00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming in you shirtless, severely vote bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything? Okay, all right? Our guests Diane boy A carnivorre and wolf specialists, but kind of mostly wolves, right, that's your thing. So let's just let's just dispatch with the other one real quick. What we're like. Let's say we're not Let's say we weren't talking about wolves. What would you be a subject matter expert on? Um? Well, wolves, but I also end up taking the lions, otters, bobcats, you know, other fur bears that come in bears. Let's do my colleagues, but I do a lot of it. But I've mostly researched wolves all my life. But I've I've done a few other things to some a little bit of game big game work, um, but mostly wolves. Do you remember what was your first Did you have a wolf? An initial wolf experience that became kind of your personal genesis? Do you know what I'm saying? Like people like to later, it doesn't even feel like it's happening in real life, right in real time. Oftentimes you later look back and you realize that there was like a moment, right, did you have a moment? There are a couple of things I ended up. Um, I was really fascinated by wolves growing up in the Twin Cities because Minnesota was the only place in the seventies that had wolves in the whole lower forty eight. Really, yep, there were none in Wish Michigan, or Wisconsin the last stronghold, and there were none anywhere in the United States anywhere else. So is that really that's true? Yes, you can read it. Look Google. I didn't know that. But but but what about like the Ile Royal head wolves in two they came in. Yeah, there were wolves in IOLs Michigan. There was a handful starting nineteen fifty. But so you're saying that Minnesota never ran out, they never lost him. No, when I was a kid, I think they got down as low as somewhere like seven hundred or eight hundred. And when I left Minnesota in nineteen seventy nine to come here to start wolf work, there were about a thousand in Minnesota then, and there was just a handful in Wisconsin. And I don't even know you p had any back yet. I had him because they were stuck there. But actually, I was just in yellow Stone this week with tick Tale and his wife, and Dave Dick was the first guy. He has been studying looking for wolves in Wisconsin since he was like fifteen, and he told the story over dinner just last night. He found his first confirmed wolf tracks in Wisconsin in nineteen seventy four. There weren't wolves there before that he was looking, and then over the years eventually they got critical mass and they had the first pack. I think it was like in seventies seven or seventy eight, the first pack. They were just coming back, so it's pretty recent recovery, much like us here in the West. I feel as though you can correct me if I'm wrong. I feel as though I cut my first wolf track in Michigan in ninth and it would have been October or November of nineteen. They're there, yeah, I know. They was when they started sending ways out from Minnesota with a Recovery and Endangered Species Act, and that's what allowed them to come back in Wisconsin and Michigan. There's you know, they've got hundreds and hundreds now in Wisconsin and Michigan. I'm sure you did see wolf tracks in ninety four, but he wouldn't have been nineteen seventy, so you grew up in you grew up in the last bastion of of lower forty eight wolves. Yeah, and as a kid, I was pretty fascinated by him. And Dave meach was on campus University of Minnesota. He is um uh, he is the guy for wolves. I mean he is Dave meach l David Meets University Minnesota. He's actually I think he's employed by the federal government at the university. But he started doing wolves in the sixties. He was early on Aisle Royal. He was the first one of caller Wolf in northern Minnesota. I believe close to it. Um and he is now he's the authority for the world. He's he's he's a amazing guy. He's eighty and he's still working full time because he loves what he does. He loves and he's he's consulted from people over the world. And he's very he's very uh. He's publishes constantly. He's the consummate scientist and he's he accepts every viewpoint, looks at every viewpoint. His brain is like a computer. When you asked him a questions like off the goalist and spends on all these realms. This is delightful, Okay. So I started y asked how did I get involved? So he was on campus where I was a student. He started in school's pre veterinary medicine student. There also was a place called Como Park Zoo in St. Paul which had this was a new concept and the teen seventy three to put out pens with wild animals that looked wild that was you know, not everything else was like concrete. That So they built a wolf exhibit and I think it was five acres inside something like that, and I was fascinating. I would go there all the time because it was close to campus, very close to campus, and um I would go to look at the wolves and sometimes you'd see them and sometimes you wouldn't because it was all forced and would it much like outside. And one day I brought my arm folks dog, just a little pound mongrel, really sweet little guy, and we were looking and the wolves came up to the fence and he was sniffing noses with the fence. So I can show you how naive I was. Right, single chain link fence, single, no double barrier. There was sniffin noses through the fence, and then my little dog, being a mail he went up to urinate bras leg mark on the fence because he's a male, and that little foot it was just smaller than the dimension of the diamond in this cyclone fence. And the wolf is there anyone, And he got his leg and he drug his legs to the cycling fence and they were tearing his leg off. This is my first wolf experience, you asked. And I was screaming, and some guys came running over from the parking lot and they threw themselves against the fence, and my dog got his leg back was still attached, and we had some pretty major surgeries and stuff. But you asked, that was kind of my first wolf experience. Really, I was fascinated much as I was sorry for my dog. But he survived, blah blah blah, he did fine. And then I started volunteering on these studies. Each was over many studies in Minnesota, UM. The graduate students study at a preserve not far o the Twin Cities. And then in nineteenth summer of nineteen seventy seven, I had an opportunity Dave me to offered me his internship up in northern Minnesota by Eli where he had his wild wolf study. And I was like, oh my god, this is it. It's like my dream. And I just I didn't have I thought, how am I going to pay for this? I'm not gonna get paid. So I had to sell my motorcycle, show you how important this was to me, kind of motorcycles. I had a Yama already three fifty bright orange, just a little hot ring ding ding, but sold it. And you mentioned a cyclone fence. I call him cyclone fences, and no one knows the hell I'm talking about. Just I know, I know, damned your motorcycle and fences, but no one knows what it's like. No one uses that word anymore. Work. How do you know that word? Did you grow up? Call them cycle and fences? What? I think? Everybody else just calls him chain link. I know when I say something about a cycle and fence, people look at me like, what do you what kind of fence you're talking about? Go on, you sell your motorcycles yea. And so my next wealth experience was I was so excited. I was so thrilled to go for the summer and study. We're going to trap and call her and study wild wolves. And I was driving up in the middle of nowhere and this this is seventy seven. How many wolves are up there at that time, Well, that was probably when there was close to a thousand, nine to a thousand. So I'm driving on the highway at night. I borrowed my parents car to get up there because they had sold my motorcyle coal their second car. And I'm driving along this windy highway and I'm really sleepy and it's totally dark, and all of a sudden, out of the side, no kidding, a wolf shoots out into my headlights and I nearly rented over a jam on the brakes, and I come to rest and I feel kind of sick to my stomach. The adrenaline thing. It's like, oh my god, my first wild wolf when I nearly killed it. But that was my next experience, and then from then then we were out working with wild wolves all summer, and I was thrilled right up by the Boundary Water Canoe area up in northern Minnesota Elie Babbitt area. You guys are trapping them, putting collars on them. Yeah, how are you guys catching them? Back then Foothold traps, modified foothold traps, like you laminate the jaws so they're thicker. Not back then. We do know when you say modified modified, how they had well back then and back now. It's not a whole lot different. But the traps we had springs in the bottom side. We checked them twice a day, so they didn't sit there very long. Um. Some of them had rubber jaws, not back then, but now we have a rubber serrated jaws, so it's more kind of their foot. Um. Then you use it like a serrated like a toothed rubber jaw. Now it's not tooth. I mean that gives an ugly image. They're kind of square flattened, but it's hard rubber like a tire. And they that's the thing you put over the jaw, you know, it's it's part of the jaw there there. I don't know how they make them one piece, but you boil it drops and everything. It doesn't come off. It's on their permanently. And when you say springs underneath, you mean like double coil spring traps springs in the chains. Your double long spring spring under the pan and a spring going to the tensions. So if the wolves pulling, they're not hitting a hard end. And and now we didn't back then, but now we have underpan tensions spring devices to keep all their bycatch down. So you can set that weight. We set it with a measured scale and you can set it for two pounds or twenty pounds or whatever. Do you wolves ten pounds of pressure? That's a red fox? Walk right over? Fox? Coyotes blinks, yeah, walk right over. Well, you think about, like, how much is your average kyote? Pounds? Maybe and it's four ft, So you divide their weight by four for the amount of weight on a roughly, if you had a huge coyot, you maybe catch it. And then how would you so you'd go into a likely wolf area? And would you just make set like dirt hole sets on roads and stuff where they're traveling or you're asking me secrets in my trade, you're really pushing the arms tea. Uh, we don't. I hardly ever use a dirt hole set because that's what everybody else does. You sent post sets some what do you like? You really don't want to tell how you catch blind sets? Some really what the what's a blind set? I don't know? Lure no attracting right. You have to know where the animals are, right, So then you're just working there a trail or a path and you don't do it or you're gonna get a out of bike catch. So you have to know where the wolves are are, like a Runde bows site or something where they're using a particular trail a lot, and you know from like if it's winter, you know they use a certain trail system a lot. In the spring you can look in the mud and if they're still using it, you know, you know where they're danned, or you know where the round site is. You've you've snagged wolves, trapped them, trap, you've trapped travel hooks, you've trapped wolves, no lure, no bait, no nothing, just said where he wants not most you have done that. I have not. Actually, there was one pack in um in the Swan Valley that had a lot of trapping pressure for a lot of years. There was a guy who was really good trapper there and he'd take his limit every year and so these wolves were very very hard to catch. We put out traps. My first year, we trapped, we trapped in trapped. We never had any luck. We did every turk I could think of everything I could think of, and finally and they were actually avoiding him, walking around him digging them. They knew they were there. I finally went to doing a blind trail set, which I don't like to do because you chance catching deer or anything that comes by. But I knew where the randevousite was. I said, okay, I'm going to tiptoe. Can you explain rendee? Oh, I'm sorry, sure, And then I want to get back to Minnesota. So when wolves have pups, they have the den and they dan. I like to tell people, oh, when did they dan? And when did they breat breeding? Pika breeding is about Valentine's Day, Pika danning is about tax Day. Okay, so those are just dates to remember. They use the den six seven weeks maybe eight. But they start moving them away from the den, and they move them to a rendezvous site. And it's generally um a more open area meadow that has thick cover around it that they can escape to safe terrain and their water nearby. And so wolves can't hunt with a bunch of goofball pups dangling along, So they leave them at the rendezvous site. The wolves go out and hunt and they bring food back, and they generally leave an adult at the on site, so it's gets to be this like a pat it's just a pack down area with toy wolf toys and bones and chewed up antlers and scats, and you know, all summer they're there and they move around a few times or not. Some packs move and use different rounde bous sites. Some stay pretty station. They most of them change round. It was site. But there's spokes coming off from these rendezvous sites like a wheel. And if you can find that in the summer months, that's the spot you don't want to catch it. Usually you won't because you've got that spring tension set. So to catch this one wolf. And how come the rendezvous site doesn't go into the fall because it pups become mobile and they start traveling with the adults. They're just station periods only three months, two months. It's iganical to a dog sixty two days. Yeah, two months. Yeah, well I wasn't in my math. That's a cancer. Early February Valentine's at tax day. Yeah, okay, give her take a little it and it's latitude oriented. So yeah, so anyway, that's how I caught the wolf, was finding the rondevousite and putting a blind sin in on a trail leading into it. And I never walked down the trail again ever. I was checked it with binoculars and it was like a little stick or something that had to step over so a place. It's foot in the right place every time. Yeah, alright, Minnesota, there you are. You almost run over one and you set the trap on them. Did you guys have some with collars on him at that time in Minnesota? Yes? Oh yeah. His study had been going on for years in the Superior National Forest. What were you guys primarily interested in looking at everything? Because at that time, I mean you gotta remember, this is the late seventies, and there was there was VHF callers, and there was airplane flying to see them, but that was it. And it's in the thick, thick Superior National Forest with a lot of water and bogs and forest. You never saw them never. It's not like yellow Stone where I just came from you going down and have your theramisic offee and you're you know, muffins and you sit and watch wolves. It just it just wasn't that way. So um yeah, and so we would learn what we could by following them in the airplane. In the summer, you can't follow tracks. So a lot of what I did from ment to my career was tracking wolves on skis in the snow when you can see every place they step, everything, they sniff, everyplace, they mark, scent mark whatever. So this was a lot of interpretive stuff. And you guys were interested in what how far they move, what they eat, what they eat, their ecology were they done, what kind of habitat that use, how many there are, how many what happens when two over packs overlap? Do they kill each other? In trespassing issues? I mean just everything you couldn't see behavior. You could interpret a little bit, you know, but you couldn't see it. I read an interesting thing out go ahead. I was just gonna ask what those wolves were eating. Mostly mostly white tailed deer and a few moose. And actually wolves in the Midwest eat a lot of