Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 037

Transcript

Ep. 037 · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: can't predict anything. Okay, Welcome to the Meat Eater. I
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: changed the name. It's now the Meat Eater Digital Radio Program.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I like that better. There's a bunch of people here.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna introduce him like how if if I was
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: dealing poker by going clockwise? Yo, honestly tell us by
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Janni is his new name? Garrett Smith, who has a
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: distended belly right now, and he's and he's got a
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: chew packed and somehow they're related like that chew is
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: gonna alleviate his distended belly. I think he was trying
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: to tell us in some kind of subtle way. Um,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Chris Gil like a fish, like a fish. Who's a
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: turkey man? Now you just heard your first turkey gowl?
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I did? Is that true? I think it is? Yeah.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I can't remember hearing one before that, I mean, you know,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: other than digitally. Yeah. And then Dr Carl Malcolm Carl
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: tell us about the Wisconsin supersow Man, the Wisconsin Supersou,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: the wiscon This is the most this is it? Yeah?
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Tell us about the Wisconsin supersou all right, so a
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: little backstory, lay it all out, lay it all out,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: all right, I mean within reason. Okay, So so my
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: mom and my father. Yeah, so I'll began right around um.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: All right, So I went to graduate school at the
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: University of Wisconsin Madison, which, by the way, was the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: first wildlife management program anywhere in the world, founded by
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Aldo Leopold after he left the Forest Service. That was
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: one of the draws for me and kind of a
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Leopold junkie growing up. Um, but going to Madison, I
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: was in kind of the southern farm belt region of Wisconsin,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: and as you travel north in the state of Wisconsin,
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: you increasingly get into more and more forested landscapes, to
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: the point where you get up into the northern part
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: of the state, and the northern third is predominantly forested.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: So about halfway up you're in this interesting mix where
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: you've got about a fifty fifty ratio of row crops
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: like corn and soybeans and forest. And our good friend
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Doug Durn and south of that line, yep, he's south
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: of that line. He's just like solid egg. No, well,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: defining like the defining feature or how would you put it?
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: You know, So the Driftless area, the southwest part of
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: the state where dug Durn is located is is interesting
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: because it does have a major agricultural component, but there's
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: certainly a lot of forest land, and part of that
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: is because there's so much slope, which is unusual for
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: the rest of the state until Yeah, so there's there's
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: some untillable land, which is where you typically have forests
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: there in the Driftless area. And this relates to the
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: story because what's been happening for the last few decades
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: is that black bears throughout the Midwest are increasingly expanding
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: their range southward. So I don't know if Doug has
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: any stories about bears showing up in his property in
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: the Driftless area yet, not yet, because I feel like
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: if he did, I would have heard about it. Yeah, well,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: because he'll tell you about everything down to a greener showing,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I imagine he would, and
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: I predict that he will have that story before too
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: long because certainly bears, why why are bears mark him south?
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Like my theory on it, and this is completely untested
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: and probably you probably i'd recommend you do not publish
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the paper on this is it. It It just took him
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: a hundred fifty years to get used to people. That's
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: the case. So what I think it has to do
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: with is persecution. So black bears are extremely adaptable with
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: their diet, and everybody knows is there. Like the classic omnivore,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: they'll eat anything. They can subsist on vegetation purely. They
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: can do very well chowing down on meat and typically speaking,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: they're eating some combination of the two. So they can
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: exist just about anywhere where there's where there's food for him.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: You know, my neighbor, uh, you'll at my last cabin.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: He's telling about a guy that had a bear come
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: into his workshop and drink three gallons gear oil. That's unreal.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I wonder if you killed it. If it didn't, it
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: probably tore some gastro intestinal situation. Was debating whether or
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: not to go there. But I took the high road
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: and let you take it there. So thanks for being Yeah,
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: phenomenal omnivorse. So the point is they're they're really adaptable.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: They can live just about anywhere as long as they're
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: not being shot to the point where it's not sustainable.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: You know, if, like anything else, if you shoot enough
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of them, or you know, trap enough of them, if
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: you eliminate enough from the from the population, they're not
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: going to exist in a particular part of the state anymore. So.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: The bears, like many other species UM that are managed
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: by state agencies as hunted species, have been on an
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: upward trajectory since their low point when they weren't being
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: managed as such. So essentially, bears, like many other species,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: were persecuted by unregulated hunting for a long time and
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: driven out. I mean, we're just like no rules about
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: take and it doesn't matter what time of year, saw
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: with cubs whatever. You could at a time shoot a
