00:00:12 Speaker 1: I guess I grew up on an all day row. Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of the Hunting Collective. Hello Philip, hi Ben. I was just telling you, boy, I feel like shit big time, and knowing you, the first thing I assumed was well alcohol was involved, and you were like, where did you get drunk last night? I like, not really, but kind of it was an accident. I was working in the yard all weekend, working hard and you know, doing landscaping, doing building things, and uh, it was hot, and then you know, last night is it got cooled down? I think I have I have a couple of beers. I'll go in the fridge and GETO a couple of beers, and I'm drinking the beers while I'm working. I'm thirsty. It's just been a long day. And next thing I know, I had eight beers. It's one of those things when it's when you're working outside in the heat and you're drinking. Sometimes you don't realize how much you're drinking until you up inside your house and like take your sung glasses off and just stand there for a second, and wasn't all it all? Just yeah coming dirt. I just shook my head and I look. I was like, all right, I'm drunk. Yeah, perfect, I'm gonna go take a nap for about ten hours. So anyway, I'm not at my best today. So I apologize to everyone out there in th HC Land. Please, this is a free show, free show. They can't you can't complain. Give us a five star review on iTunes. Write something really nice about this particular podcast. But we got it really important things to do. So I'm gonna try to perk up. Um. Maybe I'll start Maybe I'll have my first sip of coffee later today or something like that makes me feel better. Phil, I wish you would start drinking coffee. I think that should be. That would be like an event, a world changing event. I'm gonna call the guys a black rifle coffee. And but like, can we can we do a live event? Sure? I just sit on the stage with a spotlight and I'm just with a slowly bring the cup of coffee to my mouth, slowly sip it and then and seen. That's it. It's performance art. Yeah you should have. You could have done it on some some public land and to get into this contest, oh yeah, yeah. The Great American Outdoors contest. Uh is over. It's over this one. Let's see, of all the contests we've done, this is what if we're going to count them off, it's like the fifth contest we've done. We're gonna keep doing them. By the way, so keep listening. Please tell your friends, um, this one was not the most impressive via numbers, but the most impressive via the effort, which is saying a lot because motherfucker's have have made hand turkeys out of fly time material and put them in wooden cases. Do you ever see that, By the way, I didn't. In defense of your listeners, this was the most I think you were asking the most of them for this guy. The next time, I'm just gonna be like, take a picture of yourself. We need to, we need to. When I was drunk last night, I had an idea for a contests and I forgot it. I can't remember it now. That's too bad, soul have been. It was really a good a good idea. Um. We had this contest where you had to go. It was a lot. You had to find a place that was receiving or received funds from the l w c F, the Land of Water Conservation Fund, and then you had to go to it. So that's that's two that's two steps already, and that's and that's not even the difficult part. People are busy, that's right. And then you had to make art when you got there. If any it could have been. Most of you chose film. We received dozens of films and I've picked the top three are films that I've chosen. Um, some poetry, and then other people just sending photos of them doing stuff. I was said a lot of you people, this ain't gonna work on me. It might work on you, Phil, it ain't gonna work with me with pictures of your kids. Okay, even if they're cute. There were some cute ones, but it's just not gonna work on me. So don't try. Don't pander to me with cute children on public lands. That's not the points discussed. They are the bullshit. They are the future, and you are introducing them to the wonderful splinters of the American outdoors. But ben's not I'm not impressed. No, I mean, it really is the embodiment of what we're all about here at TCHC. I don't want to see it. No, I don't want you to shove it in my face. I don't need to see it. No, So we rather than vote on these things, I just felt like they were I felt like there were three that were so exceptional and they were so lived long, So we can't play that. Each of them is like four to five minutes, so I can't play them all here for you, but I've I'm gonna try to select clips that embodies the video themselves and the person who turned that video into us. But before we get to that, UM a couple updates on the Great American Outdoors Act itself last Friday. This past Friday, the House Rules Committee debated the Act the lighted piece of legislation before being considered on the floor tomorrow. So today's Tuesday. You're listening to this. I hope, I hope you don't. You don't listen to this any other day than when it comes out, So hopefully this is Tuesday. So tomorrow is Wednesday. Then it's going to get votes tomorrow starting between three and three thirty pm Eastern time. But there during the meeting last Friday, the leadership denied all amendments and kept the bill clean, which is important, Phil, Do you know why, because then they can vote on it, because if they had, if it had to have amendments, it could get pushed back to the Senate and we could be completely screwed. Because we don't want this thing to go to November, because then the world will change in a way that we do not. No, that's true. Okay. All the words I just want to check because I'm extremely hungover and you're making sense are the words. May You're fine, You're doing great, all right. We're also just just by the bye. We're back quarantined again kind of a little bit. We're not allowed in the office, which is, you know, more cases of COVID, more worries, gotta keep steaven now healthy, can't have it sick are you guys? We'll have a Netflix show, um, and so we're back, but fill our pilling. Are allowed to come in the studio and at social distance. And Phil tells me I shouldn't tell all you guys this stuff. He says they don't care. He says that all the time, but particularly about this. They don't care about like our office situation. So people have to completely tuned this out. Anyway, back to the very important life changing once in a lifetime legislation the Great American Outdoors Act. So just for review, the Great American Outdoors that would fully dedicate nine million dollars to the Land Order Conservation Fund every year in perpetuity. And then it would address the twenty million dollar or yes, twenty billion dollars and maintenance backlogs on public plans and waters will be fixing ship out there, okay, fixing it up for you. And so you're listening to this on Tuesday, you need to go and call the capital switchboard two O two two two four three one to one, or you can use the legislator directory at BHA dot com. Go there and find it, find your representatives direct number, or like I said, called that switchboard number two O two to two four three one to one and tell them to pass the Great American Outdoors. I can tell him, I care. Have you done that, y F? Phil? I have? Yeah? Yeah, I look have you? Have you told me you did? Yeah? I thought you were lying. No, I mean I haven't. I did it once a while ago, back before things are like as far along as they were now. It's looking good, Phil. I'm I don't want to be one of those guys who gets in a situation where I'm too confident. I'm usually never too confident. I'm just just the right amount of confident. But at this moment, I'm very, very confident that by the time we talked to you again next week, that we will have a bill headed to Mr Trump's desk for signature. UM. And that's exciting for all of us. So without further ado, we're gonna announce the winner. Thank you so much, the first Light, Thank you too, Nemo, and there's another one, Vortex. We love you all equally. My synapses not firing, that's fine. I'm proud of you for just just just being here. So yeah, soldier through sometimes showing podcasting, some people say poising, it's not a hard job. Check me out right now, you know. I want for for all the listeners who have real jobs, who if you showed up to work drunk or hungover, you would be terminated or face face repercussions. Just just no, no, I got a collared shirt on, you do? Yeah? Sure? Yeah? I never wear a collared shirt. Yeah I got I didn't. I couldn't find any like shoes, so just my like dirty flip flop that's fine, um. But from the waist up, I looked professional. You're doing great. Thanks, Thanks um a lot of people. Thank you again to everybody that sent things in. We appreciate you as always. It's one of the things that makes this show the most fun. It really makes worth getting up in the morning and scratching, like scratching all the dirt out of your eyes and barely being able to see for about an hour and then getting yourself into the office. Um, so what are we gonna do here? So we're gonna start with the Vortex bhind us. Okay, now this is third place. This third place, okay, but these are listeners that you guys should all you're all gonna know. But Mike Peterson, I'm gonna show you this. You've not seen this before film. Okay, I'm gonna show you this. You make sure that I mean, is this going to be are people who cannot see the video? They they're still going to enjoy this? No, okay, it might be worth uploading some of this to like your instant. It's gonna be on instant. Okay, good check it out on Instagram. But it's not gonna you're not gonna have fun at this point. It is Wednesday nine, Token Creek that's where Mike Peterson is. Okay, who disclaim or nothing but feelings were hurt in the making of this movie. I'm worried. There's Mike. He's outside, he's dressed, he has American flag tanks. A little day to be out of the park, do some fishing, maybe get something for the front pan. I couldn't ask for anything better. Yeah, popping up in a white claw is a lemon? I think so. I think it was a mango mangoes. Oh it is mad. Okay, it would be a pretty good idea for a dog's name. Not wrong. Shout out to Mike. What in the hell is that dude didn't even bring a fishing pole? How the hell is he's supposed to catch me dinner? Damn, I'm gonna catch without a pole? Well, you cursed? Is Is this some bitch drinking coffee? Starbucks coffee? We're gonna fast forward to where he's now. He is dressed like he's not dressed like a hipster. Okay, it's all an oriole today. Still a hot drinking his coffee. Oh my god, is that guy fishing? It's gonna come out here, torture fish, poke holes in their mouth and that shirt. He he totally voted for Trump. Well, I mean, at least Trump says he's going to sign the Great American Outdoors Act. Oh, I can't believe I found something I like about the guy. At least he's having fun starring Mike Peterson, oh Man and Mike Mike Peterson. Okay, that was great. Good job, Mike Peterson is fantastic. Clause feels not clapping lapping the two of us. It's not gonna sound good. Yeah, Mike Peterson's like his piece of art was trying to tell us that we're bringing people together. So gratulations, Mike Peters. You're gonna be a parabor tex Binos. Send them right to your damn house. You can use them to do whatever you do. Who knows what you do. But thanks for listening. As always, we appreciate you, buddy. I feel like, like, yeah, I don't know if Mike's ever want anything, but he always tries, and in this case he made it. He made a good joke, He made a good funny. Now this one is gonna be If you'll remember Greg Morrise from his win. He was the guy that sent us the video of him and his house in his robe, and he had the picture of frame frame picture of squeakers. Remember him recipe squeakers. This is the same guy. So he's he's he's a second time winner. He knows what makes us tick. And so he sent a video in where he was calling. We said to call. I think he didn't quite pick up what we meant by calling, and so he made a video that goes a little something like this. Hello called first Light. Nate answered, I'm good. Thanks for going on. Do you guys um sell any pants that like are okay to poop in? Sorry? Can you repeat that? Man? Do you see pants that are like okay to poop in? It depends on how running it is, you know. No, I'm trying to see her so because like I got this issue when I go out in the woods and like I always poop my pants. Oh man, that's too bad. So you do you don't? You don't sell anything that's like okay to poop in. I can't say i'd recommend any pant, but I'm sure they'd hold up just fine to your normal set. Okay, can I can you can I leave that as a recommendation or something that like it's maybe something you guys could look into you guys come highly recommended. That's the only reason I'm calling you. Yeah, I'll mark it down, man, No problem. What's your name? It's um Janice and last names Ronella. Okay, is really the star of this It is really the star of that show. So now he's out, he says, call himber two. He's at masson Ault State Park in Plymouth, Massachusetts as LWC I funded. But scouting right now. Um, the onyx app, you guys, do you guys have like a feature that shows where the deer are? What do you mean by that? Like where the deer are? Like don't don't you guys have like like a GPS system that shows where the deer are? Like, um, like no, like you where a dear would be on on the map? Yeah, like if like where he is? Like I opened up on X maps and then it says there's a deer here and a deer here. No, no, we we don't have that, all right? Can I can I put in a recommendation for that that question? And uh forget he is heard? Anything that can be done to you know, considering putting something that you know you were the dear. Yeah, I think that would be like a huge, huge help for like I don't know, for trying to find these these employees deserve raise customers always real, definitely. All right, can I give you my name? My name's my name's My first name is Phil son of a. Last name is engineer silence. All right, thank you so much. You have a YouTube, man. Third call is that Greg. I'm a part of your district and I was just calling to encourage you to vote on the Great American Outdoors Act with no changes or um clauses in there, just as the bill states. So thank you very much and appreciate it. And then there was an ending American Probably all right, everybody, well done, Greg. I was going to give you the NEMO tent, but I felt like I want to I'm gonna reverse and give you the first like kid, and I want you I want Greg, I want you to call Nate after shifting in the pants. I want you to just call Nate and he'll help you with your kid. Okay, So that was well done, man, Yeah, I um well done. I'd say that was that. That was a there's some prank calls I think that are just just mean, unnecessary cruel. I thought that was that was reasonable. Reason on the dude from Hoyt is my favorite. I'll put that in the queue. Yes, sure, And then you feel bad because I when I used to work at Yeah yeah, So the customer service people just want to give him a hug when you see him, like, I can never do it. She could. I can't do it. I could never do it. There's no way, no I we at one time when I was a kid, I prank called a Walmart with some friends and I said I was allergic to follic acid and I needed a breakfast cereal that did not contain follic acid. And we had this woman on the line for over an hour. Well, she looked at the ingredients of every cereal. It turns out they all have falic acid. This poor woman, probably making minimum wage at a Walmart. I feel so bad about she probably went home she was like, Oh what a day, honey. He's like, what happened? Some douche bag? All that maybe go over folic acid for an hour. We've all we've all had things. We also like the the reaction to Janice, right right, all right? If he didn't already figure this out, all right? Well, thanks to Nate from first light and to Mike and Greg and the last but not leasing. Now, this last one is uplifting. It that's not really funny at all, um, but it's uplifting. And so the final entry it's another video. It's a long video, so I'm not gonna be able to play the whole thing for you, but I did ask the guys from Get Connected Outdoors to send me a clip that I could play that they felt it was the best part of their video. Essentially, it's a four minute video of all types of people from all shapes and sizes, and they're all out there saying like I am recreated, like playing golf and swimming and ship like, oh look here I am on the place. It's really good. Trust me. That's I probably didn't do it. Sorry, guys, I didn't do it. If you're like us and you grew up playing on local playgrounds, If you enjoyed the great outdoors through active these such as hiking, fishing, canoeing, or hunting, or your home, your children for grandchildren will be able to enjoy any of these things, then the Great American Outdoors Act is one that you should polly support birds in the background. Will you be contributing to the betterment of society for generations to come. You will also be saying yes to the betterment of the lands, waters, and animals. We don't care for simling. Thank you and remember to get connected outdoors. Boom wow who that's like an ad I would see on YouTube. Unbelievable, filled in and clap at all. That was great man. Um, let's see I there's there's another clip because it keeps it goes for a while. What else we got here? Great American Outdoors Act is made up of very important parts the Land and Water Conservation Fund, your marks million dollars per year for things such as creating access to our public lands and waters, for fiding protection for our drinking water supplies, providing ball fields and playgrounds for our local cities and parks across the country, and many more conservation efforts. The other park addressed divert maintenance projects and federal lands across the country. The projects that will be included are things such as fixing roads in our various national parks and work on natural population restoration projects for various fishing game animals, the removal of graffitia trash throughout hundreds of properties, and much more and these projects will be overseen by the National Park Service. The forests they got logoishing is great du europe land management of Indian education and will be funded for five somebody right until we got billion dollars to the National Park Service and the public land Legacy restorations. Dude is awesome food man, chee fucking tattoos. Yeah, feeling good about the well researched. If you watch the news, you might think that videos like this aren't even possible, that people couldn't even be inspired to make such a piece of work. But here they are because of the Great American Indoors Act, because of you feel because of HC. And so thank you everybody. Thank you to the guys that get connected outdoors Um, Alex and Zach I believe right yep, Zack and Alex for for doing that. You should probably go find them on YouTube and while share the length of that video so you can watch the whole thing. It is really cool for them to not only I wonder if they had licensed that music, but get all the people in their lives together to celebrate the Great American Outdoors Act. So you guys are gonna I'll try to make sure we get you a couple of of Nemo tents because there's two of you that made the video. Um, we'll do what we can for that. Either way, you're a winner and winning is all that matters here at play. The jingle is there? No, no, we don't have a jingle fan, Okay, there's no jingles, um, So make sure you make a phone call, make sure you read an email, make sure you post on social media, and make sure you're talking about the great American doors, that great American doors. Act Boy, Phil, this is gonna be an edit for you. He just used to leave all the mistakes I've made in. That's fine, though, I'm gonna ask for a raise. This has been drinking too much. It was accidental. I didn't I was working hard for my family. Okay, Um, But without further ado, we got a long one today, so we'll get to the interview ports in the show. I will just say this, this is one of my favorite conversations I've had in a while, and there's a lot of reasons for that. Now, Phil, you haven't have you listened to it yet? Now yet you're you will right after this. It is on the docket for the day all right, you're gonna love it. We I doctor. I met Dr Dan Staylor actually conveniently at the b h A ND Virtual Rendevoo. Met is a is a term. That's how that's how we meet in this year. Loosely. Um so, but he's a predator biologists out there in the Yellowstone