The Ghost Grizzlies of Colorado: Part 1

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My streak was broken. Shoot. Yeah. That's my best. We'll keep asking how many episodes we have and now I know. Is that like three main feed episodes? I think so. That's the number I put in the last upload. It could be I could be totally out of that. Does that count the one we deleted? Oh, it might not, I don't know. We should quit at 175. I'll put one of those little squiggly lines that means approximately. I don't know what that line is called. Squiggle. Squiggles. A squiggles. Yeah, that's what that's called. We just got back from Costa Rica the other day. I had a wonderful trip with some wonderful travelers. Just wanted to shout them out really quickly. We got Lilith, Liz, Emily, Dan, Dan, Emily, Nour, Corbett, Grace, Mara. I'm terrible. She's Belgian, hard to say. Caitlin, Avery, Colleen, Lydia, Andrew, Zach, Julia, Nora, Gina, and Leslie. Great trip. And Tatiana, our guide, who is wonderful. The best. Great trip. Y'all are the best. Yeah, I'm going to kill Dan. Yeah. You want him, Dan? Watch your back. I think that's the first death threat we've issued. Yeah, I said it in front of the whole group too. So I feel like I have to do it. Yeah. We had a few firsts on this trip. We have our first attack that's going to come as a story from one of those trips because I got stung on the arm by a bullet ant. So we're going to that's definitely going to make it into an episode at some point. West Cove. A bit by one single ant in a slink. The biggest deal. Yeah, right. I did. You should have made a big deal out of it. In fact, everyone was saying, I feel like you should be making a bigger deal out of this. Go watch the coyote Peterson bullet ant episode and you'll have a pretty good idea what West was acting like. Pretty much the exact triple back to that and stuff. Caulively telling Mike that if I pass out, he should take me out of the canyon. Yeah, anyway, we'll get to that. We'll tell the whole story at some point. They don't bite. They sting. They can bite, but that's not what hurts with them. They're sting. Yeah, they're venom. You kind of have to be able to bite if you're going to be something that eats to survive, right? Yeah, yeah, they bite. They have like mandibles, so it's more like ripping, but it's biting. Yeah. Kind of like predator. Does that mean everything can bite? Well, what if something's just suck? Right. If a bullet ant breaks its jaw and gets it wired shut and goes on a liquid diet for a while, it's probably not biting very much. Not biting anymore. Or if it gets done right. Well, like mosquitoes suck, but you still call it a mosquito bite. Ooh, that's a good point, Jeff. That's a good point. This, this is, your mind works in the most mysterious and wonderful way as it does. Interesting. Yeah, I think though the difference is like, biting is often just for eating, not for defense in a lot of animals. I got sucked by a mosquito. Yeah. That's true. I'll start saying that. So doc, that yeah, nothing one can go wrong with that. I got a mosquito suck right on my elbow. Do we have a sloth count for how many sloths we saw? I was probably like six or seven, right? I saw a lot of them. Yeah, good amount. Yeah. I think it was, so what? We saw two bearlies. Yeah. And then we got our hands on the sloth. We were a good one. Yeah. It's crazy. I was looking at, we were just looking for a sloth in the wild and I was looking at the tree with by nose like studying that tree. Didn't see anything. And then Lilith came running up. Literally crying. And there's a sloth right there. She's like, oh wow. She's like, oh wow. That's why they survived. They blend, they get that moss. They look like a tree, you know? Yeah. We saw eyelash viper, fertile ants, camein, lots of frogs. Red-eyed green, or red-eyed tree frogs. Man, quadimundi. No, no, yeah, we had quadimundi. A goody. A goody. All sorts of fun. White facelisk. Oh, don't forget the facelisk. The facelisk was so cool. Howler monkeys. Lots of monkeys. It was great. It was a really fun trip with great people. So for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Bull ant. Thanks everyone that came with us. Bull ant. Yeah. It was, yeah, we did some fun canyoning that just seemed really adventurous and cool. But, uh, yeah, you know, a sample approval for Perk. For Perk. Turned out it was legally blind in Chimna. Did the whole canyon in the jungles and credit. She got through it. Yeah, she didn't even die. That's crazy. I almost died. I would have died getting out of the van to go to it. Right. Yeah. So pretty impressive. All right. Today's episode actually has a bit of a backstory. And Jeff, it involves Danielle from National Park After Dark. Might. Wow. It involves Danielle from National Park After Dark. Just wanted to know that to both of you. Yeah. No East and Ticks. No East and Ticks. Ticks scooter to prioritize either of you. Danielle sent me a story a couple weeks ago. And it was a great story. I looked into it. She said, hey, this is a great story. And guess what? She was right. I looked into it. And I thought, man, this is a great story. Just for once. Yeah. Right. She's, hey, finally. The way you said that really sounded like the way Trump talks. It's like, it was a great story. Let me tell you the story is great because it's good. And it's huge. A huge issue. Too. Anyway. So as I got into it, it actually was huge. And this was a story I wanted to do right before our trip. And then I realized, hey, there's a lot of stuff here that we need to talk about. And it's not going to be one that I can just do immediately. And there's a couple books I had to read, which you all know is my least favorite thing in the world when I have to order books and read it for these episodes. I didn't. Just kidding. I really like it. I do like it. But it does always add to the timetable substantially. So I ordered those books. And it turned into a two-parter. That's what I'm getting at. This is going to be a two-parter episode. What? It's going to be a fun two-parter. People love them. I still sound like Trump. Why am I doing Trump? I don't know. It's just really loving. People love it. I'm not going to