Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Night of the Grizzlies

Transcript

Night of the Grizzlies · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, we want to let you know and remind
0:03
Speaker 1: you that our first ever Stuff you Should Know episode
0:05
Speaker 1: on Vinyl a podcast LP is out an available for purchase.
0:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the episode is vinyl. Our episode on Vinyl
0:13
Speaker 2: is now available on vinyl. If you can wrap your
0:15
Speaker 2: heads around that.
0:16
Speaker 1: That's right. And they're beautiful. They look amazing. We partnered
0:19
Speaker 1: with Born Losers Records and they were great to work
0:21
Speaker 1: with and it's just a real feather in our cap
0:24
Speaker 1: to be able to hold some Stuff you should Know
0:27
Speaker 1: physical media.
0:28
Speaker 2: Finally, Yeah, and they make a great holiday gift for
0:30
Speaker 2: the stuff you should Know fan in your life, a
0:32
Speaker 2: great Halloween gift, a great Canadian Thanksgiving gift, a great
0:36
Speaker 2: regular Thanksgiving gift. They're appropriate for all those jams.
0:40
Speaker 1: So just go to syskvinyl dot com and order yours now.
0:43
Speaker 1: They ship out on October twentieth. Welcome to Stuff you
0:48
Speaker 1: Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:56
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
1:00
Speaker 2: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's here too, and this
1:03
Speaker 2: is Stuff you Should Know. Let's go. How do you
1:07
Speaker 2: like that one?
1:08
Speaker 1: I did? I'd also like his title that Livia gave
1:11
Speaker 1: this one. Yes, it's very fun. Can I read it?
1:14
Speaker 2: Sure?
1:15
Speaker 1: The Night that Transformed Bear human relations.
1:19
Speaker 2: It's pretty straightforward and says everything you need to say.
1:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's actually sadly very accurate.
1:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. And yet despite it being that straightforward, there's a
1:28
Speaker 2: pretty interesting story hidden amid those letters.
1:34
Speaker 1: Sounds like a crossword clue it does.
1:36
Speaker 2: I feel like we should tell that story now or else? Really?
1:40
Speaker 2: What are we doing here? Chuck?
1:43
Speaker 1: All right, well, I think this is one of those
1:45
Speaker 1: Unfortunately we can't just sort of play out as a
1:48
Speaker 1: teaser to reveal what happens. I think we kind of
1:51
Speaker 1: need to say what actually happened and then tell that story. Yeah,
1:56
Speaker 1: all right, did you want to tease this thing out?
1:59
Speaker 2: No, and justult.
2:01
Speaker 1: Because what we're talking about is a very sad night
2:04
Speaker 1: August of nineteen sixty seven when two young women, two
2:08
Speaker 1: nineteen year old women were killed by two and here's
2:13
Speaker 1: the kicker, two different bears in two different places in
2:18
Speaker 1: the same National park. If it was one bear that
2:22
Speaker 1: just went crazy or something and they were all camping together,
2:26
Speaker 1: that would be obviously tragic, but not like, Hey, we
2:29
Speaker 1: need to really look at what's going on here. And
2:31
Speaker 1: that's what happened, because it was two bears in two places.
2:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the reason why it was such a kicker
2:36
Speaker 2: is because in the fifty seven years leading up to
2:39
Speaker 2: that that Glacier National Park was a national park, only
2:43
Speaker 2: three other people had ever been killed by grizzly bears.
2:46
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, it went from three
2:49
Speaker 2: people in fifty seven years to two women in two
2:51
Speaker 2: separate incidents in one night. That is crazy, and it
2:54
Speaker 2: really did kick off this a national conversation about should
2:59
Speaker 2: grizzly bears stay alive as a species because we like
3:04
Speaker 2: living in national parks? Do we have the right to
3:06
Speaker 2: do that kind of thing. It's a pretty interesting story.
3:09
Speaker 2: It's got a lot of facets to it. And I
3:11
Speaker 2: feel like we should talk a little bit about grizzly
3:13
Speaker 2: bears first, because I didn't realize that they were just
3:16
Speaker 2: a subspecies of brown bear, although that makes a lot
3:18
Speaker 2: of sense.
3:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, grizzlies are brown bears. They are generally darker than
3:24
Speaker 1: brown bears in coloring. They're generally smaller. They can be
3:28
Speaker 1: you know, a couple hundred pounds up to about six hundred,
3:31
Speaker 1: but they And it's interesting here because I think it
3:35
Speaker 1: depends on where you live and here you ask. Like,
3:37
Speaker 1: usually brown bears are called brown bears. When they're more coastal,
3:43
Speaker 1: like the ones you see like grabbing that salmon out
3:45
Speaker 1: of the river, you would call a brown bear. I
3:46
Speaker 1: thought that was a grizzly, whereas if you live inland
3:51
Speaker 1: and you're a bear, a brown bear, you're called a grizzly.
3:53
Speaker 1: But then I also saw people talking about coastal grizzlies,
3:57
Speaker 1: so it may be one of those names is just
3:59
Speaker 1: sort of been tacked onto a lot of kind of
4:02
Speaker 1: brown bears.
4:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's just, you know, it's confusing.
4:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they're brown bears.
4:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're brown bears, which makes them, you know, and
4:11
Speaker 2: they're relatively small brown bear. There's a type of brown
4:13
Speaker 2: bear called a kodiak that gets up to ten feet
4:16
Speaker 2: tall when it's standing on its hind legs.
4:18
Speaker 1: No, thank you.
4:19
Speaker 2: Grizzlies are not nearly that big, but they're still big enough.
4:22
Speaker 2: I mean, the males can get up to about six
4:24
Speaker 2: hundred pounds, and there used to be a lot more
4:28
Speaker 2: of them than there are today. The early nineteenth century,
4:32
Speaker 2: I think, I think around the time of Lewis and
4:35
Speaker 2: Clark there was an estimated fifty thousand to one hundred
4:39
Speaker 2: thousand grizzly bears. They went all the way from Canada
4:42
Speaker 2: down to Mexico. They were in every what's now states
4:46
Speaker 2: along the West, all the way over to the Great Plains.
4:49
Speaker 2: There was a ton of them. And then as we
4:51
Speaker 2: started to move out there, we meaning white American settlers
4:54
Speaker 2: and colonists. Part of what that whole West were expansion
5:00
Speaker 2: included was not just wiping out Native Americans, it was
5:04
Speaker 2: also wiping out large carnivores too.
5:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, like when they talk about taming the West, that's
5:09
Speaker 1: what they mean. It's like, let's go out there and
5:11
Speaker 1: kill things. And they did this for a few reasons.
5:14
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was because they had cattle that they wanted
5:17
Speaker 1: to take care of, or you know, occasionally if they
5:20
Speaker 1: thought they were in harm's way, they might kill a bear.
5:23
Speaker 1: But a lot of it was just that sort of
5:28
Speaker 1: I was about to say human nature, but really man's nature,
5:32
Speaker 1: at least some men, not me or you, to want
5:35
Speaker 1: to kill big, beautiful animals because they're big and beautiful,
5:39
Speaker 1: and you know, I guess could be considered dangerous.
5:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to keep an eye on those people
5:44
Speaker 2: because they can very quickly become real like most dangerous
5:47
Speaker 2: game types.
5:48
Speaker 1: Right, that's right.
5:50
Speaker 2: So by the time nineteen sixty seven rules around, when
5:53
Speaker 2: the two nineteen year old women who died lost their lives,
5:58
Speaker 2: and I'll just go ahead and say their names are
6:00
Speaker 2: Julie Helgeson Man and Michelle Coon's. By the time they
6:06
Speaker 2: died in August of nineteen sixty seven, grizzly bears had
6:10
Speaker 2: been wiped out so thoroughly that they had a territory
6:13
Speaker 2: that was about two percent of what it had once been.