National Park, and I would just say this we've had We've talked a lot about Yellowstone. We talked a lot about in the conversation with Dan, like what it is, what it means to people. Is it flawed in its presentation of wild places or is it an ambassador of wild places to people that can't go there or don't go there, don't live in proximity. Regardless of that, every time I go to Yellowston National Park, it shows off in some way. It shows how why it's a special place. It shows why people need to visit there and see it before they die. So, um that maybe a little bit to present. We're all gonna die, but before you do, you should go to the Yellston National Park. We went just for a like a half a day early in the morning, got up, drove to meet Dan. We're gonna go use some GPS data point clusters. To go see possible kill site from a mountain lion named M to two zero that they've been tracking since May. So this is a mountain lion by the bye, that's that's had seventeen kills in the sense may since I was like May five seventeen, it's killed seventeen animals. UM, mostly elk calves or neonates as they call them. But the neo ate just means under a month old. And so it was cool to go and do that. But along the way we saw coyote making a scrape, We saw a bunch of antelope going to water across this this beautiful vista we had. UM, we then did find the kill site. We then found a police piece of black obsidian napped arrowhead that you would never find anywhere else. I've never found anywhere else right where we sat to the podcast, and UM, a bunch of elk came through during it. You hear the interruption now we had So it's just we were there for half a morning. UM found some elk sheds on the way out, things like that. So Yellowstone is always showing off. But this, this conversation is important for a lot of reasons. It's important because we did a little in the field work, we learned how important the work of guys like Dr Dan are. And then we talked about predators, why they should be in the landscape, what they mean to us, what we learned about them, what we have yet to learn about them, and why they kind of start and end the conversation in our culture about managing wildlife through hunting. Why we should why we shouldn't. Nobody's arguing that we should kill deer or not kill deer. In most places, there's a few, but the argument whether we should hunt and kill grizzly bears, hunt and killed wolves um rages on. And so we we addressed a lot of those topics you will enjoy. I'm gonna take you out to the field to the middle of nowhere in Yellis from National Park, where Dan and I are trying to find a cougar kill. Enjoy. So Dan, we're overlooking gardener, right, gardener, gardener Montin I always wonder if I'm in Wyoming. We are right now actually at the parallel straight down to our right, so we're hard to say if we're in Montano Wamy right now we're right on the um. Quickly describes just like what we're looking at here. So we're looking at what we do is the gardener basin, uh, the northern range of of yellow Stone, and UH it is one of the premier wintering areas for UH, A large a lot of yellow Stones, ungulates, um, elk, you know, the hoofed animals, the yelk, the prong horn, big corn sheet, mule deer, some white tailed deer, bison, of course. UH. And you're looking at it right here. We're in the heart and soul of it. And UH it's incredibly important part of this system. UH sustains a lot of the migratory herds that use this area and depend upon it on winter because of its lower elevation, less snowpack forage availability. UM. Of course we're here in July, so we're looking at summer range starting to dry out. We've had some wet you know, pretty wet spring, but in early summer, but starting to get round as it does. You got this little band of prong horn here and this is you know where you see a lot of the prong horn summering. In the wintertime, they'll also settle into these lowlands right here in front of us. But UM, Yellowstone River of course, cuts out of the park right there. Um, and that's the court of that migratory funnel for a lot of those uh ulis, particularly the elk herd, the Northern elk herd kind of one of the most uh controversial, culturally significant elk herds in the region. Really always has been. It's always been a big source of debate. We'll talk about that later, but um, but yeah, it's quite a quite an area, is you know. I always think of this area sort of our you know, our American serengetti. I live just across the way there. You can kind of see my house on the other side of the valley above the town of Gardener there and uh, you know, it's not uncommon to look down and see you know, everything bison, pronghorn, big horn, sheet deer, alcohol within your uh have you shed packs of wolves? Use these uh cougars. It's all cougar country. Do you ever feel like you're in a time machine? Absolutely? I mean childhood dream living in a place like this where you could go back in time and see what the landscape looked across our great country. Um, we've got a vignette of it right here. Yeah, this river just kind of connects everything and brings everything together to stand here and no, we're headed to a possible kill site for a mountain lion and see a fawn antelope and a couple of a couple of doughs. By the looks of it. Um, this is you know, you never know what you're gonna see in Yellowstone and you've kind of got back door pass. I imagine, absolutely feel very lucky to live here. Let's go see what we can find. We've got a coyote about what seventy yards He didn't even seem like he cares much about us. What's he doing? It looks like a younger coy out, maybe a yearling or something. He's a could be in this area because there's a carcass here. We're not. We've got sixty yards from that cluster of that cougars kill site, and so he might be um lingering around. It could be just a good spot for him. But I just some do a little scrape scent mark there not that far away, so he probably sees us, and maybe he's just curious. Of course, these guys in the park are and getting bullets lobbed at him. Some a little bit more curious, a little more curious. It's like he's got a little bit of a scrappy tail. There's summer coat and he goes trotting off. It looks like a young one. I mean, I know that there's an adversary relationship between wolves and yeah, yeah, you know, if there's a Mountain lion kill site today, they will they will kill coyotes and they'll eat them. Unlike wolves, wolves just kill him to kind of get him out of the picture. Cougars will actually feed on him and it's typically is around to kill site. They're not actively hunting them, but they're opportunistic. Of course, you can hear ground squirrels right now around us, so he's probably hunting ground squirrels. Yeah, he does. It's so interesting to be in a place like this and to see a coyer that normally, if he was living on a ranch down in the valley, he gone gone, be gone, or he'd be gone. It is yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah site. That is so what we're doing here, Ben is we've got um oh maybe ten or so GPS points that were logged by the caller that this male lion wears his numbers M two twenty we callered him this winner. Um. We actually called him out by Tower Falls. So it's a good twenty some one miles UM to the south of us here, and that was probably the core of his winter range. He was about I think we aged him about three and a half four years of age. It was about a hundred and forty pounds UM. And you know that's a younger Tom here. He's stuck around this summer. So we've seen too in our population have right now, UM, a bunch of younger males coming into this area. We did catch just the other day over on that cliff band and back of us a big old, gnarly scarred up um mature tom one of our remote cameras. So he's probably the king around here. But these younger males are coming in and sorting out where they might slip in and establish a territory. And this male cougar we've been following the last sixties some odd days for predation work. UM, he's ranged everywhere from here uh out about fifteen twenty miles that way down into the Yellowstone River quarter in the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone which is up and over that ridge right behind us. UM and he's just been looping around here for summer, making his kills, making his living and established maybe his territory. UM. And this is the last cluster of our predation sequence. So uh. Ultimately the objective of this work has been to understand cougar food habits and predation patterns and kill rate. You know, how often are they killing? What are they feeding on? Uh? And that feeds into our long term monitoring. That then we can more accurately understand what role do cougars play here and Yellowstone? Well, I mean too, you know how many cluster sites like this will you visit on a single line in that time? Yeah? And over that sixty days? This is a guess without looking at the numbers, I think a couple hundred clusters. We've searched some clusters, you know. We run the data that was Basically the way these GPS callers work is they a UM last about two years based on how we have a program that's dictated by the battery life of the caller. It is getting a fix every hour UM, around the clock UM, and it uploads the data via a satellite that we can access on the computer so we can check in. It's not real time but it's usually lags by twelve to twenty four hours. What we do is we wait for a better week's worth of data to to accumulate, then we run it through a uh what we call a cluster model that basically identifies any cluster where you have two points GPS points within two of one another and within six days. So what's beautiful about this technology to study predation cougars is when a cougar makes a kill, you know that you tend to cash it, and if they're not displaced by a bear pack of wolves, they will tend to stay on it for several days until it's used up. Of course, that depends on the size. If it's a small newborn fawn, they might only be there for half a day before it's gone. If it's a you know, an adult cow walk, they might be there for four or five days. And but cougar clusters are usually really or kills are easily to identify with cougars because once they make a cluster, they're really kind of hone in on it once in a while, and particularly with males, they tend to be a little bit more exploratory and travel during kill events where they'll make a kill. For example, this male killed a couple of weeks ago an adult cowalk down below us here um, and he would go all the way during the day, travel all the way up oh a mile and a half that way to bed up in the cliffs. I mean just And for cougar they're they're all about concealing and being secretive, and that's a big part of their success, particularly the lansk like a landscape like Yellowstone where you get grizzly bears, black bears and wolves that are always trying to find food and they're easily easily can displace sugars, and so he is, you know, his mo has to get somewhere safe and secure, out of sight. Um. And males tend to do that. Sometimes males will also feed for a day and then do a big travel for a day and then come back to a kill site. Females that make kills, female cuers tend to stick right there. Um. They also can get displaced of course too, and they have the whole risk if they've got kittens where there's a risk of mortality. There if a pack of wolves or another cougar even or a black bear grizzly beer comes in but um. But yeah, so a couple hundred clusters over the last sixty days. Uh. You know, I don't know how many kills. Again, I'd have to look and see how many of that is. But this male has been killing primarily elk um. Of course, this study was set up designed during the peak having period June first and Yale soon. It is thought to be sort of our our major you know, pulse of of elk calves average um caving date. Some are born late May, some are you know, born last couple of weeks even um, but usually around June one, and so we kind of set this up to understand what, you know, how many elk halves are getting. Um. So his diet has been I would say, primarily elk calves. But he's killed a couple of spike bowls yearlings, um bull elk. He uh killed the mule deer phone on last week, newborn muleer fawn. Um. You know, cougar diets pretty pretty buried. He really kind of depends what's available to them. But this time of the year, young of the year, Uh, fawns and calves are they're just easy, they're safer pray package for them to take down and handle and um and uh so yeah, that's kind of what we tend to find. It's not a bad place for cougar to live, No, not at all. It's gorgeous right here, and they have access to good hunting grounds but also you know, good escape train very much part of it. So we're so you think that it's possible from here, and we're in this patch of juniper and this looks like probably a bedside up in here, and what we'll do and usually we can find hair where they bed. Um, there's enough points here and I don't just look at the map because they're kind of scattered. You get a little bit of error from the GPS caller, but it looks like bulk of points are just through here. But well, I think that's a batch light there. We'll come sack that out. Oh yeah, so here we have elk calf. Yeah, um, imagine that newborn. You know, that's just what you would predict here. And this is pretty classic. I mean, there's not much left right, You've got what we're looking at here is the lower mandible. And of course you can easily identify it's a calf because you don't have the teeth eruption. Um. Of course it's small too. It's only about four and a half inches long from the tip down through the mandible. And you can see where they they don't um, you know, they won't crunch up the teeth. That's just an indigestible, hard to chew and crunch up. Um. But and then we see the skull cap here, So that crunched right into the skull cap. Of course, the brain would be a you know, nutrient rich source of food for any meat eater. Um. And so they were quick to that. Coot lion was quick to feed on that. And then we've got a front leg, the hoof the lower leg. But you can see, um, you know, they've crunched through it, you know, cougar's jaw. I mean, they have a really powerful bite force. Uh. They have a short rostrum, a short jaw, big powerful muscles, master muscles that wrap around the outside of their fet heads and attached to the top of their skull and their teeth of course, their carnassial teeth, their mowlers, premolars, top and bottom make that really powerful bite force. So they're pretty big bone crunchers and eaters, and they do get a lot of nutrients from that, both from the bone itself and from the marrow inside um. And this is pretty classic. You mean, you know, a cougar that kills an elk calf will leave typically about this behind, which is just a bunch of bone shards, the teeth, top of the skull, lower leg, everything. And what we'll do here is we'll look around and see if we see uh bear scot. My guess is, you know, with a smaller prey package like this, you know this is an elk calf, probably born in the first couple of weeks of June, early June, and this was kill was made on June July six, so maybe it was about a month old. It was probably you know, bet it could have been at that stage where it was hiding and mom was off grazing and coming back to nurse. Or it could have just been taken down right here with this lion watching as a group of cows, maybe filtered through in the evening or at night feeding through here. I'll look at the data. I think this cluster started in the middle of the night, which is more typical when cougars are out in the landscape hunting. They're active at night. Hunting. So you imagine that the calving grounds are here. It's like maybe this elk was born in this little in this general area. Yeah, I mean a month old. It could have been born, you know, within a mile here, I would say, in this at this area. But um you know, at that first month of life, they're pretty. They're pretty saying pretty close to where they were born and less mom wants to get up and move to summer range with it. Um Uh. This gardener based scenarios important cabin grounds for cow for sure. But what we'll do here is take a look and see if we see and he saw. What I always try to do is we try to determine was this cougar displaced by a larger carnivore and that would either be a black bear, grizzly or Brett pack of wolves. Based on how long he was here and the size of this, I would say he probably got most of this. You'll get ravens and magpies, eagles sometimes that come in. But you know the specialty of cougars, of of what they're known for is cashing and concealing their prey. And that's a real uh, it's an adaptation to really protect the food harder and food resources. You can see here on the edge of this thick patch of conifer. My guess is usually see a pile of grass where it was buried, and right here behind us um in this shaded area. Probably it was doubt it was back a year, I would guess maybe fed in right here. Plenty of shape of concealment bone shards in here, so this is probably where he dragged it to feed on, and you can see where it perfectly concealed. You know, ravens and magpies will have a hard time finding this um. A little bit of tufts of hair there. This is the end of the scapula he chewed up um. So he would pull that calf back in here cash, Yeah, he might bury it. You know what we find with with calves is they it's a small enough a newborn calf is small enough that they might not necessarily cash it. They'll just start feeding on it. Certainly with anything larger than an elk calf, they almost automatically begin cashing even before they feed, at least dragging to cover. So that's what that's what he did here. I don't see any scott you know, this area could have a blackber add there. I'm guessing he got most of the bottle mass on this calf, which would be I don't know, a newborn elk calf is gonna, you know, be twenty some us meat. Um, so a good meal, good meal. We how long would that satiate him for? Was he going to go, like you said, go off a couple of miles just typically we fine? And this is again long term. I'm kind of giving you averages here, but just give you an idea an adult male cougar. Of course, with cougar life history, they don't play any role in feeding young. They're off on their own and they only associate with females to breed females or the caretaker. They're the hard working single mom. The males breed the female usually in late and Yellowstone in late winter, although female cougars could get bred any time of the year. They they cycle extracycle once every twenty eight days or so. Um. But we can see a birthing pulse in May, June and July in a place like Yellowstone because that's when a lot of foods out for moms. But a male like this typically will make a kill on average every seven to ten days. Of course, at all is dictated by the size of the prey package, as small el cap will sustain him for less time than a large animal. Um. I forget exactly when his last kill was. Oh I do remembers yesterday we searched it. It It was about four miles that way. It was a sealing bull elk and there's a lot of black bear scout around it. And he was only at that site for about fifteen hours. So my guess is what happened is he killed that was kicked off by a bear, came down here, made this kill a little more time here. So you're like c S. I most very much, very much. I mean it's really the fun to come to these sites, look for the clues, look for the evidence, try to piece the story together. Of course, we have the old school field biology. I mean, biologists have been doing this with carnival research for uh, you know, fifty sixty seventy years. I mean we can go back to you know, our ancestors, you know, out there using the same techniques to try to piece together where prey was or where competitors like carnivores were, So we emplay those same tactics today. But we also benefit from the technology. I mean you see me I locked in here with a GPS unit I had as GPS data loaded in here, we can come right to the site. Uh. It's a really powerful tool to get accurate data on what these animals are doing. And as you said it, to imagine it's from some people not as not as exciting as hunting, but incredibly important to our our general knowledge base on how predation happens. Right absolutely. I mean there's so uh so many opinions and thoughts about what carnivores are doing and how they hunt and how they feed and what impis they have, and we all have those opinions. Um And I think what we as scientists really cherish is having you know, data right to to really critically evaluate it and truly understand what's going