talk to parties. So that's two-parter. People are saying that Wes has the best two-parters. Yeah. This may be the best. It is the best two-parter ever made. But I'm excited about it because I do think it's a really interesting story. It's something that really gets into American history and to the history of one of my all-time favorite animals. Actually, my all-time favorite animal, which is of course the grizzly bear. Nice. So this is going to be part one of what we've titled Ghost Grizzlies, the Grizzlies of Colorado. Oh, wow. So for this, I didn't come up with that title. My main source is The Book Ghost Grizzlies by David Peterson, which is a great book. I highly recommend it. And then I also got a few other sources. I'll talk about my other book next week. But that was the source that I used substantially for this session. His name is David Peterson. David Peterson. Any relation to Pete Davidson? Name's a real similar. Yeah, one of them is from an alternative dimension. And they're stuck in the same ad with each other. The accident. Before 9-11. Because that's how names work. You just switched the first and the last around. Now Mike, does Ghost Grizzlies sound scarier than Grizzlies? For sure. I'm imagining what their growl sounds like. It's probably all ethereal and stuff. It's not like it. I was really hoping you were delivering on that last thing. Make it good. Okay. I think they're scarier. But also that's not the kind of ghost we're talking about. I don't think it's scary. Yeah, actually don't do you ghost. What about the great grizzly bears? What about zombies? It's like the one from an dilation. Yeah, that's very good. Zombie grizzly. I'm scared. Yeah, right. I'm sure. Or like a mummy grizzly. I was just making up the very ancient scar. I am pie. Alien turd, Neonie. All right. So on this first episode, we're going to focus on some of the history. Or like a bear that's like cat dog, but instead of a cat and a dog, it's just two bears. It's like two grizzlies in one. Dude, that would be and they're both ghosts. West. Yeah. That is what we're talking about. We got to stop. All right. So in part one, we're going to re-rack this. We'll see if I can get through it. In part one, in part one, part one, we're going to be talking about some of the history, some of the attacks, and some of the interesting stories that led up to a fateful day in the late 1970s. All right. Before we get into the written history of grizzly bears in the state of Colorado, I want to talk a little bit about their importance to the indigenous people of the area. And we're really going to be talking about the San Juan mountains of Colorado quite a bit. And the people that were thought to have mostly inhabited those mountains are the Yut tribe, which is of course the tribe of the state of Utah was named after. College. They have been the mascot of the University of Utah for a while. And like many of the indigenous people that did share the land with grizzly bears, the Yut people had an incredible respect and an incredible reverence for grizzly bears. They saw them as a symbol of strength and an important connection to the spiritual world. I think we tend to talk about, you know, especially with kind of North American indigenous people, their relationship to nature. Sometimes it maybe even gets romanticized a little bit. But I think it's really hard to understate how important grizzly bears were to most of the people that shared the land with them. They were kind of seen as one of the most spiritually important animals out there. And that's totally true for the Yut's. Their reverence for the grizzly bears was so strong. What's that? It's true for you. Yeah. But I think in a different way, I get jealous of that connection because I don't think I can even have it to that level in my life. But their reverence was so strong that they would only move into the San Juan mountains in the spring after they had performed a sacred bear dance in the early spring. And that dance was kind of a way of them asking for permission to once again share the home of the grizzly bear. Some of the sources I found said that the dance was intended to wake the bears from their hybronation so that the bears could lead them into plentiful food sources in the mountains. But I did kind of see some contrasting information about the dance so I don't want to get anything wrong. So the main thing is that it's safe to say that they had a really deep connection with those bears and that the bear dance was an expression of that connection. Do you know what that dance looked like by any chance? I remember. I looked up some details. There was a lot of like adornments. It lasted like three days. A lot of drumming because the drumming was supposed to symbolize the thunder which is often like thought to be the voice of the bears that like woke up in the spring. I didn't watch any videos or anything but from everything I read it seems like it was a very elaborate, beautiful, like rhythmic dance that went for a very long time. I love that. Ritual. Yeah, me too. Dances I just think that's such a cool idea that I don't know if it's appropriate to say that I wish we would incorporate that more into modern society somehow but maybe that's just best left them but I just think it's a cool idea. I like that. Yeah, that's kind of like one of the worst parts of science and like bear biologists. For sure. I told you guys told us when bears wake up and that it's just like part of their life cycles and it's like, oh we thought there's drums for three days. Welcome up. I totally agree. The big downside to science is it takes a lot of the mystery out of the world. But I also don't think that it disproves those things. Like who knows? You know, maybe this dance did wake up the bears. I'm not, you know, I'm not saying that. So anyway, what I can say is that a really cool thing about this I think is the concept of them not going into the mountains during the winter because it was like the realm of the bear and they had to be invited. And that is a good conservation kind of forward-minded thing because it shows that they're like giving different ecosystems breaks throughout the seasons, which again, this is just a