6:17
Speaker 2: Mostly they were in national parks because those were protected areas,
6:21
Speaker 2: and there was something like under a thousand of them
6:24
Speaker 2: in the entire continental United States.
6:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's two percent is great when you're talking milk.
6:30
Speaker 1: It's not great when you're talking about animal populations.
6:33
Speaker 2: Did you write that one down?
6:34
Speaker 1: I didn't. It just gained.
6:35
Speaker 2: I mean it still present.
6:38
Speaker 1: Here's the weird thing, though, is, and it seems rather counterintuitive,
6:42
Speaker 1: there were there were more even though there were fewer bears,
6:44
Speaker 1: there were more human encounters with these bears for this
6:47
Speaker 1: very reason. And as we'll see, this is what part
6:51
Speaker 1: of what led to this huge mess. And it's really
6:55
Speaker 1: hard to if you're our age and maybe obviously younger.
6:59
Speaker 1: You don't realize that National parks weren't always these places
7:03
Speaker 1: where they really were smart about everything they did right,
7:08
Speaker 1: because at the time, they would do some crazy things
7:12
Speaker 1: in national parks. They would try and get bears around,
7:14
Speaker 1: they would leave food out, they would There was one
7:18
Speaker 1: story here that Livia found where and luckily a park
7:21
Speaker 1: ranger kind of stopped this in the act. But these
7:23
Speaker 1: parents brought a bear over with some food with a
7:26
Speaker 1: candy bar and then tried to put their eighteen month
7:30
Speaker 1: old on this bear's back to take a picture.
7:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a story in that same article about a
7:34
Speaker 2: guy who was trying to lure a bear into his
7:37
Speaker 2: car to get a photo of it behind the wheel. Yeah,
7:40
Speaker 2: just people interacting with giants. Again, six hundred pound grizzly bears.
7:44
Speaker 2: They can just take your head clean off if they
7:45
Speaker 2: want to. But that's the thing. They are really unpredictable,
7:50
Speaker 2: and for the most part, they're vegetarians. I think plants
7:53
Speaker 2: make up something like ninety percent of their diets, and
7:55
Speaker 2: a lot of times they're I don't want to say docile.
7:58
Speaker 2: But the eight month old baby survived, and so did
8:02
Speaker 2: the mom. And so did the dad. If that bear
8:05
Speaker 2: had acted any differently, they wouldn't have survived. So I
8:08
Speaker 2: saw that their personalities can best be summed up as unpredictable.
8:12
Speaker 2: But at the time in the sixties, that is not
8:14
Speaker 2: the impression people had of bears. They were kind of
8:18
Speaker 2: considered a lot more gentle. There was a park ranger
8:22
Speaker 2: who was quoted by Jack Olsen who will meet in
8:24
Speaker 2: a little while, who said that on a scale of
8:28
Speaker 2: a danger scale, where a butterfly is a zero and
8:31
Speaker 2: a rattlesnak is a ten, the grizzlies of Glacier Park
8:34
Speaker 2: would have to rate somewhere between zero and one. That
8:37
Speaker 2: is entirely wrong. He really should have said they rate
8:41
Speaker 2: between a zero and a ten. And you have no
8:43
Speaker 2: idea which what it's going to be at any given moment.
8:46
Speaker 1: If you encounter a bear, yeah, and you know, like
8:49
Speaker 1: a lot of large animals like this, when there is
8:53
Speaker 1: a you know, their accident. So I'm gonna call it
8:56
Speaker 1: an accidental killing. Because bears weren't like, ooh, human, let
8:59
Speaker 1: me eat them, like you said. They're mostly vegetarian, and
9:02
Speaker 1: even when they ate stuff that was non vegetarian, it
9:05
Speaker 1: wasn't like oh boy, let me go chow down on
9:07
Speaker 1: that person. It was let me go chow down on
9:10
Speaker 1: that person's steak by the fire or the fish that
9:13
Speaker 1: they're cooking, or something like that. And so when there
9:15
Speaker 1: is an accident, it's usually one of a couple of things.
9:18
Speaker 1: It's either the sort of familiar scenario where you stumble
9:21
Speaker 1: upon a bear and scare them, or they may have
9:24
Speaker 1: their cubs around them. I be a mama with some cubs,
9:27
Speaker 1: or it is that bear that's like, wait a minute,
9:30
Speaker 1: that's my food. You're eating that fish out of that river.
9:32
Speaker 1: I want it, so let's go. Yeah.
9:35
Speaker 2: Apparently they defend their food like it's like with the
9:39
Speaker 2: most jealous violence that they need to like, that is
9:43
Speaker 2: their food, even if it's your food.
9:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, because that bear thinks it's their food because
9:49
Speaker 1: it's their territory. And the other thing that Livia was
9:52
Speaker 1: keen to point out, which is like it sounds sort
9:55
Speaker 1: of funny at first, but it really is a thing
9:57
Speaker 1: that you need to pay attention to, is the Yoga
10:00
Speaker 1: Bear cartoon was a big thing, and Yogi and Booboo
10:05
Speaker 1: as these sort of friendly bears going after the picanic
10:08
Speaker 1: basket that came about, because that's what it was like.
10:12
Speaker 1: It wasn't like someone said, I got this crazy idea,
10:15
Speaker 1: let's take these ferocious animals and make them a hand
10:18
Speaker 1: of Barbara and let's make them into a lovable cartoon character.
10:22
Speaker 1: It was like, No, that's when you went to these
10:24
Speaker 1: national parks. Like you said, people are luring bears around.
10:27
Speaker 1: They're like, ooh, take my picanic basket. If I can
10:30
Speaker 1: take a picture, pick a picture, pick a picture. Yeah,
10:35
Speaker 1: going to make that into a cla picnic thing. Anyway,
10:38
Speaker 1: That's how things were. So that's why they made that cartoon,
10:41
Speaker 1: and that was just sort of what was going on.
10:44
Speaker 1: Like they literally at Glacier at one Oh I'm sorry,
10:48
Speaker 1: this is at Yellowstone, but they were doing similar things
10:50
Speaker 1: in Glacier. At Yellowstone they put bleachers up around the
10:54
Speaker 1: open air dumps so people could show up and watch
10:57
Speaker 1: the bear show, which was bears wandering in to eat.
11:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. So a lot of people rightfully lay a lot
11:03
Speaker 2: of the blame for the deaths in nineteen sixty seven
11:06
Speaker 2: at the feet of the administrators of national parks at
11:09
Speaker 2: the time, because they were using the bears as entertainment
11:12
Speaker 2: and at the very least even if they weren't in
11:14
Speaker 2: some of the parks, they were not instructing the public
11:18
Speaker 2: on how to interact with bears and just how dangerous
11:20
Speaker 2: bears were. And that was a huge problem because, like
11:23
Speaker 2: you said, people were treating them like they were just
11:25
Speaker 2: these docile, gentle animals that wouldn't do them any harm.
11:28
Speaker 2: And then the other factor that kind of gets overlooked
11:32
Speaker 2: is that this is right after the national highway system
11:35
Speaker 2: had really been developed and people were hitting the road.
11:38
Speaker 2: So these national parks were suddenly just swamped with tourists
11:41
Speaker 2: for the first time in their history. So people were
11:44
Speaker 2: there were far fewer bears, but there were a lot
11:46
Speaker 2: more people all up in the bear's grills than there
11:49
Speaker 2: ever had been in human history.
11:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, and leading up to this specific incident, and we'll know,
11:54
Speaker 1: we'll detail a little bit more of this after I
11:57
Speaker 1: guess we'll take a break here in a couple of minutes.