on, um you know, without without you know, cougars are a great example in Yellowstone. You know, in the last twenty five years wolves have come back, right and that was a huge, uh conservation success story. It was very controversial, it is to this day. Um and And but I think what we've really learned is having really good information about what role and animal like a wolf or cougar has helps us better understand how to either whether we want to manage them, whether we don't want to manage them, like in a place like Yellowson, where we just stepped back and let nature take its course. We don't have the luxury of having protective preserves around our country like Yellowstone. So those of us that live in this area and hunt and fish and enjoy the landscape and our public lands and and um, we have to coexist with all these animals, whether they're elk or cougars, and and you know, the more understanding we have of them, the better we are at living with them and protecting them, and um, understanding what impacts we have on them and what our activities as humans have. So it's all feeds into that, and it's really incredibly important. And you're definitely kind of at the you know, kind of the nexus of we as Americans are drawn to these charismatic predators. We can explore that all day long, but we're definitely drawn to them. Some people are drawn to them in a more sympathetic way, some people in a more logical way and more pragmatic way. Some people um based on you know, a lot of hunters as we were talking about walking up here. A lot of hunters are drawn to them from the propaganda of you know, the last century where we needed to kill them all and displace them so we could ranch and live in relative without you know, bears and cougars killing our killing our calves and killing our cows and killing our profits. So it's you kind of sit at this strange, you know, nexus of all those things happening together, and they all have influence, they do. And we you know, we have you know, our our our species. We have this rich evolutionary history with these animals, right. Um. You know, our ancestors competed with them for space, for food, they killed us, We killed them. That still happens today. Uh. And you know they would kind of represent this sort of stubborn, nagging conflict uh. And they can be very difficult to live with. Um, there's no doubt about it. UM. And And if we look at the history of carnivores and how we've interacted with them and treated them, and you know, modern history the last couple hundred years, it really has been shifted from one of complete persecution, uh, just viewing them as not being uh just a born in our side they shouldn't be here. Let's get rid of them. The place will be better. Um, we'll have more of this, well more of that, and uh we spent um a large part of early human history and on these landscapes and the great yelostone getting rid of them. You know, you look at Teddy roosevelt journeys here to Yelloston only eighteen hundreds, eighteen nineties. He came here and there's this great uh story that he writes about and it's in the park archives of him here wanting to come in hunt a cougar. It was a very big, poor part of the course he was, you know, as many people know his rich history as a hunter and as a conservationist, and um, it was really interesting see Teddy Roosevelt shift about predators and carnivores from his experiences here in Yellowstone National Park and when he came here to this area on the eighteen nineties, I think was one of his first visits in this area. Um, he wanted to hunt sugar, He wanted to hunt elk um. You know when he wrote about this landscape, he wrote about Yellowstone being this kind of last reserve for the elk Right, he didn't talk about how predators had eradicated the elk. He talked about how market hunting and he was very accurate in his perception of understanding, you know, we almost lost, you know, an elk on this landscape because of market hunting in this region. Yelsen really kind of epitomizes that. And you look at Teddy Roosevelt's early observations of carnivores here, and he particularly was interested in the cougar um and he had a shift and he came back and wanting to hunt of cougar. There was a lot of worry about public perception what that would look like of killing something in the park, and there's a lot of politics involved with going back and forth and um. In the end, you know, he was finally at a point where he advocated like, look, maybe we should not be hunting cougars and yellowstone. And what he saw was an elk heerd that started to increase in abundance. He saw some severe winners and winter starvation. Of course, he had experienced with cattle starvation on his ranch um out in the west and where he saw the devastating effects of winter and um and he was seeing an elk hered here with an abundant elk hered and elk just dying and suffering. And then he also was like, you know, maybe maybe predators player role here. Uh, And that was very wise. It wasn't a popular opinion at the time. UM. And you know, he and George berg Grennell really you know, started the stage of understanding how you can have landscapes with predators. Now, don't get me wrong, he's still haunting predators, um, but he was early, uh in his time to recognize that these landscapes um that have predators, you know, might benefit by that. Well. And this is where there's so many you know, fissures and these lines of thinking that take you places. But one of the things I think of that I've heard I said a lot is the term ecosystem services, Like what what are these what role are these play? And that gets into I'd love to talk a little bit about like trophic cascade and some of these ideas where each one of these animals plays some role here removal of that role you know nature boards of vacuum, right, So removing all the predators does create you know, a different ecological environment, because that's an it's an interesting thing. But you know, moreover what is it like to be an elk without a wolf? What is it like to be a wolf without an elk? Um? And so these animals kind of are made to be what they've always been by the presence of that other species exactly. You know what so many of the traits that we as hunters admire, and these animals that um you know, many people are just so passionate about having experience without the landscape and have been shaped through predation. You know, predation is one of the most powerful ecological forces that has shaped life on earth for million severes, shaped us. And uh. You know what we know about an animal like a wolf, for a cougar and having predator populations interacting with prey is that you know, they largely um uh depend on vulnerable prey, you know, the young, the old, the sick of the week. That has time and time again, every predator study has continued to demonstrate that they can't kill anything they want. And I'd like to talk about that later, sort of the limits of predatory ability of these carnivores, because I think that's very misunderstood. Um concept of how these animals hunt and what it takes to feed themselves. But you know, through predation, Um, you get a lower prey abundance, you get a culling uh you uh, you have uh in the end, tend to have an ungulate herd, a prey population her that is healthier. But whatever metric you look at, whether it be productivity, recruitment, reproductive success, body condition. There of course many other factors that shape that weather bottom up processes like forage quality. I mean, car predation is only one part of that story, of course, but it's a it's a vitally important part of it. And in terms of how food webs operate, you know, nutrient cycling, you know, through that top down pressure of predation. Do you have nutrients going through this whole system? If we look here at this site in front of us, you've got this elk half remains, there's not much left, but you're gonna get nutrients leaching from whatever is left there down into the soils. That's gonna be important for these group of plants here in this area, for you know, hundreds of species of invertebrate that come into the site and depend upon that beatles flies, um, you know, it's just all part of that nutrient cycling from top down to bottom up right now, the mosquitoes are depending on me. I got the right blood type at seas for for that. But yeah, I mean it's such an interesting what drives me too. When I was telling you coming up here, I'm like, if my wife would let me and I never get independently wealthy, I'm gonna. I'm gonna become a wildlife biologist because of what you said. There's so many elements to your job. C. S. I. Yellowstone, but also just understanding all of the very nuanced ways that these things interact, you know, which I think for somebody that listens to this show or has heard us talk about paleo anthropology and zoology and all these other things that are tangential to hunting or parallel to the activity, you start to just get immersed in this world that is endless and ever changing, and it's just like it's cause and effect and it's complex. And I think that in itself is part of the challenge of um. When we talk about predators and their impacts on prey, there's no one simple answer to it. You know, what's happening here in Yellowstone is not necessarily what's happening, you know in the bitter route of Montana. What's happening here under our management, the Park Services Management gold Mission, which is stepping back natural regulation. We don't manage carnivore numbers. We don't manage elk numbers now, of course, you know human you know, we think of Yellowstone is sort of this pristine baseline wild place and it very much is relative to what is around us. Right, but there's still human impacts here, right, I mean, I mean we've got right now in the park, you know, probably thirty thousand people driving around right now. We'll have you know, several million visitors to the system this year. We've got development, We've got uh, landscape changes, we've got climate change. There's so many things operating together, and it's very difficult to give a SoundBite, bulleted you know, bullet point, you know, simple answer to you know, hey, what impact do wolves have on elk um or cougars have on elk or uh? You know what's driving elk population dynamics? Place like Yellowstone where we have one of our most abundant and diverse carnivore assemblages, we have one of our most robust, intact large mammal terrestrial systems with bison and prong horn and big horn, sheep and mule deer and moose and elk, all interacting on these landscapes. UM. Truly lucky to have this landscape, but it is complex, uh, And our job as biologists of scientists is to try to tease out what how things are working here, what is shaping the structure and function of Yellowstone? Um. And it provides a great baseline to then look at places outside of a protector preserve like Yellowstone, whether it's the Greater Yellows, Greater Yellosoone ecosystem, whether it's the rock other parts of the Rocky Mountain West. I mean, you name it. I mean it provides an incredibly valuable reference point to compare it with other places. I like that you say that too, because when I first started coming here, I was a little depressed by the lines of traffic and the people jumping out in their flip flops and their board shorts, sick pictures of Buffalo and I my I had this conversation with my wife, and I think she felt it was a little reductive, like this is beautiful, why are you here to kind of like stomp on this thing? And then it was explained to me, I can't remember who explained it, that the park is kind of like an ambassador to wild places. It's not completely wild, but allows people to kind of see and appreciate these wild animals in these places in a way that you might if you were, you know, kind of going to amusement park. Um or is it right? So that's it's important for somebody like me. I'm sure you you hate to see those types of interactions, but you do understand that even in your work, it's like, like you said, a reference point for you know, the Galton National Forest and other places that we need to understand. We've lost so much of our natural landscapes, of wild nature across um so many parts of our world right and and thank goodness for for the strong conservation efforts of the last hundred years. I mean, look at what's happening right now and with a great American Conservation Outdoors Act. And we are you know, as a country, we value, we place a high value on nature and wild ecosystems. And you might have a family from an urban area that has no uh really doesn't have a clear concept what that means or how much that was part of their heritage necessarily, but they can come to Yellowstone and and for a day or two they get a glimpse of what, you know, what what nature is like and what it's been like in so many places. And it's different from the nature in their backyards. It's different from the nature in their community parks. Those are all incredibly important things that we tap into for our spirit and our soul. But you know, Yellowstone is this vignette of what much in North America look like for thousands and thousands of years, and it's truly special in that regard. People can understand why they're drawn to the wild places and understand how exciting is to see something like a buffalo walking across you know, a meadow and Yellowstone with a you know, with a paint pot, you know, bubbling behind it or whatever they can see like, I'm drawn to that. I value that. Maybe I don't know why because I don't see it every day, Maybe don't have this intricate understanding of this value system, But man, I feel something and it's real, it's raw, it's not fake, it's not phony. There's so much fake and funny in our world today, and and to come to a place I mean, look at us for sitting here looking at a hoof and a lower leg of an elk calf at a hundred and fifty pound cougar fed on last week, and it doesn't get any more you know, wild and real than that. Well, even walking up here, you're like, thank you. Yeah, Yellowstone never seems to disappoint in terms of wildlife. You walk up here, there's analo pronghorn, analope kind of grazing, and then we see a juvenile coyo kind of prancing along doing his thing. And we come up here, and who knows what else you'll run into. We run past an elk shed down there. So yeah, you could walk around in other pieces of public ground in this country and not have those experiences in a full day. And so it's it's Yellowstone. I've never been, and somewhere in Yellowstone where it didn't kind of show off its value exactly, like hey, look look all this stuff, look at what we what we are. And then you know, certainly we can talk more about kind of the very human struggle to understand what we are impact to all these wild places, to all these animals. And now we have recently, you know, the the judges, the judge's decision to take the Yellowstone the Yellowstone grizzly bear population and put them back on the endangered species list, and a similar debate around wolves in Colorado? Should we introduce wolves to Colorado? So you know all this stuff, and it's you know when I I would say this, and I think maybe you feel it too. As a hunter, there's kind of like the baseline opinion. There's like the standard hunter opinion, no wolves, the standard hunter opinion, let's hunt grizzly bears. Yeah. I understand those opinions. I agree with them in a lot of ways, but I'm also driven to like, what, don't I know? What am I not being at here? What about these predators? Am I missing? Um? And so hopefully we can talk about that more too. For sure, Well let's let's do some more investigating, then we'll go take a seat and talk more. All right, Dan, We're we're up here now, sitting overlooking what you called the Serengetti, which I like the description, and funny enough, we you'll hear some wind there as you're listening. We're sitting on a little a little shelf on a ridge, um overlooking the Yellowstone river that runs down into gardener and um, it's interesting. We just found just walked up here, sat down for a nice place to to do this, and here's a is a piece like a napped partial uh arrowhead that's black of sitting like the most beautiful black up city and I've ever seen. It's gorgeous. Some ancient human hunter we just got done searching a cluster of a cougar and found where he prayed on an elk calf. And here we are looking at some ancient Yellowstone human hunter. Yeah, the tools of his trade. Yeah, there's a little kind of a bench in front of us that, you know, a little it looks almost like a little bowl, and that's turning into a meadow. And you can imagine that ancient hunter's family might have been down there cooking up some ancient food while he was out trying to find more. It's really neat about Yellowstone Oubsidian is you know, there's there's various sources throughout the park. One of the most prominent is Obsidian Cliff as you head south towards Norris Junction, and um, you know they've traced you can you know there's a unique chemical signature to obsidian from that region and and you can use it to trace subsidian throughout and uh, this was incredibly important source material for weapons, um for many tribes, and it was traded. And you know, Yellowstone a cidy and from a city and cliff has been found all the way out into the Great Plains, so many places and in the epicenter of that. As I was just saying down there at the at the kill site, you know, Yellowstone never seems never seems to disappoint, you know, with its with his ability to kind of provide these little moments for you, you know, whether it's whether you're a tourist or like yourself, you spend all this time doing this, you know, I would like it. Right now, I could see a bunch of antelope kind of gather around a little watering hole there. It's like a nice place of a hunter wanted to, uh kind of either an ancient or modern hunt. You wanted to. I wanted to take a look at an antelope. That'd be a place to get be. But we already kind of you know, as we were down there looking around, we talked a lot about kind of learning about these animals. And as much as we as I like to highlight some of the more societal and cultural and even in the wildlife management UM. Since some of the debates some of the issues around these animals. What I think what really we can do it moreover is learn a little bit about them, um, what they do, why they do it, what you've learned about not only their predation habits, but their personalities and what they mean to these ecosystems. And then what that can tell us as we go out into the world and have these debates talk about these very important issues trying to figure out where these animals belong um and what we should do to help manage Yeah, I mean, you know, carnivores really do, as we were mentioning, really represent this, uh, very misunderstood group of animals, in large part because of that long history we have with them as a competitor um. There's an element of fear when you don't know about something, and you know, much of that fear is rooted in our ancient psyche because of really having to compete and live with these animals and co exists with them. And in the modern day, I mean, let's carry it over, uh, And there's a great deal of misunderstanding about them. Everyone's got opinions about wolves, right, we all do. UM. And when you have an animal that can be difficult to live with, letther it be a grizzly wolf, of cougar, any of these large carnivores UM. You know, those opinions, UH can really cloud how we can co exist with them and whether that means you know, at what level, uh can a population be hunted, what levels should a population be protected? Just the truth about what role they play? UM. And you know, you can look at both extreme sides of of opinions about these animals. You know, the prominent wolf biologists um L David Meach wrote an article number years ago about wolves neither being saints nor centers UH and really tried to, you know, demonstrate to a wider audience this idea that we place a lot of value judgment on these animals. And you know, we always those of us that were closely with these animals. You know, we always talk about the fact that there very few people start conversations about wolves about what they they can't do. It's always like what they can do, Like, look how great they are for these eCos systems, Look how bad they are for these ecosystems. Um. That's why I love that that piece of it because as we were walking up here a game, we're talking about what I want to try to get away from and and shirk is this idea that I have to come to these these very important issues, especially you know what we do with wolves and bears, grizzly