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: bear and there was no just like everything else, right,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: I mean at a time, that's what it was for
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: all these species. But under managed under a management scenario
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: where we're tracking populations, were making sure that the number
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: of bears taken is sustainable. Um, they are showing that
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: they're capable of existing well outside of what people think
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: of as bear country, including places like southwest Wisconsin, which
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: historically certainly had bears and now increasingly has bears showing
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: up places like Richland County as an example. Yeah, right,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: So I'm throwing it out there for you. Always feel
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: like calling Dug up right now if he if he
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: doesn't have a bear story about his property, he will
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: he'll have well he will soon, I think, and he'll
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: certainly have bear stories from other people's properties. So part
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: of the equation here with the expanding bear population is
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: the super Sal and bears like her. And the super
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Sal was an individual bear that was part of my
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: research project and as a graduate student at the University Wisconsin.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: Who but tell, tell, tell what you were doing? Okay,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: So I was looking at that spatial expansion. So what
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: I was doing, I was I was specifically focused on
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: dispersing subadults. So black bears are really interesting and that
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: you know they're they're in the den. So they they
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: emerge into the world um with their mother in the
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: den and basically just latch on and nurse for the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: first couple of months of their lives, and then the
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: family emerges from the den in the spring. I gotta
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: ask you the other question, bring it. What's the difference
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: between precocial. They're not precocial, they are altricial. Altricial. Yeah,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: So they're born in a state where essentially um they're
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: relatively underdeveloped, they're tiny, their limbs are barely formed when
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: they're born, and they basically just navigate from the birth
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: canal to a nipple latch on. And bears in general,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: including black bears, crank out some of the most calorie
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: dense milk anywhere in the animal kingdom. It's like liquid
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: butter coming from those nipples. So they grow really fast,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: and they do after the wrong nipples. Yeah, I mean
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: it's amazing. So as an example, you know, I have
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: my hand on a lot of bears um during the
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: field work. And when you go to work up a
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: den that had a sow with cubs, the styles would
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: be lactating. And there were a number of times where
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: explaining working up a den. But use a checklist for you.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: I want you to I want to do a quickie
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: pre precocial altricial. Do quickie on that. And then don't
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: just say work up a den, because no one's gonna
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: know what the hell that means. Okay, all right, precuecial altricial.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: So species that are born precocial have the ability to
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: do things like evade predation. So, for example, like pronghorn fawns,
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: when they're born it's a matter of days before they're
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: up on their feet and able to cruise if a
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: predator shows up. Alright, altricial species are born in a
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: state where they still have a lot of development to go.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: So we're humans are altricial. Yeah, man, Yeah, you know,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: infant is not going to evade pre ation. It's got
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: to be protected, just like a bear cup all right. Now,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: working up a den essentially, what I'm referring to is
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: going into a place where bears are hibernating. They've been
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: located either because they've got a radio collar or someone
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: from the public has encountered a den and contacted through
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: some avenue researchers like myself, and we go into the
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: den with typically a poll syringe or a jab stick,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: which is basically envisioned like a broom handle with a
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: big syringe and a needle on the end. And the
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: goal is to be able to give the bear an
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: injection in some major muscle without putting yourself in harm's way.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: So you're either trying to get an injection somewhere like
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: in the buttock or in the shoulder. Those are the
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: two best spots to try to get a stick, and
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: the den's. You know, when people think of a bear den,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: most folks are thinking like a hole in the ground
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: with the bears piled up in it, a cave. But
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: and and sometimes that is the case. But I would say, man,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: probably around half the time they're above ground, maybe in
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: like a a slash pile where they've kind of carved
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: out a little nest, or sometimes just laying on the
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: ground in the wide open. You were saying, you found
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: him dend up just under like some bows, over under
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: overhanging evergreen boughs. I found him, you know, I found
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: him dend up in places where they really have almost
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: no cover. They're just like laying there in the snow,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: getting snowed on, and the cubs will be curled up
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: against their bellies. Um, and it doesn't look like they
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: put any effort at all into seeking like shelter of
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: any form, so highly variable, what these dens look like.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: I was gonna just ask if you have like has
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: that always been like that, like when you read older papers,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: did they have research that shows that as well? Or
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: do you feel do you have a hypothesis on maybe
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: why that's is it happening more now than it used to?