11:59
Speaker 1: But at Glacier there were sort of in the days
12:02
Speaker 1: leading up, there were a lot of alarming incidences where
12:05
Speaker 1: bears were becoming way more aggressive or if you're watching
12:09
Speaker 1: a cartoon, way more friendly than they had been. There
12:13
Speaker 1: were fires that came through the park in the summer
12:15
Speaker 1: of sixty seven, so that shrank their habitat some and
12:18
Speaker 1: kind of squeezed them into a smaller area. And there
12:21
Speaker 1: was one bear in particular that had been reported a
12:25
Speaker 1: few different times. I went back, I'm sure you did too,
12:27
Speaker 1: and read this great original Sports Illustrated article. Who was
12:32
Speaker 1: it that wrote that?
12:33
Speaker 2: Jack Olson?
12:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, jack Olson is kind of the standard account of
12:37
Speaker 1: this horrific event. But this bear was an emaciated female
12:41
Speaker 1: who is underweight. Had been reported a lot going up
12:46
Speaker 1: to people being very brazen and you not like typically
12:50
Speaker 1: when you see a bear, if you ever watch these
12:52
Speaker 1: outdoor shows, you start yelling at the bear, like get
12:55
Speaker 1: out of here, and clanking a pot and the bear
12:57
Speaker 1: usually he's gonna leave. Bears are scared and they don't want
13:00
Speaker 1: to be around people. But this bear was not taking
13:03
Speaker 1: any orders and not doing any of the things that
13:05
Speaker 1: a bear would usually do. It would just come into
13:08
Speaker 1: a camp and start eating and not leave until they
13:11
Speaker 1: wanted to leave. This skinny lady bear right.
13:14
Speaker 2: So we have in the Western National Park System a
13:18
Speaker 2: situation where bears have become acclimated to humans. They're totally
13:23
Speaker 2: fine with being really close to humans, kind of not
13:26
Speaker 2: scared of us. And then also they had become habituated
13:30
Speaker 2: on human food and garbage, and they now associated humans
13:35
Speaker 2: with food and they were no longer scared of humans.
13:38
Speaker 2: There were a huge population of bears in the western
13:41
Speaker 2: parks with lots of humans coming to see them.
13:45
Speaker 1: All right, well, that sounds like a very natural place
13:48
Speaker 1: to stop, thanks and never come back, but we do.
13:52
Speaker 1: We have to tell this bad story, so we'll be
13:54
Speaker 1: back right after this, all right, So we're going to
14:22
Speaker 1: take this one horrible incident at a time, and we're
14:26
Speaker 1: going to start with the story of you mentioned earlier,
14:28
Speaker 1: Julie Helguson. Man, that is really hard. For some reason,
14:33
Speaker 1: it is I want to say a different word, but
14:35
Speaker 1: it's Julie Helgason. She was from Minnesota, and she was
14:41
Speaker 1: nineteen years old. Along with her friend that we're going
14:45
Speaker 1: to meet who also lost her life, Michelle Coons. They
14:47
Speaker 1: were both working summer jobs at Glacier. I imagine in the
14:51
Speaker 1: late sixties at Glacier it was probably pretty great. I mean,
14:54
Speaker 1: Glacier is an amazing place even today, but back then,
14:57
Speaker 1: I imagine it was a pretty awesome summer job to have.
15:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think Julie was working in the laundry
15:04
Speaker 2: facility and Michelle was working in a gift shop. And
15:07
Speaker 2: that makes the whole thing even more bizarre to me
15:09
Speaker 2: because they knew each other. They both set out on
15:13
Speaker 2: separate hikes on the afternoon of Saturday, August twelfth, nineteen
15:17
Speaker 2: sixty seven, and they knew each other well enough that
15:20
Speaker 2: Julie and her crew invited Michelle or no vice versa.
15:24
Speaker 2: Michelle and her crew of five other friends and a
15:27
Speaker 2: dog named Squirt invited Julie and her friend I'm getting
15:34
Speaker 2: boyfriend vibes, Roy duke It to join them. But Michelle
15:39
Speaker 2: and her group were going somewhere. I think they were
15:42
Speaker 2: going to Trout Lake, and Julie and Roy had been
15:46
Speaker 2: to Trout Lake the weekend before, so they wanted to
15:47
Speaker 2: go in a different hike to Granite Park. She La
15:50
Speaker 2: and they all set out, and these were experienced hikers.
15:53
Speaker 2: They knew what they were doing, and they were off
15:55
Speaker 2: to have a good weekend overnight camping trip out in
15:59
Speaker 2: the woods. In the back country is what they call it,
16:01
Speaker 2: but the back country is another word for wild territory.
16:05
Speaker 1: That's right, I imagine they you know, we say they
16:08
Speaker 1: knew each other imagine it was a pretty tight knit
16:11
Speaker 1: group back then. There are many many more employees now
16:14
Speaker 1: at these national parks and there were back then, and
16:17
Speaker 1: you know these they were the same age, and they
16:18
Speaker 1: were teens working this like amazing summer job. So we're
16:23
Speaker 1: talking about Helgeson and du Kat at this point, they
16:26
Speaker 1: hitchhiked to the and if you've ever driven down this road,
16:30
Speaker 1: it's amazing. It's called going to the Sun road. The
16:33
Speaker 1: main roadways it is, but it's really great. Well it's
16:37
Speaker 1: really not because you don't actually go to the sun
16:39
Speaker 1: it we'd be going toward the Sun road would be
16:41
Speaker 1: what it should be called. But they went to spend
16:44
Speaker 1: the night at this chalet initially, but the chalet was full,
16:48
Speaker 1: and so back in the days where when you could
16:50
Speaker 1: be surprised by something like that, and when they got there,
16:54
Speaker 1: they they saw it was full and they said, all right,
16:55
Speaker 1: well we'll just go camp about five hundred yards away.
16:58
Speaker 1: We'll go camp in the woods sort of the immediate backcountry,
17:01
Speaker 1: and they ate dinner, they watched the sunset off that road,
17:05
Speaker 1: and they take it. They didn't have tents because they
17:08
Speaker 1: thought they were going to be the chalet. No, so
17:10
Speaker 1: they just bedded down in their sleeping bags on the
17:12
Speaker 1: ground outside.
17:13
Speaker 2: I've seen sleeping bag. Oh, that's why I took it
17:18
Speaker 2: to possibly be her boyfriend.
17:19
Speaker 1: But you could have zipped them together. That'll move.
17:22
Speaker 2: There's one thing that yeah, I guess so I forgot
17:25
Speaker 2: you could do that. There's one thing we should say
17:28
Speaker 2: about the chalet Granite Park chalet that they hiked to
17:31
Speaker 2: and were camping near. That was the site of a
17:36
Speaker 2: purposeful feeding area that the managers of the chalet were
17:39
Speaker 2: throwing out food scraps to attract the bears for the
17:42
Speaker 2: entertainment of their guests. And just four days before this,
17:46
Speaker 2: some rangers had visited Granite Park chalet saw what they
17:49
Speaker 2: were doing and we're like, you can't do that, stop
17:52
Speaker 2: doing that, And the manager were like, sure, sure, we'll
17:54
Speaker 2: definitely stop doing that. So these guys are open air
17:57
Speaker 2: camping about five football fields away from that very shellet.