bears especially, come to these very important issues with an idea that I'm defending or an idea that I'm trying to um, you know, favor agreement with. And and that's what you know, we we try to shirk and go away from. And I think that you're understanding what these animals do here in Yellowstone is a foundational element to approaching these issues with what do we know about these animals? What do we know about what they can't do, what they can do right? And then and then move forward with trying to make an educated decision, which as is, in a complex environment, and there maybe isn't one right answer, um, because as you well know, left biology and wild life manager is always shifting and changing. So then maybe we could just take a quick look at the history of carnivores shore to set the stage, and then we can let you know and you tell me if if that works for you, But you know it provides a good based on understanding. You know, how we got, you know, a couple of thousand years ago of having a system with all his pieces together to a system that was um largely degraded through the removal of carnivores, a heavy management of elk and other species too. Now in two thousand and twenty, we're looking at a yellow Stone that is operating largely unfettered by heavy management and human human impacts. Let's let's maybe start with where we are, just very briefly, where we are today because we'll run back up here. But where we are today and your estimation, let's say outside of Yellowstone, you know, predators and their native habitats and and where you know, how would you paint that picture for everyone? Because again we're kind of at the seat of it all here. But how do you think about it as a biologist, you know, as a biologist, if you look and you just look at North America or the United States, Um, you know, let's let's choose the little Lower forty A Okay, you know, we're looking at a landscape that used to be rich in large carnivores from the west coast of the East Coast to the border with Canada down into Mexico. And that was a landscape defined by wolves, by cougars, by jaguars in the south, by grizzly bears, black bears, um. And then of course those you know, middle sized carnivores, coyotes and um. And then they were everywhere. I mean, if you just look at the cougar, it is the most widely historically, the most widely distributed large carnivore in the western hemisphere, all the way up into the Yukon down to the tip of South America. The gray wolf in North America were the most widely distributed large carnivores um. And today we see just we'll just choose one of those. We see the cougar largely restricted to the western side of the United States. We have healthy, robust populations and many of our western states, UM, they're not you know, they're they're at threatened areas for sure, UM, very healthy. In other parts. The gray wolf largely restricted to the Rocky Mountain West. We have the small pocket of wolves down in the American Southwest, and the Mexican wolf subspecies and we have wolves, of course, the great late steaks um um, but very much restricted from their former range. Grizzly bears incredibly restricted, right, you know, we're looking at bears and and really small population areas the Greater Yellowstone, on the Glacier Area National Park Area and in northwest Montana. So you know, we see carnivores today, uh, in a very small proportion of the historic representation on these landscapes. UM. In a place like Yellowstone, of course, that was a we you know, we can celebrate, uh that we now have restored carnivores back to this landscape really and only the last thirty years. Of course the historic wolf re introduction ninety six cougar is an actually recolonized on their own in the eighties. Grizzly bears benefiting from the Endangered Species Act, recovering in very much a large part of the Greater Yellowstone and doing very well now. Um. And we can really tout our hard conservation efforts as a society to getting where we are today. Um. Yellowstone is as rich in its carnivores simblage as it has been in the last hundred and fifty years. UM. And and so that's where we are are today. Um, but in many places where they used to be, they are to cross the country and of course you can't have carnivores in many parts of the country anymore. Um. Um biologically you know that the ecology of the landscape just isn't there for them. But also more importantly socially, um. You know, we talked about carnivores being this sort of stubborn, nagging, conflict challenge to coexist with and live with, and and we've learned a lot on how to do so. Um. But for those reasons, um, you know, they have trouble being in a lot of places where they used to be and it never will be again and so um. But that's where we are today. Uh. And I think, how do you see, you know, we're here looking at a mountain killsite. I could probably I spend enough time by the Hollywood sign, I would probably check out a similar animal. And and I think that just denotes something to think about as we go through this conversation. You know, on both sides of that fence, you have, you know, an environmentalist a protectionist view that says, let's you know, we're not gonna hunt these animals yet. You know, the hunter would say, well, we have to manage this population in these urban areas. You're probably gonna have to kill these animals anyway. UM, why not allow hunters to take part in that? And I think that's one that you know, we talked about all the time. You know, how they're they're building wildlife underpasses and overpasses and many highways in California, and so there's you know that that dynamic is an important thing to think of. I think it is. I think where what we've learned a great deal about is actually just how well we can coexist with large carnivores UH, given certain um um baseline needs for both human and the carnivorre You. Carnivores need uh food obviously, they need space to live in, and most importantly, they need to live in the landscape where there is not human persecution for them to be successful. UM. Humans need uh safety and security UM, because you know, carnivores can be a risk. You know, any wildlife can be a risk of person. Um. There are lots of risk in our lives every day that we face UM. And and so if you kind of take those things into consideration on both what the carnivores needs are and what the human needs are um as as sort of your framework, we still have a great capacity to coexist with them. And yes, here we are in a wild you know, national park, and we've got a cougar kill down below us. But you're right, you could be in Griffith Park outside the Hollywood sign and come across us the identical looking you know kill a deer kill in that area, but perhaps and poodle and um, you know, and what a mountain lion needs in in southern California's ability to move across the landscape without getting hit by a car, uh, to be able to not get poisoned by rodenticide UM, which is it was, which is a challenge in some of these urban areas where they interact so UM and and A in a capacity and willingness for humans to be tolerant of them. And that's a hard thing. And that's what we struggle, I think the most with is the sort of the societal acceptance of of coexisting, the willingness to UM. Case some point right here the town of gardner Um, you know, a couple of weeks are about a month ago, there was a a cougar in town, a cougar family in town Um and the state of Montana, following their management plan, did the best they could to deal with the situation. It was in someone's backyardy to kill the deer. It probably wasn't a threat to anyone. Uh, probably would have moved on eventually after made it's kill um. But you know, there was a concern by a particular landowner, and the state responded and and that cat was removed. And many people in the community struggled with that. You know, how do we can't we do bad or we're Gardener with the edge of the National Park. But others said, hey, you know, I was worried. Uh, it was in my backyard. I was in threat and um and you know that's sort of a day and a day out sort of example of what we deal with. I think it's much more accepting for people to have carnivores where we are around us, obviously, than when you're in an urban area or even a small, uh mountain town like Gardener. Would you say it's easier, it's easier for it to go that way. It seems to me it's easier because because everybody you're run into as soon as you feel unsafe, you want to you want to halt that feeling, you want to stop that threat. That's that's as natural for us, as natural as for a predator want to kill a deer in somebody's backyard. So I think that's probably the easier way out, the more human way out, which sets up it's harder to coexist. Right. People don't want to have to make those decisions. And again that decision being made, it's easy to say, I want all all mountain lions to live until there's one in your backyard much on it deer, Yeah right, And you know, and I think part of that is education. I mean, I think the more we learned about and the more we learned about, you know, what are the real risks of having this cougar in my back there? Um? And uh, you know, we don't want a wild animal like a cougar just hanging around town. And there can be you know, things like habituation that occur more commonly with things like bears or coyotes. But um, as soon as that line is crossed with habituation and food reward. Um. And that wasn't the case with this particular example I just gave. But that is a common case. Um. A black bear was just removed in Yellowstone a couple of days ago at a campsite because it came into camp and and started feeding on campers. It actually bet a woman. It was habituated, it was food habituated. She's okay, fortunately, and they park acted quickly and remove that bear. Um. And that is a bear that has gotten a food reward. And so you know, we struggle with that every day in a place like Yellowstone. Is how do we keep Yellowstone wild yet still provide that visitor enjoyment and carnival. You know, we can look at the person going up close to the bison, we can look at the person going close to the elk, people approaching bears. That just that excitement that experienced with wild nature is so for into so many people that you forget. Um. Yeah, the reasoning goes out the window. And so we struggle with that as a park. Yet you know, at it's our core, we really value having a place where people can still experience that. Well, I've said this, you're probably more you're probably more inclined to say no comment to this, but I'm I can say what I want. So I have thought about this and I thought like, well, okay, we're talking earlier about Yellowstone is like an ambassador to wild places for folks that that don't get to see this, that don't get to experience this, and kind of a more visceral level, I think maybe Yellowstone is like listen, I'll let you have that relationship with me, but I'm gonna take a few of you. A few of you're gonna get bitten, a couple of you're gonna get gored. This is the tax that you must pay for me to allow you to come here with your RVs and with your and and to act like this is just a drive by wilderness, and the wilderness is like not. But here's some reality, because that's for us to kind of treat it that way as humans, that that it that is, there is some amusement to be game, There is some like that's that again, we've discussed the value of that, given the disconnection with these landscapes, but also reality of nature every once in a while just decides to show itself, which is an interesting dynamic. And then and that you know, as as managers, uh, in Yellowstone, we struggle, Many people struggle and have through history in this park is is what is wild? What is natural? What is pristine? What is wildness? And you know, the best we can do when it comes to things like wildlife, for example, is is really you know, some people come out here and see a bison grazing near the road, or you know, I see a radio colored wolf. We get this a law and into them that's somehow less wild. Um. You know, I always battle that back by saying, you know, what's about that wolf that's wearing a collar, that bison grazing on the lawn and mammoth? I mean, what's not wild about those animals? Having to survive the four seasons of the Greater Yale Soune ecosystem. A wolf has to run up every couple of days and and grab onto an elk with its mouth and take it down, a it off a grizzly bear. At what's not wild about that? But you know, when I think at a core, when we define wildness and our animals here and yes we have human tolerance, we do have habituation in some cases. But you know, having an animal that can live out its life under the natural ecological subject to the ecological forces of nature, you know, surviving, feeding, raising young breeding um and and largely protected from human impacts. That's really what we're striving for. And and and you know, vast majority of what you see with the els one's wildlife adheres to that, um and and that's that's what we're trying to promote and protect here. And you could push back on that, but like the least wild thing about it is you. Yeah, you're the least wild thing about this wilderness. And that's something that we all just have to live with. We're never going back. We're not going to go back. Um and in order do we want to go back, UM, So we just have to live with this dichotomy and work with it as you have to every day. I'm sure UM to understand this place and people, you know, they there's a there's a thirst, there's a desire UM where whatever background you come from, whatever landscape you grew up in, urban or wild or otherwise, when you come to a place like Yellowstone, UM, there is this thirst for you know, raw wild nature and and and and you have that opportunity to experience that here. And people deal with that in different ways and um embrace it in different ways, but you know, it really is the treasure of this place is is. And you know, those of us that live are fortunate to live in these wild areas in general, in a place like Montana, we we do see that all all the time. Um. But for many this is their one shot at that maybe there once in a lifetime opportunity. And and I think that resonates with many people. And I was telling you, you know, as a as a kid from the East Coast to come out here. And I was telling you some stories when we first met down there in Mammoth. I've seen wolves, we see, we saw wolves, bear hunting this year. We heard a wolf how while I was having a trail camera a couple of weeks ago with a with a buddy of mine. We've seen wolf tracks, We've seen grizzly tracks, we've seen grizzly scat. All of these like represent this seminal experience that kind of can only happen in proximity to the rocky mountains, you know. And and that's what I think brings people like you and I you're from Connecticut original I'm sorry, um here because you know you understand, like you know the place to scene and you understand these ideas. I grew up dreaming, dreaming of being on a landscape with in place to see landscape, and yellow sounds the closest thing I've come to that. Well, and then you think of I used to I grew up watching like Lonesome Dub. If only I could ride a horse from Texas from the Del Rio all the way up to the Montana. You know, it's a bad to Paradise Valley. I phone couldn't do that, but it certainly could drive a you all, and so that's what we did. But yeah, I mean, so to back to these the animals themselves, and you know we understand. I think maybe I'll start like what you've learned about these animals and then maybe move through their roles in the ecosystem, because that's that's ultimately the connective tissue too. To the debate. Um in your job, describe like your interactions with these predators, what predators you interact with most, and kind of like go through each one and then you know, well let's talk about kind of what you've learned. So my job here in Yellowstone is uh for the Park Services. I'm a wildlife biologists and I've been here for twenty three years and throughout that whole career, I've largely been involved with the Yelsen Wolf Project UM and and as well as the Yellowstone cougars here and those are my two chief roles in addition to overseeing and help um UH manage the elk research program. And of course those three animals, wolves, cougars and elk are sort of that trifecta of predator prey dynamics here in in this ecosystem, and ultimately our goal is to understand of course wolves. I came in here year and a half after the last wolf wolves were brought that down from Canada, released from pens um And and from that moment forward, UH the Olsome Wolf Project had the vision early on project leader Doug Smith Mike Phillips. Originally Doug Smith took over UH in n UM. That vision that we've had throughout the last twenty five years is to is to understand this wonderful experiment of bringing back a carnivore after it has gone for seventy years and and understanding its biology and furthermore it's relationship with its primary prey being elk. Of course other species to our program is meant to be a broad view of wolf biology, but more importantly, community ecology, like all the pieces put together, that's really the value. That's a very important term. You know, I don't think of myself as a wolf biologist or cougar biologist, but a biologist trying to understand how uh these carnivores and their prey interact on this landscape. Um and and so you know, a big part of that work is a lot of hard data c action every year, every winter, every summer, UH studies that have been put in place from the very beginning to study uh these animals. And big part of that is understanding their population dynamics, so counting them um uh and um understanding and take a little breaks, just take a brain of conversation. We've got a couple of elk running glass of elk here. You know, I caught them earlier running down that drainage. They seem to be moving pretty good. And I don't know if they're just something pushed them out of that drainage trying to get into new area. The flies are bugging them. They're moving down here. There's a little bit of water. Yeah, that could be the area, that cool marshy area. It is cooler down there in the bottom or that hill site was for sure. But yeah, as as I was, I just was, as I'm sitting here, I'm like, we're not seeing much. We're gonna see something. It's it's to that one in the back, younger one calf, but yearling, yearling and then you know an adult. Maybe it's from all three or four year old. Yeah, looking cow, that's great. Yeah, I drew a b tag for cow's right up the Paradise Valley. Um uh so so yeah. So you know, one of the main goals is, you know, counting the predators. How many do we have, how many wolves we have, how many cougars we have? And that's that's harder than you think. It requires a lot of work, you know. With with wolves, the best tool we have to account of his coloring them. Each year we use a helicopter. We dart wolves from the helicopter, we put a collar on them. We try to get a couple individuals within a pack wearing collars and that allows us throughout the year to follow that pack. We monitor them from there. From the ground. Yellowstone is, of course one of the best place to view wild wolves, and so our studies have been largely observational in addition to the radio collars, and that's really given us very accurate counts. How many packs do we have, how many wolves we have in a pack, who are the breeders, how many pups are born, how many pups survive, And that's kind of the heart and soul of understanding their population dynamics UM. And then we want to understand their food habits and and so we do primarily two main field seasons in the wintertime in the summertime, and we do a thirty day predation steady early winter, thirty consecutive days. Early winter. Of course elk are in their best shape. They've come off a summer and fall of good forage, good fat reserves. They're much more difficult for wolves to kill. And then we look at it for thirty days in the month of March, that's the tail and winter. That's when elk are most vulnerable to winter in predation. They're kind of exhausting body reserves, and so we try to understand those book ends of the winter season to to see what that winter effect is of predation. We also do the same work and made June and July for predation again to look at what those summer predation patterns are and that's what made Yellowstone unique. And really we've embraced both old school field biology as well as technology like GPS callers. We still rely on the you know, the classical bush pilot that flies the super cub for us. Over the years, we've