beaver. That's all going to bring up I read a good already. A thing is they were doing a scat analysis, and you know how you know, beavers disperse after ice out, and it would be that you know, something like and in May and June, nine percent of wolf scats would have beaver remains in them, but then it would taper off. But they would really nail them when they're dispersing. Sure. I mean, if you think about a beaver, a lot of fat in a beaver, very good and slow. If you can get them not in the water, catch them on land, you're pretty vulnerable. I mean, wolves aren't there swimming for looking for beaver. They're not bobbying for beaver in the ponds, catching them on the damns or or houses. Remember the track, the track I saw nine, The first like wolf track I ever laid eyes on in the wild was skirting the edge of a beaver day. And bobcats would hunt those things a lot, and then then they would ice up, and the bobcats and hunt the ice, just going trying to catch them out where they come out. So, you know, over my area we don't have so many beavers, so it's not as much of a diet. So wolves are strictly opportunists. They'll take whatever they can get. They're not out there selecting, well, we're going to go look for a nice fat cow elk to I mean, that's not how they hunt. Whatever they catch is what they catch, you know, people think they can kill it will They can't. If they had, I mean, they wouldn't work. What do you mean people think they can kill it will Well, I've heard people say, well, wolves killed just for fun, or they can kill whatever they want. And the truth is, if if they were that efficient, they wouldn't be living in packs. A mountline is a really efficient, very effective killer because they have all the teeth, and they have sets of sabers on every pond. They can hunt alone and they can jump on a milk's back and kill it. Wolves don't have that advantage. Every time a wolf has to eat, they have to catch a fleeing hoofed mammal with their mouth. Think about it, if you had you want to get a milk steak, you had to catch that elk with your teeth. How successfully you think you would be you'd want a lot of buddies. Yeah, that's why they're they're cooperative, obligatory hunters. They're obliged to cooperate to eat, and their prey base determines the size of the pack. If they were mostly praying on white tailed deer, the packs maybe smaller. If they're praying on mooser elk, the packs maybe larger, but it actually just came from ill the stone and um Erk mcintaro showed me this amazing photo that Doug Smith took of wolf nine eleven. It was a clean jock because the wolf was killed, but he had broken his jaw completely in half, disarticulated, most most likely got kicked. They saw this massive fight. This wolf tried to kill an elk and it nearly got killed. And the wolf was underwater for a long time and the elk was stomping it, and it finally came up out of the water and crawled away. Four months later, I get back to the jaw. Four months later, this wolf by itself had killed an elk in the river. They had photos of this interaction. And while it was there with this elk, a pack of eight wolves came along and killed the wolf. The wolf stood his ground to defend the milk, and it was killed by this pack. So after they had killed it, they got the skull back this jaw from the first elk, and counter was broken completely in half, and it healed and was all gnarly in kelcifite and completely separate, completely separate, and they watched it pulled out and kill this elk by itself. People don't think that wolves suffer. I just think. I mean, if you had a broken jaw that you could never heal and you had to catch things with your mouth, man, I'd beat starved very quickly myself. They have that, and lots of wolves that are flying turn up dead. We had this discussion again over dinner last night. Things was a great dinner conversation. Things you find in dead wolves? Wow, we were talking all these glary stories. But they suffer a lot of injuries in a daily life. So the eight that killed them, they were not affiliated. They were different, a different pack, So yeah, did they were? They cannibalize them when they kill them. They don't know. I it's very very very rare that you ever hear that they kill them And Durham, I mean it. They're not so different from us. They defend their home turf, they defend their terror tory, and when trespassers come in, if they can catch him, they'll kill them. Some most times sometimes they drive them out. It's kind of depends on the leadership of the pack that's larger might mix right, and it depends on if it's if hormones, it tends a breeding season depends on if they're missing an alpha breeder. I mean this is how packs form. They do allow other wolves, and sometimes, obviously because they have genetic exchange, packs are not in bread. But most times when a pack encounters a trespasser, they will chase it vigorously and if they catch it, they'll kill it. Most times, did the you know? Oftentimes I see that the people who are who research and work on the Yellowstone Wolves, they get very upset if a Yellowstone wolf leave the park and gets killed by a hunter outside of the park. Do they get really upset one one of their wolves gets killed by wolves? Does that bother them? You have to ask them. You never had that conversation with anyone. I don't work down there, You're just there. I went down there as a as a guest record. I mean I watched there's a lot of wolves. Wolves die. The biggest cause of mortality in Yellowstone Park is wolves killing other wolves. Oh vast majority. Because there's no there's no hunting or trapping within the park. They get killed by ungulates, they drawn, they starve, they get parbo iristes temper. But the biggest cause of mortality, and said Yellowstone Park is wolves killing wolves and these usually these trustpass or inter territorial strife things. Oh my goodness, yeah, packs come apart. Packs form all through mortality. Do they mostly when wolves? Uh? Like when wolves commit frature side? Is it mostly? Um? Does it mostly occur as in fanticide? Like? Is it mostly killing young? Or is it mostly killing old? Or is it just nondiscriminate? First of all, I wouldn't put the term fracture side on. I would say because they're not friends. They're they're simply defending the resources, much like we do in war, or much like you would defend your home, or much like Chicago defends its people for the police force or whatever. They defend their resources, whether it's food or at home or whatever. There's no malice. It's not done with usually forethought, although there have been incidences. Um, they're generally not going to den's and digging out each other's pops and killing them because the dens are They generally do not do because the dens are protected by the resident wolves. Why would you try and go in and take on a pack with its pops, You'd be you'd be killed. They do do that with coyotes. They o coyotes and killer pops. That's done with forethought, and yeah, that's a plan. But wolves just wolves, like any other carnival remoteline. They dispatch each other's competitors, that's all it is. That's why they don't generally eat the carcass. They just kill them and move on. And I think you know people, I give it, so it's nondiscriminatory. It's not like they target the young because they're easier to kill, or the old because they're easier to kill. It's just like opportunistically, like do you have the advantage and you take a take a vantage of the advantage. And I think this is a question you have to ask the folks in Yellowstone because they study this intimately. And I don't want to be miscoded or lead people of stray. Sometimes the alphas are killed because they're out front of the charge. And I don't know the ratio of the percent of animals are killed at home, anyam are young of the year, yearlings, two year olds, alpha's I don't know that you have to ask them. But that's the leads, that's the lead cause inside the inside Yellowstone Park wolves, yes, they published on that and outside of Yellowstone like where I live over in western Montana. The lead causes human variety of human causes, from hunting to vehicles, everything yep, or complaints yep. Do you count livestock complaints as human Yeah, I guess you would. Sure, Yeah, I mean wildlife services, UM trains, vehicles, hunting, trapping trains. Yeah, they get by trains occasionally, and I think in those cases they're probably feeding on animals have been hit on the track. There's a cost. So let's let's back up and pick up your biography again. So you work up in Minnesota. I did, And what happened then? You were just like you were a grad student, right, So it was really pretty interesting point in my life. Yeah, I was a young undergraduate and I just graduated. I was still a student when I took on in nineteen seventy seven working for Dave Beach, and then the summer of nineteen seventy nine, I just finished goal graduated. I was working for Steve Fritz up in northern Minnesota in a very very tiny, very conservative, little small farming community. I was hired as a federal trapper do trap and remove livestock depredating wolves. So federal with Wildlife Services, US Fish and Wilife Service would be like wildlife services. Okay, So for me, I mean growing up a little bit storry, I didn't really interested in research. All of a sudden, I was thrust into this world of wolf conflict and management and mitigation. And wolves were still they were threatened, so the landowners couldn't take it into their own hands like we can here, but they had to call in the game warden like that. When you say threatened, they were, they were, Yet there were any yes, listed as a threatened species, and so um I was be called. The game weren't to be called. I'd be called, and we go out to the farm. They weren't called ranches. They were called farms, and it was dairy cattle and beef. We would look at the carcass and determine if wolves had killed it or not through tracks, the nature of the bite, wounds, wed skin the cow and whatever. You could tell what it killed it? What would you what was the most? Uh? Tell me a couple of telltale signs that it was wolf? Um tracks? Uh? Leading to with the chase scene with bites the bite marks. I mean you can't just because wolf tracks are there, doesn't mean they killed it, but you go on, you'd skin out the cow and you'd see the bite marks in various places. And if they had hemorrhaging around them, the animal was alive when it was bitten, no hemorrhaging. They were feeding on a dead call. So you look for that um scats full of cow hair, but you have to find the bite wounds. So that was tough because if they took a small calf, there wouldn't be any thing there, there'd be nothing. Sometimes they take it apart and it would be gone overnight. What's the window of opportunity? Um? How many how many hours days do you have before it becomes too late? Well, it depends on if it's a you know, a thousand pound cora eighty pound calf. So as soon as you get the call, you go out there. And because they were smaller operations, they generally could see their livestock. But we're in the West, we have allotments and you know, you don't see your stock sometimes for weeks um. So people were pretty on top of it, but it was it was a really interesting turning point for me and my education that you know, yeah, Diane, wolves or do cause problems and people don't really love them. And just because you had this wonderful research experience, you's a whole another world out there. So it was really important for me growing in my career. And I had to drop these wolves that were killing stock and we hauled them down to ground rapids where they were euthanized. Um really, yep, Why why would you move them to euthanize them? Because at that point in time, we weren't allowed to shoot them, So how would you transport them? I drugged them. I'd catch them, I sedate them and put them in a crate at home to Grand Rapids, which was very close, and then they would be a Grand Rapids Minnesota. Yeah, okay, that all right? That was confusing Minnesota. Yeah, I got you. Yeah. How many when you're doing that work? Howming did you catch that summer? Oh? If you are handful, I don't know how many. It was. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough that I could do my job. There wasn't a lot of complaints, to be real honest, And Steve Fritz, my boss, had told me, well, when you have times when there aren't complaints, then I want you to call it in radio collar for research. So I was dropping all summer. So I don't know ten fifteen wolves. I mean, it wasn't that just wasn't that much problems, to be real, honest. But if you were the particular farmer that was having the problem, it was pretty significant to you. And certain farms chronically had problems, in certain farms never had problems, and they could be four miles apart. You might not be comfortable answering this, but go back to those days, das, Okay, those days in that place. Um, if you run cattle or have cows, they die from all sorts of things. They died during they died during birth, Okay, they just get hung up in fences and die, They hit by cars, all kinds of plants, poisonous plants, there's another one. Did you find then, that for a farmer or rancher to lose an animal to a wolf seemed to weigh on them more heavily or inspire more rage in them than if they were to lose one too poisonous plants, or lose one to getting hit by a car because it jump the fence, or any number of other causes. Did you feel that it was that there was an imbalance about how people perceived that death. Yeah, and some people there definitely was. And I think a big part of it was because they had no ability to control those wolves legally, so they couldn't do much about it. So when they had the wolf was recovering because they were protected and they couldn't do anything, and they might have literally, they might literally be seeing wolves in their pen tearing some calf or cow apart, and legally, you know, they weren't supposed to be doing anything about it, so that that sense of helplessness made it worse. Now Here in the West Montana, I mean, if a rancher's got to wolves and the pan are about to chase cows or whatever, they don't even you know, they can take care of it. They can shoot them legally and they just call and report it. It's called a Senate built two hundred. They're legally protective. They can't keep the hide or anything, but we go pick it up and it's over and it helps diffuse animosity. What was your next move from So you did that one summer? So while I was there, I just you know, graduated, like I said, I applied to graduate schools, and while I was working in northern Minnesota on this wildlife services job. I got accepted at the University of Montana for graduate school in the fall. So when I departed Minnesota, I packed at my little car and I drove to Missoula, where I had the graduate project. And it was really interesting because I just came from all this whirlwind of two years of intensive wolf research and university college ecology classes and and now this new world of this conflicts going on, and we had this opportunity in Montana. In nine was there was one wolf outside of Minnesota, west of Mississippi, and we had the university to put a collar on it, just north of Glacier Park, like six seven miles and that wolf tiptoed down occasionally into Glacier Park, and that was the only wolf in the west and the only one they tried to come down female, And Bob Ream named her Kishnina after a creek that was just north of Glacier And so people don't realize those wolves walked down out there seventy nine and so she came down into the northwest corner of Glacier Park and a few wolves have been trickling down me and wolves here and there. He had a wolf shot you're on Montana occasionally, but they never stuck. They're just they weren't allowed to stay at the wolves walking in on their own from camp. They absolutely walk. So for me to do a master's