18:02
Speaker 1: That's right. So after they're in their bags at night,
18:05
Speaker 1: just after midnight, a bear arrived, grizzly bear to their
18:09
Speaker 1: camping spot. And you know, some of this stuff has
18:13
Speaker 1: come out later in different forms, whether it was interviews
18:16
Speaker 1: with survivors after the fact, or that sports Illustrated story
18:20
Speaker 1: or them writing about it years later, and they've tried
18:23
Speaker 1: to piece it together as best they can. But I
18:25
Speaker 1: did see some of the details kind of varied here
18:27
Speaker 1: and there among the accounts. But what we do know
18:30
Speaker 1: is that Ducott said later on that Julie had seen
18:34
Speaker 1: the bear and woke him up and said, hey, there's
18:36
Speaker 1: a bear here. And from what I read in Sports Illustrated,
18:40
Speaker 1: it was about ten feet away, but it was definitely
18:42
Speaker 1: a bear, and so she's like played dead. The bear
18:45
Speaker 1: did not fall for that and began mauling Ducott got
18:50
Speaker 1: to his arms, his legs and his back and then
18:53
Speaker 1: left him alone and then dragged poor Julie Helgeson off.
18:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so Ducott and there were other people camping nearby,
19:02
Speaker 2: and you know, the chalet was five football fields away,
19:05
Speaker 2: but there was probably help there. So they were screaming there,
19:07
Speaker 2: using their flashlights to flash sos and they managed to
19:10
Speaker 2: get the attention of some people who called for a helicopter,
19:14
Speaker 2: and they came and got Ducat and he said, well,
19:17
Speaker 2: don't forget Julie. She's out there somewhere. Apparently a ranger
19:21
Speaker 2: who would have been in charge of sending out the
19:23
Speaker 2: search party waited about two hours before he finally said, okay,
19:29
Speaker 2: let's go out and find her because he was concerned
19:31
Speaker 2: about putting other people's lives in danger, additional lives and
19:34
Speaker 2: danger searching for her because we might run into that
19:37
Speaker 2: bear and that I don't know if that caused her death.
19:42
Speaker 2: I mean, the bear caused her death, but that might
19:45
Speaker 2: have helped seal her fate. Two hours, Yeah, that was
19:48
Speaker 2: two hours they finally found her. This happened just after midnight. Remember.
19:51
Speaker 2: They finally found her and got her to the chalet
19:54
Speaker 2: at three forty five am, and she died at four
19:58
Speaker 2: to twelve am. She we had puncture wounds to her
20:01
Speaker 2: throat and lungs, but she probably had died largely of
20:05
Speaker 2: blood loss and it entered shock and that was it.
20:10
Speaker 2: So I don't you can't really say, yes, she definitely
20:13
Speaker 2: would have survived, but perhaps her chances of survival would
20:17
Speaker 2: have been higher had they gone out and searched for
20:19
Speaker 2: and founder a couple hours earlier.
20:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think for sure. My initial reaction was to be,
20:25
Speaker 1: you know, like, what the heck with this ranger? But again,
20:29
Speaker 1: this is nineteen sixty seven, it was a different time.
20:31
Speaker 1: They didn't have the resources they do now they didn't.
20:34
Speaker 1: I'm sure now if there's any kind of bear situation,
20:37
Speaker 1: they A they know exactly what to do and exactly
20:40
Speaker 1: how to handle it, and B they have I would
20:43
Speaker 1: imagine they have all kinds of tranquilizers or just more
20:47
Speaker 1: guns and stuff to deal with this kind of thing
20:50
Speaker 1: that they didn't have back then. I mean, it sounded
20:52
Speaker 1: like if they would have gone after this bear, it
20:54
Speaker 1: might have been one park ranger who maybe had a pistol,
20:57
Speaker 1: maybe didn't, and then a bunch of other people with
20:59
Speaker 1: you know, baseball bats or something like. They weren't prepared.
21:03
Speaker 1: So I tried not to judge too harshly that this
21:06
Speaker 1: guy said, hey, let's wait, because they had never encountered
21:10
Speaker 1: something like this before.
21:11
Speaker 2: And I think rightfully so, like people don't usually make
21:14
Speaker 2: decisions out of cowardice. It's normally there's some other line
21:18
Speaker 2: of thinking that in hindsight proved to be a bad decision.
21:22
Speaker 2: So that was the unfortunate death of Julie Helgeson. She
21:27
Speaker 2: was very terribly mauled and died of blood loss and
21:31
Speaker 2: wounds to her lungs and throat. Michelle Coons just hours later,
21:38
Speaker 2: essentially around the same time that Julie Helguson was dying
21:42
Speaker 2: in a makeshift operating room at the chalet, a bear
21:47
Speaker 2: was wandering up to Michelle and her her group's sleeping
21:53
Speaker 2: bags that they had set up around a campfire and
21:56
Speaker 2: a beach, because that same bear had already visited them
22:00
Speaker 2: all the way back at eight pm and caused them
22:02
Speaker 2: to split.
22:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that bear came up. This bear came back
22:07
Speaker 1: a few times. It was it was a very kind
22:10
Speaker 1: of one of those things. Again, in hindsight, you're like,
22:14
Speaker 1: they should have gotten out of there, but you know
22:15
Speaker 1: what kind of detail, all the reasons why they had
22:19
Speaker 1: gone fishing. They set up by this great lake, not
22:23
Speaker 1: capital great lake, but this amazing lake. No, right, they
22:26
Speaker 1: went fishing. They're one of the guys that was with
22:29
Speaker 1: them was just sixteen years old, like these were kids,
22:31
Speaker 1: you know. And he caught one fish. He caught a
22:34
Speaker 1: rainbow trout, augmented that meal with some hot dogs, grilled
22:39
Speaker 1: it up, and that grizzly, like you said, at eight pm,
22:42
Speaker 1: came wandering around and they took off. They watched this
22:46
Speaker 1: bear from a short distance eat that food and then
22:49
Speaker 1: grab one of their backpacks and take it away. And
22:52
Speaker 1: this is a point where like they could have gotten
22:55
Speaker 1: the heck out of there, but they were like, it's
22:56
Speaker 1: getting dark, we don't know what to do. This bear left.
23:00
Speaker 1: It got our food, so it's probably fine now, right.
23:03
Speaker 1: And also, if we're going to get out of here,
23:04
Speaker 1: we got to go through this berry bush field that
23:07
Speaker 1: are you know, that's tall berries or bears love those berries,
23:10
Speaker 1: so they're you know, that bear may be there, there
23:12
Speaker 1: may be may be more bears. So let's go down
23:15
Speaker 1: here to the beach area. Let's build a huge fire
23:19
Speaker 1: to try and help keep the bear away. And they
23:21
Speaker 1: built a log barricade between that fire and their old
23:25
Speaker 1: campsites and then line their sleeping bags up around this campfire.
23:29
Speaker 1: But very key here they did bring some food. They
23:32
Speaker 1: brought some cookies and some cheese its so to that
23:35
Speaker 1: new campsite.
23:36
Speaker 2: So is that the idea that that that was what
23:39
Speaker 2: attracted the bear back again? The food, Yeah, the cheese its.
23:43
Speaker 1: I mean it was food and thereafter food.
23:46
Speaker 2: So okay, we should also say one other thing. As
23:49
Speaker 2: they were before they even reached Trout Lake in the afternoon,
23:52
Speaker 2: when they were on their hike to it, they passed
23:54
Speaker 2: some other hikers who said that they had been recently
23:57
Speaker 2: chased up a tree by a grizzly around that bear
24:02
Speaker 2: nuts to that we're gonna keep going, and that that
24:05
Speaker 2: same bear they believe. Also, it turned out actually they
24:08
Speaker 2: not even they didn't believe it, like it was that
24:11
Speaker 2: same troublesome bear that had been chasing girl scouts around
24:15
Speaker 2: and had had been a problem all summer because it
24:18
Speaker 2: was underfed and emaciated. And apparently that's a really good
24:23
Speaker 2: way for a bear to start acting and behaving very
24:26
Speaker 2: oddly and aggressively, is when it's underfed.