had some really talented UM, magnificent pilots UM and you know, and we take on volunteer technicians in the winter, in the summer, and and you know, thousands and thousands of hours, thousands and thousands of miles over twenty five years has given us probably one of the best pictures of predation in a predator pray system worldwide. We're very proud of that and UM and and so that's what we do with bowls. With cougars. There's been different periods of cougar research. They did not get reintroduced yelse and they came back on their own in the eighties. That you know, cougar's benefited by becoming a you could say their conservation is largely benefited by a UM becoming a trophy, having trophy game status. There are also protections in place in the sixties and seventies, and many of the document in Western states bounties were eliminated. They became quota systems and regulated and seasons, and that set the stage for their recovery to a place like Yellowstone. So they kind of crept crept back in on their own. Uh. And there are several phases of research that occurred in the late eighties prior to wolves being reintroduced. It created this wonderful experiment and then look at what happens when you reintroduce a top predator, another predator who's a major competitor the wolf. And so then there was a wonderful study led by Tony Ruth, fabulous biologists that let that study post wolf ree introduction for about six years. Uh. And then I started back up the study in two thousand and fourteen, which is still ongoing now. And so we've had these little uh snippets of cougars and the same thing. How many do we have and what are their food habits? Does that include the trophic cascade kind of this? Can you explain that? I guess I always mentioned that I want so you know, Yellowstone has um I'd say the first real ecological study that, well, there's a couple, but one of the ones that might be most familiar to students from high school biology. It would be the work in the marine systems with sea otters and urchins and kelp forests and understanding what happens when you disrupt a food web relatively simple food web structure where you have a top predator, you have its primary prey, the herbivore, and then you have the first level of the food web, which is the plant that those herbivores depend on, and what happens when you disrupt that link and the idea of a trophic cascade as you have these top down influences occurring where a predator can influence both its prey through direct killing or let's say behavioral changes. So we have you know, sort of um direct and indirect effects on its primary prey, which can infect linked effects down to that next trophic level, which would be the vegetation community. So in a place like Yellowstone, sort of the classic UH story that's out there is that you know, with the absence of top predator wolves and cougars for seventy years, are elk herd um became credibly abundant, overabundant, you could say, and that started having impacts on on forage and one of the focuses of that story has been on the woody brows you know, right below us here we see our aspen stands. You know, you've got your cotton woods, you have your willow communities. Those are relatively a small part of the Northern Range ecosystem is more of a grassland system, especially here, but it has been an important part of the history here. You know, there's certainly beaver's player role there, uh in that history of of willow and asthmen. Uh if you go back through the park's history and their elimination. But essentially, what the idea was that in the absence of the top predator, you had overgrazing or over browsing in this sense of this woody browse, and that basically suppressed these vegetation communities which are incredibly important to many species, whether it's songbirds, beavers, aquatic insects. You know, these are you know, really important aspects of these woody browse communities. But um and and with in the restoration of carnivores and the focus has been on wolves, with the trophic Cascade story, you kind of restored that. You know, I always hate the balance of nature, but nature is never quite in balance. UM, but you know the concept that most people are familiar with. You restored that relationship between the links of your top predator, your primary consumer, and then your primary productivity, your plants. And in doing so, UM, you restricted the brows. You started having willow and woody browse communities coming back, growing back, and that became very popularized the story of trophic cascade. There's signs in the park I've seen before to educational signs, you know, National geographic television shows that that of course, that famous or infamous YouTube video of how wolves have changed the rivers UM. You know, taking a very complex issition, trying to boil it into something simple. UM. You know, really what we view of what's happened in this landscape relative to trophic cascades as we do believe that the restoration of wolves, but more importantly the restoration of our carnivore community as a whole. Grizzly bears, UH, cougars and wolves have UM shifted that dynamic between UM elk behavior browsing patterns. And yes, you have seen some vegetative communities like willows and aspens and cotton woods UM start recovering because of those roles of those carnivores. Now there's other things that play, you know. I think what is the misconception about trophic cascades is that is a wolf triggered trophic cascade. And because people see what the major difference was is that, you know, mid nineties, wolves are reintroduced. That's when a lot of some of these starting studies took place to start measuring growth of aspen and willow rebounding. And it is true wolves have been an important part of that story. They helped uh bring back down the high density elk populations, lowering them. But along with wolves were cougar predation, grizzly beer, predation on black beer, predation on elk has, coyotes, And of course let's not forget right over here to our left as we look outside the park, this is the gardener based in Eagle Creek. This was the heart and soul of the Montana Fish willand Parks Gardener. Elk Late Hunt which is started in nineteen seventy six designed to reduce the number of elk in the northern herd, and that hunt went all the way up through two thousand nine, and so you have basically this perfect storm of of predation, pressure from multiple carnivores, human hunting effects which have been important here. And then you have your factors of such as severe winners and drought which have had impacts on our elk herds as well. So the story of trophic cascades is not the simple story that you offer has been often popularizes the wolves have caused this whole landscape to change. Wolves are certainly part of the tipping point there and maybe a necessary part of that story. Um, but they aren't the only complex any more. As you say, like you get into this idea where if I'm trying to defend the existence of wolves or the in this case kind of like the manifestation of more wolf introductions in different states, I might take this idea of trophic cascade and boil it down and use it as my justification for the thing that I ultimately want, you know. Conversely, I might argue, if I'm I want less wolves on the landscape, that they didn't you have more elk, that they didn't play as big a role, and that you know, and so they're there. That's the danger in all of this. And I'm sure, as as someone who lives this and breathes it every day. It's it's I'm sure it's a frustration because I will say I have talked to several biologists that kind of cringe when you say trophic because I think they would probably say, well, you just kind of phrases, you know, it's like an oversimplification of this idea that can be a to whatever narrative someone's trying. We have to embrace the controversy. We have to embrace the debate. That's what science is all about, and that's our job as scientists is right now, you have, um a number of competing voices out there that have worked in this ecosystem over the last you know, a couple of decades to kind of tease apart, you know what has occurred when it comes to that trophic cascade debate issue. And I think there's a lot we all agree on and there's some that we disagree on. And actually we have a forthcoming book. Um, we'll do a little promotion of it right now, if that's okay, And that's University of Chicago Press that's coming out in November. It's called Yellowstone Wolves, Science and Discovery in our world's first National Park. And myself Doug Smith and McNulty were the editors, and we've brought together all these collaborators of study wolves here in the last twenty five years, different voices coming together, uh to tell the story of Yellowstone Wolves from our perspective, the people involved with it for the last twenty five years. And one of the things we're very proud about in that book because we have a chapter on trophic cascades that is co authored by many of the competing voices. We wrangled everyone together down how dare you have competing narrative? Say? It was challenging, but um, I think in the end we hope that that provides a great understanding to the public to understand that it is complex or different ideas, and that's the beauty of science. It's self corrective. We as we collect more data, as we study things longer term, we get a uh, we crystallize and we'll never completely understand, we may never understand it fully, but we get a closer to the truth. And that's kind of our our goal here. And I think it's okay. We don't need to use wolves as the justification. UH. We don't have to use a story like trophic cascades as a justification have them back on the landscape. And there's many reasons why wolves should be back on the landscape. Um, just their role as a predator and food webs. Outside of the specific example of tropic cascade, it would be enough reason to restore them to many landscapes. Um do you feel so? One thing I've always wondered is like they say a grizzly bear, the mountain lion, cougar and the mount line and a wolf, and say those three things that exist in this landscape that we're in right now. Do they all provide very similar ecosystem services? We we know the predation part of it, but would you lump them all into one kind of service? Or they're based on their habits, based on how they predate. Are their their nuanced differences in what they provide to a landscape that maybe a wolf. Sure, there's definitely nuanced differences. I mean, for example, bears are sleeping half the year, right half the year they're out of the picture for example. Um, you know a little bit of exaggeration, maybe a little less than half the year, but you know it's part of their natural history that you know, they go into a state where they're not on the landscape. UM. When you actually look at their role in elk heer dynamics, they are incredibly important. They are the leading cause for most studies that study multiple multiple carnivore predation in in elk systems. Doesn't matter if it's yellow Stone or other parts of the Rocky Man in West Grizzly bears and blackbirds combined. Black bears combined are um the primary predators on newborn elk calfs, much more so than wolves, much more sore than cougar Zoom and grant. We just visited a cougar killed elk calf, but um, that first month of the elk calf's life, it's biggest concerned is probably a bear. UM. Wolves and cougars less so but still important. Then you look at a wolf and a cougar. They're on the landscape year around and as that you know, just choosing elk calf story as an example. They're born into half the running the gauntlet of bears and and and cougars and wolves, and then by fall late summer bears are less of a predatory role because calves can out run them. UM. And then you get into winter and bears are sleeping in them. Wolves and cougars step up their role in elk calf predation and play an important role in elk calf recruitment into the next into the herd. And so they play a slightly different role. You can also look at their hunting styles. Um. You know, we'll just to choose cougars and wolves as as examples. Wolves are what we call coursing group hunters. Coursing me running. They get their prey to run. Their success as a hunter is really dependent on finding vulnerable prey. Okay, and that means young, old, sick, week slower, um, And we can talk a little bit more about I think it's a really important thing to talk about, so I'll leave that off for a second. Uh. Cougars, in contrasts, are ambush solitary hunters, and they tend to hunt more and steep forest a terrain at night. Wolves tend to hunt more in the open valley bottoms, crepuscuarly dawn and dust. And so they are the nuance there is that they are all hunting the same elk herd, but at different times and in different habitats. Okay, and and so but you know, you pull back from that a little bit, and yes, I would say that ecosystem services they're similarly providing is through predation, uh, through uh, reducing densities high densities of the ungulate, their primary prey. Uh. And then how that then ripples through the food webs and nutrient recycling um. And so in that sense, they all share that common denominator. Yeah, that's that's kind of what you know. It's nice to hear it. So simply put, they're gone for half the year because it does because when I think about this and it goes to that trophic cascade discussion, there's so it's such a dynamic situation where the application of predation is happening, you know, different wavelengths, different different So yeah, and just the kind of cap stone that I guess that idea that there was a wolf triggered trophic cascade here in Yellowstone. Uh, those of us that have been steadiness istem for a long time would rather have people understand that it's a multi carnivore and you can include human hunters into this story. And here's why is that the part of the nuanced debate of what role carnivores have had is through the numerical effects on the elk, in other words, have the changes in woody brows. The popular story that you've heard is that these ungulates live in this landscape of fear okay, and they're avoiding these areas because they're worried about being killed, and as a result you get willower aspment regenerating. There is some little truth to that, and I can expand on that in a second, but really what the uh the prevalence of data suggests is that's there are behavioral effects on elk by carnivores. There is predation risk that plays a role, but it's probably largely been a numerical effect of the combined effects of carnivores that have influenced that those vegetation communities by bringing down your ungulate densities and and bears, wolves, cougars, and human hunters have all been an important part of the story of how our northern herd has been reduced, and they've those different carnivores or the human effects have played different strength through time. You could argue our data shows nicely that in the first seven or eight years of wolf recovery, wolves played a relatively small role in the decline of elk, And that's a very common misunderstanding. It was assumed that if you look at your just your raw numbers, elk herd was over twenty thousand. Four teen moles were put on the landscape and boom, your hard dropped. Well, fourteen wolves had no effect on that drop. That really didn't. There's just too many elk and non enough wolves. There was several couple thousand elk being harvested, there were cougars operating, there were grizzly bears operating. Then you had you know, severe Winner of nine seven knocked that herd down. My first spring here in a well, nineteen, I'll never forget it. And when my first hikes I ever did when I moved out here, um from Vermont, was in this April hiked r I can see the trail right across the valley here, hiked up the Black can in the Yellowstone. It was April, and I probably counted in that first two three miles of that hike. I don't know thirty dead elk, just it is. They're just winter kill everywhere. Um and then we and so winter has has a big effect on these ungulates. And then you can look at summer productivity in the drought of two thousand and two thousand seven here in this landscape uh affected forage quality UH and that's incredibly important for caffrecruitment and cow body condition for pregnancy and survival. So you've got a lot of things operating here. And that's why part of our roles and when we talk about things like trophic cascades or what role do predators have, you have to put it into context of other factors, and so to think about connecting that, and this is often the discussion with hunters. If if the human element, as you say so nicely fits with the wild predation element, how then would you connect the human management of the predators? Because I think that's that's really if this was you know, if we're gonna be real corny and say the circle of how do you think that in this application obviously not here in Yellowstone, but like in in just in general. If if if this wasn't a national park and there was human hunting and wolf tags, and yeah, that's what you know right up? The value there is sure, you know, I mean, this is a great question, and you know, there's there's a lot of different thoughts on this and obviously a lot of different philosophies on this, and and Yellowstone is a great reference point to it because we often hear yeah from hunters or from even state game agencies. UM. Largely because of the perception of it is that carnivores need to be managed. This idea that you know, in order to protect deer and elk, you know, you have to manage your carnivores. And depending on the anth, how you answer that question depends on your values, your societal view, maybe your cultural political views. From a biological standpoint, UM, it's very difficult to defend this idea that if you don't manage your carnivores, your system will collapse, You'll run out of food, the elk and deer won't be there anymore. Because one, let's just look at yellow Stone. We don't manage our carnivores here, not to say they're not influenced by outside effects. Because we have a trans boundary population. Our boles move out of the protection out onto this landscape. Hearing are subject to to legal hunting. UM. It doesn't play a big role in our population by any means, but it can can alter things slightly. UM. But you know, we have today. A in this can change. But we have today what we view as incredibly dense and healthy carnivore population, and we have a very healthy elk population um in the Greater Yelsa and ecosystem. Despite all these carnivores, you pull back and you look at much of the Rocky Mountain West and you look at elkhurt. Let's just choose for example, you look at elk hered objectives and many parts of the Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and most by far the vast majority of hunting districts elkords are at or above objective. And that is under a landscape now that has bears, wolves, and cougars everywhere. And and now you could argue that well they're out objective or above objectives in these areas because there is hunting, there is some illegal take, there's wildlife services that plays a role with lifestyle control when it comes to carnivores um and and so I I think, you know, just to boil it down to a very simple thought process. Look, I think you can have it all. Yeah, I really do. I believe that done properly, and you can give a lot of credit. I would say to state agencies that are struggling with how you handle carnivore recovery. Of course, the major constituent would be people that might be more prone to being anti carnivore, let's face it, and that a lot of a lot of that could be through misunderstanding, misperception, or culture or background or personal experience. Um. But the state agencies are wrangling with you know, this is a contentious topic. How do we how do we meet the desires and needs of our public, which is one segment of population, with other stakeholders which are equally I would argue as important to the long term success of conservation. Can I here's a question I have in regards to that. I think about this quite often. And this may be a devil's advocate, you know, for a hunting podcast, this might be playing the devil's advocate a little bit. Um. State game agencies funded up sometimes sixty even maybe even more in some cases. Um, but that's generally the number I've heard from American system of conservation funding, which includes license sales, Pittman, Robertson dollars, Tinkle Johnson dollars, all that stuff going into fund these agencies, and so they have you know, you see, are three programs that are meant to get more hunters in there