00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is the me Eater podcast coming in you shirtless, severely folk bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything, all right, Carmen, tell me your last name again, Van Biancy, Van Biancy. What do you think about squid jigging? It was great. I hadn't done that in years. We grew up doing that in the Puga sound. It was a it was a birthday party thing in my family. We had a fall birthday. Wheould you go any time here? No, actually descembrate. It was my sister's birthday. And you guys are j squid. Yeah. We sometimes will take a group of girls down on the dock and now, would you guys clean house? Like? Were you guys better at it than than than? Uh than than me? And Yanni are at it? Not much better? I mean, we didn't have our own lights, so we just go onto the ferry dock and just fish wherever the pools of light from the um fairy lights were. And so I don't know, that doesn't seem to bring as many in. We do better some nights where some other nights. Yeah, I'm addicted to it. So now, uh, it's squid season in in the Pacific Northwest. They come in shallow to spawn. They congregate November and December. I read it they spawned between like five and thirty ft of water um and then people show up down on the piers. Like it seems that the squid are kind of drawn to light. I don't know if their prey. I don't know if they're drawn to light because the stuff they're feeding on congregates around light. There's a lot of like things people don't there's a lot of things that people have different opinions on about squid. Now why okay, First off, a squid jig. This looks like a it's like a little celind, like a glow in the dark, little cylinder, and there's no hook on. There's a bunch of wires up facing, upturned wires that impale the squid. You're you're snagging squid? Now why do you feel? And I'm not you're not a squid expert. What's your theory about? Why? What is that squids interaction with the squid jig? So my squid knowledge is based on a national geographic that I owned when I was little and a um my first report I ever did in elementary school which was on octopus and squid, and so my own got started. You got started in biology early, Oh yeah, very early. Um. Anyway, my understanding is that in the absence of doc lights, they're congregating in moonlight, and they're congregating to mate, and so when they see that flashy squid jigs, they try to mate with it, and that's when you get them. That's what you think they're doing, because I I've had people tell me that I think it's like, I think it's like a feeding thing. Okay, I've heard both. I heard a guy saying it's their territorial and he's trying to fight the jig. I've had guys saying they're trying to mate the jig, and I've had guys saying they're trying to feed on the jig. Because people catch a lot of squid all times a year using jigs and outside of the spawning season, like we caught a giant. Uh my friend and colleague Ben O'Brien called a giant a different species. The ones we were getting getting last night are low legal opallescence. Its common name is the market squid. He caught a big fatty. I don't know what it was that's some bitch hit a halibut jig. Now, I don't think he's trying to breed that halibut jig in June. He's got different opinions about it. Seemed to like light. I wrote a whole article about it, and I never I like it was years ago and outside Magas I wrote a piece about squid jigging and Puget Sound and it was partularly interesting to me is that, um, it doesn't look like you're normal fishing, your normal American fishermen down there, because the people like to fish squid in Seattle are generally the immigrant communities from Southeast Asia, particularly from my own conversations with people, a lot of people from Vietnam, a lot of people from Laos, a lot of people from Cambodia, Filipinos, and a lot of these guys that I had interviewed before had fish squid in their in their home countries, even some guys that had come into the seventies towards after after the fall of Saigon. Some guys that come over and they had jigs squid, same deal, have a light and light, but also talked to guys that fish with poison and guys that fish with dynamite. Yeah, that's a long way to get some squen. This guy was telling me years ago. This is this is I wrote this article. I remember it was right after the terrorist attacks because I was I lived in Montana, and I hadn't spent a lot of time around big buildings, and it was right after the terrorist attacks. And remember it was December, the December after the terrorist attacks. And I remember, you know, the around Seattle, there's so many planes criss crossing, and I couldn't watch a plane while in my field of view there was a large building without thinking that it was headed for the building. I remember being like so paranoid where I'd be like half watching my rod tip and half waiting for a plane to burrow into a skyscraper. So I always have it fixed in my head that it was December two thousand one. Um, the hell's I getting net? I don't know about. I don't know who's who's squid jigging on the docks here in the Pacific Northwest. Yeah, that was what it was. And yeah, and very few now you see you see like some you see like a handful of white people around. It was generally people from the from Southeast Asia. Oh I don't. I was gonna get that now, I interviewed a guy. My interview, I mean it's like basically bullshitted with him on the pier while you're squid jigging. Um, he had fish squid in Vietnam, came to the U. S. And Sev had no idea and what would walk along the piers being curious about the area where his flashlight and one day shined a flashlight in the water, saw a squid and started squid jigging. Now he doesn't claim to be the guy that like fathered squid jigging, but he discovered it, not through hearing about it and seeing people. He discovered by walking down and seeing a squid. And that's when he started squid jigging in future sound. Yeah, I don't know the history of it here, but um, ever since I've was little, there's many people out there and yeah, I don't that's because I don't know. Like if I was at my place in Southeast Alaska right now, would I go out on a float and knocked the ship out of squid if I shined a light in the water or is it like peculiar to the area I don't know, Like, I don't know if people fish squid here because there's squid here, or people fish squid here because there's a population of people who are interested in fishing squad because people doing it, so they do it. Yeah, Like I grew up in a place where people go way out of their way to catch yellow perch. Here is the best yellow perch fish in the world. No one fishes them, it's just local culture. Maybe. Yeah, there's no panfish culture in the Pacific Northwest because everybody's got a salmon centric view of the world. What do you think about I think more people would get after it because it seems like figure it out. And kids love it. Yeah. Yeah. We had my two older youngsters out there and they have a good time. I mean they're not like necessarily fishing, but they're just taking it all in. That's what kids, that's how kids fish. At first. I loved it when I was little was it was exciting to get to go out at night and you're bundled up and you have hot chocolate and it's just cool experience to be outside at night. Like most cold weather outdoor activities, just hot chocolate involved. So all the kids are in and like every other worthwhile pursuit, there are some people who are really good at it and a lot of people that suck. I'm in the suck category. And like what we had, we had fifteen yet fifteen maybe, and we watched some boys next us. They probably filled the bucket. Yeah, they caught everyone, Yeah, fishing the exact same ship. They had a bright as Yeah. I think as a little experiment you should get. Greg was dipping over into their light. He wasn't pulling squid out like that, yeah, but he was kind of on the edge of it. I mean, they definitely had some differences in tackle. Longer rods that does. That doesn't account for everything. It doesn't come for everything little every little thing matters. Yes, And the longer rod does a few things. One, you've got more play in the rod. It's a softer rod tip, you know, so who knows. So maybe when you're jerking it with a stiffer rod, maybe they get out of the way, you know, because they're feeling it more. And that softer pull of the longer, softer rod impales them in a different way that you know, they can't get off double jigs to Yeah, I do that too. And the reason I got away from it is have an inexperienced anglers, like when I had my kids or whatever. They lose so many jicks, so then they're losing two at a time, and then if I put two on, then they're like, why don't I get to right? And then you'll be like, well, because you'll lose them, and then it's like you're an asshole, Like you're like, you know what I mean. So that's why if I was if it's just like you, you were out, we would have been running two. But you know, it's just hard to get I think it's hard to make. They're set up as much as possible, and then if still nothing's changing, we're just going to go over and learned Cambodian or the last time. Last time I was out, I was running two and had a nice double. I saw a guy get a triple two on one and one on one a double. He had a double rig triple squid. I know that half of the ones icon were impaled, like in the side, but that's that's just something that happens. That's what I'm saying. It's like having stance. They were swimming by. I impelled him with my jig motion. Most of the ones I saw coming in with the guys next to us looked like the squid was hooked like between the Yeah, no, there's a there's a lot of mystery to it now. One time I was out there my buddy Drolls in two thousand one, and we went down and we had just a regular sixty watt light bulb. We had a battery and an inverter in a sixty watt light bulb, one of those aluminium shrouds you put around a sixty wild light bulb. And we went down there right at dusk and knocked the ship out of them, like we had over half a bucket. So there is stuff like there's a voraciousness I think they get. They get fired up, you know, and hit batter like maybe sometimes it's so good, any idiot, right, sometimes it's so good. Any of these gonna do good. Last night, it was like the men were separated from the boys, the women from the girls last night by those two dudes next to us, because there was probably twenty people on that pier and two guys. We're knocking the ship out of the squid, and it was killing me. Big Ones, Big Ones, I don't think we caught a single squid. As they were falling. The hook them on the face. Man, it's hard to say face because their eyes are at one end and their mouth is at the other. It's because their feet are at that same end. Yeah, they're jacapod. They have ten well, they have like eight two arms and eight legs, but a total of ten. Two of those things are longer than the others and have different cups, like a different suction cup array on them. And they got a beak like a bird. Yeah, a hard black hooked beak like a bird. I got bit by that one. Ben O'Brien called it hurt um. Now, Carmen, tell tell me what's your job description? Well, like, how do you describe? I guess I described myself as a wildlife biologists. I went to school for and I got um wildlife Management and conservation degree from my undergrad Humboldt State University in California, Northern California. Big dope smoking area, big yeah, especially in county. That's what I'm saying. My buddy always pointed like I got a buddy from Humboldt County and um and and uh when he says Humboldt County, a certain segment of the American population, their ears perk up when it's probably less so now, but back in the day, Yeah, like his father ran a hydroponic supply store there, you go, probably did well. Yeah, so that's the first thing that people think of. But it's also a beautiful place that's uh great to learn about wildlife because we were just constantly out in the field learning all the waterfowl. It's a huge waterfowl migration area and birds everywhere. You've got the ocean, you've got redwoods, you've got the mountains. So it's a really good place to go to school for that. But you weren't hunting back then, right, fishing, but you didn't hunt. Uh you know, yeah, I didn't hunt. Um, when I was in college, there were a lot of hunters in the program and I was starting to get really interested in it and knew that I wanted to do it. So then um, when I graduated from