24:29
Speaker 1: That's right. So this same bear that has been overly
24:34
Speaker 1: aggressive toward everybody it meets, it seems like, came back
24:37
Speaker 1: again after the eight o'clock visit, came back at three
24:40
Speaker 1: am in the middle of the night. One of them
24:42
Speaker 1: wakes up, sees that that fire is has basically died out,
24:46
Speaker 1: and he jumped up things. The guy who caught the
24:48
Speaker 1: trout jumped up to go start rebuilding this fire again
24:52
Speaker 1: really quickly, and apparently set those cookies down on that
24:56
Speaker 1: log barrier that they had between it and the old
25:00
Speaker 1: camp site. So now it's three am. They all decide
25:05
Speaker 1: the bear takes these cookies and goes away, and they
25:08
Speaker 1: all decide, listen, we're gonna stay awake for the rest
25:11
Speaker 1: of the night because now we're out here in the
25:13
Speaker 1: middle of the night, we're genuinely stuck, like we can't
25:15
Speaker 1: just hike off in the darkness, and so they decide
25:19
Speaker 1: to all stay awake together.
25:21
Speaker 2: So, man, I would have been quite scared by this time.
25:25
Speaker 2: This is the second time the bear visited, right.
25:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, eight o'clock PM, three am, constantly just taking this food.
25:32
Speaker 2: And then now we get back to four thirty am
25:35
Speaker 2: when the bear returns a final time, and this time
25:38
Speaker 2: it just goes straight up aggressive. I don't know if
25:40
Speaker 2: it was because they ran out of food and the
25:42
Speaker 2: bear didn't like the fact that they didn't have any
25:43
Speaker 2: more food or what, but it bit one of the
25:46
Speaker 2: guys sleeping bags. It clowted his sweatshirt. So now we
25:51
Speaker 2: get back to four thirty am when that bear returns
25:53
Speaker 2: a final time, and I don't know if it was
25:56
Speaker 2: because they had run out of food and the bear
25:58
Speaker 2: didn't like that very much, but it became more aggressive
26:01
Speaker 2: than the other times, and it actually started attacking the
26:04
Speaker 2: kids in this camping group. One of them had its
26:07
Speaker 2: sleeping bag bitten, which if a bear's attacking you and
26:10
Speaker 2: it bites your sleeping bag, that's kind of best case scenario.
26:14
Speaker 2: Clawed his sweatshirt, and I think there was other bear
26:18
Speaker 2: encounters in this event.
26:20
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, so that was Paul Donne. He starts screaming,
26:24
Speaker 1: He runs away and climbs a tree. This bear is
26:27
Speaker 1: chasing him. He runs away and he climbs a tree.
26:29
Speaker 1: This kid's sixteen, So he's up this tree in a
26:32
Speaker 1: matter of seconds. Apparently he did get all cut up
26:34
Speaker 1: in stuff though, because he didn't have a shirt on
26:36
Speaker 1: and he was, you know, climbing like a person scared
26:38
Speaker 1: of a bear. Sure, so he gets up in this tree,
26:41
Speaker 1: and from up in this tree, he looks down and
26:44
Speaker 1: this bear is sort of circling below him. His friends
26:47
Speaker 1: are at the camp. They have obviously woken up at
26:50
Speaker 1: this point, and they see the bear circling the tree,
26:53
Speaker 1: so that they use that as their opportunity to get away.
26:56
Speaker 1: They grab that dog first of all, Squirt, And yeah,
26:59
Speaker 1: they grab Squirt when this thing first started happening. They
27:03
Speaker 1: grabbed it and put it inside the sleeping bag and
27:05
Speaker 1: literally like had their hand over this dog's poor dog's
27:09
Speaker 1: mouth like to try and play dead. But so they
27:11
Speaker 1: finally get away as well. They run away while this
27:15
Speaker 1: bear is circling the tree below Paul Dunn and except
27:19
Speaker 1: for one person, and that was Michelle Coons. She they
27:23
Speaker 1: hear there, literally, you know, thirty forty feet away from
27:28
Speaker 1: this bear and their friend, and they hear her screaming.
27:32
Speaker 1: They're like, you know, get out of there, get out
27:34
Speaker 1: of there. They hear her yell, I can't he's got
27:36
Speaker 1: the zipper. They hear her yell, he's ripping my arm.
27:40
Speaker 1: He's got my arm. My arm is gone. And then
27:44
Speaker 1: they finally hear her yell, oh my god, I'm dead,
27:47
Speaker 1: and this bear carries her off in the sleeping bag,
27:50
Speaker 1: still right right in front of them.
27:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they are. They have no trouble staying awake
27:57
Speaker 2: for the rest of the night. At this point. They
28:00
Speaker 2: couple hours later, the sun came up, and after it
28:03
Speaker 2: did and they saw that the bear was gone, they
28:06
Speaker 2: took off for help. Right.
28:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a you know, in these parks, I'm
28:12
Speaker 1: sure they still have stuff like this, said what's called
28:14
Speaker 1: seasonal rangers that were maybe just there for the summer.
28:17
Speaker 1: And there was a guy named Bert Gildart, and he
28:20
Speaker 1: said at six thirty in the morning, he was at
28:23
Speaker 1: West Glacier at this point in his little apartment, he
28:25
Speaker 1: got a knock from another ranger named Norm Hagen, and
28:29
Speaker 1: Guildhart was the one who knew about that previous killing
28:32
Speaker 1: earlier in the night. And I'm not sure how, but
28:35
Speaker 1: somehow he managed to go back to sleep, and he's
28:37
Speaker 1: the one that got the emergency responders there. Hagen shows
28:40
Speaker 1: up and says that there's a young woman who is
28:42
Speaker 1: mauled at Trout Lake. And he was like, no, no, no,
28:44
Speaker 1: you're confused. This was over at the chalet. And then
28:49
Speaker 1: as you know, this Hagen guy keeps going, it dawns
28:51
Speaker 1: on him, like, my god, what has happened. This has
28:54
Speaker 1: happened twice in a matter of hours.
28:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he very quickly out of himself over to
29:01
Speaker 2: Trout Lake. I read that he essentially ran four miles
29:05
Speaker 2: from the trailhead to the lake and there was another
29:08
Speaker 2: ranger already there named Leonard Landa and two other men
29:12
Speaker 2: arrived by helicopter and they formed a little search party,
29:15
Speaker 2: and very quickly Leonard Landa discovered Michelle Kuhon's body. And
29:22
Speaker 2: you had said earlier that like grizzly bears just generally
29:26
Speaker 2: don't see humans as prey or as food, and one
29:30
Speaker 2: of the things that makes them so unpredictable is they'll
29:32
Speaker 2: do that sometimes sometimes they do see us as prey
29:35
Speaker 2: and food. Like sometimes they'll attack one person in a
29:38
Speaker 2: party see them as food, and then attack the other
29:41
Speaker 2: people that defend that first person that they see as food.
29:45
Speaker 2: And that seemed to be the case also with Michelle Coons,
29:48
Speaker 2: because when her body was discovered, the bear had begun
29:52
Speaker 2: eating it. And another dead giveaway usually is that the
29:56
Speaker 2: bear will eat some and then go essentially bury the
30:01
Speaker 2: body under some like dirt and twigs and stuff like that,
30:03
Speaker 2: and then sit around and protect it. And I don't
30:06
Speaker 2: know if I don't think they found the bear around
30:08
Speaker 2: her body. They just found her body, but yeah, but
30:11
Speaker 2: she had been essentially partially eaten.
30:14
Speaker 1: Man, all right, I feel like we should take another break.