because they need those dollars. What does that do in your opinion to how those game agencies think about their constituencies. Well, sure, I mean, you know, I'm a park service biologist, and I don't want to come off and I and I don't. I'm also a Montana resident, and I believe strongly in the in the in the UM, the need for our state agencies to have the resources and tools to do the job they have to do to manage UM, the public trust the wildlife heritage that we all have. I think there's no doubt about it. There's a rich history, predominantly of support through the hunting community, sportsmen and women who have contributed financially and activism greatly to the success of wildlife conservation in our country hands down. I think where we're entering is into a phase in our world now where we need to acknowledge that and celebrate that UM. But we also need to provide opportunities for other stakeholders to buy in. And we can look at the issue here, the very contentious, hotly debated issue of wolf conservation in the state of Montana, which I'm most familiar with, and you have seen in recent years the efforts of sort of non consumptive stakeholders that maybe aren't even anti wolf hunting as much as hey, we want a voice to uh, please provide us some opportunity for buying into this. We want to see it at the table. And if you look at the you know, the vision of the state agencies as they'll say, you know, we we want all stakeholders to have a voice. I think what we're learning is that how do we transition to an industry not an inditsty. How do we transition from a culture of where it's largely been supported financially uh and religiously by sportsmen and women that are hunters and fishermen. How do we now expand that which is a great need. I think we're at a real important tipping point where we would be well served to embrace all stakeholders who may have slightly different values and views on wildlife and how they be managed. They might not totally agree with one another um, but they agree on many things and they want a lot of the same things, and we need to capitalize on that energy. And I think we're seeing that more and more right I mean, my experience with in my time out here in the Rocky Mountain West has seeing that transition. We're talking earlier about organizations like Meat Eater or b h A back Anglers, and I think it's tapped into an energy and a resource of bringing people together that might be on slightly different sides of an issue. Hanging out with Patagonia shows up, like what's up you Van, He's like, yeah, I'm anti predator hunting. We're like, okay, We're willing to tolerate that and talk about that because we share this value for the landscape. That's a tough thing. Admittedly, I would say, oh it is, and it's seen it, it's it's I would say this is one of those issues where I'm like almost right on the cutting edge of it, right on the split, because I want to say I want all voices to come in. You gotta have these competing ideals that all that are all grounded on value, valuing wildlife and right and you gotta have these competing approaches to the to how to express that value and how to manage it. At the same time, you look at states like Colorado even Oregon where you know, ups we lost spring Bear, hunting whoops, we lost this. We lost hunting with dogs, Whoops, we lost. And so I I can see both. I see the philosophical need for this, but I wonder and again I think that's what I'm here to try to do, and and having you on as a big part of that is to get people to understand how complex this is. And I think from a defending hunting standpoint, I always come to the table like I want everybody to understand the value of this, even those that come into it, like you said, not necessarily anti hunting, but more valuing the wildlife for what it is, not what it gives you exactly. And you know, and that come back to the point maybe before I do think we can have a little bit of everything, and maybe not all in one place. I mean, you know, we've got a place like yellow Stone Um where carnivores are protected, ungulates are protected. Course, they're transpouncy, they migrate, they move over large areas, but we don't have many places like that are study is probably one of the own, one of the few studies worldwide of an UH wolf population that is not under some level of human exploitation. And even then we can't say that because each year we lose a couple of wolves from packs primarily living in Yellowstone that spend that one day and they travel out onto a place like across the valley here and they're subject to illegal harvest where we get a legal take. And again I come back to that point that that has not we haven't shown or believed to have an important population impacts on the park wolf packs, but can disrupt natural social structure, which we our mission is to preserve. UM. But you know, when you go outside a protected preserve, there's very few places out there on the landscape where you have that full protection. And I think it'd be great if we had more of those um and UM. But I also think that there's places where you're not gonna have carnivores or can't have carnivores, and then you're gonna have all the places in between where um, you could have sustainable some level of sustainable car of war hunting. They some would argue for that, and the populations would do okay, uh and be resilient. I mean, these animals are incredibly resilient by nature, UM and and that's why we see uh, you know, stable UM carnivore populations in many areas where they aren't overharvested, and likewise you would see stable angular herds in many of those same areas. So, UM, I think if we work together more um different stakeholder groups different and come together and try to find compromise on both sides, that will service very well in the end in terms of ultimately what we want a lot of us is to preserve wild nature. Yeah. And I think as we talked about UM, and I could say this because you know, but I think in Dr Vlarious Geist would would love to I was texting me the other day about doing another podcast and I was very excited to talk to him. When we first talked, and again he is, let's just I'll just say I'll say it personally like. He was very anti wolf when we spoke. He talked about predator pits, He talked about hydada disease. I hope I always say that, right, UM, and this like, and he explained to me it was informed by a lot of things he had he had experienced in Russia with some wolves over there, and so his explaining of his world view was kind of shaped that way. UM. Your world view, I'm sure is in a lot of ways shaped to what you've seen here, and so again I fall I go back to when when we slot in these charismatic mega fauna into these very controversial, very emotional topics, where everybody comes to it with a different perspective, in a different worldview. You can you can come into these debates right where where we're not we're kind of talking past each other a little bit. And I think, you know, what are a person like myself? Job is here is too try to provide, you know, the basic biological truth about how these systems work. And first of off, we have to you have to fully admit we really don't understand nearly just as people wish we did. Uh. And that's a very hard thing to explain someone when you know what happened to the Elkert or what world will you know? Sometimes you as you get into the details, you have to say, I don't know. But I think what we can say and what we've learned a lot from studying wolves in a place like yellow zonn or cougars is is we've definitely added more accurate understanding of predation and and and what role they play. I always try to come back to the biology and explain it. And I think and and I don't know if you want to talk about this now or or have the conversation go, uh, we should talk more about the animals themselves, because I generally my mistake is I'm like, let's talk about the idea. But I think you have so much information on mountain lions and wolves and what they are and like what they really do. Um. And again I said I said this earlier. I think that's a big part of what I like to learn. I think, you know what I really like talking about wolf hunting behavior and cougar hunting behavior. Want to talk about that. There's there's a lot of misperception out there. We sat to sort of hold the wolf up on this pedestal as being sort of this mythological Uh. I think that's Liam Neeson's fault. Yeah, maybe so. I mean, you know, we wrote about in our books sort of like we kind of equate wolf predation is sort of like to these sort of mythological forces like Moby Dick or tornadoes and having these just sort of and you always hear, always hear the stories about, you know, how wolves did this and how wolves did that. And you know, we've studied wolf hunting behavior for twenty five years, and we've studied it by watching them do it, which is so rare in a predator study maybe outside of Africa. And we've you know, I personally have witnessed um fifty sixty seven. I can't and you lose track of how many direct kills from beginning to end. Our teams have watched thousands of hours of wolves hunting elk and bison, um and and through that, and we've collected data and we've analyzed it, and we've really kind of pieced out, uh, out of the complexity of that issue of really fundamentally how wolves hunt. And I think one of the biggest takeaway messages is that, um, they're very much limited by their biology and their behavior to be good of hunters. They are very challenged by hunting and getting their food and and and so let me just kind of go through a couple of key aspects to their biology and they're like, yeah, so, you know, first of all, they're limited very much by their just physical biology. I mean, they are a sort of a jack of all trade sort of an animal. They have Essentially, their skeletal structure is such that they they're hunting and killing tools are primarily their their teeth right, their jaw, what's in their mouth, and their endurance and ability to run and move the way they do. And but because of that there it's very difficult for them to kill something five times or size. And when we look at a place like Yale, soon about their preise elk. Okay, their next most common food type is bison, and the majority of biomass they get from bison isn't from killing them directly, although they do hunt and kill bison. It is through scavenging on bison, and we've seen more and more of that in recent years, and I'll talk about that after. But so they're limited by their ability they have to approach a prey animal. Let's say they approach a group of elk. They use their sense of smell, they're great olfaction, they have okay eyesight, it's not great at night, pretty decent during the day. They have to find prey first, and then once they find prey, they have to engage with that prey and that process involves watching and then they start running, and by running they try to figure out, Okay, I'm approaching this group, out which one is going to be that the less risky to kill. There are very risk averse. They've evolved to be risk averse. Is very dangerous and difficult for them to run up to something. I think about it. You're from your own perspective. If you were to run up to an elk and open your mouth and try to grab onto its mind quarter and pull it down, just they think about dangerous and physically uh difficult that would be. And that's um. And that's for an animal out on averages. You know, males are about pounds, females are about a hundred and UM. So they have to do that and and and there. As a result, they're only successful doing that when they hunt adult elk about fifteen or so percent of the time. So think about doing a task at work, ben Jee, we'd like to see your performance step up a little bit. You're only at about fift efficiency. You went last long. So you know, these animals just to get their meal, it's very difficult for them. So what they need is vulnerable prey and vulnerability manifests itself in a number of ways. Uh. Young animals like an elk calf that's easy and not dangerous to pull down. UM, an old injured animal that's weak and easy for the wolves to grab and pull down um and or something sick, or something stuck or trapped or in a terrain trap. Outside of that, uh by and far, the elk get away most of the time. And when they do engage, they have to grab on, and they have a long rostrum and as a result, and they have teeth running down that they grab on with their incisors and they use their canines to puncture and and grab and restrain, and they're getting yanked and jerked and kicked um and they have to hold on. And their real benefit as a hunter is that they hunting groups, and so it is by having at least one several other animals come and help them and to overpower that animal that they might be fighting with. The pull down to the ground. You now, that is their most common prayer. And yellowstone bison, you can imagine it's even more difficult to pull down a bison, and so most often they fail when they attempt their encounters, aren't successful buying far the majority of the time, and and so that right from the get go limits their ability to be a runaway predator UM. And that's why elk aren't wolf bait. Okay, they have the ability to uh handle predation risk on the landscape because buying law the majority of the time, and any individual out is going to survive their encounter with wolves. Um. And so there's that one aspect unlike a cougar that has retractile claus um. We call the word is superating. I love that word. It's rotating uh wrists um. They have that super and cougars have supernating risks, retractile claus and really incredibly powerful for limbs. They don't have the endurance of the wolf. They have short, quick bursts, They stalk their ambush hunters, they sneak up and pounce um. Very different hunting style and as a result they and we don't know this. We hope from you also and to get this data because of the special GPS colors, were using these accelerometer colors where we can measure and see hunting events and see how often they're successful from the surge and the data from the GPS scholars, but we believe in general that most biologist studying cougars would would argue that they're probably have a greater success per encounter with prey than do wolves. Okay, so they're very different in that that hunting style. UM. And so you know, again back to the wolves are really their successes the predators. They need vulnerable prayer to be successful. So that's calves, that's old cows, um bowl elk in late winter or in the fall if they've exhausted reserves from the rut are more vulnerable. And so from the get go the wolves are by far at the disadvantagement the encounter elk um. But obviously they're successful. They would survive if not, and they do that through group hunting. They do that through a division of labor. What we've learned in Yellowstone is that we know a lot about our packs and who the individuals are, their age, their sex. We can estimate their body weight because they wolves follow sort of body growth pattern UM that we have from all our hundreds of wolves. We've weighed and measured and known their ages, so we can kind of understand the role of body size, sex and age class. And what we've learned is that um, the best hunters in a wolf packer the two to three year olds kind of that sort of combination of experience hunting but sort of youthful vigor and body size, males uh tend to have a higher probability of success than females. Of course, they hunt together, so sometimes you have to tease that out. You typically find those two to three year old younger wolves on average being the fleet or of foot, the faster they select out, the one they grab and restrain, and then the large dominant breeding mail or the older doll mails will come up and use their larger body mass that weight to help pull that animal down. So it really is a division of labor. We also see an age effect. Just as the younger wolves are the better hunters, the pups are just kind of learning the first year of their life and not great hunters. We also find what we call predatory sinescence as about age five or six. Wolves have a very short life history. They don't live that long. Average lifespan is about five um, so they're not a long live carnivore, less so than cougars, which on average live you know, a dozen or so years. And what we see is that their participation in a hunt, their their ability to be successful at capture and takedown starts declining after at age five or six, and we see that changing of aging. You know, humans go through that too at a slightly different scale. Any any man wal does UM and that predatory sinessnce And we've actually looked at their blood profile, We've looked at physiological responses where you can look at the effects of aging on on wolf behavior and it's very clear cut. They age quickly and then they're just not of effective as doing what they do. So UM that has implications for you know, for impacts on elk. If you've got a wolf population that is constantly being hunted and managed and knocked down, you're gonna have a younger age class or the kind of the best hunters of the population. And so place like Yellowstone we see more age classes and that in the end we believe has an effect on their impacts overall in elk UM It might be subtle, but we think it's a real effect UM. And so you've got those different aspects of their biology that really shows their limits to success. We see seasonal effects on vulnerability. Of course, summertime Elk cafe neones the newborns are very vulnerable predation, but their mother is not UM. An adult cow elk and Yellowstone UH is largely invincible to wolf predation from the ages of two to about twelve and unless she gets herself in a pickle and makes a bad choice or gets in a wrong spot. But by and large, those bulls don't kill those um elk. In fact, our data for twenty five years has flat curve. Average age of a of a cow elk kill in northern Yellowstone is fourteen and that is not changed in twenty five years. Yes, they kill primate cows occasionally. Yes, they kill a twenty five year old cow. We've had twenty five year old cows and Yellowstone. We just had a collared cow elk that was died this winter at twenty five and a half years old. Think about that, a cow elk that was born in ninety four, the summer before wolves showed up. Voter for Bill Clinton voted her survived her whole life through a gauntlet of carnivores, pumped out a bunch of calves. Many of those didn't make it, and we're killed by carnivores perhaps or other factors that that calves died from, but lived her entire life on this landscape of carnivores and in the end was killed by a pack of and a half years old. There's so much here as I listened to all, you know, like as you just kind of like dump this information, like there's just such a wealth of experience. I'm here trying to like make some connective and I'm sure a lot of listeners are doing the same thing. And as I listen to talk about the ineffective predation of wolves and what they're able to do, um, it fits into the kind of this ecological idea that they are kind of literally eating at the edges from a population. It's the core. I'm just trying to articulately just I can, like the core population is not immune but largely immune to this predation, which allows both of these things to exist at the same time. And what might sound like a hyperbole, but is is some harmonic um you know, relationship. And the important part of the link there to to make is this. For an elk herd to grow or maintain a certain population size, you have to have two main two main things adult cow survival and caffree cruman Okay, bullolker, you know bull out are important to uh to us as hunters, right, I mean that's often the target for many, not all, many of us prefer to get a cow for me, but um, there's you can't deny the uh significance of bull elkin of population, of course, but for an elk herd itself, it's dynamic is largely driven by adult cow survival and elk calf recruitment. And so the reason we have what we see as a robust elk herd in this landscape despite this high bunths of carnivores, is that if you just look at the wolf's impact, is their biggest role on the trajectory of our elk herd is through killing elk calves, which impacts how many individuals are recruited into that herd and how long a cow elk survives, and and the longer she survives through those primary ages, more calves she cranks out. What we find here is high pregnancy rates of our cow elk and yellow stone more but of prime h cows are pregnant each year. Um, they're cranking out calves each year. At about age twelve thirteen, you start seeing what