project, I had to think of some kind of an interesting project so we can monitor this wolf and still have enough data. So what I did was, they decided I'm going to look at because I was a good trapper, I decided I would look at this wolf and compare her food selection, at rice selection, and habitat use with coyotes within her territory and outside of her territory. So I caught and call it a lot of coyotes. In the meantime, I kept trying to catch more wolves, and there weren't any. So that was the core of my master's thesis. But I was fascinating how they were interacting on the landscape. Now, when you were doing that, you you presumably had like a course load you had to do. Yes, how did you balance that with being in the class Like one hand, you're in some classroom with a bunch of ding bat students, right, and then the next in the other hand, you're up trapping wolves. I alternated with queer in the order system. Then so I do a quarter in the field and then a quarterer in school in the quarter in the field, and go back and forth through around through two and a half years. So I had to read the classroom part. No, I didn't. Actually it was interesting to me, and great professor's back then class I'm not hacking. I went to graduate school Jouncle Barto Gara, Bobbery and all these old wonderful guys who were real good mentors. So no, but I was always Jones and to get back, always Jones, going to get back up the North Fork. And that Collard, the Collard female that you had that was coming down. You guys are getting data off that it was still a good college. Yeah yeah, and um it's it died out in about a year and a half. It should have lasted longer, but it didn't. But we continued to see tracks of a female because you can tell by the yur nation and the snow through her territory throughout the winter and using the same travel routes. I mean, I'm sure it was her. And then the next she met a mate the next year and they produced the first litter in mate in what country Canada, of course, so just north the glacier. They did, just north the glacier. How many miles outside of how many miles north of the border, seven or eight? And she's flirting with the border. She's flirting. Yeah, she crossed occasionally. So um her died that summer and she it was captured inadvertently in a barret trap in Canada. They were researching trap research. So this female raised she had seven pups, half for gray, half for black, with no help. We were worried about her their survival because she was really remarkably um proficient, apparently because no one was feeding her. I mean this was out where their oil gas exploration and log trucks and wilderness and wild things and lots of game. And by that winner we would still see tracks in snow of eight wolves. So they all made it. And then about two years later another female came in and the next letter was born in five. And then in nighties six they moved more down to the park a lot and an eighty six the first pack was born in Glacier Park in over fifty years first litter, so that's the progression kind of went from like one to two to seven to fourteen and then they just kept expanding. But all of those wolves, all of those wolves prior to reintroductions in the bark in Idaho, they all walked down and nobody brought them. Nobody brought those wolves. And it's so hard people don't grasp that I was there. I know that there were many of us hard, you know, volunteers and students and starving technicians, following these tracks around, and we know that they were not brought there did so I didn't know that. I know that people like are up there up in arms about the Yellowstone wolves being brought there, but there are sort of I guess would you'd call them a conspiracy theorist that people think that those wolves up there were brought into and they didn't walk in. I don't know what you'd call it, because I'm not a believer in it. I mean, I'm the factual check fact checker there. I was there, and they were native. And the interesting thing was, while we were killing off her wolves down here, there was a big program in southwestern Elbird in southeastern BC to poison off wolves. So in the sixties, by the late sixties, there basically was kind of a wolf free zone, right around the international border. So when Kishnina arrived, she had to come some distance, maybe Jasper, but at least mamp She had to run that gauntlet down through all these hazards and she made it. Yeah. Well, a mountain lion you know about this recently left the Black Hills of South Dakota and got hit by car and Connecticut it's nothing. And so when my tracking, so I call her this one little wolf in Glacier and we had her in the area for a year and a half and I caught her again and I replaced her. Call her. She was not very big, and she was an average small female And like, what tell me this eight pounds? What's a big male? So the biggest wolf I've ever caught pounds, which is almost as much as I weigh. So it's pretty amazing when you see hundred and fifty pound is like the two and I'll yes, I'll get there. But what I want to say about this one wolf is she she was collared and then she floated around again. She'd been for a year and then she just disappeared and we couldn't find her. And that happens with these VHF collars because they're not GPS collars and you have to physically go out and listen for the signal with airplanes and ground whatever. She was shot seven months later at Poosh Push Poosh Coupe, which is up very in northern Alberta b C area, which is north of where some of these wolves to Mellowstone were captured to bring down. So the moral of the story is that wolf was connected with wolves further north than these wolves were taken for reintroduction. They are one species here, one population. They are not different. Okay, Okay, you're getting That's great, You're getting ahead of me a little bit. I'm just sorry. I want to back up hit a couple points. Okay, No, I want to get to that. I want to get to the super Bowl thing. I want to we hat to like set the table for that one a little bit. The urination pattern females between their legs, males and female like a spade female dog will razor leg, but it doesn't go up high on it tree, you know what I mean. They mark a little snow bank or something spade female does. So you can tell from the urine pattern from the tracks relative to the where the piss lands. You can tell somewhat age of the female, not age, you can tell if she's dominant or not dominant, meaning within her social structure. And an old female doesn't necessarily the dominant one. So what does the dominant one due to raised leg your nation. But it's just you know, the squat and raise their little leg up because you don't off to more of an angle, just a little to the side. It's not quite between their legs. Is she There's no way to know. But is it that she's mimicking a male? Like? What is that? Like? Why does a dominant female raiser leg a little bit? You ever seen a spade female dog do that. I've had spade female dogs that do that, and they had a Spade female dog. But I just I feel like she would just squat. Okay, well, she probably wasn't a very dominant dog. No, I was dominant man, see, as should be with dogs. But so the dominant thing, it's just it's a higher mark, higher in the leanscape, more visible, more detectable. They may have a higher androgen level in their body. It's like a female dog doesn't have much estrogen. They tend to start raising their leg. It's just that way. It's just behaviorally, but more dominant the mark, the more dominant the animal. Okay, I know this isn't the most importance. Have you ever seen where a female was dominant and then lost dominance and stopped raising her leg or once they start they never stop. I never. I didn't get to see the wolves in the North Fork of the Flathead like Minnesota, because it's so forced. That's a question for Yellowstone where they can actually see them out in the I'm sure they published papers, they're probably documented. I don't know. The male, of course, raised like urinates, and a dominant male will make a very high mark and tail flag and just be like, oh, I'm just the boss up. So they'd like to they like to urinate on a on a poster or tree. Yeah, in a in a real subordinate mail might actually squat urinate when he's younger, especially, but yeah, the higher the mark, the higher the status. Nice. Um, then that was behind on another thing too. Oh, let's not get into the superwolf the suit. No, we're gonna get there the superwolf conspiracy theory. If that I don't know that that's a conspiracy theory, right, Yeah, okay, so we're gonna get into that see. You know what's funny is you might learn from us. You might learn um besides us just learning everything from you, you might learn from us about what sorts of thing creep around in the ether among hunting and fishing type folks. So I try to heard it all though I am a hunting and fishing type of I have not heard at all. But do you? But do you ever spend time undercovered? Do you ever just sitting in the bar and act like you're not who you are? Just absorb what people say? I am. What you see is what you get. I am who I am. Okay, So you never just like get into a wolf conversation bait the person along to try to get to try to find out what they're thinking. I'm not saying I didn't do that when I was younger, but I don't do it now. Before you just sit there go you don't say, you don't say so, Um, what's the big Okay, tell me in your career the biggest wolf you've ever weighed on? We're talking certified scales right like you do it where you're getting the actual real weight. So the biggest wolf I've ever caught was a pounds. He was the breeding male of the Headwaters pack. What's the biggest weight, um that you've like, do you know the highest acceptable way? Because I know they've gotten some bigger weights and Alaska, for instance, a little bit the high We were asking this of the Yellowstone folks. So the biggest wolves they've ever weighed there, and those are very you know, they're doing pretty well. Um. I think it was close to like a hundred and forty seven pounds or something like that, which is more than I wait, that's a really big yeah. And I've also heard that when you get those high end weights, it's typically something with twenty pounds of meat in its belly typically, which you know can really yeah, really like tip it to the high end. So in my career, considering starting with Minnesota, and I've I've worked in the Canadian National Parks, I've colored wolves in British, Columbia, Alberta, Montana, Royal, Romania. I mean, I've had a huge Romania in Minnesota. So the wolves on average in the West where we are, because your audience is the Western audience, we got them all over places. Some Minnesota wolves are on average twenty maybe smaller. Far more people will listen to this who aren't in the West than are on the West Saks. I didn't know that. Okay, So they're smaller the Midwestern wolves. It's a smaller and it's called the Eastern wolf. It's slightly different. Our wolves in the West are slightly larger. Again, it's prey based. The wolves in the Midwest live on deer and beaver and occasionally almost Wora wolves live predominantly almost The wolves out here live primarily deer and elk occasionally most, but they have a larger prey that they go and the ones that came from Canada they may have bread and caribout which again are larger and more most so they are what they eat, just like us. And if you're you know, if you're if you're taking down a hundred forty pound deer, that's your diet. Does not behoove you toway a hundred forty pounds because there's a lot of you they're gonna eat. So just being smaller that just works out. It just if you need take down a really big, a thousand pound animal, you need a lot of real big beefy animals. So, okay, super wolves, are you ready to lay out? I don't even want to do it. I'm not even do it. Lay out what lay out the super wolf, lay out the super wolf. It's been a while since I have had to do this or even think about it. But I think that the theory goes that I don't know. I don't know the reason why or the proposed reason why. But the theory is that for some reason, they trapped a bunch of wolves. And we even talked to a trapper told us who told us that, and he that he had an evidences this was true that because he knew the trapper that trapped these wolves in Canada. It's it's okay, go ahead. But there's there's two there's two competing wisdoms about the super wolf. Okay, well, either way, that they they picked out and they they picked out the biggest, baddest, nastiest, meanest wolves, and those are the ones that they brought down and put into els on that sational park. I bet again, I don't know why or well, okay, and there's that, and we were told that by a fella. Yeah, and there's another one that they took the wrong wolves, the long species of wolf, right, yeah, they're sober, the wrong variety. Yeah, from way too far north. And the ones that were here, the native wolves here where these little rinky dinky plant very like mild mannered, polite little wolves. And they went and got these big northern savages that are two fifty pounds, and they cut those loose down. As soon as they got here. They just reigned holy hell on the north Yellowstone Elkerve. Yeah, the heard went from twenties some plus thousand all the way down to four because biologists, can you remember to within this. I'm just gonna let you run. Okay, I'm gonna let you run. Be careful. How much time do you let you run? But but I we're gonna see how good you are. Um as you run on this, however you see fit? Can you also touch on the idea and I think this comes from you, the idea that the reintroduction maybe it was not necessary. You just give me four hours with some materials recover, so I will start. Let's do it. Let's start with the super wolf first. So the wolves that they captured up in a Hinton and for in St. John's are within dispersal distance of our wolves here? Where are those places? Tell people? Where those places? So? Um one is in Alberta and one is in BC. They're close to the Alberta BC line. Um there about. One is about three miles north or so. One is about five miles north or so of hair of Glacier Park the border give you a take. And so the crew went up there and they just had guys who are trapping bringing you know, call and they went out put a radio collar on them to have a judice wolf, so then they could go out and fly and catch more wolves and dark than whatever. They just took the whatever wolves they could get. There was not a selection for bigger, meaner, badder, uglier, beautiful whatever wolves. They just random sample those locations. I don't need to have to ask somebody from Yellowstone. I think it's because the Canadian government says, we're really glad to give you all the worlds you want. They're free, come and get them serious. Because out there they still aerial gun them, don't they in certain places. I don't think so, not anymore. I don't think so. I'm not sure, but I don't think so. Maybe back then they were they were killing them. I mean, they economically valuable pelt they have, and so they kept them in the wolves that they could catch as a family group. Were the wolves that they put into Yellowstone and the holding pens with the hopes that they would stay together as a pack. And the young teenage kind of age wolves that would be potentially good dispersers or unassociated with other wolves. They caught those and they put them in Yellowstone because the idea wasn't in I mean in Idaho. They caught those and put them in Idahole. The idea was they wanted family groups to stay in the park, but when they dropped him off with the wilderness Boundary and Idaho, they wanted them to just blow like dandelion fluff in the wind and disperse and find each other and pair and form new packs. So they were tartly. Oh yeah, So the ones that they put in Yellowstone was called a soft release because the ones by Frank