30:17
Speaker 1: That is the sad story of what happened that night,
30:19
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk a little bit about the
30:21
Speaker 1: aftermath of what happened right after this.
30:49
Speaker 2: Okay, So that was a big deal, not just in Glacier.
30:53
Speaker 2: That stuff made it out very quickly and one of
30:56
Speaker 2: the first responses among park officials was to go find
31:00
Speaker 2: these bears that did this, and not only that, we
31:03
Speaker 2: might have a problem with any bear that eats human food.
31:07
Speaker 2: So Gilder and Landa formed like basically a death squad
31:13
Speaker 2: looking for bears, especially the one who killed Michelle Kuons,
31:18
Speaker 2: and they were basically instructed to shoot any bear that
31:22
Speaker 2: didn't run away from him. And the first day they
31:24
Speaker 2: didn't find any bears. They stayed overnight at a patrol
31:27
Speaker 2: cabin at a place called Arrow Lake, and when Gildert
31:31
Speaker 2: went out to use the bathroom the next morning, he
31:33
Speaker 2: saw a bear and he called for Landa to bring
31:36
Speaker 2: out the rifles, and Landa did, and as they were
31:39
Speaker 2: standing there, giving the bear chance right, because none of
31:42
Speaker 2: these people wanted to kill bears, there wasn't like vengeance necessarily,
31:46
Speaker 2: and even if there was, I think actually that's not true.
31:49
Speaker 2: I think Gildert had a sense of vengeance and then
31:51
Speaker 2: eventually kind of had a change of heart. But some
31:54
Speaker 2: of the other rangers were not happy about this job
31:57
Speaker 2: of killing bears. And even if they, however they felt
32:01
Speaker 2: about it, you were supposed to still kind of give
32:04
Speaker 2: the bear a chance. If the bear took a step
32:06
Speaker 2: towards you, that was a dead bear. If it ran
32:09
Speaker 2: away from you, that bear could live to you know,
32:12
Speaker 2: be examined. Another day, this bear started coming toward them,
32:16
Speaker 2: so they had to kill it.
32:18
Speaker 1: That's right. And this was the bear. The bear was
32:22
Speaker 1: seventeen years old. The bear was under three hundred pounds.
32:26
Speaker 1: And I know we said their range can be a
32:28
Speaker 1: couple of hundred and up, but I get the idea
32:30
Speaker 1: that this was a larger bear that was under three
32:33
Speaker 1: hundred pounds and like clearly underfed and emaciated. They opened
32:38
Speaker 1: this bear's stomach jaws movie style and found some a
32:44
Speaker 1: big ball of blonde hair undigested inside the bear, and
32:48
Speaker 1: also found this which and this is is all. It's
32:52
Speaker 1: a tragedy for these humans. It's a tragedy for these
32:54
Speaker 1: bears because they had been you know, fed human trash
32:57
Speaker 1: for so long, and we're used to people. It's not
33:00
Speaker 1: their fault. But they found glass embedded in the molars
33:04
Speaker 1: of this bear. So this bear had been eating glass
33:07
Speaker 1: food that was probably in glass from trash and made
33:11
Speaker 1: it difficult for this bear to eat. Probably probably made
33:13
Speaker 1: the bear very uncomfortable and grumpy, and that probably all
33:18
Speaker 1: contributed to what happened to Michelle Kuhon's.
33:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's really important to remember that none
33:24
Speaker 2: of this was the bear's fault. The bears were acting
33:27
Speaker 2: like bears, and they were being essentially mistreated by humans
33:32
Speaker 2: in the park administrators by allowing them to get habituated
33:36
Speaker 2: human food, because it was destined. This was destined to
33:40
Speaker 2: happen essentially the way that people were behaving in the parks.
33:45
Speaker 2: So they had definitively the bear that killed Michelle Kuhon's.
33:49
Speaker 2: I mean, they didn't test the hair or anything like that,
33:51
Speaker 2: but it was just her. Yeah, they were still looking
33:56
Speaker 2: for Julie Helgeson's bear, and they actually never offinitively identified it.
34:01
Speaker 2: But another ranger named Dave Shay, who was among a
34:05
Speaker 2: group of four who shot a bear and her cubs
34:08
Speaker 2: that were feeding at the Chalet garbage pit, he was
34:13
Speaker 2: convinced that that was the one that killed Helgeson because
34:16
Speaker 2: that bear had blood on her claws, and I don't
34:18
Speaker 2: believe Julie Helguson had any feeding done to her, So
34:22
Speaker 2: it's not like that could have been an innocent bear
34:24
Speaker 2: that just came along and was like, oh, I'm going
34:25
Speaker 2: to have a bite of this but didn't kill her.
34:27
Speaker 2: It was almost certainly the bear that killed her. And
34:30
Speaker 2: even if it wasn't, there an orgy of grizzly bear
34:34
Speaker 2: death fell over Glacier and Yellowstone and the other national
34:39
Speaker 2: parks that had grizzly bears in the ensuing weeks, months
34:44
Speaker 2: and years after the Night of the Grizzlies.
34:46
Speaker 1: Absolutely, like you said, the media got hold of this
34:49
Speaker 1: and all of of course, all of a sudden, everyone
34:52
Speaker 1: once got an opinion. Everyone thinks that they know exactly
34:55
Speaker 1: why this happened. Some people were like, well, there were
34:58
Speaker 1: thunderstorms and lightning nearby that could have agitated them. The
35:02
Speaker 1: idea that bears are attracted to minstrual blood was brought up.
35:07
Speaker 1: I think they now say that that's maybe true with
35:10
Speaker 1: polar bears.
35:11
Speaker 2: Only well, they've never experimented with They experimented with polar bears.
35:16
Speaker 2: Polar bears showed a preference for that and like seal
35:18
Speaker 2: blood or something, and then they've never experimented like that
35:22
Speaker 2: with grizzlies. But somebody that did like a once over
35:25
Speaker 2: of grizzly attacks and didn't find any pattern necessary. So
35:28
Speaker 2: we don't know experimentally, but we do know anecdotally that's
35:31
Speaker 2: probably not true.
35:32
Speaker 1: Right, But at any rate, that doesn't keep the media
35:34
Speaker 1: from reporting something like this, sure, and then showing up
35:37
Speaker 1: in Anchorman as a joke years later. But you know,
35:42
Speaker 1: it was coincidence. There was never any like link between
35:46
Speaker 1: these two. It was just a really bad coincidence, a
35:49
Speaker 1: horrific example of bad human luck that night between these
35:53
Speaker 1: two young women. Jack Olson wrote that story, the Sports
35:57
Speaker 1: Illustrated Story, which is a really fun read parts and
36:00
Speaker 1: three separate issues that you also get the benefit of.
36:04
Speaker 1: The ads of nineteen sixty seven in a magazine Whi's
36:06
Speaker 1: always fun. I'm sorry. This is nineteen sixty nine when
36:09
Speaker 1: it finally.
36:09
Speaker 2: Came in, right, the Summer of Love, right, that's.
36:12
Speaker 1: Right, one of them. This was when everything started to change.
36:17
Speaker 1: People started. There was a biologist name Gardner Moment who said,
36:23
Speaker 1: you know what we should And it's interesting that this
36:27
Speaker 1: was a biologist, but this guy came out and was like, hey,
36:29
Speaker 1: you know what, we need to finish what our forefathers started,
36:33
Speaker 1: and we need to make them extinct in the United States.
36:36
Speaker 1: And not only that, but the common rat in the
36:38
Speaker 1: fire ant, some kinds of sharks that seats fly this
36:42
Speaker 1: guy was like, let's wipe out anything that bothers humans
36:46
Speaker 1: or is a potential threat to humans.