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Like the expanding bears aren't finding good spots, you know, man,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: or maybe they don't need to because the winner is
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: still In some places. They don't even hibernate, right, I
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: mean they in hibernation is a whole different subject. You know,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: they're not technically true hibernators. They go into like a
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: seasonal sort of downturn in their metabolism, but they're not
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: a true hibernating species. Um So, I don't think it's
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: something that has changed. I think it's part of their
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: life history. Um So, No, I don't. I do not
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: think that the denning without a hole in the ground
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: is something that is new for black bears, like it's
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: part of their life history. It has been part of
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: their life history. They basically do what they need to
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: do to survive. Some bears one year will make it,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: then the next year not. There doesn't seem to be
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: any rhyme or reason. One interesting pattern that was true
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: throughout my research and was conveyed to me by other
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: folks who have done a lot of bear handling, is
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: that an individual bear will not use the same den
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: location twice ever, and in some cases, and I thought
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: it was twice in a row but they'll alternate. I've
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: I've never seen a bear go back to the same place,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: and the people with whom I have done my research
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: have never seen a den get reused. What it makes sense.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: There's a guy I know in northern Wisconsin. Um, his
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: last name is Heart maybe Bill Hart. He owns a
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: T shirt shop. Where's Northland College something like that. There
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: is Northland College, I can't remember the town. They have
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: to think called the Secret f Olson Nature Writing Award. Yeah,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: and I won that award and was hosted by this
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: man Bill Hart. He took me down and showed me
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: undercut Bank on his property where every other year there's
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: a black bear with cubs in there, and there's a
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: little hole he can even look in there. So maybe
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: it's different bears. It's just a SP's different bears. Maybe
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: it's the same bear disproving this pattern that I've served.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: I'm sure he listen. I hate guys like I hate
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: people to do what I just did, because you're trying
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: to talk about like generally right, So generally it's bad
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: to smoke tons of cigarettes and then someone's like agreeable,
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: you know, so it's like, yeah, interesting side this fello
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: by the last name of Heart. I will go on
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: to say this, I guarantee you in the history of
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: American black bears, a bear has reused a den. That's
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: that's all I'm trying to say. Man, generally speaking, black
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: bears do not reuse den sights. And this the super
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Saudi asked about is a really interesting example of this
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: because she denned in the same like hundred yard by
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: hundred yard area, but shows different locations within this small
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: footprint during the years that I found. You're worried about
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: disease transmission of some sort. I don't know. I don't know.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe it's who knows. Man, Trying to get into the
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: mind of a bear is what we're doing here, and
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: I think it's But I don't like. Yeah, it's an
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: when you're talking about like why things do things, why
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: animals do things, A lot of people say, like, for instance,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the r day, my friend Heart, he's got a bear
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: that comes back to the same he's convinced it's the
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: same bear. Yeah, And I don't think I said, like,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: never has a bear done this. I'm not taking your task.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just asking a point. I like it.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: I like it. Um And then knowing thing people do
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: and I do it all the time, is you'll say,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: let me give an example. I was yesterday admiring some
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: turkeys that we shot on our turkey hunt. It's a
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Miriam's turkey, and a Miriam's turkey has a lot of
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: white on the end of their feathers. I was saying,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: I wonder if that has to do with heat reducing
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: how many how much radiant surface because it's a it's
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: an animal from the southwest, very intense sun. An Eastern
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: turkey has a lot of black on it. Maybe these
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: turkeys have a lot more white on them as an
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: adaptive advantage about radiant heat, Like maybe that's a problem
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: getting too hot. So I think that when you look
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: at stuff you be you'd say, like you, I can't
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: say that that's why those turkeys evolved that what you
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: could not pillage, But what would you call it? I'd
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: call it that. Okay, I can't say that's why those
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: turkeys evolved that pellage, but I could say that could
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: be something to do with it, or that it could
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: have that effect in reducing radiant heat. So, but I
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: find talking to scientists like yourself, I'll be like, oh,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: do they do it. Do the bears not want to
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: go back, maybe because of mits or some kind of
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: thing like that. I know you don't know all the way,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: but is that a reasonable Yes, it's a reasonable idea.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: It's a reasonable idea. It will be another reasonable idea
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: maybe to be unpredictable. You know, if they've got a
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: den that has been there on the ground for X
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: number of months and a certain number of animals have
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: encountered that den and become aware of its existence, then
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: there might be some adaptive advantage to moving locations, you know,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: especially if you have those extremely altricial cubs to look after. Um.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: You know, basically the onus is entirely on a mother
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: bear to make sure those cubs get to the point
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: where they can climb a tree. And they've got a
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: long road to ho from the time they're born before
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: they're to that point, because they're born in the middle
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: of the winter, right, Yeah, that's right, like February March
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, late January, yep. And then
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: like I said, you know, when when they're born, they're
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: they're tiny, and by the time they're coming out of
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: the den, they've gone from being you know, like something
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: you hold in the palm in your hand to be
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: in something that's four or five, six, maybe seven pounds,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: And so the mother has she's got to bring all