quick plug for indigenous-led conservation is often the most effective type of conservation because there's like a real sense of stewardship for those animals and for the land and everything. Wouldn't you say we for the most part kind of do that now though, like with hunting seasons and like fishing seasons and stuff like that? To some extent, but I think the difference is like they won't even go up there. There's no resource extraction at all during that time. And those it's not like our seasons are perfect. And adoptions. Again, kind of. Yeah, there's no human presence or endgame when Chris Evans was talking about the whales, swimming in the water again. Yeah, we need a fan of. She. She. That's so cool. And that that's not every tribe that did that, but this was a practice of the you tribe in the San Juan Mountains. I've been having some tooth problems lately. I'm very lucky that my older brother's a dentist, but I do tend to really clench and grind my teeth at night. And that does cause a lot of problems for me. I even recently cracked a tooth because I was doing it so much. And that's why I'm really excited to tell you guys about Remi. I had an old mouthguard that was too thick. It made me gag when I put it in. I really didn't like it. 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All right, when we messed things up when frontiersmen and explorer showed up and call Rado in the 1800s, the Grizzly was far less scared of them and far more scary. Grizzly bears were often shot on site because their reputation from early expeditions like the Lewis and Clark expedition was well known. And Lewis and Clark had killed 43 Grizzlies their expedition. It killed 43 Grizzlies during their roughly two years adventuring and probably wounded a ton more because they would essentially shoot at almost any Grizzly they saw. But there are more devastating effect really came by way of their reports because they described this white bear as pretty much a bloodthirsty monster. And the killing intensified when trappers came to the area white. Yeah, they called it a white bear initially trappers and stuff. That's what they called it before I got the name Grizzly bear. Before they found polar bears. And we're going to dig into what I'm about to say. Before the word brown was invented maybe. Yeah, brown was invented. They're like, we got black, we got white. Nothing in between. Yeah. Anyway, so when trappers started showing up, they were getting hides and skulls and claws that they were selling for high prices. Then people started building homesteads and villages and towns. And more and more bears were killed in direct conflicts. But we're going to rewind a little bit and we're going to go back to kind of some of those early days. So there were a lot of Grizzlies in Colorado in the early 1800s up to the mid 1800s. And some of them did end up attacking some of their new, entitled neighbors. And the first attack on record happened in Colorado. Or sorry, the first attack on record in Colorado happened on November 13th, 1821. It was a cold fall day. So this is like two days from now. We're recording on the 11th of November. That's crazy. I just realized that. Yeah. Oh, 11-11. Yeah. New neurologists are going ham right now. Make a wish everyone. Yeah, make a wish. Right. It's kind of like 9-11, but just the first number is a little bit nothing happened. Or is that what just what the government wants you to think? That's just what they want us to think. Building seven dude. Oh, 7-11. That's another good one. Now, oh man, we are numerologists all of a sudden. We got to connect these somehow. All right, it's a cold fall day. And this guy, Lewis Dawson, was traveling with a group of mountain men near what is now Los Animas, Colorado. The group had made a midday stop and some of the men were out to hunt and some stayed in camp and some were foraging. And the quiet noises of these men making themselves busy were suddenly shattered by the crack of a gun and then the sound of someone yelling, white bear. Which again, is a grizzly bear. Brown bear. All of the men, including Lewis Dawson, grabbed their rifles and ran in different directions to try and kill this bear. And they were unaware that this injured bear had actually taken cover in some brush right next to their camp. And when Dawson ran by that brush, the bear charged out and knocked into the ground and began shaking him back and forth and biting his skull. Hugh Glenn, one of the leaders of the company, tried to shoot the bear but his rifle misfired. It seemed like Dawson was about to be ripped apart in front of his friends when a large dog from the company ran out and attacked the bear, drawing its attention away from Dawson. When Dawson got up to run, the bear turned back on him and began ripping into him again with both its teeth and its claws. Hugh Glenn once again raised his gun to shoot one more time, but again the gun misfired and then again the dog charged in and drew the attention of the bear. These guns used to misfire a lot. They weren't very reliable. So this was pretty common. This is like a flint gun. But at this point, this guy with the gun, Glenn, realizes that probably nothing is going to stop this bear from mulling him because it's taking him forever reload. He decides that he's going to climb a nearby tree and get away from this enraged, grizzly bear. The bear is still busy with the dog, so Dawson also gets up, the guy that's being mulled, and he limps to the tree and starts climbing up behind Glenn. You guys how well does tree climbing work with grizzly bears? A little better than with black, right? A little better than with black bears for sure, and better than nothing. So Tom is currently or maybe finished already working on a paper that kind of goes into all these secondary ways of getting away from bears and how effective they actually are. And I think his, I'm kind of paraphrasing what he told me, but his findings were that yeah, it actually does quite often work with grizzly bears, but when it doesn't, it's really, really bad because the bear will come up after you. It'll pull you out and you've given up any kind of chance of getting away and you might sustain a pretty good fall in the process. So it's, it can work. It's a good last case scenario, but it's never what you should go for first. It really reduces your options. And the eight, wait, what year was this? This is 1821. So it might be a better option back then. Good plan back then. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like the head base. No bear spray, their guns took forever to fire, their low caliber. They didn't have good options. So this is a great option back then. Unfortunately, it wasn't a great option for Dawson as he's climbing up the tree. What bear does that probably scares the bear up the tree? Yeah, maybe. And I honestly, I don't know, I know people are going to ask what happened to the dog. I don't know. This is from one of the, the expeditions, people's journals. And it's written in like, like you can hear this guy spitting into a spatoon as you're reading his, his stuff thing. But so he didn't say anything about the dog. I don't think they really cared back then or maybe they did. Who knows? Anyway, as Dawson's climbing this tree, the bear decides to climb up after him. It bites into his leg, rips him out of the tree and back down on the ground. By now, Glenn, the other guy in the tree has fixed his rifle. He's loaded another shot and he fires at the bear from the tree and hits it, knocking it over. He climbs down. He grabs Dawson by the leg and pulls him free of this bear. But when he does that, the bear gets back up and charges toward Glenn and Dawson. But luckily for these two men, at this point, some of the other hunters had shown up and they all fire at the bear and they kill it on the spot. So they take Dawson back to camp and while he's still conscious, he's been really torn up really badly, especially on his head in his scalp. And he tells the men that he knows he's going to die because he had both heard and felt his own skull cracking in the mouth of the bear. And he was right about that. Now plug yours if you're squeamish because this next detail is a little bit gnarly. But when these men investigated, they found a large puncture wound from one of the bear's canines near his upper right temple that had gone all the way through his skull. And they said that some of his brains were working their way out of that hole into view. Oh, he must have big brains. He probably said these brains in there. Yeah. They did their best to stitch him up and make him comfortable. But he did die from his injuries three days later. Dawson would be the first person to be killed on record by a grizzly bear and what is now Colorado. And he would also be the first non-indigenous person to be buried in the state. Which is kind of cool. Oh, wow. It's probably worth it, right? Yeah. We'll leave your mark on history. Yeah, you get the record. Yeah. Probably going to die as some sickness in anyway. Yeah, syphilis or something. Yeah. Which isn't a good way to die. It's kind of like V for vendetta. Yeah. Well, that scene where you get shot. But then he goes and he kills the one guy he really wants to kill. And then they all shoot him like a hundred more times and they dies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just remember, remember the 11th of November or whatever. Wait, is that the 11th? No. Okay. What is it? The six of December or something? I don't know. No, it is November, isn't it? Is it November? Yeah. I don't know. Okay. Now we got to look it up. I feel like it's like the fourth of November. Remember, remember the fifth of November. Oh, we missed it. She's right. We forgot. Should we quit? Five, eleven. Jeff's true height. All right. Don't out me, dude. I six one. I meant six, two even probably. In those early Mount Mandeys of Colorado's history, there was a lot of other memorable run-ins with grizzly bears. The famous trapper and mountain man Kit Carson was out hunting elk in the 1830s. He'd just killed and started processing an elk when two grizzly bears showed up and chased him off the south. That would any shots left in his rifle. He ditched his rifle and climbed in nearby tree, which the two bears started to climb up after him. He broke off a large branch and swung it at the nose of the bears, hitting them and causing them to back off and hang out at the base of the tree. They stayed there for a few hours, then they got bored, went back to his elk and ate it, and then he spent the rest of the night in the tree and climbed down back to camp where he told his story. Those are just kind of illustrative events from the 1800s of this relationship between grizzly bears and white settlers. It was fraught with conflict, but that conflict was somewhat evenly matched. These guns didn't work very well. I think the scoreboard was maybe pretty even on both sides. We definitely killed more than they did us, but when they got us, they got us good. How long did you say that bear was waiting at the base of the tree? They were there for five or six hours, I think. That's not bad. No. It would feel long, though. I would feel really long. I was just thinking with our TikTok brains these days, that bear would have been gone in three seconds. It would have been so long. Not going on here. Yeah. Just ADD bears. Can? Well, maybe that's not a good question for right now, but can bear and other animals have attention deficit disorders? I don't think we have any way of knowing dogs. That's probably true. There's that one. Have you guys ever seen that experiment where they gave a spider like a bunch of different types of drugs and then watched what happened to its web? Oh, yeah. And it like on cocaine and meth, it went all crazy. Just pretty much what Adderall is, right? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know where that doesn't mean. They glad I said taking that one out. I was like eight. Hey, you know what I'll fix your kid? Methanphetamine. That's the yeah. And then if he gets too excited, let's give him some downers too. Is he? Yeah. His grades are still bad, but he's sitting still. That's that net that doing the trick. All right. In the late 1800s, white settlers really started realizing that the combination of lots of winter precipitation and summer sun led to some really good growing conditions in Colorado. And countless farms and ranches started popping up around the state. And at the same time, the timber industry was also really starting to accelerate. And like almost all resource extraction of the time, basically no thought at all was given to the effect on wildlife. And a lot of prime grizzly bear habitat was destroyed as a result. And with all this livestock around and with a reduced amount of good habitat, these bears naturally started killing livestock. And there was a lot more conflict than they had been previously. So while they're used to have this kind of strained relationship between grizzly bears and white people, now they're ready to completely declare war on predators like grizzly bears and wolves and other predators. So they called professional hunters to come to the state. And these guys killed so many bears that the population quickly fell. And they started to be seen only in the most remote parts of Colorado, places like the San Juan Mountains and the San Grey Decreastos. Now this is an interesting time. It's a really sad time for predators, but it's also an interesting time because this war kind of created some animal heroes. Bears that were especially troublesome or hard to kill started to become a little bit famous and they would make it into newspapers around the country. One of these bears, one of the first of them was called old two toes or old clubfoot. And he was a massive male grizzly that was often seen on Grand Mesa. He was especially proficient at killing cattle. And he had earned his nickname in 1890 when he was briefly caught in a foothold trap but managed to free himself losing three of his toes in the process. It's kind of crazy actually how many of these bears and wolves did this where they would get caught in a foothrap and managed to like lose a couple toes as they got away. And how every single one of them would be like old one toe, old three toes, old clubfoot, like all of almost all of their names. They are. They're based off of that which just shows they weren't very creative back then. They would have got out of that first trap and saw so fast. Yeah, just a sock I would have just been like shit. Yeah, he wouldn't even get to wheel out as little as a little bicycle guy. What's the saw for? Jigsaw. Jigsaw. Yeah, the bears knocks the saw away. All right. A $500 bounty was put on his head on old two toes. But he continued killing livestock and evading capture until 1902 when a small hunting party decided to go to Grand Mesa to hunt some deer. And in that party was Franklin Manges who was a bit of a novice but wanted to tag along with these hunters to try and get some game. The hunters were out one day and he was alone and camp and he got bored probably after like 20 hours of sitting still and like doing nothing and picked up his 30 30 and went to go look for a deer. He was walking alone when he heard a wolf behind him and he turned to see a large grizzly bear charging toward him. He froze in the bear broke off of its bluff charge and ran about 60 feet away when Manges raised his rifle and fired. He hit the bear and it sprinted off and then he followed this blood trail through the brush. Wants to die apparently. Tracks at a few miles is crossing a creek when suddenly the bear stands up above the bushes about 75 feet away. He shoots again. He hits the bear in the shoulder and then shoots again and the bear runs off once more. At this point I think he has like a repeating rifle so he can get off multiple shots pretty quickly. He runs into the brush where the bear disappeared and then it charges out at him at about 50 feet away. He starts shooting really fast and the bear collapses and at this point he had hit this bear old two toes 11 times. Wow. Yeah. 50%. Almost. Yeah. He decides to go back. Yeah, how many he got shot nine times, right? That's what he says but he doesn't walk with the leg. Yeah. I don't believe it. Prove it. Yeah. He decides to go back to camp to tell it. He sent just shows up at my door. I could see it. Part two special guest, 50 cent. Yeah. He decides to go back to camp and he tells his hunting companions about this bear and a group of these guys go back to the spot where this bear had died but it's no longer there. They follow the tracks for about a hundred yards and they see the bear is still alive lying in a thicket and may just take same and fires his final shot at the bear is 12 shot hitting it under the eye and finally killing it. When they inspect the body they do see that it's missing three toes on the right foot and this old two toes had finally been killed. All right, but the famous of these marauding drisley bears and Colorado at the beginning of the 1900s is old mose. Why do you guys think he most old mose? The most famous one? Most famous. That's pretty good because he was the most famous drisley bear. I think you I think you forgot the word most but that's fine. Yeah. It's M O S E. I don't know if you'll get it. I'm just going to tell you that. Moses. He was found as a baby bear in a basket in the Nile. I thought these guys love the Bible. It's probably their only book but that wasn't it. You got to guess this, Jeff? No. He's called old mose because he liked moseying around a lot more than other drisley bears. No, come on. No insurance word mosey to mose. That's what they did. Mike. That's what I call the mose. And he was famous because he had reportedly killed hundreds of sheep and cows and three people. But only one of those who's how many sheep equal one person in your view? What? Like how many like the on the trolley problem? How many like sheep would have to be lined up before I hit that switch and let it kill one person? Yeah. Like 10 billion sheep. Wow. That's like all the sheep in the world, right? I don't know how many people would you guys say? 50. You'd basically you're saying you'd rather have zero sheep in the world. Then like probably this person's not that I guess like everyone lost their sheep in the world than a lot of people are going to die. So yeah, probably like a couple thousand sheep. I call it even like one to one. Even one to one. You can't make up your mind. Yeah. I'm letting the train hit both of them. Two people equals one sheet. Okay. Two to one. Oh, favorite the sheep. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Anyone's on the people. All right. So old mose had killed hundreds of sheep and cows and three people. And only one of these human deaths was somewhat verifiable. It happened in 1882 when Jake Rackcliffe was hunting with a friend and they stumbled on old mose just mosing around. Yeah. Rackcliffe fired close range. I don't know why that makes you so mad. Mike. I loved it. Oh my gosh. Old mose immediately turns to attack. Rackcliffe quickly realizes how big of a mistake he's made but not quick enough to get another shot off. All he manages to do is smash the butt of his rifle into the face of this huge charging grizzly bear before it's on top of him and mulling him. And it mulled the shit out of him. Oh, good. Essentially ripped off the back part of his neck with its mouth. Broke one of his legs completely shredded both of his thighs and ripped one of his arms completely off. Oh, man. He did. This guy died. Which it's kind of fun when you talk about these ones from like the 1800s. Just like we just kind of say whatever we want. But yeah, he died from this bear. The other two deaths attributed to old mose probably didn't happen. I would say almost certainly didn't happen because the story behind him is that two human skeletons were found near the entrance of a den that he commonly used in the winter. But I feel like if they knew where he was denning, they would have been able to kill him pretty easily. Like we're trying to kill him. Yeah. Oh, everyone wanted old mose dead. Yeah, it's killed other shit. What were the skeletons posed in an interesting way? I don't think so, but I'm not sure. Wasn't the Pompeii volcano explosion? Didn't they find volcano or skeletons having the sex and stuff? I think they're just like hugging. Yeah. Yeah. Hugging. That's kind of the same thing for us. No, it's not. It's not just a hug. It's not even close. I mean, my neighbor puts like little decorations on her door throughout the year. So maybe the bear did that with the stand. It's possible like a little reef. Oh yeah. Yeah. Like it's not going to find anything much better than a skull. Maybe like a big horned sheep skull, but human skull would be cool. It would be the coolest predator. He's got that little wall of skulls. If Hugging counted as sex, I would have like the highest body count because I love giving hugs. You do like hugs. Yeah. All right. That's actually because I won't bring up how many times I've hugged. Never mind. I take that back. Okay. Kinsmoses maybe play that out. If they were having sex and the volcano erupted, we could easily say like they're probably just hugging. That's true. Sure. If they were just looking at their bones, it's like, yeah, they were just hugging, trying to say stay. Yeah. I have like, have you ever seen them? They're like both like front to front and like their crutches are on to get 69. I just don't. I've ever used that position that they're in doesn't seem like it would work, but I would ever. Okay. I'll agree with you though. Mose only got one. He only got one. Maybe someone killed some people and like tried to blame them on old mose. That's a good name. That's smart. Yeah. Yeah. It's stuck because they really wanted to kill old mose, but he was really hard to kill. He's a smart old bear and he'd manage to steal a lot of bait from a lot of traps. The only time he was ever caught in a trap was when one was placed underwater and therefore had no scent so he couldn't realize that it was a trap. He did get free of that trap though and he left two toes behind. So he was old three toes. Yeah. And dozens of hunters tried to kill him over the years. Many of them successfully actually shot old mose, but they all failed to kill him until 1904 when a famous bear hunter from Idaho and Wyoming decided to try his luck. This guy's name was James W. Anthony and his secret weapon was a pack of hound dogs that had a that they were very good at chasing down grizzly bears and bang them up. You guys know what? Baying up a bear means. Jeff, you know this. It's in there. Is it just getting him up a tree? Close. That's tree. So if that's tree, what's bang? We're getting them in the ocean. Getting them in the, yeah. Hudson Bay. Uh, no. Baying just kind of means they surround the bear and push it up against a place where it doesn't want to run anymore. So sometimes that'll be against like a rock wall or against just an area with grizzly bears if dogs chase them long enough, they'll finally just kind of turn around and decide that they're going to fight. And then the dogs just kind of know to keep a certain distance and it just keeps the bear in one spot. Okay. So that's I think this guy needs to pick one place to be from you can't be from two. I know. And Wyoming. Yeah. I know. I think they were states though back then. So I think he was just from that part of the country. Those territories. But okay. I think that's fair. Yeah. Coming from the guy that every time you tell someone where he's from it somewhere else. Yeah. That's a best route. You think anyone asked where you were from. You have like 10 answers. Yeah. So when he arrived in Colorado, it took Anthony about a month to finally find a fresh track from old mose. And when he did his hounds were on the chase. He followed the barking dogs and found them surrounding the biggest grizzly bear that he'd ever seen. He dismounted from his horse, walked up close to the bear and the dogs and raised his rifle. He fired, but his aim was off. And when he shot, he hit old mose in the throat. And his dogs have been taught to back off like too bad of a shot. Yeah. It sounds like you want to hit a bear. There's a lot in there that it'll just pass through and not do any real damage. And that's what happened in this case. The dogs have been taught to back off at the sound of his rifle too. So when he shot, they backed off. And old mose did his thing. What did he do, Mike? Wolf. No, he bade the dogs. A mosey. He started a mosey to off into the bush. Just mosey to slow mosey. That's what it says that he just slowly walked off into the brush into the brush. Wow. But then his intrusive thoughts got the best of