36:48
Speaker 2: If a biologist can be a hack, Gardner Moment was
36:50
Speaker 2: a hack biologist. Agree, that's just a terrible idea, and
36:54
Speaker 2: it's not like that was just like the zeitgeist. People
36:58
Speaker 2: arguing it, like Gardner Moment introduced it to the zeitgeist,
37:01
Speaker 2: or at least kind of stoked any existing feelings in
37:05
Speaker 2: the public. And so now all of a sudden there
37:07
Speaker 2: was like a push to get rid of grizzly bears
37:10
Speaker 2: because they wouldn't behave around the humans that had invaded
37:13
Speaker 2: their areas.
37:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, luckily that didn't happen, right. I think there were
37:18
Speaker 1: more people, or I don't know about more, but there
37:20
Speaker 1: were people beating the drum on the other side of like, no,
37:23
Speaker 1: this is not something we should do, and they went out.
37:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, real biologists, grizzly biologists. They're known as the father
37:28
Speaker 2: of grizzly Fathers of grizzly biology. They were twin brothers,
37:32
Speaker 2: Frank and John Craighead, and they became the Philischaffley of
37:38
Speaker 2: the movement to eradicate bears. They just almost single handedly
37:44
Speaker 2: gotten the way of that and managed to swing public
37:46
Speaker 2: sentiment back toward conservation. And it was a real that
37:52
Speaker 2: was a real accomplishment because when Jack Olsen wrote Knight
37:56
Speaker 2: of the Grizzlies, which by the way, there it was
37:59
Speaker 2: called the Grizzly Bear murder Case in Sports Illustrated.
38:02
Speaker 1: Right, Oh wow, I'm.
38:03
Speaker 2: Glad they switched it. When he wrote the actual book
38:08
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty nine, he was a disinterested observer, he
38:14
Speaker 2: was a reporter, but he concluded like that was the
38:17
Speaker 2: fate of the Grizzlies. They were goners, Like the public
38:20
Speaker 2: had turned against them so much that it was all
38:23
Speaker 2: but already done. So the Craighead brothers managing to turn
38:27
Speaker 2: public sentiment like that was a big deal. And they
38:29
Speaker 2: did it by saying, like, there's just a few common
38:32
Speaker 2: sense things we need to do, and if we do them,
38:34
Speaker 2: you're going to basically get rid of human bear interactions
38:40
Speaker 2: or deaths by grizzly bear.
38:42
Speaker 1: Yeah. And they actually had research. They weren't just saying,
38:45
Speaker 1: you know, this is what we think. They had a
38:46
Speaker 1: full decade of human grizzly interaction and they could point
38:51
Speaker 1: to actual stuff and say no, no, no, this is what
38:53
Speaker 1: we have found. And they cited this research. And this
38:57
Speaker 1: is a great quote. I think it was John that said,
39:00
Speaker 1: you know, getting rid of all these bears, he said,
39:02
Speaker 1: would be as tragic as the leveling of Yellowstone Canyon
39:05
Speaker 1: because somebody fatally fell from its brink. Yeah, like, you
39:08
Speaker 1: don't go knocking down the mountain because someone fell off
39:12
Speaker 1: of it, And you don't go killing all the grizzlies
39:14
Speaker 1: because they killed somebody.
39:15
Speaker 2: Jack Kerouac said, you can't fall off a mountain. Did
39:19
Speaker 2: he really, Yeah, it was in the Dharma Bums.
39:21
Speaker 1: I read that one. It's been a while.
39:23
Speaker 2: So the common sense stuff that they pointed out, where
39:26
Speaker 2: like keep humans out of some parts of the park.
39:28
Speaker 2: It's like, sorry, this is bear territory. Just leave it
39:31
Speaker 2: to the bears. Don't go back there, it's too dangerous
39:34
Speaker 2: for you. Step one, at least another is just like
39:37
Speaker 2: actually monitor bears, like start tracking the bears in the park,
39:43
Speaker 2: know them, get to know who they are, and then
39:45
Speaker 2: also like when they're moving around, you should probably have
39:49
Speaker 2: a good idea of where they are and win and
39:51
Speaker 2: who's around them. And basically just teach the public that
39:56
Speaker 2: Yogi bear is fictitious, not a real bear. He lives
39:59
Speaker 2: in Jellystone you're in Yellowstone. Big difference, right, And if
40:04
Speaker 2: they do that, but also teach the public like, yes,
40:06
Speaker 2: they're a risk. You're at greater risk outboating on one
40:10
Speaker 2: of the lakes. But they are still a risk, so
40:12
Speaker 2: treat them as such. They're a wild animal. But yes,
40:15
Speaker 2: go see them and take in their majesty, but from
40:17
Speaker 2: afar like that would definitely reduce encounters and thus the
40:23
Speaker 2: chances of bears killing humans.
40:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you've been to a national park at
40:29
Speaker 1: all in the last well, since this really then what
40:33
Speaker 1: you see are bearproof garbage cans. I actually bought these
40:36
Speaker 1: for my camp. I have bearproof stuff at my camp.
40:40
Speaker 1: Bearproof garbage cans. You're going to see where you're cooking
40:44
Speaker 1: area should not be where you sleep. You're going to
40:47
Speaker 1: see these cables strung between trees or you're encouraged and
40:51
Speaker 1: they teach you how to do it yourself. So you
40:53
Speaker 1: hang up your food high off the ground, suspended between
40:56
Speaker 1: trees at night. You can't just loop it over a
40:58
Speaker 1: branch because they'll climb up that tree. You gotta suspend
40:59
Speaker 1: it to pain in the butt, but you got to
41:01
Speaker 1: do it. And you know this stuff now you can't
41:04
Speaker 1: go to a national park or go back country camping
41:06
Speaker 1: without seeing signs and just knowing everything that we know
41:11
Speaker 1: now has all been in place literally because of this
41:14
Speaker 1: night that all came out of this, that you shouldn't
41:17
Speaker 1: have food around your camp, You cannot entice bears. Don't
41:21
Speaker 1: get that candy bar near your windshield, Like this is
41:24
Speaker 1: not how we should be treating bears.
41:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think also a general idea that your
41:29
Speaker 2: bad behavior might not result in your death, but you're
41:32
Speaker 2: increasing the chances that it could kill someone else. So
41:35
Speaker 2: there was a collective responsibility that was put upon visitors
41:38
Speaker 2: to the park too, and I think that was super helpful. Yeah,
41:43
Speaker 2: like we said, there was a this changeover wasn't just
41:48
Speaker 2: without fault. Apparently Yellowstone was just they just shut down
41:52
Speaker 2: the garbage dumps like they were like no more garbage
41:55
Speaker 2: for bears. Smart, I mean what you would do in
41:59
Speaker 2: response to something like the Night of the Grizzlies. But
42:01
Speaker 2: the Craighead brothers had said, like, don't do that, Like, yes,
42:06
Speaker 2: shut them down, but do it gradually and start supplementing
42:09
Speaker 2: their food that you're taking away from them with actual
42:12
Speaker 2: food of theirs, like elk or something like that, and
42:15
Speaker 2: they didn't do that, and as a result, the bears
42:18
Speaker 2: were now made more appearances at campgrounds looking for food
42:22
Speaker 2: because the dumps have been shut down, and it ended
42:25
Speaker 2: up in more bare deaths and the death of a
42:27
Speaker 2: camper in nineteen seventy two.
42:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's basically saying it's basically like having
42:32
Speaker 1: a food store for a wild animal that they know
42:35
Speaker 1: is always open, and then they just shut that food
42:38
Speaker 1: store down all of a sudden. The bear doesn't know
42:41
Speaker 1: that they're going to keep coming back there. They're going
42:43
Speaker 1: to be confused. It will take them a long time
42:46
Speaker 1: to learn that there's not food there to go elsewhere,
42:49
Speaker 1: which is why the Craighead said to do it gradually.