Church, they wanted them to split. They didn't put packs in there, they put in individuals. They wanted them. They dropped what wolves there over two years, and they wanted them to just go go high and wide and find each other. Hot hot release, hard hard release, herd release. And was that to so they can monitor sort of two different versions of releases and research too different. Yes, because you've got to realize prior to the Yellowstone wolf introduction, this had never been done anywhere in the world ever, and so they didn't know how it turned out. It was like, this is our best guest. So we'll build these pans with cycle and fences, like we will hold them for through breeding season, and just before they're gonna welp, we're gonna cut them loose. And those pregnant females aren't going to probably go very far. And they've got their pack mates now they've made it, and we're gonna hope they stick together and stay in the park and Idaho it's like, you guys, better run your tails off and get the heck away from people and go find each other and disappear in the wilderness and mates. So it was a totally different starter, and they were literally the doors are opened up, the wolves were kicked out, and they're gone in idahol it's totally different. So both worked, and yeah, they both worked. Interestingly, I had a wolf that caught and Glacier Park and he hung around for a while and then he ended up going over to the Kelly Creek area in Idaho wild Area and he stayed there, and the fish and game would keep drag of him, and we'd see him occasionally, and he was there with a radio collar, and he just bided his time by himself up in the Great Burn country. And I mean it's a big wolf by himself. He was a hundred eleven pounds on e cottom, pretty big male. He lived by himself, killing whatever you could do. And when they let those wolves kicked him loose in seven at the edge of the wilderness, this little black young female found her way up to Kelly Create and paired with that collared male from Glacier Park and they formed the Kelly Creek and he lived to be eleven. He lived a long long time. That's an old wolf, very very very old. Average life expectancy of a wolf. They've calculated it in Yellowstone four point six years, I believe, and in Minnesota four point one average life expectancy in years. You make it to five, you're doing really well. Eleven is very old. So you've only seen a handful over ten years. Yeah, I can count him on one hand. Huh. They just don't live very long. I had one brought in for checking this fall that a trapper caught over by. Libby was really interesting because it had been trapped in two thousand and twelve. Was an adult already and he was brought in so he think he was about nine, and that's a really old wolf. The trapper brought him in dead. Yeah, he caught. He harvest I didn't know if he meant like trapper, like you were a trap. No, harvested him for for and um he yeah, he lived on that landscape all that time and avoided Oh my goodness, I can't tell you how many times he'd probably you know, had experiences with humans that he should have died and he didn't. So actually he had a bullet, a small twenty two caliber lodged in the base of the skull that healed over. Really, I'm telling you these wolves he did. He sent me the photo. They don't have it easy. So back to the super wolves. Yeah, we're digressing. So the should I repeat about the glacier wolf, about the one that I caught that dispersed. You could remind me because you're making because now I think the connection will have more potent. So all these people are concerned about these wolves not being the same wolf. So this little female that I dropped in Glacier Park at about age two, and she dispersed in nine seven. This is one of the ones that walked in original. Yeah, she was born in Glacier Park. I know because we caught her as a pup. I know she was born there. Anyway, Um, she went up and dispersed and disappeared, and she ended up being killed by a farmer. And she was traveling with other wolves in July and called it in because out of the radio color a phone number. Game Warden called me and this is where she was shot. And it was north where most of the Yellowstone wolf were taken from. It was equally far north as the furthest north Yellowstone what was were taken from. So clearly that range that she traveled, it's all one set of jeans. It's one wolf population. And I can tell that to people time and time again. And she's not the only one. She was the first one that we documented. She spirst five and forty miles straight line. No, I don't know. She may have gone further past that. When they do that, I'm really interested in the anomalies. What is it that made her do that? Because she's a wolf, I mean, this is she's not unusual. It's just that it's really hard to document it, and not that we have GPS colors. Oh my god, they are all over the place. We had wolves and Yellowstone go to Colorado and Utah. I mean, this is not unusual now that we know, we just didn't have the tools to detect it. Average wolf dispersial instance is probably average including all habits, probably around fifty miles. But there are those that gos and in Canada where they're following migratory hurts, Oh my god, they'll go thousand miles easily. Remember that we're on Remember what you spose you're talking about. Let me let me sidetracking from Matt Have you have we yet had um? I'm sure we have introduced wolves intermingle with wolves that came in on their own. Yes. So originally we had the native wolves that walked down from Canada that colonized northwest Montana and started spilling at Idahole a little bit. The introductions were winters, and those populations in Idaho Yellowstone in northwest Montana were separate for quite a long time genetically, and they didn't begin to successfully not just dispersed, but dispersed land and breed that's the sign of success when they're only inter England. And now we have shown through genetics and radio collars their one population Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, you know, Wyoming. It's one about the ones in northern California just came from Oregon, which came from Yellowstone. Yeah, I mean nobody put them there, and you could say, well, they were put into Yellowstone? Yeah? Or seven? The thing? Why did they not come out of the frank Church. They may have. I'm trying to think. I'm pretty sure that our seven, I'm pretty sure it came from yellow Stone. But sorry, I don't actually remember. Okay, so now maybe it came from I'm feeling good on the stup. Maybe it can't. It probably came from Idaho. You're right, not the one that wou or seven's the number. Um, I'm feeling good on super wolves? Are feeling good on super wolves? Yeah? Okay? Now what about the idea? Well, the other thing is I've heard that wolves have eight canines. These super wolves were a hundred seventy pounds and they have double canines with eight canines too. I hear it. You really have heard that public meetings, and you can't laugh at a public meeting. Someone told you that at the meeting that they're super heavy and got extra teeth. I've heard a lot when you point out when what are you getting at? Am? I I'm right that you observed that we would have landed We would have eventually landed in the same place had we not done the Yellowstone in Idaho reintroductions, that we would have gotten there. Anyways, do you just point that out as an interesting idea or do you point that out because you feel that there's a lesson there or did you feel that there was a mistake made. This is a very complex question, so I'm going to start with complex show. I'm going to start with data because I'm a scientist, so I believe it was there were two wolves that showed up, one inside Yellowstone Park and one south of Yellowstone Park two years at least two to three before the reintroductions, might have been ninety one. There was a filmmaker here from Bozeman, right Panovich. He was in Hayden Valley filming for Bush Productions filming, and he was he was out monitoring a bison kill and he was filming this. The grizzlies and the grizzlies and the coy its interacting and just just as was getting too dark to film, he's packing up his camera, this form comes out of the dark and he's going, oh my god, I think it's a wolf. And it steps up to the kill with the grizzlies and the wolf like it belonged there, and they're all tearing at this feeding on it. It was too dark to film, so he got up like three o'clock the next morning. It makes his way back out. Um. I believe it was August. It was a summer month and he goes right at sun before the sun is there, and he's there waiting and as the sun comes up, there's this wolf feeding on this kill. Before years before the introduction, he was so excited about it. All the whiologists saw the video. I know him. It was a real thing. That wolf was around. It disappeared, never seen again, and then it was black and silver, kind of your classic wolf that we see here in this equo system. Now it's like an older, middle aged animal. Unlike the rest of us, they get gray hair as they get older. What was the word you just said, You said, we see here in the like we see here now. The classic Sorry too much Catheine. And then in September and that fall, that same fall, a black pound wolf was shot at Fox Park Fox Creek, just south of Yellowstone Park, and it was shot by somebody who claimed they thought it was a kaya. It was unds in black, but who knows, but it wouldn't be in that case, It wouldn't be in their mind that it would be anything other. I don't know, but it was not the one that was filmed because this was black. So I was doing my PhD. We got the genetic sample. I worked with the Fish and Walife Service. We the genetics were done on all of those introduced wolves and then about a hundred wolves that I had samples from collected over the airs, from road killed colored animals, wolves from Canada. We had many collaborators contributing samples. That wolf that was shot south of Wyoming Genetic Lab in Nason Organ said it was most closely related to wolves from nine Mile, Montana. It walked down there. It wasn't native wolf too. So there were two animals that got down there prior to reintroductions, so they were getting there, but they both disappeared overre dead and it's kind know where we were at in seventy nine and the North Montana we had one wolf that made it for a couple of years and finally phoned one other and it was just at that threshold. So in the early years when this reintroduction was being planned, Bob Riem and I keep mentioning Bobby was the father of the wolf research here in Montana, fabulous man. Neither of us supported reintroduction because we've seen the natural recognization work so well. They were making it on their own. And when they when they run or trond the gauntlet down the rocky mountains, those wolves that are too bold or bothers, somebody shoot shovel and shut up, they're gone. So it kind of selects for wolves that are a little more shy and and there it's more accepted by the local people. If the wolves aren't put there, because I'm in the controversy here, most of it's because these wolves aren't native. So we were against reintroduction for those reasons. And then the reintroduction moved forward and it was it truly has been, like I cannot think of a more successful recovery story anywhere in any dangerous species. It's phenomenal because they took over it and they gone everywhere. And I just came from a listen to watching wolves. I mean, I love to watch them, but I still think that socially, it would have been more acceptable if our wolves from northwest Montana could continue spreading and they weren't reintroduce. However, would it take five years fifty five d That was the factor time and the window of opportunity opened through the Administrations in charge Center McClure from Idaho, owns from Utah, Simpson from Myoming. They've introduced bills to reintroduce wolves because they wanted them reintroduced as non essential experimental under the Dangerous Species Act instead of really endangered. And that's how it moved forward because because you feel that they did that because they knew they like you, knew that it was going to happen anyway, and it would be better for management if it happened experimentally, because it gives you greater latitude and lethal control. That's what the reasoning would lead one to conclude. I don't know what's in their brain, but I would think so. You have to ask that, but I would assume so because it would make sense as a as a person in charge of conservative states that you would want to have some control, especially for your live stock constituents, to be able to manage these wolves. And if they were fully endangered, you couldn't do anything. So they're thinking, you're the constituents. Wolves reproduced rapidly have great resilience, they can take it, and they have. I mean, this is there's wolves. We in the West have almost two thousand wolves across scattered across all of the West now from one I mean I was there with the first peop don't realize that there's so many more in the Upper Midwest and the Upper Great Lakes and the Great Lakes has another. So we have almost two thousand here, not quite the Great Lakes, there's a four thousand one. We have like six thousand wolves now in the lower forty eight states connected to one population with Canada. It's a vast meta population is no more isolated. Worry they're going to go extinct, that is not even a concern anymore. When they were kicking around the idea, When when when they were um building a plan to do the reintroduction and you felt that it was not necessary. Were you coming from the perspective of someone who wanted to see wolves return, or were you coming from some of the perspective of someone who was ambivalent about whether or not it happened in terms of like who you were cheering for. I was coming to the perspective of coming from Minnesota, where they success successfully dealt with conflict issues to resolve them where they're still protected but only threatened, not fully endangered. To minute to hear where there was one wolf, and now we're seeing this wave of wolves coming out that we're not bothering a lot of people and the ones that were being bothered while life services going to remove. So I saw a good window of opportunity for wolves to be on the landscape and resolve the conflicts. It wasn't so much of a concern with the hunting community at that time. Was more live stock at that time, because there were so few wolves. I saw it as a great opportunity and I wanted them to succeed where they could be welcome, where there weren't conflicts of livestock that were in conflicts with hunting. There's so much game on the landscape. They had plenty of food, they had plenty of refugia to live in, landscapes where they could be unbothered. They don't need wilderness. Wolves would live in Bozeman if they could. And they don't need a wilderness area. They just need to have someplace where they can raise pups, find wild ungulates to eat, and live long enough to reproduce. They can live anywhere. I mean, the wolf lives from the Arctic Circle down. There's wolves in the Gaza Strip. They can live in any biome. They can live in the desert, they can live in a temperate force, they can live in the Arctic. They are really adaptable. So it's just matter where we will tolerate their presence. And I knew all that, and I could see him successfully making it. That's why I thought we would be better off holding off in reintroduction, allowing the social landscape to evolve as wolves slowly made their way down the landscape, because it's a social issue. It is not an ecological issue, never has been with wolves. So at the at that time when there was this very controversial plan to to to do a reintroduction, Um, did you sort of feel that were you ostracized by the superpro wolf community for for for not wanting, for not uh advocating or condoning the reintroduction, or