there, I uh started actually taking action on it, and I went out and bought a gun not really knowing what I was doing, and took hunter safety and um, I just kind of started putting it together from there. But but anyway. So, yeah, I call myself a wildlife biologist, um, and I concentrate on carnivores. So most of the work I've done has been with carnivores. My master's work was on links um in Washington, and UM, so most of the most of my career has been just working seasonally all over the country different projects. Just yeah, you say, like like you're like a like field biology though, right, Yeah, because you're out there catching and trapping and track and yeah. Yeah, so for example, yeah, mostly, Um, I started out Actually my first job was uh after my second year of school, and it was in Hawaii working with hawks bowl turtles honoring turtles, which, um it was a pretty couch job. We camped on the beach, waited for turtles to come, and then basically put them in a full nelson, which didn't work. The first time I tried to do that, turtle just kept on going like there was nothing on top of her. Yeah. I didn't quite have the body type for that, but hold on, hold on. So I obviously don't know about this turtle that you're you're speaking of, turtle, big turtle, thee in Hawaii there, Well, I think, yeah, yeah, maybe probably I think there's some overlapping size, but I don't know what an average one is. But that's like a wheelbarrow big. It was huge, very very strong. And so this turtle comes up on the beach. We've been told you restrain it by jumping on it, putting it in a full nelson, and then the rest of the crew will tag it while you've got it. So arms under his front feet. So yeah, yep, you're on the turtle shell. Your your front arms are under the front flippers, sort of lifting them up so they can't get any purchase. And then you know, your hands are locked over its neck. So I did that. You can't come around and grab you. Yeah, these are nesting nesting turtles. And just to keep it in one place so that you can put tag on its flippers. That's what they tag them. Uh, because it's easy to just punch through the skin on the flippers. I've caught, like when I've caught tagged soft shells. Here, they clamp it right to the back of the shell. She's like a perfect place to put it. You put it. It's a flipper. Yeah. It was just a little metal tag with a number on it, not like a track and devoy right right right, um, and they will they will try to get you when you're trying to restrain it probably, I mean, yeah, you don't want to put your hands in front of their face and then their flippers are just flying and it can be kind of a rodeo, especially when I did it, because I just didn't have the weight to hold it down, so it just kept going. So we swapped out. We gotta figured out anyway. That was my first job, and that was also my first dially into trapping, because we would trap mongoose around the beach to try and keep those populations down there invasive there, and they just try to control a mongoose from getting the eggs. Yeah, yeah, have a heart catchmen have a hearts, um, and then we just euthanize them with CEO two gas. You just pick up the trap and you put in a plastic bag and you have a tank and you shoot a shot in there. Because you get the same effect by it's closing off the bag. It just takes forever. Right, That might be a Sloan painful sort of deal. So this is fast, and you could check your little trapline and farrell cats and rats too. Yeah, when I've been in Hawaii. Do you see a lot of those freaking mongooses around me? Yeah? Man, it's a problem invasive. You know, the turtles there, what's the other? So there's the hall, but there's the other kind of like a green. Yeah. Now last year we were on a family vacation and I was spearfishing there and I'd go out at night and you dive down under the coral ledges and you bump in face face those turtles. It's like everything underwater scary. Everything underwater at night it's even scarier. And it's like on the beach it's like, oh, it's a big gas turtle underwater and always be like kind of intimidating to roll up on those things. And one time I went down and there was a turtle laying there under underwater under a coral head and there was a collar, you know, like a unicorn fish feeding on the turtles head and it was a big collar, and I didn't want to obviously hit the turtle, and so I corrected so much to try to get the collar but not get the turtle out out missing the fish off the back side of fishcause I was even I was like point blank range I was just paranoid about messing with that turtle, which is like an image stuck in my mind as giants because they don't like attack people. But anything like that just seems kind intimidating underwater man out of your element in the water too, I find I you know, I run around in the woods all the time, and I've worked with predators and I I don't worry about bears, I don't think about cougars. I'm not I'm totally comfortable. But in the water, I just I did some circling when I did that job, and I would just be I couldn't stop thinking about sharks. I just felt so out of my elm went and it's just not you know, just not what you're used to, you know. I guess that's what you're used to that you're comfortable with. But yeah, because I used to I used to have some of that fear of like I used to have more of a fear of grizzlies. But it just gets used up somehow or goes away, you know. Yeah. I mean I think you just get comfortable and you're your perception of what the risk is changes. You start to realize that it's usually overblown. So what was the next animal you worked on after? After the turtle work, they're trying to find out about the turtles, just mark and recapture, like yeah, it was a monitoring project and then we'd mark the nests. It was also an effort to protect the nests um and then in the fall when they hatch in late summer. I actually wasn't there for that part when the nestlings hatched. They're trying to be there to get as many as possible to the ocean, just to get them over that first hurdle of making it alive. It's like mechanically assisting m yeah, predators away, helping them get back right, Yeah, because that's the that's their vulnerability rights. Yeah. Well and then also in the water. Not many of them make it anyway, but I think the ideas to just give them a little better of a chance to make it because there's because they're struggling a struggling species. Yeah, how many times, but do you know how many times when those females might breed. I don't know. I that was my one and only dally into reptiles. Yeah, that's the weird thing about what was animal populations like that? Or like fish and they're laying foul and eggs. Well, in the case of turtles are laying a dozen or more eggs, they're gonna live for decades. Presube lay eggs dozens of times. Yeah, and then it's like if they can, if they can have two of those eggs, they're successful. If two of those eggs turned into turnley, if that, yeah, like you're successful. Yeah, over the lifetime, not per um. Yeah, So salmon comes up and drops how many hundreds of eggs, it's successful if two or roughly one or two live. Yeah. Yeah, it's common strategy in nature. I mean you even see it in just our our prey populations. You know that you're having way more babies in the lank and support. So yeah. Yeah. We had a guy we interviewed on here one time that had a he had a black bear saw that he watched during his research project that he watched um rear ten cubs two hundred pound size, back to back to back. Quinn is a quintuplet, five m back to back quintuplets. That's impressive that she got all ten to one hundred pounds at least. And at that point there they're rocking successful. Yeah, well we got into that. She was onto a lot of crop land. It was onto the place where they dumped road killed. Yeah. Well yeah. The bear's name is the Wisconsin supersow. So you did the turtle thing, then what happened? So, um, let's see. I did a couple of bird projects one of the smokies. That was fun, doing some misnetting and looking for nests. What kind of birds? Um, we were looking for junk on nests. They're just a comment. Yeah yeah, sparrow. I got those in my yard right now. Yeah yeah yeah. And the reason we were looking for those is we were collecting eggs, so it needed to be a common bird. And I was working for a PhD student who was looking at um environmental leeching. So from all the pollution, UM wondering, is calcium leaching out of the environment enough that it's affecting eggshells? Why is there? Why is there calcium in the environment? Just natural calcium in the environment, that's the good part that's spread the birds need from eating snails and whatever, um, and then needed for making shells. So being leached out by pollution by pollution, yeah yeah, because when you know what they used to use DDT it would cause the birds shells to be too soft. So the one the birds incubating. Do you know what it was? Was that a calcium issue? I don't know. I don't know why it caused their shells to get thin. Yeah, I don't know, I don't know. But so that was a great job, just basically wandering around the smoky's usually by myself, hiking around um looking for the eggs, looking for nest. Yeah, how would you find? You just get They like to nest on the ground in cut banks a lot. So you just hiking trails, You just watch for birds flashing, and you just are looking to see the little nest tucked in there. Yeah. You know that Tom Petty song where he says I can track a stink. I can track a single bee to its high That saw the people like hunt bee hives and the old days. You just sit out in the woods and watch a honeybee fly by, Watch it go as far as you could see it. Stand there, wait for honeybee to fly by, watch until it disappears out of your line of sight. Stand there, and over time I got a friend you to do it. Sometimes to take him a couple of days of just whenever he would have time, and he would just go to his last position and wait for one to go by, and eventually you'd locate the honey bee hole. Yeah. Yeah, so I started the same deal. But we wait for them to flash you sometimes. I don't know. I don't know the Tom Petty Cannon fact tracks, but he made that claim. Yeah, how many would you find? Was it a good day a bird? Oh? No, more than that. Yeah, you'd be finding there's tons of juncles there you'd find. I don't know, I don't remember. Probably four or five might be a good day, just working by yourself. Yeah, So, how like when you do these jobs like we're gonna get to we're gonna talk about a bunch of but how many jobs like this? If you had coming into work on a research project that involved you run around out in the woods, that's what they've all been. I don't know how many jobs I've done, doesn't Yeah? Maybe almost? How are they described? Um, there's a big the Texas A and M has a wildlife program and they have just an online job board that's kind of the go to for a lot of people. You just start cruising the job board and you find a job. Then you're like, the that's in a cool place, and i'd be doing something cool. I'm interested in that. And you apply and and the more you do then the better your resume is, right, Yeah, and so I was. But as the goal to wind up, like do you have a goal you'll do? You want to keep doing this? You have a goal you'll wind up like at a fixed position. Yeah. See, that's something I agonize over because I love being in the field. I love doing what I do, and I I would I'm dreading the day when that my typical day involves a lot more office work, which it will when I some day get a permanent job, which is I would only do because you know you're going to make more money and it's just more stable. And there's certain fields I think that do that. Yeah. And the higher up you go in the field, the less you're in the field. And I got friends like in the military too, man, Like they train up to learn how to do all this like badass stuff, and like you do well at it, and eventually what that means is you stopped doing it because for soon you have a desk. Yeah, exactly. I cling to the hope that your job is some what you make of it. And so, UM, if I can get a job where I'm doing some office stuff and maybe you know, getting to um think of research projects and actually be managing research projects, but balance out with some field work, that'd be good. That'd be ideal. UM doing carnivore stuff, that would be good. But I've been having a lot of fun doing this, and I've been fortunate enough to be able to um for a lot of this time before I kind of