we call preproductive senescence, where they pregnancy races started declining, and the data is very strong in this and they probably stopped producing calves every year and start alternating and then probably stopped producing calves all together. So the fact that the average age of a cow we kill and Yellowstone Northern herd is a fourteen year old cow, she's at that point where she is less important to her dynamics than the prime h cow, the average agent. I don't make this to pick hunters human hunters versus wolves, but just did the data's uh, just to explain the data uh during the gardener Lei hunters, all this great data collected by the State will Montana, State will uh Montana um fish, wildlife and parks, and the average age of the cow l carves did during the gardener Leig hunt all those years was about six. You know, that's a prime ate cow, incredibly important to el caffre recruitment. So when you look at the reason that wolves haven't caused his help her to crash is that there's still enough cows each year that are surviving from year one to year two putting out a calf. Now you know, fifty to sev those calves aren't gonna make it till adulthood. They're gonna get killed by carnivores, They're gonna die from weather, disease, drowning, you name it. All factors um, But as long as enough of those calves survived, you can have a stable herder growing. So that helps put that perspective of the limits of wolf hunting ability into perspectives that that's why you can have a stable elk herd and still have a fair bit of wolf predation. It depends on which elk they're killing. Um. And as we know, uh, you know, a few bowls can breed a lot of cows. So yes, wolves are going to kill mature bull elk. That again, their success at killing bull elk is largely driven by seasonal vulnerability late winter. Now let's remember bull elk have weapons. And this is another great finding we had from Yellowstones. We this really neat study on wolves in late winter in March when elk transition from antler to dropping their ambers. This is a really fascinating study led by one of our long term researchers, Matt Matts. He's a finishing his doctoral degree at University of Montanadism took the initiative years ago to start collecting this observation data during our winter studies. Where the data we started collecting was looking at when wolves attack bull out groups, do they select the pedical bulls are the ones wearing anidlers, and we found that they were. There was significantly greater selection for pedal for pedical bowls than antler bulls. The ironic part of this story is is that we think of wolves needing vulnerable prey to be successful, and when you look at the bulls that dropped their antlers first, they are in better condition. You know, bull antler growth and bull reproductive success, as we all know, is driven by antler size. Um uh. It is the primary selective forces sexual selection with antlers and ungulates. But secondarily, we believe they've served as a predatory defense and Yelso we're able to demonstrate that whereas that wolves would, given the choice, which makes sense, go for the one that wasn't wearing the ailers, and ironically they were the bulls in better condition. But the trade off there was that I'm from a wolfs per side and I'm less likely to get gore because we see bowls do this. They stand their ground, they put their antlers down. We've had wolves die from getting gored from elk, from bison, so we know it is it is a real risk to them, and we have this really sweet data set that demonstrated that antler retention in elk is probably being driven by wolf predation over the thousands of years, because they are the primary prey. And many of these systems where there's wolves and elk for thousands of years and things like mule deer, white till dear moose drop much earlier in the winter. Not that they aren't prey the wolves, they certainly are, but if elk are the primary prey, it's probably was a selective pressure in part for retaining antlers for longer, because if you have your antlers on your head, you're less likely to be killed by wolves. Now are they Are they growing them back earlier as well? As does that make sense where they're being hunted less by wolves at that time, because so, yeah, so I don't know about if they're going back earlier or not. You know, they are obviously earlier. Antler growth is starting immediately once they're shed, and that nutrient that blood vessels start pumping in, and that's of course antler being one of the fastest growing tissues in the animal kingdom. And you know, but of course the sooner you start growing, the bigger your antlers can get. So there is a again probably driven by sexual selection to grow to drop early, and if you drop early, you'll grow bigger and that theoretically will enhance your reproductive success in the fall. But wolves have tip have like inserted themselves into that story a little bit, we believe, through evolutionary history, which is so that's another really cool part of it. So, you know, all in all, kind of what I just went through is sort of demonstrating that wolves need vulnerable pray to be successful by and large, UM, and there are limits to their ability as a hunter. And that is why you are unlikely um to have in most places sort of a runaway predation, a sort of wiping out of an ungulate her. Yeah, they're just not able to do it. They just are not capable of doing it. Yeah. And I think as I sit here too, and I'm thinking about, you know, the totality of all the converse stations I've had. This is episode one thirty five or so. We I had a conversation with the guy named Douce Shon's Mentana who lives in Bozeman. He's a photographer but originally came from Czechosto, Fakia, and over there they had a like a traditional idea that the hunter was revered in the community because of his knowledge, because well, because of his responsibility to have a knowledge of the ecosystem, to know which animals need to be plucked off the landscape, to know what the predation was happening, to really understand and and provide value to their community from their understanding of what they had to do to maintain these healthy populations as a hunter, and this was kind of a traditional forget the term that he used that that was a check term. Um, But it was interesting to hear him say that. And it's interesting to hear this information that not many hunters really know, and not many people, not many biologists are able to suss out study. So as a hunter, you understand, Okay, this is what wolves are doing to these herds, regardless of what I can do with this tag. It's interesting to me too then that greater understanding. It's kind of the responsibility of a hunter in the modern in the modern shirt to understand, like what are all the dynamics here? Um, if I have a cow tag and I have a bull tag, what do I do with those things? Yeah? I mean I think you know, and I those of us that spend time hunting out It is hard to do and we have tools much more so than wold. So, UM, you know many people like myself, you know, a bird in the hand. Ye, my, here's my chance. And you can't be selective and you aren't selective and um and other people, UM either might be a better hunter or be able to hunt and U have more time to hunt or be able to hunt in a place that um, they've really learned the patterns and can be more selective, and they might decide like, no, I really want to go for this sort of an animal this year. But but you would imagine if you know graduate level hunting, if you start out, you know, there's these philosophies that hunters go through stages being that hunters start. If you start it as a hunter when you were a child, you go through these stages right, well you imagine, I imagine that even my own I'm sure your evolution has a hunter mine as well. You go through these stages of understanding and appreciation and value, and you would hope that you'd be able to, you know, listen to this. Everybody that is out there learned to hunt or is brand new that you know this is something is it that has value beyond just the understanding of wolves has value to your you know, to your role, to what you can do and what you can't do based on what other predation factors exist. And I would encourage anyone that is passionate about, you know, the landscape they hunt on to to learn about the local ecosystem there, and you know, talk to your local biologists that spend a lot of time in the ground. I mean, you know, I don't want to demean or diminish the experience that hunters have. I mean we let's face it, when you have boots on the ground, you spend time out there, you inherently learn and pick up a lot of things um about the landscape and the animals. And that knowledge is irreplaceable to any scientists, data point, to any uh you know, so you embrace that, but also take advantage to you know, I encourage people to really learn about what's happening in that particular hunt unit they're going into. You know, what are our wolf populations, like, what are our sugar populations? Like? You know, what role may they have? Our bears, cougars, and wolves all playing a role at different times of the year. What is my role as a human hunter as part of that story? To um, what did the habitat to do this year? What was the winner like, what was the summer precip like? And and not being so quick to jump to that one convenient scapegoat of why you may not have filled your tag. Well, I hear this all the time. You know, while I was in this area and all I saw were wolf and cougar tracks, So you know, there's no good it's not good hunting. I mean, I've been hunting here in the gardener basin for the last twenty years, and um, you know, every day where I hunt, you know that one of the most things I enjoy the most is coming across that cougar wolf track. And you know, I just know that there's also elk and deer out there well as well, because that's why they're there. Um, and you know, trying to understand how all those different pieces fit together. Now, you know, I'm not trying to paint this picture to say, well, don't have an effect. They don't impact elk. They certainly do. And that's you know, part of the story of Yellowstone is that, yeah, they reduced the elk herd. You could say in the years where we didn't have carnivores, and even the gardener leigh hunt could only do so much to reduce the hunt. And what you had is an elk herd that was probably uh. And when we know this, we've got good data on this of density dependence, we call it. When you have high density ungular herds, you tend to have a poor body condition, more competition for available food, um, you tend to have um bigger effects of winter die offs. In a system absence of top predators and natural predators, you tend to have more large scale variation in your booms and your bust and your crashes. And when you have a system where your top predators are in place, it dampens that. And so if you look at the elk herd and Yellowstone over since the nineteen twenties when the first counts really started, you see in the absence of carnivores, you know, carnivores are removed from this landscape. And let's just use the northern herd as an example. UM that elk herds started climbing in high numbers by the nineteen twenty five. The last cougars were thought to have killed the last wolves were thought to have been killed in the park. You saw that northern arangelkhorts starting to climb, and then the park stepped in and said, well, wait, we need to start doing something. Even Teddy Rose about when he was here in the early nineteen hundreds recognized they had all these starving elk. What the park do? They started feeding alfalfa um, They started translocating and calling. Do do the listeners realize? This is a really great part of Yelow's story about fifteen thousand elk over the years between the nineteen twenties and nineteen and nineteen sixties. Over fifteen about fifteen elk where translocated from Yellowstone National Park as the source population for elk throughout uh, not just United States, but Canada, Argentina. Places where you see elk now can and most places linked back to Yellowstone. And and so the park was involved in heavy management of our elk herds, you know, calling, shooting, translocations, and then it became out of public favor and the Park Service went into in the sixties this idea of natural regulation. Let's stop the calling, let's stop the translocation, let's step back, let's go into natural regulations. See what happens. Well, then what happened is we still didn't have carnivores boom that Elkord just started climbing. And I'm just talking about the Northern herd. There are the Elkords that use yellowstone as well, and I'm sure many of them went through similar changes. Uh, the Northern Ranges are best Northern herds are best studied herd long term, and we have that heard get incredibly high abundance, high densities, and we saw on average probably body condition, pregnancy rates go down, more competition, and so you know what we have today is there's no doubt about it. And for the foreseeable future. You know, the days twenty elk in the northern herd are gone. Um. You know that has cultural significance, of course, but from a biological standpoint, UM, we have what we believe is a incredibly healthy, stable, robust Elk herd right now. Our population estimation is about eight thousand seven eight thousand elk. We count elk every year by doing a one day you go up in an airplane, you count as many elk because you see on the landscape and one day from multiple planes. It is a um, a very imprecise uh techniques, So everyone kind of hangs her hat on, like this year there are three thousand four in ninety two elknelso, and then the northern herd, well, it's a it's a minimum estimate, it's account. And what we do is we apply tools that biologists used call that siteability correction factor. Where, um, you you are only counting a minimum number of the elk. Your your probability of count pcent is always going to be less, you know, and and so you are basically trying to understand, Okay, here's our count what is our siteability and so, um, this last year, about six thousand count elk we're counted during the that day, that one day count, and that includes the elk that are wintering north of the park up towards Dome Mountain and Paradise Valley. And what that translates into based on our side ability index is closer to a herd size about eight thousand, okay, so, and our herd has kind of the decline is stabilized. Um, some years we have good counts, some year we have bad counts. So when you try to correct for those imprecise counting methods of the airplane counts. You know, we have a herd that is stable and if not slightly increasing. What is the future hole We don't know what is going to be the role of chronic wasting disease. We believe carnivores might play an important role in there. That's yet to be determined. Yell soon will be a great place to study that should it show up here. Um. What it's going to be, the effective climate change of future droughts, of future winter severities. UM, We'll wrangle with this for decades to come. UM. But I think we are starting to hone in a little bit more closely on teasing out what the role of wolves are, what the role of cougars are, what the role of bears are, what the role of human and hunting is, and and and if we continue with get a lot of stakeholder involvement of different walks of life and values and views, we will be best served to keep this research going on into the future. And we hope that that helps better understand how we manage our elk herds, how we manage carnivores, UM, what level of hunting can be at play, um and um. And we have to remember that we've got to be cautious of not to apply you know, everything we're finding about Yellowstone to other parts of the greater yellow soonne ecosystem and then beyond um for example, Uh, it would be hard to argue that you will see strong trophic cascade effects and many parts of the Rocky Mountain West where carnivores are restored, just because humans still play such a large role in both carnivores and ungulates, and so you know, even in yellow Stone where humans are largely out of the picture, we still wrangle with what the relative effects are on that that particular issue. So we can't expect to see strong effects outside of a place where you know, carnivore levels probably densities are being kept lower because management. UM. Anyway, that's a huge part of it too. And I think as as you as you're kind of walking through this, you're answering all my questions before I have as I think, so, I think, you know, a lot of this is to go a little bit back to you know, this is ever evolving. Um, the knowledge base is ever evolving, and so there isn't there is ever gonna be one answer, you know, So I think the next the next thing everybody is wondering. You just touched on it a little bit, is what's the future of all this as we see, as we use this landscape that we're looking at it right now, this this vast serengetti that we're looking at that has enjoyed, you know, this reintroduction of wolves and being able to kind of see it like you do. Then you think of the future of of wildlife management. We have We have ballot box biology going on in Colorado right now where they want to put a referendum to introduce wolves. You have this Greater Yellowstone ecosystem situation with the grizzly bear population where the argument is less like should the grizzly bears be there? And can hunting play a role in managing them? So there's an argument there. Just to maybe crystallize it and correct me if I'm if I'm off here, the the argument for keeping them on the endangered species list is if you kill a certain number of them, they may not be able to be feeder populations for other very important um grizzly bear populations outside of this ecosystem. So that like, do you have these little pockets of debate that I'm sure we'll continue. UM. But over time, I imagine that the battle too to protect these animals, to hunt them, to include them, to dis you know, to not include them is going to you know, only intensify as we experiment. It's quite sober, I mean, because there's so many things out of our control. I mean, we can talk about management and what actions can managers play, whether it be in a national park and some more hands off a pro to a state agency that is challenged with managing a variety of species into one landscape. UM. But the things that we can't control, I mean, look what our country is going through right now. We covered the unforeseen effects of a disease outbreak and our wildlife populations, the unforeseen impacts of climate change. UM. And so we can look at the debate of what we should do with the grizzly bear and you know, can they can sustain hunting and and ultimately comes down to is um. You know, bears will be removed because of the challenges of coexisting with them on a human dominated landscape and what's the best way to manage And I'm not going to enter into a gressing discussion necessarily, UM, but you know, just the you know, the discussion revolves around how many bears can uh die and can we still uh you know, have a sustainable, healthy population as well as the potential to be connected, which is a very important part of so many species lar scale biologies, that are they connected to other populations. And I think it kind of we can kind of whittle it right down to the basic question of what are we willing to lose? Are we willing to lose grizzly bears from our landscapes because we jump the gun on something or we or maybe um, we wouldn't lose it, And let's have that discussion too. Maybe there is hunting of bears, and then we can still have all of what we want. We can have a population that's healthy and robust, we can still have some connectivity, and you know that will come up with some creative ways of having tolerance and allowing bears to move across the landscape in these areas. In these areas, we're going to be less tolerant. Um. Those are those aren't biological questions. Those are social questions, the political questions, value societal value questions. That's why you know, sitting here with you and trying to you know, I, like I said, I come come at this with a certain idea and that when I think about grizzly bears or even wolves, I think, you know, I think about the North American model of wildlife conservation. You know, one of the tenants is that we're going to use science and wildlife biology to to kind of meter this all out. And that's going to be the foundational level of how we go about what what can we take off the landscape? What can we you know, what is approachable in terms of both carnivores and ungults and in all game