was it that you all felt like you were kind of striving for the same thing, you just had different approaches to get there. I don't know that I really would care, because I hear both sides all the time. I mean, I'm always I'm I like the wolves the middle of the road. We have to live in the middle. We can't live out on either end. And I've worked a lot with hunting groups and ranters and wolf conservationists and wolf protectionists. I'm a scientist and I'm driven by science, and US science says that there is place on this landscape for wolves and it's not going to be Nebraska, and probably it's it's not gonna be Boulder, Colorado. But there are places where they can be in and and as long as we can handle and manage the conflicts, there'll be anywhere we want them to be. And as a scientist, I was seeing it happen. So that's why I was against reintroduction. And I imagine there where people that would slap me upside the head if they could, saying, well you should love wolves and have them everywhere, or what the hell is what are you thinking? They're gonna wipe out all the deer. Knilk. I don't listen to that. I'm doing what the science shows me and they can do. But here's here's where you're not. Here's it's not where you're wrong. But it's a little bit where you're like misleading because it's not Science isn't telling you. Science isn't telling you that we need wolves or that we need grizzly bears. Right, you can make the people make these claims. Nod, I said need. But here's the thing. It's a decision. It's it's a decision that we that society makes. It's totally a social fabric thing. Yes, yes, so. And I'm not even wanting to push you too. I'm not trying to push you into a thing because I feel like you know, I'm not, because I feel like you and you and me are like very much aligned. I them around. Okay, you haven't said this, but I'm assuming you do. Like I enjoy them being around. It just comes with um. I have certain requests that come with them being around, about conflicts, like how we control conflict and how we weigh out and value the interests of different stakeholders. And I feel that the ranching perspective is valid and important, and I think the perspective of big game hunters is valid and important. And I don't think that these people are being hysterical when they point out that there are some things that need to be resolved in order for them to get comfortable with this. I didn't. I know, I know, I know, I feel like we're on the same team. But what I'm saying, like when you talk about whether or not wolves would have recolonized the lower forty eight on their own, or whether we needed to do a recount, or whether we need to do a reintroduction to bring them back, I don't accept that you had no sense of what you hoped would happen. You had to have hoped something would happen. I can tell you when it came out here in seventy nine and there was one wolf, I thought of it as an interesting and novel idea and experimental to see if if it would make it or not. If you would have asked me in nineteen seventy nine if we'd be harvesting three hundred wolves a year in two thousand and eighteen, and he said, are you oh to your mind? I mean I never would have believed would have been this far along. So, I mean, I think wolves are pretty amazing creatures. I think that elk are pretty amazing creatures. I think cougars are amazing creatures. I mean, I like all wildlife. I'm trying to think there's an exception, maybe not quite so fun of skunks, but I could have a bird dog. But I mean, I like to see all the full complement of all the predators and all the prey in the landscape. And the thing that I would think back you've read Lewis and clark Journals, Undaunted Courage. They came out here. They are uncountable hundreds of thousands of game animals. Right. It was like to Saren Jetty and there was pray animals and they were predator animals everywhere, and nobody was shooting or controlling any of them, and they were just fine. And when people really push me on an issue, but we have to manage this or that, Yeah, we're doing pretty well managing wolves in Montana. We harvest a lot of them. They're still adequate wolves hair, there's a lot of them, They're very resilient. We can go on like this. But if you want to say, you have to manage predators or they'll eat all the game. If they ate all the game, they'd be dead, right, there'd be no more wolves. There'd be no more game. So what I'm just saying before, when Lewis and Clark came out, nobody managed anything. We barely had firearms at that time, right, limited in scope. Yes, animals manage themselves. The wolves in Yellowstone they kill each other off and the population took off rapidly when they were first introduced. It went up to a peak of about hundred sixty animals in two thousand eleven. It dropped down after that to be about a hundred and it's been about that level for a long time. This year there's less I heard there was about wolves. Now nobody's shooting those wolves. They are regulating themselves based on the prey. Prey populations go up and down, the predator population goes up and down. It's it's a leg time just slightly. That is the normal. And we as humans and I'm a hunter, we like to see something always at a level that we're used to, and when it drops below that way panic. If it goes above that, it's like, oh good, it's getting back to the good old days. The good old days is the average, but we don't look at that. And I'm just saying that if we didn't, if we didn't manage elk or deer wolves, and my department may have an issue with differences of opinions, but animals manage themselves in the landscape, and if there's too few. We had after the big winter of seven, there's a huge record amount of snowfall in northwest Montana and Yellowstone. When they die, not and our white tail died in Montana that one in northwest Montana that spring. The wolves are doing pretty well feeding on carcasses until they had these pups. And then there weren't any fonds in June as alike, as most of the dose died, we had a huge pop mortality. That's how wolves reached fond They don't know the food. The pups don't make it. Meantime, the next winter neew was milder and the prey populations built up, and then the wol was built up. Just this leg cycle, but we always want it right here on the average in the middle um. Two things, a thing that I've always laughed about. I have a lot of friends who are just like rapidly anti wolve. Hey wolves and it's the end of hunting, but they all want to hunt in Alaska. I was like, dude, it must be great to hunt Alaska. And I was like, yeah, you wouldn't like it. Bro these wolves running around, the grizzlies running around, why would you want to go up there? But it's like people view it as they don't. I don't know because people like things to be static. And on that point, my wife's reading this book right now. Uh buyout Buddhist monk and he talked about one of the greatest challenges for people is to accept that there there is no static line that every year you intercept everything in life. You intercept everything in life amidst radical change. And there's something that makes you want to hit something a relationship, whatever, a place you'd like to go on vacation, that you want to act like you hit it in stasis and that that's normal. And then you watch as everything changes and it's disappointing to you. But you hit everything mid change. There's no there's no place to feel comfortable or you have to be comfortable with the idea. There's no place to be comfortable that the only constant is change. Yeah, and I see in the literature now, I mean the terms equilibrium is going away. It's nothing is ever in the uniquilibrium things that are always changing. Are you comfortable doing? Uh? We like to play a little game called looking through the crystal ball. I don't know, not looking through it into it? What's your Colorado? What's your Colorado do? Right now? Do you think it's inevitable? Will you ask? Okay, a minute ago, you asked me about how I felt about the change in the Lower forty eight, because Colorado may be affected by that. Okay, ahead, so we'll start there. So this this change of the taking away in and protection of wolves in Lower forty it will have no impact on the Western States essentially, and because we're already harvesting them and managing them. It may have a little impact in the Midwest because the states there haven't had their hands on the management for a couple of years. But what's your perspective on that, the harvest and trap like we do at some at some level they did for a little bit. We're just her jerky over there. It's litigation stuff. But in the West, weird, you know, Montana Idaho, Wyoming harvesting wolves. It's hard to say exactly where're at because it's really hard count wolves. It's very hard. Is it very hard? Yeah? You never see them. Their secret to them, they're elusive. Is it harder to count wolves and grizzlies? With grizzlies they've been doing DNA work care work. Bears are large there. Yeah, they don't disperse us far. I would say, yes, it's harder to count wolves, and we weren't doing DNA work and sampling everyone. We just know that there's this range of this many wolves out there, and there still seem to be a lot and three hundred wolves sounds like a lot. We don't know how many illegal marks are, how many natural marks, but there's still quite a few wolves out there. Motity sorry, mortalities. Yeah. Well, I always say if we start pushing the wolves too hard, people are going to be less able to harvest them because there'll be that much smarter and they're hard to see anyway, and the harvest level will go down. We'll have to see. This is kind of new wolves coming back in the West with a big harvest. We'll just see how it works out. Um. Then your question again, sorry, what's gonna happen in Colorado? Colorado? Because Colorado is like Colorado right now is in other states too. Um. I think the writings on the wall Oregon, Washington is sort of like you're now very like you are in a wolf state and you're gonna see more wolves, um and there because the political leanings of those states, it's less likely that you're gonna see in any time in the near future. It's less likely you're gonna see the kind of control that I think the hunting and ranching communities would like to see. California never gonna see any control probably. And then but Colorado kind of on the fence politically, on the fence state, UM used to be maybe that changed in recent years. Um. And they're gonna have wolves are there's documented wolves showing up there. And there's also a movement, like a social movement of people wanting to move a little faster and put wolves on the ground. Um. Based on the things that you've seen that we've learned from the experience and Northern Great Lakes, the experience in the Northern Rockies. Uh, what do you think will end up happening in Colorado? And what would be your advice two managers in Colorado. Is that a fair question, it's a fair question. I don't. I don't. I don't have the answer. I would say, if they want wolves and landscape. So there's a talk of reintroducing Mexican wolves up to southern Colorado, and there stock of wolves, allowing wolves to migraty and remain on the landscape from Yellowstone. Those are different gene pools. The Mexican wolf is distinctly different genetically, behaviorally, morphologically from all the rest of the wolves in North America. So it's a little different animal which I don't care to get into. But the gray wolves will get there, and I would The best advice I could give about Colorado would be, don't panic there. There's gonna come in. You've got plenty of time to set up a management plan, a system, and get wildlife services in place, get you know, get input from hunters, get all your public input, get people as aligned as you can. It will never be perfect because people are just very controversial either side, but be prepared, and um look at other states. I mean in Montana. I don't have figures on other Western states, but an hour Montana I hear a lot Oh, the wolves have killed all the darren elk, and I hear that a lot from some segments. Is that true? No, That's where I'm gonna go. So we have our harvest data, fish, willife and parks, and we can show through the harvest, the check stations every fall and the spring green up council where we can't recruitment, number, number of funds or cabs per female b darren elk or sheep or whatever, and our numbers. Wolves have been on the landscape for quite a while, though it's not like they've changed greatly in ten years there except that we had one show up at buildings, but otherwise they're kind of it full. The landscape is full of wolves and deer. Nelk numbers at present are in the long term average. They've slightly to the high end. The last two winners are slightly down because we've had pretty long winters um and we haven't had the recruitment. But they're not they're not off the scale in the black hole. So when people say, I used I've hunted this area for thirty eight years and I used to be able to go up there and get an elk and the wolves. Since the wolves have come back. They've killed all the elk, and I'm thinking about that, and our numbers don't support that. The game struct stations in the spring count showed the animals are in the region, But maybe the habitat has grown up there, maybe there's more road access, maybe there's more competition for people going after those animals. There's a variety of things. There's wildfire, and I just say, well, if if you're hunting the same area for thirty years and the animals aren't there anymore, maybe move ten miles or fifteen You don't so you don't accept, like take for instance, the Idaho Panhandle or the Northern Yellows don't hurt. You don't accept that those elk populations were reduced by two thirds. I don't know about the Idho Panhandle situation. I don't follow it. I can only tell you from Montana. Sorry, that's just my limited scope of my job. So I do know. I'm just saying the harvest data shows the animals are still out there, but they may be using the landscape differently. They may be moving during hunting season differently. We do have climate change. Things are changing differently. I don't have an answer to all for it. I'm just saying numbers show that the animals are still out there, and if people aren't seeing them, maybe the animals are becoming more nocturnal. I don't know. I don't know, and I've hunt darn up too, and I'm able to get dar nol and i live where there's a lot of wolves. So um I have in the past. UM. I don't have an answer except to say that wolves can drive population is really low, they can keep some bear. If that happens, the wolf numbers decrease, they gotta have food. How long does that cycle play out depends in the habitat. I mean you've orout up earlier about the Northern Netherland herd. I think, honest, you brought it up. Was it twenty thousand or so? And then wolves came back and they went down to four thousand. I think this year. I just heard the number of this week when I was down there, it's up like six thousand. Now there's a lot of bison. Yeah, I'm reading right now about the Northern herd, and it's the last count in seventeen was five thousand, threety nine, so it has been so that's two seventeen yeah, and it's been stable like that. We're increasing for four years. It so the northern herd. So the wolves went in the winter nine seven. I think they put thirty one wolves in half each of those years. We had that enormous winter. I don't know if you guys were here in n seven. The snow at my out house was five ft deep. That's what killed the elk in one winner. I mean thirty fifteen thirty one wolves over two years. Do you think the eighteen was an elk or fifteen elk in two years? Think about it. I mean the numbers dropped off really fast, and then they've been kept low, and I can't say if the wolves kept him low or not. Probably has something to do do