settled down in eastern Washington, to be able to just kind of travel all over, which really opens up the number of jobs you can apply for obviously if you're free to just go and live wherever for a season. How many years ago was it that you did, like the junk thing in the Hawaii thing. Let's see, I started school in two thousand two Hawaii, was I guess two thou four? Yeah? Yeah, And then what'd you go on to do after? Because you still haven't done a carnivore job for tracking year my career. Yeah, so like hunting bird eggs, hunting bird eggs, and I, UM, I knew I want to do carnivore. I knew I want to do wildlife stuff from when I was really little, and then I started getting really interested in carnivores and knew I wanted to do that, but I couldn't. I don't know it didn't. I was applying for carnivore jobs, but I think people were hesitant to hire a twentysomething You're old girl who's going to go and trap bears. I mean, I think I needed to prove myself a little bit. So, UM, do you feel like there was a you feel like it's an honest bias there. Yes, I can constantly say that it's definitely, especially in the carnival world, is it's definitely a boys club, and that's um something I'm conscious of. But it's also I mean, it's not like it's been a problem or something in the field where I'm I feel like people are respectful of my abilities and stuff. So have you overcome it now, Like does your resume override? Like did you or there's still some people like I don't care what I see on this resume. It's a girl. I don't know if people would not hire me because of that. Um, everybody I worked with has been great, but there have been people where it takes a little longer to gain their respect, and I'm I have the feeling. I mean, it happens enough and I see them interacting with other men on the crew or whatever that I sense that it is maybe just even a subconscious biased against what they think I could do in the field. I had someone in archaeology one time refer to the Bison boys, and I said, what are the Bison boys? And she was saying, well, in this field, that helps. If you're working on bison and your boys. It's all about like, uh that and that, Like in New World archaeology on the great you know, plains, it's like the bois and boys, the bearer boys. Yeah, And I think it's it's common with those field jobs that are especially I don't know, more traditionally thought of as I don't know if macho is the right word, but you know, it involves trucks and knowing how to get yourself unstuck when your truck stuff. It involves snowmobiles and four wheelers and big animals that you're moving around and traps. And I don't I mean, I don't blame people because they are an examples out there of women doing this a who lot, and so people I think just look at me. The first thing they think, it's probably not. I don't know, burly trapper biologists girls, you know. So I don't know, but I can usually get people past that and it works out. So yeah, so bird collecting egg gathering. They ate one of those eggs, right, No, I didn't. I was watching. I was watching it in there with my kids. Man. It was they like to watch stuff about the Arctic, and we were watching these videos and these boys who just with like old shitty three agents, three eights inch line repelled down cliff faces to gather eggs. Yeah, they rigg up they got this looks like crab hot rope, and they rig up a harness and ship and they take the oldest, frailest, older guy because he's real life, lower him down over that edge, has some bitches garing those eggs up, and they're saying, and this the narrators something baha is a common way to die. This is in Siberia. I bet have you seen that footage of collecting um nest for egg nest soup and they're going down these rickety the middle scaffold systems. I've tried to do that with. That's a swallow. Yeah, one yeah, yeah, what is that family? Like they have a saliva and they take stuff in their mouth and they cold it with the slive, and the slive is sticky, and they build their nests and then um, you boil it down and you can extract that sticky saliva and used the thicken soups. And I've taken you know those kind of swallows that like build them under bridges the mud the mud, Yeah, like a barn swallow or something. Yeah, I've taken shiploads of those nests and boil them all down and then and then skimmed off the you know, let the mud settle, and then cooked it down. I've never found that ship in there, whatever it is, like, I've never isolated what it is that the sticky stuff, because I wanted to make some of that soup, and I figured that they don't reuse those, you know, those dome nests. I figured you could probably break those up without breaking any laws and now to get them under urban bridges. But I could never get whatever they're after. I don't know if it's like whatever they used to make that mud sticky, don't know how they extract it when they cook it. Well, that maybe the mud they use is already sticking. They don't need any of their own special I didn't do a whole hell of a lot of research. I just I just jumped right into it and might be delicious real quick before we get off the birds. You called it miss netting. Yeah, eting, So that's how you catch birds. Songbirds to put little bands on their legs. So you set up these nets that are just really fine. You can hardly see them missed or miss missed. Oh, I said, yeah, they made like missing them. I was like, that doesn't seem like an effective way I'd be hit. I'd be hitting no missed nets. So you set those up in the morning, and they don't they don't, they don't break their bones and ship they fly into them and they get tangled, and so then you go out there and untangle them, and then you can, you know, drop blood and measure things, and you gotta have some mortality, right, there is some mortality, yeah, but I don't think it's real great. Especially I think the most dangerous part is getting them out of the net. Is kind of a trick to learn how to do that really delicately. But I got a body I don't want to say his name. He works with ducks, and his PhD advisor said, if you're not killing some ducks, you're not working hard, meaning like gets you know, he wanted them, he wanted them to get some data and like if everything, if you're making all your decisions around no mortality, you know. His feeling was, yeah, and that's a balance. You work with mallards and things. I mean, you work, you're not you know, it's like you're trying to catch the last ivory build woodpecker, right yeah, um yeah, So after birds, then I, um, I got into carnivores. Finally I volunteered. So I spent volunteers. Yeah, I spent right, I spent this summer just um trapping bears around where I lived, helping out with trapping effort there. And then that wasn't humble having bears and cleaning houses in California. Yeah, clean the houses and take care of somebody's homestead, doing their garden and stuff like that. So I'd cleaned some days and then I go trap bears other days and how are they what was what was going on with the bears? How are they catching foot snares? No? So there we were using just colvert traps so it's a bit. It's a piece of covert usually blocked off on one end, and at that end. For that job, we were using um a sock. Stuff it full of dog food, dip it in old nasty friar grease um, and then hang some fish carcasses. So you hang that in the back. I think they were like just salmon carcasses, UM stinky stuff. Basically hang that in the back of the trap on a chain that's connected to the like a guillotine door. They go in, pull on it, door closes. You go up to the trap and there's little hatches on the sides that you can open up to stick. Jab stick UM so lar a long pole with the hypodermic needle on the end and instead of the plunger, you've got the pole going into the um casing of the needle or the um whatever that's called, the two that holds the drugs the impact of you exactly. Yeah. So then you um, somebody kind of distracts the bear. You're over by the hole and you jab it in the butt. Go sleep. You open the door and pull it out and when you roll up. Usually it depends um, it depends on their personality. And it depends on how carefully you are about, you know, moving slowly and being quiet. I like to, across species try and keep them as calm as you can, just react better to the drug and you just I mean, it's a stressful, awful experience for them. I think, um, even when they're under with a lot of the drugs, it's like I've had it described as a really bad trip basically depending on the drugs. So if you're making a lot of noise and jiggling them around and stuff, I don't know, it just sounds awful. So um, and there's complications that can happen if they start getting stressed out while they're under. So anyway, sometimes they're you know, popping their lips and banging around on the trap, but sometimes they're calm. I think a lot of that is just individual personality. But they gotta get trapshy fro those cool word traps. That's funny. That's also across species also. That can be kind of uh individual too, because sometimes they've had animals get very trapped happy where they like it's not that bad. I get to go on the trap, I get a meal and then oh yeah, because when I used to trap fox. You know, if you pinched the toe on a fox and then get them, they got mark about that ship. Yeah, canines are a little different, and these are um, I mean traps with bait. You know, that's where you'd have it happened more so. We for example, we had a lynx that was always getting in our traps. We'd already put a collar on him. He'd always get in our traps and he'd figured out that he could just ch a hole through the trap, get out, go down the trapline. So for links on back up from it. Okay, why are you guys catching the bears? What were trying to figure out the bears? This is on Timber Company land and they were having a lot of problems with bears girdling the trees because they eat them. Yeah, and so it kills the people here struggle with that, like on the Limited Peninsula talk about want doing bear control because of how much they girdle and kill trees. Yeah, so they were trying to figure out where they were going. We should explain girdling. Oh, like you know, in the old days, we went out to clear land. Like when you hear about you know, pioneer type settlers when they would clear land, they would generally go in to get your first crop, and they're just going girdle the tree. So you cut through the bark and through the cambium layer all the way around the tree. Um. Think about like a girdle on someone's leg. Right, you're just like cutting a ring around the tree and then kill the tree. Yeah, and then you could, so you would. You don't need it necessarily to start to establish farmland or whatever. You didn't need to necessarily going and log the thing off. You can just girdle everything first. That lets sunlight through and you can start growing crops, and at your leisure you can go in and cut the tree down. So people will talk about girdling a tree to kill it, just doing that to it. And bears are just doing that because they're just eating. Yeah, they're eating the cambium land which is right under the bark, and so they're eating out. So they're stripping the bark up um, and they'll go all the way around the tree or probably just strip it far enough up that it can kill and damage. Yeah. Yeah, conifers. So they were um every time yearly hitting the trees. Oh I don't know, but there I think if I remember right, I actually did my like senior thesis, uh, using some of this information that we learned. But they liked to hit the young, fast growing trees. I think if there's more Cambium um and so in a you know, unlogging land, that's a problem for them. But they were one of the things they were hoping they might discover from the callers that we were putting on them, um was were they migrating in the fall two places for um acorns where they could maybe direct hunters, so hopefully, Uh, the goal was to maybe figure out how to target the bears that were impacting there. So they were like trying to do scouting for people. Basically, yeah, that's the kind of roof church light. That's well and yeah, and I don't know, I actually don't know what became of that. They wanted to be like, where are these sons of bitches in the fall during hunting season? Yeah, basically, yeah, there's also a master there's dirty pool right there. There's to get my hands on some of that. There were also, um, there's a master's student on that project. I'm not sure what she was using the data for. And then I did like a