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: that all those calories, all that energy into the den
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: with her both to maintain that pregnancy, deliver the cubs,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: and then provide enough nutrition through her milk to get
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: him to the point where when they emerge from the den,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: she can wolf at them and they're ready to climb,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: because once they leave the den, you know, she's she's
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: not in a position to just protect them the way
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: she can while they're they're all bawled up in a pilot, dogs,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: other bears, all manner of things. Yeah, definitely. So that's
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: you covered on everything so far. No, man, I'm sharp,
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: I am sharp. I'm good. It is fascinating stuff. And
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: by the way, one of the highlights of this week
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: turkey hunting. Yea, you guys almost got killed by bear. No,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: we didn't almost. We had to bear encounters this week though. Um.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: The first one was going out trying to locate some
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: birds in the evening and I heard what sounded like
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: a cub kind of bowling down the hill from us,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: and then a bunch of claw marks on a tree
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: and then what had to have been the sow popping
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: her teeth, and given how late it was in the day,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: I decided not to take the shotgun with me. I
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: was just kind of strolling up the hill, and when
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I heard that sow pop in her teeth, I was like,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: let's let's take this other direction. And then, uh, what
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: was even a cooler sighting was um as yesterday morning
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: man saw that the biggest bear I've seen since coming
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: to New Mexico. And it was also the blondest bear,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: this great big boar, and UH had him while I
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: was putting a decoy in the ground and heard a
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: twig pop and looked over and he was no more
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: than seventy yards away looking at me through the trees,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: and he was just beautiful. And then we we set
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: up a couple more times, and he came back in
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: to check us out, and he was woofing at us
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: from up the hill, so we all got a good
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: look at him. Is just a beautiful animal man there,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: And you're getting a lot of bear vocalizations, which is usual. Yeah,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: that's true. You know, I was telling you I one
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: time was hand calling to a tom to a gobbler
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: and heard an exhale over my shoulder, like how someone
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: would do, like they're a little bit tired from walking
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: up a hill. And it was a bear, I mean
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: arms distance that that would be an exaggeration, extremely clear
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: enough where I could like, I could hear it breathe.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: He's coming to kill that hand When I turned around, Man,
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: it's scared the ship out of him. Scared. He freaked out. Yeah,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: he did not like that man. Yeah, and that big
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: one yesterday when he first saw me, he went part
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: way up a tree and decided that wasn't his best
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: course of defense. Came back down the tree, making so
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: much noise, breaking big branches, claws scraping on the side
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: of the tree, and then tore off up the mountain.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: And it surprised me that he came back in to
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: check us out when we were calling again. So I
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: don't know if the turkey he went and got pumped up.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe he's like, come on, dude, your whole life he's
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: been running, Go down there. You've got that guy. But
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: at least two and a half bills. It was an
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: awesome animal. Man Okay, Wisconsin, Supersouth, Okay, Wisconsin. Super south.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: So aside from the fact that she came back to
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: the same general need, I needed more background. Okay, how
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: many bear dance have you dug up? I would have
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: to look at my notebook to give you an answer.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: I would say, oh, gosh, in the neighborhood of lady
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: to fifty dans something like that that I've been or everybody.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: So I should give you a little more context on
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the research projects. We're interested in. This expansion of black
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: bears south in their range, so individuals moving farther and
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: farther south. And as you know from all the other
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: species that show up in crazy places like mountain lions
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: showing up in New York State. You know these critters
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: that go hundreds of miles. Typically it's these young males
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: disperse sing that go great distances. So I was really
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: interested in looking at the dispersal behavior of black bears.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: So what I needed for that research project was to
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: get GPS collars on yearling bears and a little bit
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: more about the biology of the species. Got you, I
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: got you. So born in the den, they get up
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: to let's say five pounds, come out of the den
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: with mom in the spring, keep growing still really dependent
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: on mom for their defense. Spend that whole spring, summer, fall,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: buy mom's side, side like insight of mom or in
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: sound range of mom. And if something's going wrong, all
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: that mother bear has to do is give a wolf,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: and the cubs know they've got to get up the
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: nearest tree. So what a lot of people don't know
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: is that when that second winner comes around, now you've
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: got Mama bear and a bunch of you know, we
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: call them year things, but they're less than a year old.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: They're just about to complete their first year. They all
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: den up together again, so you'll have a beared end
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: that might have let's say a sow that weighs two
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: thirty pounds, and then she's got x number of one
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: year old cubs, some of which might weigh as much
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: as a hundred pounds themselves, all piled up together. So
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: it could be a huge like biomass of bear in
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: a heap, and they're sorting it all out. And and
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: especially if they're underground, you know, so I mentioned I
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: described this this polsyringe that you used to sedate the bears.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: And if they're underground, you know, you've got like a
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: head lamp and you're looking in there and it's a
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: dark hole and a dark animal and they're the way
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: that they're piled up, it's like super spooning. It's like
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: a tangled mass of limbs and heads and trying to
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: figure out where one bear ends and another bear begins.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: And you don't even know how many bears there are
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: down in the hole. Like when our kids crawling with