it. There's wolves, there's grizzly bears, there's lions there and the wolves. It's interesting they have switched. There was printed and primarily an elk grocery store when they first got there, and now they're switching to bison because there's more biomasso bison. It's a lot harder to kill a bison. There's less wolves. But I don't want to do. Why do you have shirt written on your hands? Reminder? Something I had to do later today there are Okay, they eat seven pounds of meat a day. They can eat more maintenances, like eight pounds per day. So you have several hundred of something eating pounds of stuff a day. There's has to be there has to be an effect. I thought we had this conversation with one of your colleagues who works mountain lions, where I find that, um, I find that you have these two extreme views. You have the perspective of people who again feel that they annihilate the prey base and eliminate ungulates from the landscape, which, as you pointed out, is counterintuitive because then you would also lose the wolves to die and maybe gone. And then you have the perspective of the ardent apologists who want to tell you that there is no population level impact from wolves, mountain lions, coyotes, what have you, and that they somehow subsist on nuts and berries. You you hear from these you hear from these different views. And when someone tries to sell me on one of these two perspectives, I get frustrated. There there there is I feel like you're tiptoeing around, tiptoeing around it. I feel like you're trying. You're suggesting that there's not a population level impact from having hundreds of wolves on the landscape. I didn't say that, but you kind of. That's I trying to get you. I want you to say it. I want you to say what you think is So, what I'm telling you is that fish wife and parks harvest data data and the spring count data are still within the norm range and a little on the high end, except the last two years where the winter has been bad and there are hundreds of wolves in the landscape. That's for deer. Now do you feel that winter do you feel that winter is more? Is more of a driver of Absolutely is more of a driver. One winter like this es it came in and killed in the white tails. You could have sauce and wolves and the landscape. They're not going to kill forty percent of the white tails. Winter is the ultimate driver. And the when people when wolves look where wolves are gonna live, they say, oh, where are they going to live? They're going to live in place where the winter ranges. They're not going to live up in the snow and rocks in the Wilderness series like some people think they do. It's like, what the hell are they gonna eat in december, there's nothing up there. They come down in the valleys, they come down in the winter ranges, they come down to where people are in calves because it's the valley bottom and they're loud as lousy with deer and elk were starving along with the calves that are being born this time of year. It's you know, there's conflicts set up. Potentially some wolves have conflicts and don't you know, it's in back to this things. So I'm not saying it was all winter. I'm just saying there was a really So if you know, if you saw Yellowstone in the sixties, they were paid people to go out to kill mule, deer, and elk because the landscape was so devastated by the overgrazing, because there was no predators. That's a fact. You can look it up. People gunners were paid to shoot deer and elk on the landscape. So now we're up to it is never Historically it wasn't that high. I mean, if you look at you could go down to the Old Stone knowledge still see major impacts on the brows. You can look at the exclosures, defenses. You know, the story down there it's not new to us and maybe new to your listeners. Wolves him on the landscape. We had this massive hard winter. He died like flies. Additionally, there were a lot of what it has been termed naive elk that had never seen a wolf, and the wolves come running up to him and they just kind of stand look because they don't know what it is. Boom, they're dead. They had fat city, those those wolves the first few years, and they definitely helped take the numbers down. There's no doubt about it. Um, So, is five thousand sustainable? Yeah? Is it socially acceptable some circles know. Is socially acceptable? You bat? Is it ecologically sustainable? No? So you kind of have to think about what is realistic to be on the landscape. Yeah, that we weren't going to hold that as a norm, correct, That's what I'm saying. I'm not saying that that's a really good point because nobody ever, everybody always loves that twenty thousand number. Nobody ever says what it was five years prior. That's when we that's when we came into the country. Man, me and my bro started hunting that herd and how many what was the Oh? Yeah, when they were at there. I remember where I was standing, I remember where I was staying it, and I could figure I could sit and figure it out by year. I remember where I was staying when I heard the first wolf hole down there. Yeah, and you know what we thought it was. I heard it rip out. I thought it was a bugle. Oh sure, because it's just like you know what it was? Well, yeah, I thought I thought it was some kind of crazy bugle. And they we're like, holy ship, that's wolves, man, and all this extreme viewpoint on the yellow Stone or all I can see is just kind of let the rhetoric go in the BS drop and kind of think about the sustainability and maybe you want to see the herd at ten thousand. Oh, that would maybe happen, but it probably won't. It's probably gonna stay about where it is unless there's some huge campaign to kill off lions and wolves and bears, and then you know what's gonna happen. You're gonna have your jump up and they're gonna starve again like they were doing. Uh, what's going on with Isle Royal National Park? So Iole Royal. The two Wolves came out in about ninety or so. Back up, back up, because I gotta say something first. It's an island and Lake Superior belongs to Michigan, right, yeah, yeah, it's the only little free standing national park and it's not very big. I think it's oh my gosh, I think it's only two square miles or something. Okay, our country wolf territories are bigger than that. For one pack. Oh that's interesting, take it away. I just wanted people know what we're talking about. Midwestern wolves, smaller groups, smaller wolves, they have smaller territories. So anyway, Ile Roil has never been colonized. Initially in the fifties, they've had a couple of the wolves that have shown up when the lake is frozen, but it's a rare thing. The lake freezes about once every decade, allowing genetic exchange potentially. But they've determined through genetics the wolves have not had outbreeding and they're all very closely related and so by now they've been in breeding for seventy years. So the the original ones that showed up, they kind of made Ile Royal like a wolf place walked across the ice in Canada. Correct, they were not put there either, They walked and frozen when they documented it, and they showed up and just had and had the running place because there's a bunch of there's a bunch of moves, oh heck yeah. And there's nothing to eat the most except ticks. The biggest predator tick on the Royal Moost is a winter tick. It was more more wolves than than wolves, I think so. Anyway, so the wolves make it out there, and they're all in bred now. And the last surviving two wolves as a father and a daughter, and they were down to two two there don't inter breed and they're wolves don't do well when there's not a lot of exchange. No, they're just so in bred. They've got they've got through the four genetics. Are like siblings. All them are like siblings now. And of course they are not gonna they've been in a breeding for too long, and they've got deficiencies, physical deficiencies. They're not resilient to disease. They got screwed up tails, they got screwed up spines. Anyway, they're kind of a mess. They're done. So then this reintroduction efforts just happened and as of this morning, hot off the press, they have brought fifth They brought thirteen new wolves to Ile Royal to add to the two they calmed legacy wolves. The two that are remaining, they aren't going to be breeding unless they could mix it up with some of the new ones, which is the whole they're bringing in super wolves. They're bringing in those little tiny midget Great Lakes wolves from So they got some from a little island called Coton, which is in Lake Superior, but it's in the Michigan portion. They've gotten some from the mainland Ontario there, and they've taken some from Minnesota close by, and they may now try and get a few more out of you, Michigan to keep the genetic stock variability. They added thirteen. That's the number as of this morning. They just brought some more in this week to mingle with the two that are there. So they have a total of fifteen now it's about half male and half female. They how can such how can two square miles support fifteen wolves because they're so dang many moose there, they can't possibly can't eat them all, I find it. So this is this question about We were just talking about this last night again at dinner. But so the wolves on Ile Royal can eat beaver, and they can eat moose, and there's a few fox and that's that's it. That's their food source. But there are so many moose. And because wolves are territorial, the population of the island, I think that its highest point. I'm trying to remember the numbers. You're really pushing me on this. It might have been about fifty or so that many wolves around them, multiple packs, and then it dropped back down and then it's been lower and now we're down to two and they're gonna they're gonna go to extinction. Driven to extinction, clearly, but it's not due to lack of food. They did never kill the moose up. They never got you. They never did it. But that is different from what we have most other extinction extrapation, well extrapation indicates to me human cause I don't know anyway, a regional, okay, like regional, like very specific regional extinction, the island island would be free of wolves once again. And my thoughts on that are probably over e ens of time and glacial periods and whatever. Ile Royal has had multiple colonizations and disappearances of wolves over time, and interestingly, I was talking to a biologist day Mates who worked on there early, and he said the people who were there around nine ten, they were out there early and they were miners and trappers. Around the turn of the century, the island had caribou and links and there were no wolves, caribou and a few most but remember the ratio of moost to caribou. But the caribou and extinct. And Dave said he saw what was probably the last links track on the island when he arrived there about nineteen sixty sometime in the sixties. And now there's not so things constantly changed. So we want our window to be the right window. So if you look at Isisle Royal nine hundred, there were no wolves and not and there's tons of caribou links and coyotes. There was coyotes and there was no fox. It's a totally different ecosystem now and that's not because we've changed it. The wolves have changed it. But moose got out there and they caribou went away. I mean, there's a brain worm that goes for most to carible. I'm not sure why the caribl went away, if they were overhunted or or died from brainworm or whatever, but it's a completely different ecosystem in a very short lifetime that we can document that happens all over. Are you gonna blame somebody or a species or a fire or whatever. It's everything is so complex. You asked me these black and white answer. I want to know what you have, and it's like, I can't. It's kind of like the change in Big Game. If you aren't seeing Oak, or you've been seeing him for thirty eight years, go someplace a little different. There's places in Montana where they just so bloody overrun without they're giving away to permits, and they're having shoulder seasons either. And it's like if you're living someplace and you want to get to go to one of those areas, I mean, you don't have to go five miles, but the animals are out there. They may be using the lanski differently, they may be more nocturnal. There are some areas where there's more hunting pressure than there used to be. Go someplace where there's less. We were hunting one time and met a guy. I didn't actually talk to him. Do you remember who actually talked to him? We're hunting with Remy. I was there, Yeah, and uh, Pat and uh I think, Yeah, he was hunting deer, and he was on his way out, and he had been hunting following tracks and ran into wolf tracks and just said that that was the norm now there that always his deer tracks always end in wolf tracks, and therefore there's no deer around. He's not killing any deer. He left in a huff, but you're seeing deer tracks and parts of the same place. So I have to tell you the most incredible. I thought, I've kind of heard all the wolf stories, but this is kind of a fun one. I just heard from a friend who had talked to somebody about wolves a few years ago. I said, you know who was really pushing the wolf for introduction. Don't you choose a government employee? She said, no, who, she says, the insurance companies. Why is that? Because the rate of white til der and car collusions is so high in northwest Montana that they want to the wolves there to take down the number of deer, so they pay outlish insurance. I thought, I've never heard that one before. That was a new and unique story for Yeah, please, I heard that it was the Clintons. The Clintons, and let me tell you why, Because if the Clintons could bring in wolves. The wolves would kill all the game, and then people in the Rockies wouldn't own guns anymore because there's nothing to hunt and there would be less resistance when it came time to seize everyone's gun. That's why we have wolves. Wow, you did one up me on that one. I mustn't anyone that's crazy anyway. Okay, well, what did we miss? I've got a couple. Just follow black and white. I hope, I don't know. I don't like them. They're challenging to answer because it's not black and white. Do wolves kill more bulls versus cows? Do they care one way or another? Do they tend to pray? There's a lot of literature out there, and then it depends on species and geographic area. But wolves will take whatever is most vulnerable. And what I can tell you is that is the young of the year. I don't care if it's an alcor fun wolves go into winter. Yeah, they could be a fawner calf. I mean, when you're going into winter, they're the smallest, they're the weakest, they're the slowest. Most of the animals you take are young of the year. Then beyond that, a big fat cow is not very vulnerable if she's middle aged or you know, a good age, but it's snow conditions. They're right. So what I say when people people say they take the oldest sick in the week, I said, you know, that's kind of the outcome, but that's not really the selection factor. They take what's vulnerable. So you could take a seven year old prime fat cow elk and you put her in this crusty four ft deep snow out there, and she's breaking through and the wolves aren't. There's nothing wrong with that elk. She's just vulnerable, and most situations she's not. She's the strongest one, and she might be in the major cow. You know, So it's vulnerable, and it's generally the old the sick in the week. But they're not doubt they're still electing for him, liking for what they can catch. A very big, huge buck or bull elk that goes into the rot and ruts his brains out, they can lose like of the body weight. They go into the winter in really terrible shape. They don't eat while they're breeding. In a couple of months, they hardly anything. They're skinny as are all. They're punched up. They might have puncture skewers that are bleeding from the other bulls. They're pretty vulnerable. You know. We think