut cheating, no meer, who knows, Maybe he's in the middle of anurism. I mean, who knows, you know? Said, why would you think he would? Why do you take that so personally? You know what I mean? They got something on his mind. Son. When I saw Gordon both times I saw him, he knows that, like a lot of people are there for the rack, especially in Michigan. That's big ship, right, definitely, that's big Every Michigander who who has a any kind of right to call themselves as such carries a has a weight in their heart about the reck of y Evan Fitzgerald. Uh, and Gordon knows when he's playing Michigan. Well, I saw him in Sioux, Ontario, which is sister city of the Sioux Michigan, and then I saw him in Traverse City, Michigan. And he knows that everyone's there to watch him do the rack and it. They're probably gonna allot him, are gonna split afterward. But he's come to peace with that, and he puts it that in appropriate place. He doesn't wait till like the bitter end. He doesn't wait for an encore. He doesn't want to lead his audience on. He doesn't hit it with him too early where they're not ready, and he knows where to put it in the act, and he also knows how to sell people on it. So like when I saw him in Sue Ontario, he's out there doing his deal doing all He's got a lot of hits, right, but he's up there doing his deal and uh, we're in a big hockey stadium and all of a sudden he says, um, I can't remember what number, what what year it was, But all of a sudden he gets off and he goes, um, it was twenty years ago, this November whatever, some cryptic thing like that, and people just come out of their seats. People come out of their seats. Yeah, whoa, you know, every's so excited. He does the record, the Evan Fitzgerald takes some out eleven minutes and then people just kind of split. Man, I've never seen that happened. I've seen him. I'm not kidding you. I've seen Gordon Land for at least ten times, and I've not seeing people's But he sings that song. But yeah, I'll never have but may may. Maybe I'm not paying attention. It's a great jukebox song, because really get that in American pie back to back, Yeah, dude, fifty cents you get three hours and listening to join. You know, Dandy Warhols do a cover of the Wreck of the administ It's not very good. Oh you got any concluders. Oh man, it's gonna be hard to come on the heels of all this good stuff. But I heard this brought a great song. Pat talking about writing as a you know, wasting your time writing a bad response to somebody. Um that that hits home and it got me to thinking about how my father in law recently we were He was telling my daughter how he just doesn't fight with anybody anymore and doesn't get angry because it's just a waste of time, you know, and he's so he's over it. He's at that point in life, Yeah, where it's like freaking you know, you just like time just get shorter and shorter and there's less and less of it, and you're just like, I'm not going to spend time um doing that anymore. But then I think it might have been an NPR. Over the weekend, I heard this quote. I really liked it. I think I should share it. It's a Sam Clements quote. You know that guy some folks call Mark Twain. Yeah, there isn't time, So brief is life for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There's only time for loving and but an instant, an instant so to speak for that. That's not Mark Twain, is it? That doesn't sound like something he'd say. But all Mark Twain did a is bicker and call people to account. It did entire life to calling people to account. Maybe this was late in life, Yeah, all right. Yeah. Plus you can also have a quote that, like, you have a quote that contradicts sort of what you've done. Yeah, you can picture like Mike Tison being like, you know, you should never punch another person, right, yeah, sure, then that sounds like I mean so often these days when people quote Mark Twain at my intendant, because I think Mark Twain has been given all sorts of quotes, they never said that one actually sounds like like his way, he's space pasted and stuff like that. That probably has the Mark Twain. But dark snow Twain hated Roosevelt. Yeah I didn't like. Yeah, yeah, well, well Twain wrote, I think when the great um criticism of turkey hunting ever written what, Yeah, I don't know. He thought it was just the height the height of um. I can't remember what term you used, mean spiritedness to take the wing bone from a turkey and crafted into a call and then fool that bird with its own um bone basically, And it's an interesting story, but it's it's it's it's really good. I I'd like I would say, yeah, if you caught a turkey in a live trap and cut its bone out of it, cut its wing off, cut it loose, made a call, called it back in, and killed it, yes, yeah, but a different turkeys bone. No, I just say we agreed with him. Yeah, can I tell one more from my concluder because you still got a concluder. Yeah, try to rob you of it, but I'm gonna let you have it. Is n done. I'm done. Okay, I'm not telling another unless you find the Turkey quote. And so it's actually a whole short short story. It's it's worth reading. Though. Um, I'm not telling tell you another cool Rick Krueger story. I thought of enthusiast I thought about this one. Um is it? Ben Long wrote the pieces last week or so on on these on trump sniffing dogs, Um, the fact that you could train dogs to sniff fall trout and the species of trout, even walter in the water. Well, Rick Krueger, Mhm, I never knew till I talked to him. He just tell me that that these cadaver dogs. Everyone. I always thought caldaver dogs basically were operated on land, and that you know, that was the only place they could they could be have any use. But he says he had a case. This is only about five ten years ago now. A young man from called Connam, Wisconsin, was Don and Madison in December early this mid December for a for a conference and he went out drinking. And people who know the Lake Mondotta structure, there's a there's a hotel on the southwestern end of Lake Monona. You can see it from across different parts of the lake. This guy was out drinking, got drunk and banged on some woman's window. He's twenty six year old guy, and I wanted to help, basically because he didn't I don't know if you didn't know where he was. But the woman kind of freaked out and didn't didn't know what he wants, so she didn't answer answer him. But then she saw him kind of shelfling off toward the lake. And they think what happened was he tried taking a short cut across the lake on the ice to the to the hotel where he was staying. Never made it there. He was missing, and the lakes were partially frozen, so they're pretty sure he tried going across the lake thus directions from and saw him going. Well, they went out there and they had these cadaver dogs and then in like thirty three ft of water. These cadaver dogs, I guess when they smell what they're out there, you know, trying to find they'll sit down. I guess they just sit and well, here they're in the spot and they sat. No, yeah, thirty three ft of water. As I asked if, I said, really, I didn't know this, and he was yeah. And so that the police marked that GPS unit and they could not because of weather in the because of conditions, they couldn't go down and check it out. And so they so Rick got those coordinates of where they were, those cadaver dogs that spot in Lake Manona. And that was like in December. Come April, the lakes are free advice. Rick got his boat ready to go. I got it all fired up and got verified the GPS coordinates, went out there very first pass finds what he thinks there's a curled up body in the bottom the lake right there, and so and he pulls pulls his camera down a his his procedures. He got his camera down and he thinks he could see that little camera viewfinder what looked like a boot or a shoe or something. And he wasn't quite certain though, so he went home, but on his computer blew it up definitely that guy. And they went out there and went on got him and yeah, but then but you can't rule out that dog was a psychic. You just I mean, this is why you're this is why your podcast that he smelled it, but I think he might have picked up on that unmistakable juju that comes off of Well then then my my um so my footnote to that one though, when I when I questioned Rick on these dogs have that ability to be able to pick out a cent thirty three ft down in the bottom of the lake, he said, well, if you want, if you think that's impressive, he said. Over a lake Mondota, not too far away from there, there's these these um up behind the u W University of Wisconsin campus. There's this nice cool ridge along the lake, and up there are some old Indian mounds and they were out there with the cadaver dogs for for some reason doing something, probably looking for someone else. And these dogs kept sitting at a certain spout out there, and the only thing they could come to conclude was that somehow there were scent is coming off those those moulins up there. These dogs are picking it up. There something up there that they could pick up, and that's what they kept sitting right there. It's interesting and they've been psychic about that too. So who well, Pat Durkin, it's always a pleasure to have you on. Thank you like how you always came, You got like things we need to cover, makes our job easy. What's enjoyable? Ski, Thanks for having me