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: me and my wife, man, yeah, just wake up. It's hard.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: You can't get out. So you're like, is that is
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: that Steve's thigh or you know, you have no idea,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: so it can. It was, and it is a nerve
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: racking thing at first to intentionally go up to a
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: den and try to sedate these animals. And you got
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: to sedate the cubs too. You have to sedate the
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: cubs when they're in that second winter when well, yeah,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: and they're you know, hundred pounds, Yeah, and they don't
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: know what's going on. They want to get away, and
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: you don't want to. You don't want to fracture that
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: family in a prematurely either, So you want to get
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: everybody sedated and then you because you don't want one
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: to run off. Yeah, and yeah, and that can happen.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: You can have individuals that you know, try to make
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: a getaway. So that's what I'm talking about when I
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: say working up a den, going into sedate um and
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: then you're getting measurements, you're taking um blood samples. You know,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: there are other research projects people were looking at a
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: variety of other topics with respect of these bears, and
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: one of the projects they're interested in in milk. In
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: in the bare milk, And I mentioned to you the
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: fat content of bare milk, and we segued several different
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: times since then, but I wanted to mention on several
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: occasions I've had bare milk on my hands when I'm
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: doing this in the winter, and obviously it's gone from
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: bare body temperature out to wintertime temperature, and it's almost
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: instantaneous that it turns into a solid and you can
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: smear it between your fingers and it feels it feels
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: like butter. I mean it, it's so it's got so
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: much fat in it that the second you take it
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: away from that that body heat from the mother, it
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: turns into a solid. And obviously for the cubs, that's
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: just going straight from bare body temperature to bare body
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: temperature inside the cup's mouth while it's ingested, but if
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: it gets out in that winter air, it is like
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: a solid material, so pretty fascinating stuff. So those cubs
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: are not a ton of weight. And the number of
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: offspring that a single sow has in a given year
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: is linked directly to her body condition. So a bear
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: that goes into the den in good condition will have
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: more cubs than a bear that goes into a den
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: in poor condition. And one of the ways that this
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: is controlled is that black bears have what's called delayed implantation,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: so they get pregnant and these little fertilized eggs just
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: kind of float around in the womb for a little
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: while and then when the time is right. The body
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: is communicating to the brain what kind of condition it's in.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: And there are a variety of chemical uh interactions that
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: scientists believe drive this relationship. One of one of the
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: keys is likely to be uh lepton, which is in
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: circulation in a in an amount proportional to body fat.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: So a really fat bear, it body is telling its brain,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: I'm in really good shape. It's brains telling its body
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: we should be having more cubs than in a poor year,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: and more of those fertilized embryos will implant into the
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: uterus wall and turn into cubs. You can you imagine
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: humans had delayed implantation, the implications at half I'm imagining it.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: We still be My wife is still have three floating
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: in there. They're like no, not quite yet, Like no
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: one are there, but not quite Yeah, So it's pretty
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: It's it's amazing stuff, man, animal kingdom. What's the maximum?
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: When you say that, how many does she have in reserve? Like?
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: How many could she have? That's it's a great question,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: and I don't know the answer to it, but I
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: can tell you that in the literature there are very
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: very few instances where six cubs have been documented. Being
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: born to a single mother in a given year seems
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: to be about the mass six is like, you know,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: like the less than once in a blue moon number.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: What's the national average? Two to three is really common?
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Two to three is really common? And imagine you know,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you asked about a national average. Obviously, depending on where
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: you are on the map, you're gonna have different food resources,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: and then even in a given location year to year,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: it's highly variable. Think about you know, in a lot
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: of these systems acorn mast crop is a key driver.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: So if you're in a place that's let's say, got
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: a lot of white oak and it's a massed year,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: you should expect those Souths to have more fat and
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: more cubs. And when it's a massed poor year and
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: they're forced to some relatively inferior calorie, poor food source,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: lower body condition for your cubs makes sense. Hold there
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: for a minute. Okay, Yehney, any questions. You're cool and
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: everything up to this point. I'm cool. I can tell
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: you that where there won't be a lot of cubs
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: come out of dentist here, and that's in Kentucky, Tennessee's straight. Yeah.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: I am curious about the the hundred yard square, like
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: if that had a reason to it with the Superstown.
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: It's a it's like how many she dined? How many
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: times within a little chunker ground? Three times I visited
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: that sow in this little area. What were the three dens?
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: So two times? It was this interesting place. It was
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: on private property. The landowner gave his permission to do
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: the work. If I remember right, it was it was
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the Pettis Farm was the name of this place. And
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: there were some stump piles there the farmer had cleared out,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: you know, some egg fields and piled up a bunch
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: of stumps. So on two of those occasions, the sow
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: was in a stump pile, but it was not the
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: same stump pile, two separate stump piles. And then on
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: a third occasion occasion, she was above the ground and
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: close to those stump piles, just laying out, just laying
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: out with a pile of pile of yearlings. So how
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: in the world does that work? I don't know, man,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: but I can tell you, like, like, how do they not?