habit a little habitat analysis with the data that we got. But so then we'd go and um, after we trapped, we went out and we do telemetry to figure out where they were hanging out. Did you ever mess up and get scratched up by a bear when you're working a bear? No, I haven't had them come up, come back to or something. No. That generally happens pretty slowly. So they start lifting their head a little and you can just you know, try and calm them down. They have a you put a blindfold on them to help keep them calm. You heard about that story Montane, Right, some guy as are working up at Grizzly and they were they're working it up. They were relocating it or just working it up, but either way, they put some signage out while they're working. Got all done. The bear is still comb a toaster be still sedated. They took down their signage. Some fellow who lives in the area had seen him in there and wonder what they were doing. Goes in there, bear wakes up, kills that dude. Yeah, super unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah, So we after on that project. After we worked up the bear, we'd put it back in the trap and let it recover fully. Yeah, and then we um could actually tie a rope, so you don't put him out when he's vulnerable, right, And we didn't want them like, I mean, they're they're drunk seeming when they start to stumble off, So we didn't want them walking down a logging road and you know, get its wits about it. Oh, definitely, because they could be killed by another bear or whatever. So yeah, so we'd let him recover in the trap and then tie a rope to the door, tie that to the truck and open the the door that way and let him run off. And when they come out, are they usually just looking to get out of town. They want to get away from probably probably get a little bit um imagine like the vast majority of grizzlies are probably the same way, But I think they'd be more inclined to maybe come out and be like looking to a sign blame. Yeah, be a little piste. Yeah, I'd be like, first, I'm gonna take care of this. I'm gonna make this thing not want to mess with me anymore. And like, yeah, we got a friend, We had a friend saved mule in your buck who got all hung up in some ropes on a fence and once you got it cut for you to tack. I have not had that happen yet. So all right, what's up with the house cleaning? You're working for a service or just running ads at that time, and howmelt you could put your name on this just kind of like pick up odd jobs sort of thing. And so I put myself on that list for house cleaning and like yard work and super around the people's houses. Oh man, stuff. Yeah, you know their secrets, I imagine, man, Yeah, if you probably don't really hide their secrets as well as they think they do. Right, it's not all you get to do any real snoop and right. And I'm an annual cleaner, so I'm like deep cleaning, you know, I'm dusting inside the drawers and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, Actually I think I'm a good cleaner for the same reason that uh, I do pretty well in biology. It's attention to detail. There's some overlap there. Yeah. So then so are you now like professionally as a field biologists. Are you now you just can work or do you stuck to do side jobs in the off season? Is there a sason you call you guys talk about a busy season. Why is there a busy season, Well, there's I mean in summer, there's usually a lot of jobs because that's when people can get out there easily. There it's easier to collect data in the summer and then but there's always jobs that are going on the winter to just usually not as many. A lot of times that's when projects take time to you know, do their analysis or whatever. So the field portion is often in the summer. But then there's jobs that are specific to the winter, like snow tracking and trapping some species is easier in the winter. Do you still have to do odd jobs to fill in? I haven't done odd jobs in a while, remember that being when I was when I was coming up as a writer. Um, that'd be a big moment. Well, I just could do what I wanted to do, because I would do like trim trees for you know, did arborst work when I finally got or I didn't need to do arborist work. Now that didn't like doing arborst work. But it was like a mile, it was a milestone. It was a milestone, you know what I mean, Just like now, it was like a leap, right, It was like, now I'm just gonna do I'm just gonna do this thing not have to worry about the other thing. It feels good, but it's still gonna be like it's gonna be hard to make a living, right when you're jumping from job job job, and they're not paying you know, it's all like entry level. Yeah, yeah, that's probably people get out of it as much fun as you're having. Eventually you're like I just can't like yeah, yeah, dread when I get bills and stuff. Well, and then you have that conundrum of like what you're saying, like you make the money and all of a sudden you're not in the field anymore. Yeah. But yeah, I think that that you have people when you're younger, you have a tolerance for uncertainty fades if I'm any, If I'm any example, like I used to be very comfortable with uncertainty. It didn't bollow me at all. It bought me a little bit. By me like I kind of like half lived in my one brother's basement, half lived in my other brother's spare bedroom. Yeah, right, and it is it was just like okay, this is how it is. Yeah, and I um, I didn't have a whole lot. I mean, it's not like I had a bunch of bills. I just it felt good to know that I could fit everything in my car and go and work wherever. Yeah, I went for years and nothing but a cell phone. Billy was the only thing my name was. Yeah, I didn't even have that for a long time. Um, And then I also, yeah I did. I mean I'd do some odd jobs if I couldn't find a winner job or whatever. I did baking a lot baking. Yeah, I had a bakery. I could always go back to come crawling back. Yeah, make some cinimon wrong. You know really in the annal it makes you just such a whole person, you know what I mean. Think about if you hadn't done all these odd jobs, you know how different of a person you'd be now. But like these skills in baking and like, I'm sure you're a very clean organized house. Like, oh, it's totally and their thing about it. And I get into this all the time with people who, yeah, I guess like now that I'm my age or whatever, I've come to the weird point in life where I find myself getting out depensing. Yeah, like I like give advice now you know what I mean. And I have like four pieces of advice I give the people, and one of them is like, develop your humility, man, do you know what I mean? Yeah, because a lot of people don't have it, and I feel like, yeah, I could say it really old man type thing. Now start talking about kids these days, but I'll spare you that. But I find the people I admire and the people who do something new and find success in something new. We're not where they have like family lineage propelling them along, you know, but like you're like you know our you know, like my like my parents didn't go to college, you know. Um, so when we went into professional lives, we're sort of going in a new direction. I think. To go and do that, you gotta have. You gotta like be able to to just like do sucky jobs well, because that's the quickest way out. The quickest way out of a sucky job is to kick ass at it. If you don't kick ass at it, you'll always have sucky jobs. Because people were like be like that dude, couldn't even do the sucky job. You know. I'm not going to give them the important one. But like humility, Yeah, I have scrubbed a lot of toilets and that that's a quick wait to humility. Yeah. I remember when I was in graduate school, I had a job cleaning the bathrooms in the l A Building, the Liberal Arts Building, and like I was in a very prestigious graduate program, it was very difficult to get in. And I would and like my classmates would be coming out of writing workshops and going to take a leak while I'm in there scrubbing the toilets, right, And that ship hurts, man, it hurts, but it's like it does something to your head and it makes you like different, you know, it gives you something. Uh well, it gives you just on top about like a level of humility. Yeah, the you know, the familiar sting man, you know, gives you a girl and grit. I remember sitting there with you on us one day in Bozeman and were scrubbing toilets. We're actually pulling off a coffee shop and we see a guy like a drift boat go buy on a trailer, like very obviously, you know, like a young guy driving a boat on a morning and like clearly that dude is a guide. And Yana said, oh, you know that brings back memories, and I thought he was gonna get on nostalgic. It was like floating at same fucking stretch of river every day. Bo I later found out after we talked with that photographer that was with us on that trip, he got it, you know, and he said something like, within an hour's drive, they have like two hundred miles of floatable river where we had I don't know, maybe a quarter of that. You know, maybe he didn't have the same beat up feelings that I did about it, but yeah, alright, So after bears, so after that job, and that was volunteering, Oh yeah, that's I mean, you gotta have balls to put up a job listing that you're not gonna pay. That's a lot of wildlife tech work, especially fun carnivore jobs that are super competitive. They're like, people are gonna want to do this, People are gonna want to do this. People need to get their toe in the door. They need to get experience. And our project has no money. Let's get volunteers. You probably get w p A volunteers. But it's like then he can't even yell at. I'm sure you got yelled at as a volunteer, right, you know what. Everybody was so appreciative they were Yeah. I mean so my next job was right after I graduated, and I spent the summer in Alberta in the mountains there on a cougar kill site analysis. There you go, that's good stuff. Was that paid? Uh? It was very little. It was stipe. That's the other thing is a lot of these places you get you get a stipend, so your basic glee. You're not spending money because you're in the middle of nowhere. They give you housing and stipend and you're camping out. No, well we had like four service housing. Yeah, so bunk house they were. It was killside analysis. So this project he um, he was looking at pray composition. So what the cougars they were eating and kill? Right, so how often they were killing? Um? So you got collars on collars on the cougars and these were GPS collars, So these collars would take a location and store it in the collar. Did he already have the collars when you joined up? That was a wintertime thing. They use hounds in the winter to call it them. Yeah, so run the cougar down on the hound darted out of the tree, that's something I wanted when you dart. My boy asked this question last night after he was talking to you. When you dart the cougar up in the tree, how do you keep it from getting injured on the fall? I this is how he did it and describe it to me, is that he would go up there before it was so out that it just fell and help help it down. Yeah, because it seems like they'd be in some positions where you couldn't dart. Him. Boy, that's got to be intimate with a big cat, just not quite out and yeah, let me help you out of the street. Yeah. Yeah, you're kind of stuck. You don't have a lot of room to maneuver. Yeah. I'll tell you a horrible story. I was working on a magazine article in Nevada one time and I got to hanging out with this dude who um had been a mule deer and lion guide. So he's a he's an outfitter. He had long long sinceince he got out of the business. He we could looking through photo album and he's got pictures of him up in a tree with lions with a jabstick. Okay, so the same setup your top boat. He explains me that when he was a lion guy, he would find the clients only has so much appetite for running lions, because it's hard work. He would keep a couple. He would go out in the off season trank lions. This you're gonna think I'm bullshitting. He took me and showed me the cages on his property. He would trank lions. Is highly illegal. He would trank lions keeping in cages, feed him dear meat. When he had a client that couldn't hack it, he'd let one of those out and then he run that one. Yeah, you talk about dirty pool. No, it's awful. You want to punch the guy in the nose, right, But I mean he's talking about like something from way back in his mind. You know, clients never knew, I mean he should. The weird thing is, yeah, he's