42:51
Speaker 1: It makes sense, but just rash decisions were made, Like
42:55
Speaker 1: you said, in seventy two, another camper was killed. This
42:59
Speaker 1: was an illegal campsite I think, and you know had
43:03
Speaker 1: left their food out, so that's what happened. They still
43:06
Speaker 1: killed a lot of bears. I think one hundred and
43:09
Speaker 1: eighty nine bears were killed between sixty eight and seventy three,
43:14
Speaker 1: and by nineteen seventy five, between those killings and then
43:17
Speaker 1: the lack of food, there were only one hundred and
43:19
Speaker 1: thirty six grizzlies left in Yellowstone, prompting them to be
43:24
Speaker 1: placed on the Endangered Species list and covered by the
43:27
Speaker 1: Endangered Species Act. They've made a very nice recovery such
43:33
Speaker 1: I believe they have six recovery zones starting in the
43:35
Speaker 1: early nineties, one of which was in Glacier and one
43:39
Speaker 1: around Yellowstone where they you know, were trying to have
43:42
Speaker 1: reintroduced these bears. And now they are up to a
43:46
Speaker 1: couple of thousand I think in the US.
43:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think nearly two thousand.
43:52
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean such that there are people now that
43:54
Speaker 1: are saying, like, hey, we should let people hunt bear
43:57
Speaker 1: again in the US.
43:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which is a great idea. Do it. Of course,
44:01
Speaker 2: we should really get that instinct of killing a large
44:05
Speaker 2: trophy animal for bragging rights back as soon as we
44:08
Speaker 2: possibly can.
44:09
Speaker 1: That's sarcasm.
44:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so that didn't do a way like it's
44:14
Speaker 2: not the end of bear killings among humans, like it
44:17
Speaker 2: does happen. Actually, twenty twenty three has seen four different
44:21
Speaker 2: deaths from three different bear attacks just this year alone
44:25
Speaker 2: in I think national parks in the United States. That's
44:28
Speaker 2: pretty significant because it is really really rare despite you know,
44:34
Speaker 2: events like that. The National Park Service estimates that if
44:38
Speaker 2: you visit a national park you have a one in
44:41
Speaker 2: two point seven million visits chance of being injured, not killed,
44:47
Speaker 2: injured by a bear. But if you stay in the
44:49
Speaker 2: developed areas like the roads and everything and don't go
44:52
Speaker 2: into back country, you have a one in thirty nine
44:56
Speaker 2: point six million chance of being injured by a bear.
44:59
Speaker 2: But it it cuts both ways because if you do
45:01
Speaker 2: go back country camping overnight, you have a one in
45:04
Speaker 2: five hundred and fifty four thousand overnight visits chance of
45:08
Speaker 2: being injured by a bear. So it really depends on
45:11
Speaker 2: where you go and what you do, and if you
45:12
Speaker 2: put yourself out there in bear country, you have to
45:16
Speaker 2: come prepared.
45:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've done. I mean, you know, we've got my
45:20
Speaker 1: little black bears at my camp that I've caught them
45:23
Speaker 1: my camp camp. But these are the you know, the
45:26
Speaker 1: little guys in Georgia and they No one has literally
45:28
Speaker 1: ever been killed by a bear in Georgia. But I've
45:31
Speaker 1: done a lot of camping in back country, camping out
45:33
Speaker 1: west over the years, and I never saw a bear.
45:37
Speaker 1: You know, it's if you're smart, It doesn't mean it
45:40
Speaker 1: can't happen, but like you said, the chances are very remote,
45:42
Speaker 1: but you got to be smart. You got to do
45:44
Speaker 1: the right thing with your food and your trash, be
45:46
Speaker 1: good steward of the land. Back in the late sixties,
45:49
Speaker 1: it was I think at one point Olivia said that
45:52
Speaker 1: they were starting to clean up a little bit then,
45:54
Speaker 1: and they got three helicopters worth of trash just out
45:58
Speaker 1: of this one area of glacier. People. This is the
46:01
Speaker 1: time when people just go back country camping, not everyone probably,
46:05
Speaker 1: and just leave their stuff another yeah, and just leave
46:10
Speaker 1: their garbage. And it's a Thankfully, we've come a long
46:13
Speaker 1: way since then, and even though that still happens, I
46:16
Speaker 1: guarantee you every time there's a bear incident in the
46:19
Speaker 1: United States, it is highly scrutinized and studied, and they're
46:22
Speaker 1: still trying to learn from it.
46:23
Speaker 2: Yep, you got anything else?
46:26
Speaker 1: I got nothing else?
46:27
Speaker 2: All right, Well, if you want to know more about
46:29
Speaker 2: bear attacks, go familiarize yourself, especially if you're going to
46:33
Speaker 2: a national park. And since I said that, it's time
46:36
Speaker 2: for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this.
46:40
Speaker 1: One Hammond clock. Remember we talked about the Lawrence Hammond episode.
46:44
Speaker 1: He made those clocks.
46:45
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the tickless clock.
46:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tim and Sarah have one and it's beautiful. Hey, guys,
46:50
Speaker 1: listening to the Lawrence Hammond episode and had to write in.
46:52
Speaker 1: My wife's parents owned a Delhi in Brooklyn and had
46:55
Speaker 1: a Hammond electric clock hanging up for many years. When
46:58
Speaker 1: they passed on, the clock came to our possession not
47:01
Speaker 1: in the greatest shape. I was able to clean it
47:03
Speaker 1: up and discovered that it also had low voltage light
47:07
Speaker 1: bulbs on the inside. It took some time to find them,
47:09
Speaker 1: but I got that working too. My wife never knew
47:13
Speaker 1: that the face lit up all those years. That's super cool.
47:15
Speaker 2: Yes.
47:16
Speaker 1: During my online searches for bulbs, I had read about
47:18
Speaker 1: the uniqueness of the Hammon electric clock. One thing he
47:21
Speaker 1: did differently from all the other electric clock manufacturers at
47:24
Speaker 1: that time was his clock requires a restart when the
47:27
Speaker 1: power goes out and comes back on. The other people's
47:31
Speaker 1: clocks start right back up automatically, And Hammond designed it
47:35
Speaker 1: the way on purpose. And I agree one hundred percent
47:37
Speaker 1: with the design decision. We know exactly what time the
47:40
Speaker 1: power went out. Think about it. Even if the clock
47:42
Speaker 1: automatically restarts after a power outage, you still have to
47:45
Speaker 1: adjust the time. Anyway, the man really did have an
47:48
Speaker 1: analytical mind and thought of just about everything. And I
47:52
Speaker 1: think I agree Tim. That is from Tim and Sarah.
47:54
Speaker 2: Nice Tim and Sarah, thank you very much. So it
47:56
Speaker 2: was a great email. I guess they send a picture
47:59
Speaker 2: of the clock all lit up.
48:00
Speaker 1: They sent a picture later because I was like, why
48:03
Speaker 1: didn't you send a picture?
48:04
Speaker 2: Oh, I want to see it. Did they send it
48:05
Speaker 2: to both of us?
48:07
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but if not, I'll afford it to you.
48:09
Speaker 2: That's very kind of you. And that was Sarah and
48:13
Speaker 2: Sarah and Tim. Yes, thank you guys again. And if
48:16
Speaker 2: you want to be like Tim and Sarah, you can
48:18
Speaker 2: send us an email too. Send it off to stuff
48:20
Speaker 2: Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
48:25
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
48:28
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
48:32
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.