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: So it's just laying there, like a dog could walk
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: up and start eating the young. If a dog walked
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: up and tried to start eating the young, it would
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: not go favorably for the day, even though she's in
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: a semi stupor state. Yes, and that's another sort of
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: misconception when you approach a den. And I should probably
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: have prefaced the conversation about so called working up den's
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: with a disclaimer like, no one if you find a
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: bear den should be messing with it. Just leave him alone.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: Let them do their things. Now, when you come up
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: to a den, it's not like the bear is laying
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: there in suspended animation, oblivious to your presence. The vast
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: majority of the time when I would get to the
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: point of trying to figure out how many bears are
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: in the den, is it is, you know, the den
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: above ground or below ground. By the time I found
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: that the location and was looking at the bear, the
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: bear was aware of my presence and looking back at
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: me sometimes but aware. It's not like they're you know,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: completely sedated already and you just walk up and give
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: a sleeping bear a shot. They know you're there. And
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: the speed at which they can go from being in
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: this metabolically um slow state to just being like with
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: it and running away, you know, it is remarkable. I
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: mean they can they can go from idol or sub
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: idol speed to full RPMs in a matter of minutes.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: It's really an amazing thing that their bodies can do.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: That's like me in the morning before tricky hunt. He's
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: noticed that as long he's got some of that great
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: camp coffee. Before I can even think about getting up,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: he's got the jet boils round and everything's happening. You guys, run,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: You guys are in a tight ship. Chris, are you cool?
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: And everything. Yeah, Actually I do have a question. Um,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: so averages two to three cubs per per litter per letter?
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: How many cubs? Like, how many litters can a bear
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: have in her lifetime? Is it just one? Or is it?
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: That depends on one key variable, which is how long
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: she lives? So they can't. They don't do it every year,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: though they do. That's exactly well typically, that's right. Yeah,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: so bear in mind again those cubs are born. Let's
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: say year one, the cubs are born, mama's got that
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: responsibility for a year two, right, she's denning with them again,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: so she can't give birth to a new letter and
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: care for last year's litter. So that's why there's this
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: cycle where it's a litter and then it's rearing last
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: year's litter and then they're gone, and then it's a
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: litter and it's rearing that litter and then they're gone.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: How old are they when he becomes sextually mature. It
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: depends on diet, But you can have bears that are
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: reproducing at two years of age. Yep, So they're not
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: they're they're not doing is that many times? Well, he
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: could have a black bear boar one time they aged
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: at seventeen not accurate that they can get I mean
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: they can live into their twenties. It depends, you know.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: The biggest thing is is uh, honestly, how how hard
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: hunted the population is. That's like the leading cause mortality. Ye,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: but you could you could you know in a in
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: a situation where a sow has avoided predation and made
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: it to her twenties, she might have had eight litters
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: nine litters, so they can crank out a bunch. Now
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: this style that I'm talking about, the super I named
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: her that because she perfect perfect. I'm a fan of alliteration,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: so it kind of has a ring to it. Um.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: She really stood out because I mentioned that A visit
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: her three times. The first year I visited her, she
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: had five cups, which was noteworthy in and of itself.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: She's the only bear during my research project with five cubs. Ever,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: that's a good question. I'd have to look at my
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: notes again on that. But she wasn't She was not
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: not like a monster, but she was in the neighborhood
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: of two twenty somewhere in there, so not not like
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: holy cows. Would have read reread my paper on this
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: if I knew I was going to get all these questions,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: but it's a it's a cool topic, for sure. So
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: let's say she was in the neighborhood of two pounds.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: All right, she has five cups. That's big, but not extraordinary.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: It's a good, a nice, big, sell healthy cell. So
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: she's got these five cups the first first time I've
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: seen that, really cool deal. And so I'm looking at
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: it from the standpoint of, all right, here are five
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: cubs now. But next year I can come back and
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: I'll have five year links for my research project. Because
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: then when their yearlings and they emerge from the den,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: that's when the family unit splinters, all right, breaks up,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: And oftentimes that coincides with the spring breeding season, so
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: the males are starting to chase mom around. The yearlings
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: don't want to be in the neighborhood anymore. Mom isn't
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: caring for him anymore, and the females will typically go
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: a relative short distance when they disperse. Sometimes their home
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: ranges as adults will even overlap a little bit with
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the home range of their mothers, and those young males
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: can go phenomenal distances like on the order of tens
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: to hundreds of miles they'll cover and then set up
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: shop in a new place. So I've got five bears
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: that I'm hoping the following winter I'll be able to
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: put GPS colors on from my research probac slim that's
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: gonna happen. Yeah, she's good that they're all gonna live. Well,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't say the odds are slim, because we actually
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: had pretty high survivorship of bears that we found as
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: cubs and then relocated as yearlings. Most of them survived,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: but you know, you got your hands full with five
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: offspring to deal with. I come back to the den
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: the next year hoping to find five yearlings. There are
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: five yearlings. And not only are there five yearlings, but
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: they're big, like they've thrived. They've done really, really well.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: What's big, like hundred pounds, So they've gone from five
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: pounds to hundred pounds in a year. And the males
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: were bigger than the females. The females, you know, seventy pounds.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: So there's seven hundred pounds worth of bears. A pile
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: of bears, yes, seven hundred pound blob of black bears.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: A heap of black bears, six of them yes, six