got a photo albums, like big blown up photos. Just he was like he wasn't, you know, hiding and he was hiding it from them. But he's like, oh, yeah, here's me, and that's where I used to put him. I'm not shipping. Just he was an old fellow. I'd be surprised he's still alive right now. But you know he's talking about whatever. I know if this is something he's doing the fifties or sixties. Yeah, but you know, if there's a moral to that story, it'sford do your research on your guide. Yeah, I mean you'd hope that that stuff is harder to get away with. This fellow has some collars on some lives. Yeah, so, um so we would. So these GPS collars, they are taking locations. Um. I think his were set to every two hours. She's getting pretty detailed location data from these animals stored on the collar. The collar also has a traditional radio transmitter, so it's making the beep if you've got your little antenna in case the GPS fails or something. Um, just so you can locate them because collars, Yeah, you have to find the cat again, get close enough that with a special antenna. Uh, you can suck the data off the cat's collar. Depending on the topography and everything. I don't know, eighty meters maybe close, sometimes further if it was a good strong collar. So you gotta find the lion all bedded up somewhere. Yeah, hopefully they're not moving or you're running to catch up with them. You track in on the line yeah, never saw one doing that. I heard one, but I never saw one doing that, just because it's thick and they're good at hiding and the rocks usually you're down the forest. Yeah, it was a lot of well, there were some. There was We had one, uh, mountain cat. She was way up high. She was lying in the mountain. Yeah, lying in the mountains. So she lived. Her territory was um way up in the Rockies and she was you know, eating mountain goats and big horn sheep and stuff. Um, so she was Yeah, so she wasn't a lot of open you know, cliffy country. But then we had cats that were just down in the in the more boreal forest. So it was really thick. And then there was one kind of town cat that lived sort of near to um Rocky Mountain house, the town that was nearby. And so that cat was you know in farmland. But also timbers at or where would you find it. Just some timber stands all over. I mean they're timber stands, yeah, I mean they I don't I don't know that they'd be betting down in a grassy area. I don't know. We weren't, I mean we weren't. We were going to kill sites. So we just it would be every you would be able to find the kill site without downloading where it had been. Right, but you do that every month or two sort of opportunistically as you heard them, you know, oh I got you. Yeah, so you get a whole pile of data all at once and then so so you'd go find it, download the stuff and you didn't have to do that regularly once and then you'd have all those GPS way points and you analyze those to make sense of where it might have killed something. Yeah. So he how would you know by looking at the way points just it lingered in an area? Yeah, So he had developed an algorithm that would go through the points and um pull out places where the cat had spent enough hours within a small enough radius. So it was like a two intermter. The cat had stayed within a UM you know, two day period, had been had main locations within a two radius or something um for enough hours so they could they could leave. But if they came back, you know, more than two or three times, it would make what they call it cluster well cluster points. So it's basically saying this cat hung out here consistently for you know, more than just a couple of hours. So then our job was to, um, go out to those spots get there however we could. We did a lot of uh formilling, a lot of backpacking in especially for the mound cat, and then you just plug it into your GPS and navigate out there. And then you'd get to the area where the cat had been hanging out and you just start searching and searching and searching to see if there was a kill there. Oftentimes it was just a betting site and you could you know, find a little bed under a tree or whatever, but um, a lot of times it was killed, and so then you'd This is where I started getting really into tracking. I've been interested in tracking before this, and you know, learned a lot in school and just on my own, but um, it's really cool to go to a spot where our predator has been recently and left a lot of sign and you're trying to figure out, you know, sometimes from just tiny bone fragments and hair what it was they ate who else was there, scavenging what went on there, So that that method you would miss all the small stuff the cat killed, right yep. Yeah, So so you're not gonna find like fox turtles. I mean all the garbage they pick up. You're only gonna find a stuff where he had us like a substantial amount of meat underground, right, cats with cats, I feel like we were finding some We were finding some smaller stuff. They'd often when they have a kill, they eat and they stay there. Um, whereas with say wolves, they tend to eat for a little bit and then go bed down or just go on their way if they've eaten it all. So I don't know, it felt it would hang out. Yeah for some I mean mice and little stuff. You're right, you're not catching that stuff, but you're getting the bigger prey. Would you ever go in and find like a bunch of blue grouse feathers? I can think of that happening one time and that was all we found. But that you find blue grouse feathers all the time, you know, Right, So what was the main what were the main things you were You were locating elk dear what elk deer during the during the spring, with a lot of you know, calves, moose, calves, calves, caves. Yeah, so we'd find moose, porcupines, beavers. They love to beavers. They would linger on a beaver carcass. Yeah, we found a lot of beavers, I guess. Yeah, because if you got a cat's hunter pounds and he kills a forty pound beaver, yeah, I mean he's gonna hang out. It's like he's gonna drag it off. I mean, I could drag it too far. Yeah, uh, and then it would be hitting when when they're hitting the beavers, you managed to probably catch them when they're up out of the water working on cutting willows and stuff. Probably. I also imagined because there's I remember in a lot of spots, it would be like a wet meadow with just a deep trench that the beavers have made. But it's it's you know, not the channels, Yeah, plugging them out of there. I mean, I don't know, I never saw that happen or anything, but it's easy to imagine a cat just waiting for one to swim behind. Yeah. You know, you know, I've I've hand grabbed. You can hand grab beavers on dry land. Yeah, you get between them and the water. There's nothing yeah they can do. Yeah. Yeah, you know, we just we've just hurt back when we were of the age that you would her ass animals that you found out in the woods. We would her ask beaver as if we caught them on dry land now and then yeah, yeah, so, yeah, they ate a lot of beavers. There was one that ate porcupines a lot. And then what would you find on the you find? Would would that skin be pretty intact on the porcupine where they kind of pull that porcupine right out of the skin, where they shred that skin and all you'll find maybe a piece of it, but there'd be you know, a pile of quails. Maybe yeah, a piece of the back with clothes on it. Or did you ever get the sense they ate it and then passed the quills or they get the meat out. No, I never had the sense they ate the quills. Yeah, like you go to a griz where a grizzly bear has something, they'll run the whole damn thing through their system, where all the bone, all the hair. Sometimes you'll find all the bone, all the hair and dropping form. Have you found porcupine cliothes? Though? Never Yeah, that might not be good. Yeah, I managed be awful. We found my body. We were hunting in southeast Montana and he shot a mule deer and uh, it was just nasty because she must have the only thing. I think she ran over a porcupine an accident. How does the deer get her entire bottom coded and drills? I feel like she's going along and happened to get over one man. She was full of infections. Also, it was disgusting. Yeah, like messed up, like to the point where it could have like long term fatal Yeah, probably you know from all that just full of quills on her belly and around her memories. Yeah real, all it's green. We cleaned it up, and we cleaned up and got most of meat off it. But I remember thinking it was like a deer killed, like would have become a deer killed by a porcupine. Yeah. So the other fun thing about those kill sites is that on multiple occasions we would find where they had been eating their deer and moose or whatever, and another animal will come along to scavenge, and they just opportunistically swipe that animal and added to them. Really like what I've had a bobcat once, fisher um. I think somebody might have even found a lynx once that he had to kill and it was like sleeping or upen a tree or whatever around comes some other thing to get in there and kills it and then eats it. Yeah, they're opportunistic. We would find double kills two deer in one cash. Yeah. I got a buddy that was running lions, and they had a lion get up in a tree on a rock pile, and it was dark by the time they got there, and they couldn't get up on the rock pile, and there were and there was a dog up on that rock pile. They couldn't get back, so they left and came back at first light. No lion, but it eating dogs. Yeah. The lion came down out of the tree, eighth dog and took off. Yeah. Yeah. From what I've learned about hunting the pounds that you don't want to get your hounds, any of them isolated, because the pack, though, you know, run away from but they know they can take the single The single animal I had have been a satisfying meal a bit. Yeah, No, I got you load. Yeah yeah. Would they would you find the animals that the lions killed tucked up and and buried, like were they bury a beaver or they just eat the beaver, not car they cash a fawn. So sometimes what fighting funds is really hard because a lot of times it's just some tufts of hair and maybe one little hoof or one little bit they scratched the cover up. Yeah, they're real anal about that, so they'll scratch around it. And then with a deer or something especially there it was you know, real mossy if we were in the forested areas, and so they just haul moss from all around and make a huge pile. Oh yeah. Were they pretty fastidious about eating the whole thing or they often leave a lot of meat or what does a cat like like to eat his kill right down a bone? That's something I'm really interested just in general with with predators because I think there's a lot more scavenging than than we think about going on so for um like other stuff, eating those coming in and eating so after the fact, right And with cats, I think it probably happens less because they tend to stick close. Um, but I'm sure they you know, could get chased off of a kill. I definitely went to some that were just like there's a huge rotting maggot pile here for whatever reason, didn't get to finish it. But typically we were finding um, you know, the room and contents they don't like that. They take that out first drag they eat the stomach or the lion not like to eat the stomach. They don't like the room and contents. They'll eat organs and stuffy. But I mean because you always see it looks like someone dumped out a bag of grass clippings out of the lawn more because they eat the actual stomach, but leave that sack as the Yeah. I also sometimes you just find that because they've just kind of taken out the whole thing. Um, so they almost almost yeah yeah, m eat the soft yeah yeah, that's really nutritious stuff that tends to go first with kills. In fact, with wolves, you can tell you can kind of get a timeline from the scats um. So like the early scats from the first feedings on a kill will be these like black nasty I call them organ scats because they've been eating just the organs and pure met And then as they eat those things up and they start eating cracking more bones and eating hair, more of the hair and hide and stuff, you get those more and you can also learn a little bit about who maybe left that scat because the breeding male and female get first pick generally until they're eating the organs' oh wolve that So I'm jumping around side my buddy, uh Rammy just was showing me some photographs. He was out hunting elk and found where some lions. Those two lions had killed. Would you remember they