species, you know, and what we say is a game species and what's not um and then you look at like the history of it, and I want to say this and and this is what I when I think about that modelo conservation, I want to say that the application of those ideas, those tenants, however, they may change over time. And I would argue that some of them need to um need to be updated. But however they change over time. The application of these value this value system, however, it will you know, morph The core tenants have been good for elk, they've been good for turkeys, they've been good for deer um and so the application of those same ideas to carnivores seems to me to be logical. Now, that's that's only the starting point from my thought process. And then talking to you, what I'm trying to do is, you know, knock holes in that and understand where that maybe isn't an apple's apples comparison, and given where we are as a society, it's not as easy as that. I know. Yeah, well, if we just look at the history of carnival recovery here, it hasn't been the North American model that has saved them. Let's saved them is the Endangered Species Act, right, and then we can we can point to other things like the Clean Air and Water Act. I mean, having healthy ecosystems, having protections where they weren't being hunted. That's what was good for carnivores. Now, whether that that change their future is a different question because so and I think that's where you kind of alluded to this. There's some papers that have been published, uh more of a philosophical approach to the North American model conservation, why it's flawed, why it needs to change. There's some great stuff out there. Um, I think those arguments have indicated in and and try to help people understand that, Yes, that model has worked really well for so many species and is still a great baseline for many agencies to operate under who are charged with that public trust of wildlife. Um. But let's not forget the significant role of other things outside of that model that have been a key role of conservation. That kind of comes back to this idea you and I were talking about before, is you know, should other stakeholders get by in and helping make decisions. And that's where I do think we have an opportunity to modernize, and we are in many ways modernizing how we move forward with managing wildlife, and I think with that will come tough conversations between people of different views about hunting to come together and say, Okay, I don't agree with carnivore hunting, or I do agree with it, or I think it should be done this way or shouldn't be done. All those are very challenging discussions to have to get everyone at the table, but they're necessary ones, um, and I think you know they won't be easy and there aren't obvious answers, but the discussions have to happen, and people need to come to the table willing to give up something but also fight for something that they think is important. Sure, And I think that's a huge part of this conversation too, because I come to this not as a person I've said this in the past, not as a person who desires to shoot a wolf. I don't desire to shoot a grizzly bear. Um, I don't. Necessary Well, I kind of desire to shoot a mountain line because I can eat it and it's it's pretty tasty. I've had it many times, never killed one, but I've eaten it many many times. And so as my value system kind of shifts through these ideas, I'm not it's not that I have a desire to hunt wolves. I have a desire to come to a place where both sidedly, politically and biologically, we can all make it the right decision based on the right evidence. As we know it's in every every biological decision here is imperfect because we don't know enough. You never will. So that's how I think of it. I'm not saying, God damn it. I want to be able to my kids to hunt wolves and my kids to hunt grizzly bears. They've got to be able to do that, and I'm gonna fight for I want the hunting because I think this ultimately what gets hunters and me as a as somebody who really cares about the community further along. Anyway, if we're able to independently prove look, you know, rather what I want or don't want. If if if you as a biology can independently prove hunting applied in this fashion is of positive, a long lasting positive. And it's better for me because it's because it's a more sound way to make that decision. Um. And so that's that's where I love the idea and I and I do think the limit we have is with science is that it provides a pathway to a certain point. It provides uh, factual information about how a system might be operating with predator and prey for example, UM, but it reaches a point where beyond that it can no longer provide the guidance. And that's why it is only one part of the tenant of the North American modeling and based on scientific data. And you could argue that it's not applied as much as it should uh and and um, but you can argue that in many cases that it is applied as it is uh necessary to apply and adequately enough, so and and it then it does come down to what does society want? What do they we choose to do, And then your argument to use science to defend for a certain action kind of goes to the side. And so we just have to be cognizant of the fact that the job as science is to just provide um an understanding, a better understanding that then provides sort of a benchmark by which someone, then a society can decide and come together, what are our values? What do we want to see? You know, you know some believe I believe this as well, that it would be nice to see um because and again this comes down to, I think the misperception about how carnivores are on the landscape, bowls and cougars, and you often hear you see this all the time on social media posts, even some prominent celebrity hunters that you know, I have a lot of respect for. You see the comments where you know, I show a picture them with a dead wolf or a dead coup here, and you're comments like, uh, you know, one less dear killer like doing your part and and it would be nice to see a greater segment of the hunting community come to appreciate, um, the carnivores role and their importance in being on the landscape. And and and I think you are seeing that I've heard. And I think more and more we are learning that you know, And we've now lived in this great an ecosystem for a quarter of a century with intact, robust carnival population in the sun rises every day, and we still get our elk tags filled and have wonderful experience on the landscape. And um, again, I think we can have a little bit of everything. Yeah, and I think we've had Dan flores on a day. He talks about cuts in much the same fashion. Um. And again, like nature abhors a vacuum, and so this carnivorous need, this this trophic need to kind of to balance it, you know, an ecosystem in that way is always there for me. And I think if anybody cares what I have to say, But like the way I try to think, and I've evolved as a hunter, and I would articulate like the voice says, like what are what's your job as a hunter? You know, what do you what do you think is the value you provide? Personally, or what's the philosophy that you moved through the world with when you're out looking for an animal, And and increasingly I think of like I'm here for ecological health, Like I'm here for I need to understand biodiversity. I need to understand like predation. I need to understand all these things because if I can be an agent for the health of this ecosystem that I live in and care about so much about, there'll be so many other things that are benefits from that that I maybe I'm not gonna see if I don't care about the entire picture. If I'm just like I'm gonna go over that Elk lives, I'm gonna shoot it, I'm gonna eat it. I'm gonna celebrate the meat itself. I'm gonna celebrate essentially like the game, like quality of hunting, the adventure, the challenge, all those parts are are all things that I and used to kind of paint the picture. But when it comes down to like what is my purpose, my purpose in to the world for hunting? Like and I also often think people are asking anti hunters and non hunters are asking why is hunting good for society? Or you need to take society off why is hunting good? And if you can answer that question, like me, as a hunter, I care about the health of an ecosystem. And if every hunter kind of started to adopt this thinking, then we would have a bunch of agents of these ecosystems going out and trying to understand it. And I think we would have more of what we more of what we all really enjoy as a hunter being out there on the landscape. We'd have that in more places. And um and you know, understanding that the choices we make as a hunter ripple throughout. I mean, just think about I think about how many few beef cattle I've eaten over the lat and it's not that I love that, and but I just think of that small part of the last twenty years of my diet, in my connection to my food that as a hunter, that has linked me to wanting to have a landscape like this, but also also wanting to see that wolf and cooker track out there. And and you know, so it goes beyond all those really important things that I also identify with that you just listed off of. You know, what why you hunt and why it's important to you. Um, And it goes beyond that, I mean, And and we all make choices every day in life to do things, whether it's to own a phone, uh, drive a car, buy meat from a store, hunt meat from the land, don't eat meat at all. And they all are easy to justify from your perspective, And but they can all have um reasons to argue and it too and so um yeah, I mean I'm simple, especially out of here. No, not at all and and um so yeah, I mean where does that leave us? It leaves us with this idea that my perspective. If the better we understand how the role of predation fits on these landscapes from natural carnivores, um, those of us that are hunters who can appreciate and identify and maybe truly admire that element of those carnivores, because there's something in that that we are either jealous of or in or enamored with or admire. Um, the better we understand that and those truths, I think, the um, you know, the better we will fit in as humans on that same landscape and and have more of those landscapes. Yeah. And as we continue like these conversations are important to unpack these things and continue to run at these hard issues and say like I'm not gonna and I'm gonna instead of avoiding this because I would tell you I'm I'm not going to go out there and shoot a wolf, so what do I care? Um, but having the kind of you know, worldview where you're like, I want to kind of tackle these tougher issues because they do inform the rest of the thing I love to do. Um, you know, and then not again, I come back to this, I'll continue to I like to challenge my own I think the most interesting conversations are one that challenge your own assumptions or your own bubble think, or you're like the assumptions of all the people around you that tell you that, you know, in this case, wolves are bad. Wolves are bad, and I agree with you. I've seen a lot of hunters in my purviews say like the grip and grow with the wolf is to say like, you're welcome, we did it, we did it together. There's three more. You're like, yeah, maybe, But that all that does is bolster the argument of the anti hunter who says you're just out there because you're killing wolves because you want more. Dear, You're not, You're not doing that for conservation, wildlife management. And I've always struggled with the with the idea and this is my you know, I think any hunter can relate to this, that internal debate of you know, killing an animal, taking life of an animal, and when you come to that choice of the hunt, when you do that, it's always that internal struggle for many, myself included, and um, but you know, and you had this such a deep admiration in sense of wanting to make sure that these animals are out there in the landscape. I'm always sort of struck by how many people have an hatred for a wild animal. I mean, I guess I have just never experienced that or can't comprehend that of how you can love one sort of animal then see another and I have an actual hatred in your heart for it. Um. I struggle with that and trying to understand where that comes from, and deep it is, deep seated. And um you know, because you know someone could argue to me, while you you kill an elk, you must not like them, or you must be okay with just taking the life, and um, you know it could be further from the truth. And you know that's always hard to defend to someone that hasn't gone through that or haven't had that experience. But um, it is interesting that there are some people that feel hatred in their hearts towards a wild animal that's just out there doing its things well that you do for a job, Thank you for a job. There's people that have unhealthy admiration and love for wolves. Yeah, and it totally skip over. Here's the dichotomy I think it's worth talking about. There's a lot of people on the environmentalist protectionist side that have this overwhelming love for these animals and anthropomorphize them and make them out to be something they're not. And then conversely to that, you have hunters or some of my friends where like nature is Metal, where they're like wait, wait, wait, look how look how awful they are, or look at how bloodthirsty they are, or look at how what they really do. I mean, you think you love an animal that would rip an elk out of, you know, the birthing canal of a cow and eat it alive. Essentially, Um, you love that? Um I hate that because it's due in that to an animal that I hunt. Somewhere in the middle of that is the truth, right somewhere in the middle of that is the truth and an understanding the animal, which you help people with just in this conversation is a beginning of of not having either of those unhealthy views, you know. And that's what happens when we apply human emotion and judgment and value onto the lives of wild animals. I mean wolves, you know, simply put, are not good or bad. They do what they do because they've been doing for thousands of years and that's how they've been successful. And um. And you know, as soon as we come in there with some judgment of this is good or this is bad. Uh, that's when you know, the human perspective will drive how we then choose to live or not live with these animals. Sou But I you know, I do think as we uh, look at what we almost lost for wildlife, for a wildlife heritage, habitat landscapes, and what we're losing every day. Um, if we can remind ourselves when we get a place like a yellow Stone of that, you know, wouldn't it be great to have more of this or this is what it used to be in many places and and and appreciate that and learned from that in and maybe apply that to you know, reaching out beyond the boundary of a protective preserve like Yellowstone and going onto, for example, our public lands where you know, I look across here, across the boundary Yelsta National Park and the Custer Gallatin Forest up there, and I can see the very spot this fall where I was fortunate during our archery season to to just to get a magnificent, beautiful bowl in my backyard on public land, and and I just it was this very emotional thing for me to look down on this landscape I've spent my career as a biologist, look around someone that's passionate about hunting, feeding, my family being part of that community as well, uh and having it all pulled together, and just feel how lucky that I'm living in a time when um, I can experience all this uh in one in one place, because there's so many places where that can't and that's not even possible in oh my gosh. Yeah. And if if in humanity and hundreds of years from now we moved past this thing that you and I like to do, then at least we were here. At least we were the last vestige of of enjoying it. The one day it will be the young kids. Instead of dreaming about the places scene, they'll be dreaming about we gotta get through. They won't be dreaing ab back in Clinton era. Um well, thanks man, I really appreciate it. Plug your book one more time and tell people when it's coming out and where they can get it. So we have a book coming out called Yellowstone Wolves, Science and Discovery in our world's first national Park, University of Chicago Press. It was a five year effort to pull together twenty five years summary of synthesizing the story of wolves back in Yellowstone. There's we We've tried to write the book so it's very accessible to the lay audience. We've synthesized the science, referenced our per reviewed science publications, but tried to do storytelling. Storytelling is at the heart of so much of what our human cultures do and the value importance, and as scientists, we need to tell our story, tell the wolves story, and we have. The book really encompasses everything from predator prey, genetics, disease, the history of bringing wolf us back, um the human wolf dimension. We even have a wonderful chapter describing sort of the challenges in and of trans boundary management of wolves across a park and in public lands outside the park, bringing a lot of different voices together, men and women that have been involved with the story of of Yellowstone Wolves. Uh, we're very proud of it. We hope a lot of people, uh get their hands on it. It's will be available in November. Um, a very affordable book, whopping thirty five dollars and uh, we're excited for people to hear the story. Yeah, me too. I'm I'm glad to be I guess we could be like signing off from a ridge in the Yellowstone serengetti. Um, but well, thanks for taking me out here. Thank you for including me and what you do every day. And as I tell my wife, I'm going to try to If I podcasting thing don't work out, I'm gonna go back to school. All right now, we'll take you on as a technician next winter. So all right, man, thanks, all right, Thanks Ben, Bye bye. That's it. That's all another episode th HC in the books. Thank you to Dr Dan Staylor. Thank you to everybody at Yellowstone National Park for doing what you're doing. Riding the great outlet for us to have these discussions. They're very important and we will continue to track grizzly bears and h wyoming the Greater Yellstone ecosystem, continue to track wolves in Colorado, and wolves and grizzly bears and everything else here where we live in Montana and across the Rocky Mountain region. But it was fun, man, that was one of my favorite conversations. So hopefully, um, you guys got out of it what I did, which is is simply that predators, apex predators, charismatic megafauna, however you want to call them, um, have a place in our culture for a reason. Right, Phil, That's right, that's it. That's all you had to say. It's a long once. We're gonna keep it short again. Thanks to everybody for sending in your videos, your poems, everything for the Great American Doors Contest. Make sure you go call the switchboard, call your representative. Times running out. This is important and once we get across the line, we can all celebrate together with a nice white claw. Um. And by the bye, Phil, have you had the pure white claw? The unflavored white claws? No, there, that's one I haven't had. They also have these lower calorie run ones that come in different flavors. That I've had the seventy cow ones. Yeah, they got pineapple, they got clement I haven't had those. Are those good? Clementine is good, pineapples are right, pineapple sounds good. The pure one is dogshit. Well sure, it's just like a sparkling water that even if even a little kick, even if one day, which this may never happen, if White Claw sponsors the show, they're not warm. We're not gonna do ads for pure because I drink my White Claw because I want to, I don't. I want to argue with you about the flavors. And if there's no flavor, then what can we argue about? There's nothing to argue. I think I would argue pure as a flavor, and I would say you're not. I would say you're not in any position thinking that no flavor is a flavor. Yes, you're not in a position to be making demands about your non existent White Claw ad campaign. I'm saying, if they eventually come around, they're gonna want to get on board. They'll pay me and they'll be like, it's a full on I probably won't and calling it pure, what's more pure about it? You didn't put the flavor in it Does that make it pure? What should it be called? I don't know. She should be called nothing. What's the flavor? Nothing? Nothing, Seltzer water. They come on, man, white claw, pure my ass? All right? Well next week because I can't go a week without doing right drinking in heaven

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