those are great trophies because they've got bigger acts. But reality is it's maybe it's even at the end of its life. It's done a lot of breeding. But it makes people really angry when they see wolves kill a big bull out. But they aren't selecting for the bulls. It's just that they're vulnerable. What I find really interesting is they helps still have their antlers now too. You will rarely ever, I'm trying to think of I've ever seen in videos. Bob Landis has taken the most amazing footage. Rarely ever, if ever see a bull elk with antlers swing as antlers as a defense tool. They are strictly ornaments. So why do they hang on to all that weight all winter because they're done breeding in October? Why do they pack forty or fifty pounds on their head that slows them down if they aren't able to use them for either sexual selection because breeding is done, or predatory defense, why do they do that? I can your hunters, I'm just asking, I mean amusing ecologists like trying to think about this. Why would they do that? Anyway? I'm just saying the stuff out there. We don't know. Maybe somebody's answered that question. I haven't read on it. I read not long ago that a dear biologist was saying that if you could, if you can take deer in and manipulate him through photo periods, you could create to create no deer that would throw two racks a year. Huh, why would you want to do that? You wouldn't He just we're just talking about when you take a deer from let's say you take a deer from the northern hemisphere or taken out from deer. Let's take a deer from the northern hemisphere and put it in the southern hemisphere. How long does it take that deer to adjust to start right, to want to flip flop when it drops and girls antlers. And he's saying they do it very quickly. And he said, not only that, UM, not on if this has been done, or he suggested that he thinks it could be done. He said, not only that, I think you could put a deer in a an artificial situation and do photo periods and you could make it. You could trigger it to produce two racks a year. Mother nature doesn't do that because it would be really hard on the animal. Yeah, but he but you could point being this point being that it's it's linked to photo period, not not art, not the Gregorian calendar, whatever, right, whatever we live under here. Uh what you put a lot of miles on in the winter in the snow? What do you wear for boots? Uh? These days, I'm not doing it so much too Moore, but I did for most of my other research work. I were I've had snay boots, I've had sorrows. I'm mostly yeah, mostly just ski boots. I mean when I'm talking was, I'm mostly in skis, big heavy, back country three pin boots. I don't like I said, I don't and that's not part of what I do. Know, it's not part of my job to do that winter work anymore. Which is back and you were hard at it. You did most in ski boots. Yeah, yeah, hard hard plastic ski boots, leather, old marrows and uh yeah solos or oslos, depending on how you pronounce it. I got a pair of their sneakers on right now. Um got that question for you and I and other question for you. Let's say you're Emperor of the world. Okay, you control the world. Empress of the world. Sorry, you didn't want to be, but you are. Now you have to make all of the humanity's decisions. Um. Do you do you feel that would you allow wolf hunting and trapping to continue? Um? In areas that have sustainable populations of wolves? Empress of the world of the world. Yeah, so we're outside of profession right now, and now we're talking about the King of the world, Queen of the world. I don't live outside of my profession. Come on, you do too, There's no way you don't. I have the same problem my brothers, who are both ecologists. I'll be like, what do you hope happens? They don't like it. They don't like it. But come on, your Empress of the world. And someone says, oh, first thing, first quick issue we have to take care of is do we let the hunting and trapping seasons continue for wolves? And you have to make a quick decision. You have decide here. You are emers of the world. You're not gonna let the people down by lack through lack of leadership. Don't come on, really, really, wolves wolves can live anywhere that we tolerate them. In order tolerate them, we have to have some kind of a management plan. In a perfect world, wolves would never kill a coward of sheep and wolf, and unulate populations will never go up and down. There wouldn't be any controversies, right because that was a perfect world. Then he would need to remove them. But that's never gonna If there's not a perfect world, undulated population to go up and down, people get livestock taking their horrible and cheap that can happen. So in order for social tolerance to create possibilities for wolves to be you have to do that stuff. Let me hate with another personal one. Well, I just want to add that the perfect world is just perception. It might we might be living in the perfect world right now, but I do I'd say not. Look what's going on across our country, in the world, in the world. But it's been crazier in the past too. Oh yeah, we just have this thing called the Civil War. Yeah. Um, but kind of on that note, you hear a lot from the people that think that they could just survive, But I don't know if those are people that think they can just survive on nuts and berries. But anyways, that when some of these packs have a member of their pack that's killed by a hunter that you know, you have a dog wolf, it leaves the park and get shot and then it really disrupts the pack and it's like going to be the end of the pack. How true or false is that? Like have you seen have you been able to document and research that and see like what it does or doesn't do. You'd have to ask Yellowstone people specifically, because that's the concern down there. I know, when wolves or whatever, when they leave the pack and they get killed at Cook City or around Comin or Basin, it's it's very painful for some people, very painful. They common glued. That's tragedy beyond belief. They're very attached to these animals. As an ecologists looking at the population level, it's a loss of an animal. And as a breeder, it's it's more of an impact on the pack. The pack might split up, the pack might get a new breeder, the pack might fade away, they might have two breeders the following year. They there's this dynamic that goes on all the time, and death is part of it. She said, We as social people put judgments on the animals taken. And I know early in my career when there was only three packs of wolves in Montana, I knew those animals, not by name or anything, but we followed them enough in the snow on the trail. I flew once a week. It was very sense of kind of like here, except you didn't get to see them. And it was hardship early on because every one of those animals was critical to them coming back at all. So if you lost, if you had twenty animals and four were killed or something new, you kind of felt it and you saw the adjustment. But it's like, oh, well there's an adjustment, and that wolf's gone, and g where did this one come from? And none? Next year they got Pops. That one is gone. They move on, they don't think about it. They're wolves, and we put those values on it. And it is hard for those people. I know, they're friends and them are friends of mine from Yellowstone, and it's difficult. And that system has the bonus. I tell these people, my friends, you guys have a bonus. You live in a research bubble here. It's amazing. You can see these animals. You sit on the I just came from there. You sit on the side of the road with your service, then your apple pie or something, and you can watch these of That is not the real world wolves live in. They live where I live, and they're shot and hunting, trapping around over by cars and trains and whatever. That's the world wolves have to live in. And when one gets killed, it is not a tragedy. We don't, you know, it's just different. Yellowstone does like it does so much good. I know it does harm well, I would venture to say that. I mean, like I said, when I first was out there, I was against their introduction for all those reasons. We talked about most of the social fabric and the natural selection of wolves coming down blah blah blah. But now that they're there, I go there a couple of times a year. I so enjoy seeing them because they're they're not they're not remove. If they're they're pretty visible, and it's a different energy down there. Everybody goes watches those wolves, is very in love with seeing them and the experience, and it opens a lot of people's eyes. But that is not where the wolves live in of the world. But they lay the problem is is it? Yeah, it's like ecological has done so much good for recovering species. It's not a lot of good um. But the psychology of the place and its advocates is that they they they lay claim and take ownership of anything that touches it, so that a herd of elk, say that spend the bulk of the year not there, become the Yellowstone elk of grizzly that passes through becomes a Yellowstone grizzly. Um. And if something occurs outside of the park within some number of miles, it's a travesty because it was only a mile, only a five miles out of the park, as though it's footprint is inadequate, and it needs to sort of extend this psychological energy that reaches out like the tenles tentacles of an octopus to grab in anything ing around it. And I think that out of that that mentality drives a lot of creates a lot of like contentiousness and people who are competing over management of things. So when I say it causes harm, I think in that way where people become that The wildlife politics in America, like wildlife in America, is very complicated and there are a lot of factors at play, and a lot of people who need to be heard. And I think that when people are introduced to American wildlife through the lens of Yellowstone, they get a very distorted perception of what is actually what actually happens in the way people's lives are impacted and the different concerns going on. And I think that there's certain agencies like National Geographic is a big driver of this, The Smithsonian is a big driver of this. The people that push this thing that that wildlife just lives in this little protected place. Um, it's only there. It's surrounded by horrible people who want to do horrible things, and it's just by the grace of God that we have this little gem in which in which wildlife can exist. And they push that narrative, and it's it's frustrating. It's like, it's difficult to watch that happen. It is difficult. And when people got to realize, say there's say there's eighty wolves now, and this spring there will be several litters of five to six born who knows how many letters ten and there will be that many more wolves. The population will at least double or trouble based on reproductive and every year. This happens every year, and then by this time next year it'll be back down to every year. So a certain number of wolves, and they don't have percentage, but twice as many as there will disperse, get killed, die of disease, drowned, get killed by an get killed by the wolves. It happens all the time. But when it's a wolf that is seen often and as a number in a radio color and then it's killed by human, that is a beaut as a very large tragedy. And I wish people would I wish people would be more concerned about connectivity and linkage is out on the landscape. I wish people would be more worried instead of Scarface being killed illegal, the big grizzly bear that was killed supposedly illegally, and it was seen for twenty five years and yellow So I saw him and he's very identifiable. People identified with this bear for a long time. And he goes outside of the park and I believe he was illegally killed or killed anyway, but it was outside the park. If people put all the energy and money into thinking about well, let's work on the connectivity linkage between yellow Stone and Montana. Those landscapes between McDonald Pass and you know, the Gallatin Valley, so that bears are are more free to maintain viability, so that it doesn't become this still pretty isolated. That's a bigger concern than the scarface being chop, much bigger in my mind, especially putting all this emotional energy into these single wolves, as you just said, for them to live to be I was a big deal. To big deal. And I I mean, I I love seting and I'm taking in and I love listening stories about who we got who, and I have I have ultimate respect for these people out there every day at like five in the morning. They're out there all day and they know these animals and they dedicate their life to it. And I you and I I mean benefit. I can pull up in my car and get out and ask what's going on. They tell me. I'm very appreciative, But I don't have that attachment to those animals, to the singles. You're interesting in population not down there, But I can understand the passion and they they're very passionate about It's like maybe me and my bird dog. I mean, I'm very passionate about bird hunting and training dogs and when dogs die, it's a tragedy. But the wolves are not my dogs. I don't know how to answer that. It's just challenging. Is there a time in like scientists education, where someone sits you down and says you you don't call animals by names. We do numbers and this is why? Is that like a very strict point thing or does that just naturally come along. That's a really good question, honest, because when we started the wolves, you know, in search study, and the first one was Kishena, and then we had Phyllis, and we had these wolves because there were so few, and yes, we were going down the same path and we saw him a lot. And the park services you can't name those wolves, and the fishing life services you can't name them because what happens when Phillis goes and kills a column. We've gotta take Phillis out. Okay. Every wolf had a number anyway, Some of mad names early on semed numbers. And people would be funny because you'd be talking to something the park service about wolf eight five, fifty and they say who is that, Well, that's Phillis, okay, or fifty three? Who's that? That's mohabb okay, but they knew the name, so it was kind of a trade we played. But and I know within fish Wife and parks they don't want us to name wolves, but all of the grizzly bears that they tag are everyone is named, every one of them. What's the difference? And I don't feel like if if I knew you boy so security number, you can give that to me later I'll follow up. But you are you so security number? I wouldn't when feeling different if you were like the fourteen oh seven versus Jannice, I mean you could and the other thing I mean, I'm turning to a scientist. Our papers are very technical and factual and models and statistics and all that. And I think one of the things that we need to do better is is scientists biologists, and I don't I'd love to hear the input, but I think that we don't do a very good job in reaching out to the general public who has concerns and thinks about being outside and enjoys all aspects of wild life, but maybe it doesn't really know how to predators and prey relay. When do they kill or not kill everything? And we don't put it out in a format that's very user friendly. People just see these papers with his Latin and figures and numbers, and it just gone. I think it's there for people that want it. It's hard. I mean, I go do a lot of public presentations and different groups, different people grasp different things. But I find a lot of groups as soon as you start talking data, this light goes out and I have to ask you, because how do how can I be a better communicator to the public about these very important issues, Like when we do some of these meetings and people say, oh, that's not right, those numbers are wrong, you know you blah blah blah. Well they are what we have. And but but I don't think that you're asking something that can't be