killed? They killed elker deer. I don't remember what it was. And he's got all these pictures of them up in a tree because the wolves rolled in and the lions just ran up on a couple of leaning lean trees. You know, this load took a nap. Yeah, they're like like it now, naps waiting for the wolves to leave because there's nothing they're gonna do about it, you know, stayed up in the tree, right. Yeah. I actually went to a wolf kill site that had It was hard to tell what had happened because it was an old kill site that the wolf I was following had returned to, but it looked to me like she'd they'd killed a deer. I think it's what it was. And then I also found where they had been where they killed a mountain lion and she had gone back and was renowning on those bones. The wolves killed the lion, So I mean, I don't you never know exactly what happened, but but the lion's carcass was close to the deer. Yeah, so they might have rolled up, got a tussle over the deer and killed the lion and eighth the lion. Mhm. It's a good way to get trick analysis. Yeah, that's all that happens. Yeah, So but anyway, just mainly the point there is that when you're looking at predation rates and you know how often predators are killing prey, you gotta kind of think about and remember that it's probably not just that that predator of that prac that pack that's eating it. A lot of times, there's bears coming in, there's you know, food for a lot of stuff. We got a friend, uh fella, we talked to you that he was doing they were doing mortality. They were investigating mortality of collard caribou and they had a caribou wearing a collar. Gotta you know the death you know, the mortality signal had been hit by a car, eaten by wolves, eaten by a bear. Yeah. There's a lot of sharing going yeah, definitely. Yeah, And so that's one of the things that makes kill site analysis fun is it's not always just a straightforward Oh the cat was here, so it ate it all up. You know, you don't know, is this a scavenge situation with the cats? That's less common just because they like fresh meat. But um, like what percent of a wolverine? Like what percent of a wolverines diet? Did he not kill himself? It's got to be enormal. Oh yeah, that's I think one of their main things is scavenging, avalanche slides, other kills. So now the last thing about the lion, that lion job. What were they trying to find out? What are they eating? What are they eating? And what's the kill rate? Yeah, what's that mean? Kills? What do you find or what they find they've I'm not gonna be able to remember off the top of my head. But as far as prayer composition, it's you know, it's very but it all so, I mean, predator populations and eating habitats are eating habits in general are really kind of controlled from the bottom up. So what's available? You know. Um, something that I've come to realize just from being out there and from you know, reading the literature, is that a lot of times it's the reverse of what people think. It's more the the prey population controlling the predator population um, which is kind of relieves some of the fears that people have of you know, these predators are going to come in and you know, decimate this dear population or whatever. That's the thing. That's the thing I struggle explain to people oftentimes when when they're when they're um, when people get a little bit too hysterical about the predator threat, is um. You know, predators have Really it doesn't really make sense mathematically for predator to annihilate its resource because that spells real bad things for the predators. They can something up and then move on to something else, you know, for sure, Like we got our body in Kentucky, was he was saying it. When coyotes came in, He felt that the first thing they did was they worked groundhogs. And he said that was like the one thing you saw that just vanished from the landscape was groundhogs. It was like he said that he felt just anecdotal personal observation, but he felt that they went from having shiploads of groundhogs and then they had no brown hogs, and then they went on to other things and established a viable population. But he felt that that was a case where it was just they were gone, yeah, and then did they did you feel like they switched to something? Yeah, and then now they got you know, shiploads guy oots and he all kinds of stuff. But he felt the one thing that he saw just vanish was it must have been this easy pick kinds and something they really dedicated a lot of time to and and that was what they've done. Yeah. It's the other thing that I've learned is that trying to pinpoint the relationship between prey and predator populations is really complicated. It's um, it's tempting to say, you know, this population of deer is doing really badly because X predator is on the rise, or you know, because they gave out way too many tags or whatever. It's it's easy to try and pinning on one thing, but in reality, there are usually a lot of factors going on and working together. And um, I think the climate is under appreciated for its influence on prey populations, you know, a bad winner or a drought or whatever, and and predators are often um over appreciated for theirs. It's it's hard to find a situation where I mean it happens especially in situations where populations are already not doing well. Um, but it's it's not often that you see this population of prey is doing badly and it's because of this predator population. But yeah, I think that it becomes most pronounced when you get to those vulnerable spots like for instance, the cab the caribou guy we talked with, he's dealing with with a dozen animals, which is a population that is going to have It's a huge deal for us, you know, like losing one new predator is a huge deal. Losing one anything, losing one to get hit by a car vehicle, mortality on white tail deer isn't really making anybody worried. But when you've got a dozen of something, it's a big deal. Or you have a drainage that has a population of maybe six or seven breeding female moose, Yeah, predation becomes an issue because you got six or seven well, and everything becomes into yeah, everything. You can't just point it at the predators and it's habitat and um and climb our they're usually big. It's hard to isolate all those different factors for the research so that you can say if it's another but that's what um our buddy bil Andre is talking about the warden from Colorado. Have you heard about the researcher doing in the Piance Basin in Colorado with the with the predator mule dear relationship. They feel like they've got an isolated enough area and a herd that's not doing well compared to other herds around it, but it's isolated and they know that they've got like what do you say, the habitat they know can support the the fall. Yeah, they're they have they're having great fawn the females, they test their pregnant with twins. The fawns when they test them, the live fonds and they test them are heavier than the last time they are tested in the eighties, so they're well fed. But they have just zero recruitment. So they feel like maybe they're getting some very heavy predation right during that like early stages of growth like in June July, and so they're gonna try predator removable at those keys. You know what they think is But one thing you're saying, too was peculiar about the approach we're taking. As a lot of times people do sort of this like generalized predator control. But they're gonna do a very targeted predator control at a very targeted time. So not like going out in January February to catch cats that may or may not be killing fawns in May and June, but to kill cats in May and June to see if you know, you never know if you're getting like the cat, but like to see if what kind of movement that has on it? Yea. Um but man, Yeah, predator control. It's like such a thorny subject it is, and it's um. I think it's slowly changing a little bit. I think our traditional predator management is has been in the past that there's a problem, we kill the predators. Um. But I think that there are other ways and um that that's slowly starting to be incorporated. Yeah, but I'm afraid they're gonna throw out the baby with the bathwater. I mean, I think the old days of you know, taking a half dead animal and injecting it with strict nine and then having that be your predator control program is you know, those days are beyond us. But I think that also there are times like this thing we're talking about, this this piece of work that they're doing in Colorado or the thing they're doing with mountain like the thing they're not doing active predator control of the Mountain carripe, but were they. It's like in cases, I think it's very valuable, but everybody, you know, people want to be so binary. It's like we had the early model which was used poison to eradicate all predators, and and now to have this like over correction that we're leading to now where we want to be like, oh no, it's you know, it's like this this tool we dacn't use because of the you know, because of the public perception of it and the pr obstacles in the way. It's just like everything else. I think like predator control at times can be a valuable tool. Does that mean I think we should poison carcasses and kill everything that feeds on a on a on a on a dead l No. Yeah, I think that we don't want to limit the tools we've got. But I my I don't know. My feeling and what I've learned from just being around predator management is that, um, we often come at it from look at it with a certain framework of what we've always done, which is there's a problem we control predator populations where um, where I think we're missing in situations, that there are other things that might actually be the problem, a more underlying problem, um, and that there might be other ways to solve it, that this is not a panacea. Yeah, it's like it's like people, some people, some people, especially on our end of things, like a lot of big game huners, want to think that that's like the answer to all problems. Right, Yeah, I think we're where it gaus, we're with predator controls. When people act like it's a um, you know, I think a lot of hunters, especially act like it's like this panacea where they feel like it's solved all problems. The predators are the root of all evil when it comes to diminished game populations. I read this paper not long ago. Was more like an internal letter where a guy was there, there's a biologist news explaining people's perceptions of the impact of wolves on elk and you're saying, how we've always, you know, prior to the re establishment of wolves, we've always lost thirty calves per hundred two lions. And he said the wolves probably added about ten calves per hundreds, but people were just used to thirty. Like people had just become used to the fact that you know, about sevent calves survived, and they got used to like that was how we allocated tags that people are used to seeing. And then you had an additive effect of wolves and it wound up, you know, it upset this sort of long standing system, and it impacted the number of lk impacted the number of tags, and people are like, oh, it's all wolves. It was like, no, in fact, it's mostly lions. Wolves are just a new additive to that. Yeah, you know, but it's like people take a while. I get used to it, but then they then I run into people about wolves who almost want to make you believe that wolves eat grass. By the way, they point out that there's no you know what I mean, that they don't do anything. I was like, well, these seven pounds of me today, so it's coming from somewhere. Yeah. I mean, they they're out there just doing their thing. But in both directions. The the impact that they have I think is overblown a lot. They're not, um, they're not necessarily fixing everything, and um, they're also not ruining everything. I like, I mean, I enjoy them being out there. I like them being out there it's like I think that I probably represent a pretty standard view of UM. I like having all the native species on the ground. I like having like, you know, an intact collection of large predators. And I also like it when those large predators are managed as a renewable resource where you have interest. So that's just my personal take on I'm like the middle of the road or yeah, I'm like, yeah, I would never suggest eradicating them. But I also don't like that the game we play where people have they're like favorite animals and then they um want to act like certain animals are off limits because they're like a calendar worthy