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: bears all piled up. That's incredible. So one of my
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: grad school colleagues, guy named Dave McFarland, who's a working
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: for the Wisconsin d NR now as a as an ecologist.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: He and I were tasked with getting those bears handled
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: and collared, and those five became subjects of my research.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: And then another year goes by and I go back
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: in to this same style. She's den in that same
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: general area, and she has five newborn cubs again, so
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: she has successive litters of quintuplets, and that's amazing in
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: and of itself. Furthermore, we weighed her that first year,
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: we waited the second year, we weighed her the third year,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: and over the course of birthing and weaning those ten cubs,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: she put on on the order of fifty pounds of weight,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: gaining weight, gaining weight while cranking out calories like nobody's business.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: So that's how she got the moniker of super cell. Yeah.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: So back to back litters of quinn tuplets, I mean,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: ten cubs over the span of three years. And then
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: I started getting stories to one of the one of
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: the coolest stories was from some Wisconsin Department of transportation
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: guys who had seen the sow with those five yearlings,
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: and they were going and scavenging deer carcasses that the
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: d O T guys had picked up and taken to
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: like a dump site. Secret. Well, that was part of
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: her secret. The other part of it was she was
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: living in this landscape where there's corn like corn and
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: oak forest and she's just translating all those calories into
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: bare biomass through her reproduction. But now did she do
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: it again? Though? So what she did again was rear
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: those five cubs to the point that they were yearlings
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and dispersed, and at that point I was done tracking
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: that style. Did any of the ten that you watched
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: her bring to yearling hood? Did any go south? Yes?
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: What percent went south? So out of those out of
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: those ten specific cubs, I do not know the answer
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: to that, but I can tell you that there was
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: a statistically significant skewing of the data where the bears
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: were moving in a southerly and easterly direction from that
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: sort of central forest part of the state, like moving
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: initially or winding up, winding up, winding up, So they
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: were they were checking for territory and finding unoccupied locations. Yes,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: that's certainly true. And I think one of the things
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: driving it was not only were they finding unoccupied locations,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: but they were finding unoccupied locations with ad libitum, in
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: other words, unlimited food supply and no competition. And another
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: really cool thing that happened because these GPS collars, you know,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: they've just revolutionized wildlife research because rather than going out
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: there with like an antenna and trying to locate the
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: radio signal, you're just getting thousands and thousands of locations.
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: And I had a handful of bears that made these
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: really interesting forays into totally new areas where they'd never
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: been before and distances of dozens, sometimes as much as
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: forty or fifty miles, And then they'd returned to the
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: area where they were born. And then they'd go back
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: to that place that they had explored and set up
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: shot there. Yeah, they come back to get their stuff. Well,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: you know, I think it was like get their stuff
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: out of storage, you know, again trying to try to
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: get I got to go to store. You know, it's
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: try to find a spot if whatever he'son, come back
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: where they came from, and then go back to their spot.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Do you want to see some of these data points,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: well I will buy me not right now, but i'd
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: love to. I looked at one time. We'll put some
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: if you want to share. We put somebody's up for
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: listeners to go check out. Because I also find this
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: link where I looked at one time how a wolverine
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: uses a mountain for a year, and it was just
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: his marks of all the places he went on a mountain,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: which was looking at it. It seemed like very haphazard,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: but probably made some kind of sense to him. Yeah,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: you know, it's got to be a reason for it. Man.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: So one pioneering bear, the Wisconsin super South, moves into
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: a new area semi new. Yeah, I mean she was
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: at the southern extent of what you consider like the
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: core bear range of the state, and in the course
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: of four years produces ten offspring weighing a hundred pounds.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Some of them move souphomore. So if you see a
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: bear your listeners show up in your neighborhood, think of Carl.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah they're coming, Carl. You could go, you could do
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: your thoughts last Okay, yeah you can. Here's deal. You're
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: gonna have to come back on though. I'm down for that,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: we don't even talk about what I was gonna talking about.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: Let's we'll do it again, Johnny, I'll do my job here,
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: do you. Um yeah, it's kind of general broad but
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: I love the fact that we're doing like biology and
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: science equals hunting, Like that's just awesome for me. And
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: I hope we can can te you to do that
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: and have more biologists on but on the digital radio program,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: on digital radio program. But yeah, man, I feel like
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: all hunters should be thinking, you know, with this mind frame,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: you know, and and looking at it that way so advantageous.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: I recently I gave a talk at a at a
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: thing and um, after I get this talk, well, as
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: I was preparing for my talk, I noticed my wife
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: for what she was doing. She was working on a project,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: and she had a lot of unusual magazines around our house,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: and I noticed that the big thing in magazine anyone
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: who stands in the checkout line, I'll see this. Everything's
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: like top you know, um, seven things to make for dinner,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: or like forty nine ways to blow your man's mind
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: in bed, or like a hundred and one you know
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: what I mean. Like lists are big. And my wife
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: was even telling me that an odd numbered list does
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: better than an even numbered list. People when you say
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: top ten, people think they're being bullshitted. If you say eleven,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: they're like, who, like why eleven? They want to read
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: it more so. Anyhow, at my end of my thing,
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: I had seven things that I think hunters should be doing,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: and one of those seven was why not spend more
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: time learning about a college and biology, like from real places?