answered, because I think that the people have. But that same problem exists everything, with every subject. It exists with every subject. Care if you're talking about if you're trying to explain social services, if you're trying to explain um climate, I'm trying to explain wildlife populations, trying to explain the mility, the budget for the military or whatever. You're gonna always run up against people who um cannot conceptualize, can't make sense of data. There's people that can't look at them, that that can't understand the landscape um from having lived on it and travel across it and occupied it for their entire life. Then you represent that landscape to them in an aerial image, or you represent that landscape to them as a map, and they cannot they can't make that jump. So I think that to say, like, how, because I hear this from wildlife professionals all the time who wring their hands about they're perceived inability to articulate complex ideas to the public, and they're like, well, how do we fix it? There's probably some things you can do, but I think that you would say, well, we're gonna have to tackle it through our public education system at the elementary school level, because I don't know, when you see someone take something that's complicated and beautiful and then you see attempts to like strip it down and dumb it down, it gets really ugly and it becomes not satisfying anymore, and you almost feel embarrassed for the person that stripped it down. I'm not gonna say what it was by recently read an attempt to take something counterintuitive um to take this like counterintuitive idea and demonstrate it to the public, and and and it happens to be a point that I desperately want to see demonstrated to the public. But when I saw it stripped down to its barest, most easily digestible form, I looked at it and all of the wonder and beauty was gone, and it was just stupid. So I don't really know that you're going to get there. I think that, uh, it's just from the ground up, trying to invite people to be invite people to like being surprised. My father was very resistant to any discussion about human evolution. Okay, his resistance to discussions about human evolution is that they change the story too much. It used to be this, Now you're telling me it's this. So what he wanted to see was he wanted to see an explanation that was the end all, be all, final answer, that this is what happened. If someone failed to give him that the absolute thing that in twenty years will not change, he wanted to discard the whole thing because he didn't want to take the energy, the mental energy to follow a constantly evolving narrative that had new inputs in the upset old understandings. It was frustrating to him. So the minute you changed it too many times, he became suspicious of the entire body of knowledge. How do you change that? He was a smart dude, very smart, but some things, um, he wasn't Like there's certain aspects of learning that he didn't enjoy. The journey. You had to give it to him. And if next year you came and told him that, you know what, we're kind of thinking this, but now it looks like this, he's like, I'm gonna I'm gonna forget everything you've ever said to me. So that's maybe what's hard about wildlife issues because it's always in flux and there. And by learn you learn more. I mean the tools they're using now with the remote cameras and genetics, Oh my god, the tools are non invasive monitoring. We're learning things, amazing things that you can't see even with the radio caller. Dear biologists just last week tell us that now the amount of data he can pick up in one day it might have taken him years twenty years ago. Great, And I don't know that it's necessarily better, but it sure is helpful and trying to look at some things, but it opens up a lot more questions looking at Yeah, genetics is an especially powerful tool. I I'm very amazed with what can be or no by picking up a scat temple or urine sample, even from an ungulate and looky whatever it is, but usually a terror or scat and learning, you can glean enormous amounts of information about where this animal came from, how it lived, how it died, whatever, who was related to. It's just an amazing tool. Yeah, people people really, some people really like uh we keep talking about change. Some people like things that don't change. We're just down. We just had our little family vacation down in Baja and we bought a really small bananas like those, a little dinky finger banas. My daughter, who doesn't like bananas, liked these bananas. My son is upset by this for some reason, and it's saying to her, I thought you didn't like bananas. And I said to him, it was like any sentence that you begin with the words I thought you didn't is a not necessary sentence where you're calling someone out for having changed something. But he didn't like it, and maybe he likes his sister to not like bananas because she doesn't like bananas. And I think a big part of the whole wolf thing is in our memory of our parents and grandparents, there were not wolves on the landscape and now they're back and it's change. But if they went back two years ago, the landscape was crawling with wolves and that was the normal. So we are selective in our memory about what we want to think about or how we analyze things. In hunting and fishing, dudes are generally in love with the Lewis and Clark era. They're like, man, if I could do one thing, it would have been out with those boys, all the wolves running up down Chase and everything, killing all the game except for the ten million vice and whatever. Yeah, no, it's it's an interesting concept. So I always ask people that, just instead of thinking of just how things are today or in your mind, try and think on a bigger scale. And the future, I mean the future is there's going to be left less and less landscape available for wildlife, and that that frightens me. And I think I would like to see people instead of hating this or that or wanting to kill all the wolves or whatever, I would be more concerned about protecting and preserving a wildlife heritage on the landscape. And I think ranting community and hunting communities are absolutely key to that. I mean, I work. Do you look at where they look at where the big game winners? Think about these ranchers. Man, you look drive between Livingston and Gardner, Holy crafters. Thousands of animals out there eating up. There's nothing this the grass that looked like this table and they got to raise cattle on it next year. It's private land. They support all that wildlife. Your own people want to get rid of their cattle because wolves get killed. You know what. They provide a huge amount of wildlife resource. I want to see them there. I want to see him stay in the landscape. I got I know a guy down in Utah and they had some unusual snowfall patterns this year in Utah and he lost forty dollars or they hey to a group of elk, And he texted me that he's trying to be cool about us they season. So it's it's really complicated. It's it just does Uh Do you have any final little things you wanted to wedge in there that we didn't get to. I don't think so. Um No, We've covered a lot. I like your point that space for wildlife. That's why I become front. That might be one of the reasons I become frustrated with UM aspects of the animal rights community or people who UM oppose any kind of wolf hunting or wolf trapp trapping. For the hides would be that when I look in the future, like, I see a problem that needs to be addressed, and it's maintaining half a tat, maintaining space for wildlife. And I'm like, how are you so, Like, how do you when you look into the future, how do you see? Um? Why do you Why are you not worried about that? Why are you worried about Why are you bringing so much energy into this thing when the real problem is that the real problem is habitat. Yeah, and the two things That one is that habitat for world life is not not necessarily or at all exclusive to human presence. Like I just point out the ranching. The ranch lands are the winter range for the most part, And I think people get hung up on wildlife has to have wilderness, No, I have to have it. Yes, we all do. I mean that's part of the I do have one more point that I want to tell it's called a concluder. Kind of concluder. So the thing that I think about a lot here in the West especially is but it's true anywhere, is how do we create a value for wolves, Because the only way they're gonna be hilerate on the landscape is if they have a value. That value can be in terms of uh, cultural it can be in terms of hide value selling hides. It can be what's wolf hide worth right now? I think it was told hundred seventy five dollars. So like up in Alaska, some of the biggest opponents of aerial gunning were the trappers because it's their culture, subsistence and income, and they didn't want to see those wolves gonned off because they cont on trapping them and catching them. So that's a value. Another value would be aesthetic. Maybe you live in Des Moines, Iowa, and you'll never see one, but you like to know they're just out there. Maybe you come to Yellowstone Park and your value is seeing them in that environment or potentially hearing them hall. I mean, I don't care what the value isn't those values are on opposites in the scale, and they may be conflicting values. But they have a value because if something lives in our world and it doesn't have a value, it's gone pretty quickly or is innocuous or is innocuous. Well maybe I don't know. Well anyway, I'm just and I think it's really important that you know, we they have a value to survive. And I know in this particular in Montana, for example. What I mean by that is what I mean by that actually clarify the point. What I mean is things that require some level of sacrifice have to have a corresponding value. You could have something like you know, people might not put a lot of cultural or economic value on apossums, but will continue to have apossums because they're not you know, we're not we're not making a decision about their fate. Generally, you provide certain things and they just continue to exist. They're not controversial. Um, we don't need to have meetings in public comment periods about what we're gonna do. I don't know, I don't know. I possum country. Okay, Okay, we don't talk about possums. Okay, damn shoure talking about everything else, right, steelhead deer, turkeys, we talk about it possums. Nope, what's kind of like matlons. So you know, Jimmy, I didn't hear Jim's podcast, but there's three times as many mountain lions and the landscape in Montana's there are wolves. People aren't angry about mountain lions and the landscape. They aren't piste off. They don't want to seem eliminated. They're introducing twelve bills into the legislature this year to kill more mountain lions. And it's like, you know, if there's three times as many mountain lions, it's two and a half to three times as many. Is there are wolves, you can presume that they're killing three times as much, two and a half to three times as mentioned. Game as wolved. Why aren't people concerned? I heard an explanation. Please tell me this is out of a thing that this is out of a research piece in Idaho and they kill people. This is not a research piece in Idaho where you, let's say, annually you lose sixteen seventeen per cent of your elk calves or no, it's like you lose or your elk calves every year two mountain lions. And it's been that way for a long time, and people are used to a certain cow calf ratio. But then you come in with this additive, this new additive thing, and all of a sudden it adds a five mortality rate that you feel that five. You can observe that five in your lifetime because static, your idea of static was the mountain lion presence. So people see a shift the new thing to point to ours, just to change, and so that's where the animosity grows. When all along you've been losing this very high percentage to mountain lions, but you've always you're used to that. When you're out and you see cows and calves, you're used to a certain ratio. The ratio switches and people perceive that new thing as being the problem. This is articulated through something that the buddy sent me. But still the majority of them are being killed by lions, had shown over and over and people don't worry about it because it's And I also think in addition to that, that's a good point. But in addition to that, moultlines have a value. How much is an outfit or charge for a mountline hunt four? And how many does he do it? Year? Many? So it has a value to him. The Houndsmen are very well organized. They're very vocal proponents of keeping lions on the landscape. They're also pretty vocal about getting rid of wolves. From what I've seen, dogs killing dogs and kill mountlines and compete with them. So but my point is, you know, honsman her amazing. They're amazing to learn from when they bring in mountlines to be tagged. At work with a lot of them tagging their lines, and I learned a lot from them. They're really good information sources about where they're seeing wolves and how many lions are out there. But they have that value, and then nobody goes drives and spends thirty five millions annually to go to look at mountainins and Yellowstone Park. That's yeah. I mean, I'm just saying they're sneaky, they're quiet. You don't know they're there, and there's a lot more of them and people don't. I mean, they kill a few people every so often in mal people it's like, oh, whatever, I can tell you when it happens sometime in the future. Who knows if wolves kill a person, Oh my god, it's gonna be really all over the front page for weeks on end. It's happening all the time with lions embarrassed. Well, I mean there hasn't been alone. I mean, yeah, there was a couple of Yeah, there was two I can think of. Yeah, there's a couple of years more in Oregon, one, Washington. Yeah. I'm just saying there's a different value system on these different animals, economic, cultural, ecological, visual. It's something can be interesting to think about. So my point is we need to create value on wolves. Could guided wolf hunts be the salvation of wolves? I don't think. I don't think it's hard. But you know what, some people are taking people out to kill wolves as they learned how to. They've learned how to get them, and they're good at it. And I know some of them and they're they're pretty efficient. They understand wolfee college, they understand behavior, they know how to find them. They mostly calling yea, they know how to call them. And so the sounds are they using so you don't have to ask them? You do know? I don't know, you never got curiousness? Do you need? They're using wolf vocalizations? Do you think they're using pre vocalizations? I'm saying, is there what could be a business for it. There could be a business for it. And and there is business for a wolf. I mean, look at the number of wolf safaris. I mean there's a huge economic value to seeing wolves. But if you wanted to do them for hunting, and right now with the move to pay bounties on wolves, that will incentivize for people. It's a monitory. Does put a value on them. It may not be your value or my value, or might be I don't know, but it puts a value on them. They get a thousand bucks a wolf, they can Uh, it's not called a bounty. It's a compensation program. H and at least got a value, right Liner, It may not, I mean it sit well with everybody. No, it won't, all right, Diane Boyden, Yeah, you got any final concluders, I don't mind, say, Shade, we go on forever. Like you said, there's hours and hours, but what he'll come back. We'd love to have you again. One last yes or no question. You had to go back to seven all over again. Would you have like sold your motorcycle and drove off to work on wolves up in Eale, Minnesota. Wouldn't think twice about it? Absolutely, that's good. No, thank you very much for coming on the show. Thank you. MS convert to prove to feet