species. Yeah. Yeah, and that's all. That's tough thing to talk about two because that hits some people's emotional attachment to different animals and just kind of their own belief system. You know, there's some animals that are just taboo for take you know, UM, but I think we all we all have that that threshold somewhere or you know, a lot of hunters I think of I kind of think of a graph and there's a lineup of animals on the X axis, and like so for me, zero is mosquitoes, and then you know, at the other I know the X axis. There's something I would not want to kill, like my grandma or something, and so and then there's this Yeah, two lines and one is um, your desire to eat it hunted, UM be a predator for some reason. And then there's another line, UM that's just kind of your empathy or whatever. And so you have this line that for me, I want to kill mosquitoes. So I don't have empathy and I have a high want. And then where those lines intersect, where I've got um, the desire to kill something is higher than my empathy, higher than UM, my desire to just know they're there, that individuals there, um. And then but there's also the point where I like knowing they're there, and my empathy is so great that I have no desire to kill them. Where is it fall for you? Um? I I think empathy grows as you interact with animals a lot. So for me, I don't know about that. Well okay, well, okay, here I think bear. This is where things are getting really great. For me, those lines start to get really close. I would have a hard time hunting a bear. I wouldn't I don't have a desire, my desire to to eat it doesn't outweigh my desire to just know they're there. I've also I have interacted with so many bears. I've held their cubs and watched them in their dens, and watched hours of you know, trail camp footage of them, and so I just feel too connected so that myself doesn't explain it. Why not interaction doesn't explain it? Because think about how how much have you interacted with elk? Yeah, thousands of hours held their babies? Okay, but observation studying, right, Yeah, I think in my case, in my case, interaction leads in the other direction. There's some things where I feel like, uh, like recently, we had a wolverine, right, get into a wolf carcass in an area where you're allowed one wolverine year hunting. It was the first wolverna I ever laid eyes on. I was like, I'm not gonna kill the first wolverine I ever laid eyes on. Right, That's the thing that I was thinking about what people go to Africa where it's kind of like, oh, that's what that looks like. It's like I don't have any context with it, right' I shoot the first wolverine I see Now, if I'd been out and I glassed up a dozen wolverines over the course of a couple of years, I start being like, yeah, like I now have sort of earned my place at the table. Ah. Yeah, that's just another measuring stick of like, I don't know, I just feel like everybody's got their own kind of complicated value and ethics around it and that that plays into it. But there's mean, you shoot a panda bear. No, I have no desire to do That's what. Yeah, that's where I draw the line. He's always having to be guiding. It seemed like a round animal number ten of the fall, where like because early on it's just like every client you're just like, I want to kill an elk with you. I want to kill an elk with you. Let's go, let's go, let's go. And then when you've seen about ten of them hit the dirt, all of a sudden, you're just kind of like, oh, killing another one. Yeah, there's something so fresh for the client though, yeah he's not he's not feeling that, you know. I definitely felt like as a guide I would just be like, oh, well, you know, yeah, if you don't want to run after that one, we don't have to, you know. Yeah, Yeah, so that empathy line is starting above your desire to. Yeah, I have with I have with wolves as much as I support UM, as much as I support the right of state fishing game agencies to manage wolves as they see fit, as much as I support UM hunters who operating within the letter of the law. They're like right to hunt as long as their state game agency has determined that the population can support harvest and it's all done within accordance to preserving the long term viability of the species and all that stuff. That's a long caveat right, UM. And I've purchased wolf tags, but when I see a wolf, UM, I just don't, right, don't feel desire. Uh. One time we were out and I'd killed a doll ram and then my buddy got a bear. And that night we had a you know, white wolf come rolling down the river bank where we were, And at that time I just was like, you know, we just got a sheet, we got a bear. Two days later, It's like, you know, that's a lot, But there's always something hard. Time I was just hiking up a river with my rifle. Wolf standing there could have you know, shot the wolf, zero desire. I was staying. I mean, I could have thrown a rock at it. No desire, but in the back of my head, and I was like, yeah at some point. But it's like when it happens, I don't the when I like, you know, you show me something like a doll ram, the minute I see it, my desire to go after it goes through the roof. Yeah. But the minute I see that, you know, lay eyes on wolf, the desire doesn't climb grizzly Bears. It's like a very gradual down like a wolf. It's like the desire is pretty sharp down. Grizzly Bears is a gradual down. Black Bears is a flat line. Mm hmm. I'm like, oh, there he is. I suppose we should go over there and get him. Yeah, come, let's go, let's go. Yeah. There's a lot that goes into how quilthy that empathy threshold is reached, and I think that's I don't know, it's a it's not something that we should never necessarily like strive to push through that or or to you know, not think about it too hard, because it's upsetting to think about, you know, killing this elk. And I think it's okay you can be upset about it a little bit but also want to kill it and go through with it. But and it's okay if you're like, I cannot just make that wolf into um into something I don't have empathy for. You know, if if the if the reasons to kill it don't outweigh the kind of sad feeling it would give you to kill out why why push through that? You know? And there's something I know and and and I'm listening. I think that people. Yeah, I think it's something that it's a valuable thing for people to discuss and talk about. I do think also it's important that people recognize it as pretty arbitrary. Yeah, okay, very personal and very arbitrary. And I only have problems with that when people want to start legislating based on their personal arbitrary perception of it, because I'm like, okay, I talked without serie day with someone like if you go and buy like, if you buy a box at Chicken McNuggets, right, how many chickens are in that box in the way they produce that ship. It's not like one chicken, A dozen damn chickens in there all blend it up in a blender together. So I'm like, oh, just imagine cuddling all those twelve little chicks, right, But it's like you're not invited to think about it. So I think that when some people do run the calculations in their head and they're like and they arrive at this thing where like, I wouldn't want to hunt black bears. Therefore I'm going to really push to make it that no one can hunt black bears because it's upsetting for them to think about it's upsetting for me to think about all those little baby chicks. So it's some people feel like obligated to really pursue pushing their line. Yeah, and that's the only time it starts to be not offensive to me. But it just I started to get a little skittish when when that happens. I think it's always going on. You know, if you if you watch the way initiatives work and in the political cycle, it's always going on that people are like coming up with arbitrarily arriving at their favorites and then and then trying to like legislate their favorites when it's when it is entirely arbitrary. Yeah, Um, that's true. But I think that it's going to be a constant battle all the time between our sort of historic cultural attitude towards wildlife and um are your natural areas in general of this is here for us and we can just take I think that's one extreme end and then there's you know, it can't be touched and let's ignore the fact that that we're predators and have a desire to engage with nature in that way. Um. So if those extremes keep fighting and we keep meaning in the middle, that's you still want to have both both ends, maybe because I feel, um, historically the like when I look at just the historic wildlife, the enemy is uh, the just take right, Like what happened to what happened to American wildlife in the late ag ear was having absolutely no regard for the future, no comprehension of the finiteness of our resources. Further than that Abrahamic you know, like Leopold calls like this Abrahamic concept of land where it somehow everything was like given to your god given right. Yeah, like this you have this like you like this divine right to just destroy and a divine duty to civilize. So that's like the old enemy and that has been largely vanquished in this country. I'm not saying globally, but that attitude has been defeated. Yeah, you know, it's it's rude. Is still there, but but we've arrived at a place where you legally squashed it. Right. The new enemy now, like the new threat now, I feel, is the other side of it, which is the complete dissociation with wildlife. And it's something that we just have to look at out the window of a car and it has nothing to do with our lives anymore. That it's an art, it's a relic of the past, and it's just meant for observation. There's no entanglement. Yeah, I know, what do you think of all? I got a concluding thought just after my bathroom break. You're gonna hit me with that. I'm thinking we need to have Calmon back again, because we took a little break and I got the chatter up about her early hunt experiences and there's a lot to talk about there and we didn't even get to that. Yeah we didn't. How many animals do we miss off? We're just getting started on my resume and I don't even like to know, just like a real quick like how even like how it's done. What the tactic of of traffing wolves? Yeah, when they when they put collars on wolves or catching my foot traps, Ye, paddles, padded jaws, Yeah, put in line springs in them. Um, they're just I mean they're they're no different. They've just got pats. So you look a double coil sprain with pats and then you get one in a trap and you drug it and put a collar on and kind of the standard use urine to lure them, all kinds of stuff, all kinds no, not bait, um, yeah, sin lures. They are so smart and they they they tuned up really fast, and so sink control in the area of your trap is really important. In fact, so the trapper that trapped for this project would have everybody else they're just sitting the back of the truck because you know, I didn't want our foot putt smell around. Um. And then just disguising these traps really well and using different sint lures. And it's not it's not easy because um, they are so smart and the slightest, the little thing wrong is gonna make them skittish. I've had so I've done a lot of trail camera work over the last couple of summers with wolves, and even they're they get wary of those. You know, I have so many videos of them just slinking around my camera. They somehow know that it's there. I've don't like it. They don't like it, and I don't know. I've I've tried, um, putting like fur bowls in my hands and then grabbing the camera with that so I'm not even touching the camera. They've got to and I have. You know, they've got the black light so they supposedly can't see it, and you get pictures of their staring right at it. They know, so they're they're pretty savvy. Yeah, it's a sheen to it or something something or maybe a tiny noise. I don't know. It's hard to figure out. Nice to trap Fox and Kyo would be the UM. All the precautions like you die and why actually traps that storm and boxes full of hay. Only use rubber gloves, clean your rubber gloves any to every time. Only use rubber boots clean every time, disinfect everything and um and then you know when you bed the trap and you cover it, you know, half inch three quarter inches of dirt if that trap had any wobble, and they just it's like, but you're stepping on ship the wobbles all the time. They're walking to the right. But how many times did he place his foot? He places foot thousands of times every day, but like how often is something under just under the soil. It's