him, old mose. And he decided he wasn't actually going to walk away. And he turned and charged at his tormentors. Anthony fired a few more shots at essentially point blank range. And one of them grazed old mose's neck and caused him to break off his charge. So guys really good at hitting him in the neck, but that's not where he's aiming. Anthony, who's got to be really brave, decides that he's not going to accept a stalemate. And he runs up behind old mose and he fires another shot. And this bullet actually hits him behind the shoulder and then goes through his shoulder, passes through his lungs and exits out his breast. And now old mose is pissed. He turns to charge. But Anthony was ready for this charge. And he fires his final shot. And this shot actually separated the part of old mose's spine that connects his neck to his head. And it was enough to drop this big old bear. But like the best slasher's, movie slasher's, or in my opinion, the best movie heroes, however you want to look at this, old mose still struggled one last time to get up and move forward toward his attacker. But his strength gave out any fell breathing his last breath. When they examined his body, they found somewhere around 20 healed bullet wounds. And one old bullet that was still lodged in his spine. His skull was 14 inches across and 15 inches long. And it was the largest ever grizzly bear skull measured from Colorado. Thanks a lot of bullets to get shot by. It's a lot more than 50 cent. It's true. 50 cent ain't shit, dude. And then he's coming to my house. I don't care. Actually, don't please don't. When he needed freaking doctors to help him out. Bare to move his doctors. Yeah, just walked off. You ever see the music video for Indy Club? He's got like a whole fleet of physicians and stuff just training him. Eminem comes and checks up on him. He's doing this like upside down. He's got all the sit-ups. I do kind of remember that. Maybe he did get shot by all those bullets. He's tough. Yeah. I mean, he has scars from some of them for sure. Yeah. Okay. We'll give it to him. Yeah. All right. So in the late 1800s and early 1900s, we enter the real heyday of the grizzly slaughter in Colorado. And that was made much, much easier with the proliferation of higher caliber, multiple shot rifles. So we're going to take a quick look at two different historical accounts about grizzly bears in Colorado that are just 55 years apart. So in 1855, Captain J. W. Gunnison is serving the wilds of South Central Colorado. And he says the following when he's talking about the Sangre de Cresto Mountains, which are the mountains that border to the present day, Great Sandunes National Park. This is what he said. Sportsmen's spirits are excited by grouse and fesents, deer and grizzly bear, in every valley and every glen. So he pretty much said that every valley in Glenn he saw there is a grizzly bear in it. And then 1911, 55 years later, the Department of Agriculture sponsored a biological survey of the state. And federal biologist Merit Carey had this to say about grizzlies. At that point, at present, grizzly bears are uncommon, if not rare, in the northern mountains, but are occasionally seen in the wilder mountains of Southern Colorado, particularly in the San Juan, Laplata and San Miguel ranges. Small numbers are found in the San Juan Mountains north of Pagosa Springs in Balacito. In an average of one or two had been killed north of Pagosa Springs every spring until 1907, when none were killed. Grizzlies were quite common in the higher San Juan Mountains as late as 1873. I have no data of this bear along the eastern slopes or the front range, and it appears now to be extremely rare or entirely absent. So just in those short 55 years, we went from having a bear in almost every single valley in Glenn to people hardly ever seeing them anywhere in the state. It really goes to show just how effective this all was. We're going to get into like how got even worse for them. And the true death knell really came for them in the early 1900s, when the US federal government got actively involved in the wholesale slaughter predators in an effort to ramp up livestock and agriculture production. Okay, bear with me here. A big step in that process was the formation of the US Fish and Wildlife Service Predator and Rodent Control Branch, which was called PARC for short. And the PARC got really wild with their tactics for killing predators, and no method was deemed too extreme or inhumane. This is another little trigger warning because some of the stuff they did to these animals was terrible, but I do think it just merits kind of saying this because it's part of our history here in the US. One of the most sadistic trapping methods they used was what was called a keg trap. And this is essentially a big beer keg that was baited, and they drove all these big spike-sized nails into the keg. So these nails are pointing inward inside of the keg, and then they put the bait in the back. And when the bear or the wolf or whatever stuck its head in to get that bait, these nails would catch on it, and they as they tried to struggle to get out, they would drive in further, and they would drive in far enough that they were stuck into the animal, and then they have a beer keg stuck on their head. And most of these animals would just die from starvation, and they're also an incredible pain from all these nails driving into their head. So it's a terrible way to kill an animal. I can't think of a much worse way. And thinking of a grizzly bear with one of these on its head, like makes me so sad and angry that I almost don't even know how to process that. It's just so terrible. Like even when you see a video of just a bear with like a bucket stuck on its head, it's sad, and this is just unbelievable. So yeah. Okay, a more effective and less inhumane, but still really terrible method they used was something called a coyote getter. Now it's basically a bait that's booby trapped with an exploding cyanide bullet that would literally blast into the mouth of the animal, unlucky enough to eat this bait. So they'd bite into the bait, and this thing would explode cyanide into their mouth. Which isn't like if you're gonna