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean? Like, especially if you
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: can figure out how to read the abstracts of peer
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: reviewed wildlife journals, that if nothing else, you'd be a
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: better guy to talk to in the bar, because you'd
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: be like, you know what, you'd be you'd be the
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: kind of guy who gets to go like this. You'd
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: be saying, you know what, that's not how it works,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: that's not exactly what happens. You're wrong. I read it
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: in a pure reviewed journal. Um is that if you're
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: concluding thought gret to Cotail that it was very enjoyable
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: to hunt and hike with Carl because of that fact,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: like a little tidbits, you'd point out that you knew
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: because of your studies that otherwise you know what had
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: gone unnoticed by someone like me. So that dude to
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: wealth and knowledge. He introduced me to the word music
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: and then the opposite of music is zer. So Carl
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: was describing a ridge top as being music, meaning it
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: was relatively moist by Southwestern standards. Yeah, so this is
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: one of these we didn't get talked about. Carl is uh,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: tell me what you I know what you do, but
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: just give me, give me to everybody what you do.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: I work as the Southwestern Regional Wildlife Ecologist for the
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: Forest Service, so pretty much anything related to wildlife monitoring
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: and research type stuff in the Southwest Arizona, New Mexico
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: on the Forest Services, twenty point six million acres of
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: land is under the purview of my position. And by
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: those twenty point six million acres of four Service land,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: I mean the land that belongs to all of your listeners,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: to all the listeners, to everybody around this table. And
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: that's way the world's people. That's true, because if you're
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: a German and you come over here, they're not like
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: even a German can go out there. Chris Gotty concluding thoughts, Um, yeah,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: I learned that you shouldn't go working up a bear
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: den without some sort of poking stick. He made a
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: personal note. I was like making a was like, you know,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: excuse me minute, I gotta call my wife, tell her
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: to remind me of something. I get home. Carl concluding thoughts,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: I agree wholeheartedly that you know, I think hunters. I
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: think hunters do innately have a desire to know more
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: about the places and the species that they hunt. So
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: they have the desire to know more. I think so.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: I think it's a it's a natural thing, a natural
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: fascination and and um, that was what it was. It
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: was experiences as a hunter and fisherman, just kid grown
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: up outside that led me on this career track. And
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: this career track feeds directly back into how I appreciate
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: those activities even more now than I did then. It's
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: like a it's a a feedback loop of sorts. The
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: more I learned, the more I like to hunt. The
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: more I hunt, the more I want to learn, you know,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: And if people feel that intrigue, if that's something that
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: resonates with folks, you should you should explore that when
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: you're out there. You should take the time to note
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: a question that you have and pursue additional information. And
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: you should be trying trying to find ways as individuals
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: to be more than takers from these places. If there's
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: a place from which you are taking a resource, you
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: should feel like you have a stewardship responsibility. Yes. Um,
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: my conclusion thought is I love it that I didn't
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: know about this. I knew roughly this about you. Better
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: know all the way about you did. Um, you got
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: your start on your own hunting squirrels. You're darn right.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: Carl was telling me in Michigan, where Carls grew up
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: and I did too. Deer season openers November fift The
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Carl's telling me about one time he went out on
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: a squirrel stroll on November fift that got a hollered
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: at by a deer hunter, which I kind of love.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: But you turned a love of squirrel hunting into doing
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: like very important work and our understanding and preservation of wildlife.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: I appreciate the kind words. But a squirrel hunter, debt
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: bared and digger, I would counter that squirrel hunting is
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: in and of itself important work. Yes, that that point
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: point well taken. There you have it, Wisconsin super sow
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: Dr Carl Malcolm. Can people look up your work online.
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: Is there? Do you think I go to J store
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: and pay for it? Can they find stuff? There's some
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: stuff on there for free, the best, find the abstract
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: of the super sal Yeah, the best, the best. Some
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: stuff online, you man. We'll put stuff online. We'll put
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: some of those some of those little maps showing these
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: bears roaming around. Let's do that all right. Next time,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: Carl's gonna talk about stuff that he's been doing recently,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: and that stuff you did a long time ago. Sounds good, buddy,