just different. They're nervous because they're they're nervous because yeah, so you you asked them to come in, and once you pinch one's toe, man, they get very very difficult. You'd even then going like if you had like a dirt hole set or a cent post set, you know, when you got your trap, you know, nine inches back, three inches off center, and then you'd want to bed in a couple of them to three feet back because he's not expecting them to be there, you know. But they it's just like they just there's they're just being so frustrated, just like dread Like when he came out and saw your trap excavated, Like when you dig around the outside jaw and expose the jaw, you're like, I will never catch this thing. Yeah, and he will come and do this every night. That's that's the I think the fun thing about research trapping is there's an added challenge of a you're not always trapping in a place where that animals plentiful. UM. So for example, I first trapped links in Maine where there were many more, and it was it was a lot easier. We call a lot of animals um, although catching females we had to get trickier with because they just it seems like in general across species, a lot of times the females are harder to get and older animals. So if you care about getting a nice slice of the demographic, you know, young adult male female, that that adds the challenge. And then you're trapping somewhere where there aren't many. So trapping links in Washington, Uh, they're threatened here and there's less than fifty probably, and so there's a there's it's a whole winter of trapping. And we caught four. And there's this one female with kittens that we just pulled out every stop for and UM got her into trap once, but she got away before we got there. We're not trying to catch those and leg holds, right, they wouldn't hold up. Probably they can get frost bite. Yeah, so we just used they don't it's just not so it just doesn't seem like a cat's gonna do well enough. Foot trap people use them in the summer, Yeah, yeah, but it's hard to get a permit for that. In Washington for research, she guys using box traps. Box traps'larly trap shy, but they get trap shy about box and that's individual. So um. Some of them would go into traps once they figured out that there was bait in there. They'd go in them every night or so for a while, and then they're like I said, the females though super hard to catch, and this one in particular, I mean we had when we ended up when the time that we did catch her. This is a story that still makes me sick to my stomach because it was so frustrating. We've been targeting her the entire winner, and we'd extended our season because we wanted to get her so bad and on the last day we were out closing our traps and we pull up to this trap who was a We started setting double traps, so we'd have one box trap backed up to another one. We'd cover all sides of it with bows so that if a kitten or one of the links went in one trap, the only way for the kitten's mom or or figure out what's going on, yeah, to get too closer to that to be going the other trap. So we had a double trap set, and we had we'd done away with our whole treadle season or our treadle um trigger system, so we had fishing line. We explained what a treadle. You step on this stick and it triggers the trap you step on, you step step on. It's like a lot a lot of dead fall traps that way, because it's just a trigger system where when it enters, it puts its foot on a basic a like a like a stick, like an inch or two off the ground, right, Yeah, So this was so basically are trap sets were this box trap. You cover the sides with bows so that it's it's a tunnel through and you've got visuals out in front of it. You're trying to get the links in the area. And then you've got bait in the back of the trap, and your hope is that they will feel comfortable enough to walk into the trap to get to the bait, and they'll step on this little paddle that you've done your best to disguise with snow and whatever, and they step on that and that triggers the door. The door falls down reb like Ben Benion's hog traps. Yeah, yeah, where they bumped the wire. Picture that you had anything even like a piece of ply would elevated. Where you put weight on that apply would yeah, tips forward and the dogs. So it's kind of like a like I have a heart trap, but these were homemade and bigger. What kind of weight? Uh, what does it take trigger that trap? You tried to just have him on a hair but it was just weird enough that it was and they'd get bugged up with ice and whatever. So they weren't working well enough that we were catching cats and they were wary of them. So what we did was we took those out and we took um fishing line and we drung it kind of towards the back in a sort of a like a zi these shape, So it came from one side to the other and looped back and then went out the top of the trap. Then we had a a mouse trap mounted on the top of the trap and um that would throw the trigger. They would throw the gate. Yeah, So the fishing line was um tied to the little fake cheese thing, and then we had the door was on a on a little piece of rope and you loop that over the the um the lowell thing, yeah, the bail, so that when the cheese got pulled on even slightly we had birds tripping these things. When it got pulled on even slightly by an animal in the trap, the door would close. So anyway, so we've gone through all this. It's our last day. We're closing traps, and we pull up to the trap and the doors are closed because it's a double trap. We leap off our snowmobiles and the trap is empty, and we could tell from the tracks what had happened was one either the mom or the kitten, had gone in the trap, and the other had obviously been upset about this and was was, um, you know, trying to get at it. And we even sat on top of it and all this stuff. But before it got desperate enough to go into the other trap and we would maybe even have both of them, a little bit of snow build up at the bottom of the door created a tiny gap in the between the door and the top of the trap, and that length squeezed out of there, so we missed. We never caught that female. We came so close but never caught her. So anyway, the point of all that is when you have to catch certain individuals, you don't just get to move on. It makes you get creative and get it's fun. Even with beaver trapping, sometimes there's just that last female that you really want to get out of there because you want the whole family group or whatever, and you just even that could be super tricky. So you found that the females are harder to get the males like, as a generalization, Yeah, yeah, I think just they're less, less risky, more wary. A lot that I'd say in general, the easiest is young males and experienced young males because oftentimes they're finding themselves in strange areas to the more aggressive. All right, man, we're gonna have to have you back on and talk more about all this knocky deer concluding thought yunning. Lots of similarities there between the animal kingdom and in us. You know, the young males get in trouble. Jared Diamond talks about Jared the you know, the physiologists and among many other things. Jared Diamond talks about why reckless behavior in males like how that would become selected for in sexual selection, like why would why would you know the propensity to do like ridiculous crazy ship that will get you hurt? Wi is there? And why is there an advantage there? And he thinks it's like getting really ship faced drunk? Why is there? Why is that advanced? Why is that selected for? And he he talks about, I can't here if he was given this idea of his own or given a summation of someone else's theory, But it was that it's a demonstration of fitness because you're basically saying like I'm so fit, I'm so fit that I can afford to do these very risky behaviors and that has over time had like a sexual advantage and attracting females that you're like, now there's a specimen. He can get that drunk. It'll still be okay because there is something about it. You know why? It wasn't just that sexual selection and adapted advantages wouldn't just make you real timid people won't, you know? They don't want that. They want that bull out that just comes screaming in thrash and brush read it up. The guy hiding out in the black timber. He doesn't he's not getting anywhere. Um, all right, is that your concluding dot? No? Um, I guess thanks for coming on. And I'm so stoked that we have people like Carmen out there doing the good work and getting this research done. And and now that you're a hunter, it's even better, you know. I don't know. We were talking about it off while we weren't recording, but just getting somehow keeping science, um, you know, like in the forefront, to keep you know, people making decisions and not getting you know, the politics involved too much. And um, yeah, I just hope we have more people like Carmen out there doing wildlife research and helping us, help the rest of us make this informed decisions. Yeah, just find out about stuff. Yeah, keep learning. I don't know anything thought. What are your concluding thoughts? Do you had any anything you want to you want to try to get the job or anything, or I would just you don't have anything to gain from this. You're not selling anything? Are you selling it? You know, like you don't have like a T shirt company or anything. I mean, as scientists, I think is important to try and reach a wider audience. You know, you know, we had a long discussion about that. Last we had a researcher on who is a m the sociology research, and we had a long discussion about um what I see as my need for scientists too. As painful as it is for them to translate their work for a popular audience, but a lot of them, it's just a very uncomfortable It's super place to go in because you live in a world of caveats and reservations and not wanting to make generalizations and not wanting to oversimplify things. And you enter into a world where people like, so, what's it all mean? Yeah, and you're like, that's not my job. I don't tell you. I'm not here to tell you what to think about it, to tell you what's there. I can tell you what's going on, but I'm not going to translate it for you. Yeah. Yeah, but scientists need to be able to do that effectively, you know, so that their work isn't just being circulated among other scientists. That's the only I talked about too, is like someone's going to translate it. Why not be in the driver's seat. Why let some Why let some you know, Penny, any journalists read your paper and take a stab at it when you can a little bit try to guide it by getting out there with your messaging. Of course, people can abuse it, and you wind up having scientists who get accused of grandstanding, where everything they do is meant to be outward facing, and they lose their credibility. But I think that yeah, to uh, to enter that uncomfortable space of coming in and to aching something that's like really complicated and you're trying not to make to read into it too much, and you're trying not to be suayed by policy and personal opinion, and then explain to people like, here's what's going on out there. It's tough to distill it down because you can always imagine your colleagues listening and jumping on you. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's it's definitely a skill. I mean, it was taught in classes that I've taken. You talk about it, oh, definitely. I mean a lot of scientists know, Okay, we've got this problem. We need to figure out how to teach people what we have found in a way that's understandable and yet still accurate and true to what we've found, you know, because it's a balance between making it understandable and also not missing important points of your research or simplifying it too. Whatever. My one of my brothers, you know, he's a researcher, and part of the is it's kind of built into his it's sort of built into his job description and some amount of public facing, some amount of public facing work. Yeah, it's a skill. You don't have a great scientist who gives a talk and nobody can understand or follow it, and so that's that doesn't work either, you know, just as much as oversimplifying it or you know, not explaining enough, it doesn't work. So yeah, it's a skill. Yeah, it's a lot easier just to have every answer be I don't know, it's complicated, Yeah, too complicated. I can't explain. Yeah, all right, well thanks to we have to yeah you have to come back on. Yeah, definitely, thank you.

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