die, that's not the worst way to die. You're gonna die in like seconds. Yeah. But it's the problem with something like this, the biggest, I mean, it's already a huge problem, but it's totally not targeted toward anything. So you can put this bait out and you might have ground squirrels come up to it and feed on it, coyotes, wolves, vultures, golden eagles, bears, anything that might want a free meal could get exploded by this thing. Havier Bardem, he didn't die. So maybe that's like a Havier sign. Bear Dem. Yeah. Out there that lived through it, Scott like a huge grudge against the CIA or whatever. Am I? Do you guys think he's the best bond villain of the like modern ones? Oh, I don't know. Lachif is so good and Lachif is really good. Casino Royale or whatever that mac in his balls with that thing. Dude, be sure to hit some so hard villain move. Yeah. When I watch that movie, I was like, oh, I'd be dead after the first one of those. I'd just be done. Right? I tell him anything. Like anything. It seems like for the rest of the five Daniel Craig movies, he would just kind of be like not. You should never have sex again in his life. Like his balls over. Yeah. Right. Right. That's that's a fun thing to think about actually. Yeah. Jeff, you got nothing to say about that. Yeah. Come on. I mean, I'm pretty sure he had sex after it. He sure did. Ninti. We saw it. That's the difference between the common man and 007. They can take the steel dude. Yeah. He can take that. He was getting hit. He was joking. Yeah. That's a little bit to the left. Yeah. That's right. That scene. He's ripped in that scene too. Our names. We want my best of the Craig villains. I really like him. Did you use cyanide in the bear collars when you blew their heads off? Oh my gosh. We did not. So inhumane and we didn't blow any bear heads off. All right. This cyanide thing, this coyote getter was extremely effective. And they used it all the time and aside from the indigenous people that still remained in Colorado, almost no one seemed to care that they were doing this. So while these government trappers are really running rough shot all over the predators in Colorado and elsewhere in the west, the war against predators was officially codified into law with the passage of the animal damage control act in 1931. It was a terrible act. It created a new federal agency that was charged with the eradication suppression or bringing under control of animals in Julius Dagger culture. So basically any animal that threatened Dagger culture in any way was deemed an enemy of the United States. Man. And they were. Yeah. It's crazy now though to see predators doing so well. Yeah. Yeah. And running the government. Segment. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. Or dominating the fox office. How do you know the site exactly? We're losing. Yeah. It's a good point Jeff. Predators are having a real heyday right now. It's like either side predators are going to win. Yeah. You can be the president of the United States. Basically the idea was that even more government trappers were given the full time job of killing as many predators as possible all in order to maximize profits and the output of ranchers and farmers. And I want to take a minute that like reading and researching all of this did make me think to be a little bit appreciative of how far we've come politically when it comes to conservation. But I do think the current climate here in the US has swung back toward the idea of maximum profit over everything else. And that does it does feel like we're kind of drifting back toward a concerning view of wildlife as like almost like it's you know like the frosting on top. It's it's something that I don't know what am I trying to say? You know it's not something that actually matters. It's just kind of like a bonus. Sure. We just need like a way to get fossil fuel involved with it like with windmills where they're like think about all the birds they kill. Like if windmills were killing bears they'd be like oh man we gotta save these bears. Yeah you know. Yeah but that's true. If yeah if we can tie the plight of predators into like pushing forward fossil fuels. Yeah yeah. I had one question for you. So like I know Colorado has the most elk of any state. Yeah I think I was wondering do you do you think where do you think like Colorado ranked for grizzly bears during this time period? Like during like the heyday of grizzly bears in America. I think pretty high. And the reason I think that is because they were the last state where they were completely eradicated. The the states that now have grizzly bears are the ones that still had them. So I think outside of like Wyoming Montana Idaho and Washington and Alaska obviously Colorado probably was the next highest when it came to grizzly bear population would be my guess. California probably had a lot too. Because California has some great habitat but Colorado is pretty much all grizzly bear habitat aside from the far eastern part of the state. So that'd be my guess. You think a bear ever climbed a Sequoia in Redwood? I'm sure black bears climb them yet. Like all the other top that's cool. Yeah I don't think they've gone all the way to the top but probably. Just like the Alex Hull and old of black bears. Yeah free soloing it. Yeah. It's too bad Nevada got rid of all theirs before. They could see this fear. Yeah. They were really sad. I think about that all the time. All right in the early 1900s these trappers were responsible for the deaths of thousands and thousands of Colorado bears. Both black and grizzly. And in 1941 just 10 years after the passage of the Animal Damage Control Act it was thought that only about 12 grizzlies were still surviving in Colorado. None of them. Nope. All of them were thought to be in the areas in and around the San Juan Mountains. Quickly let's take a quick minute to talk about the San Wands. Have either of you been to the San Juan Mountains? Yes sir. Where have you been Mike? Do you remember? I don't remember exactly. No but okay. I think if you're out there wondering like where the San Wands are. If you've ever been to like Telluride or Silverton Colorado or Ure Colorado those are in the San Juan Mountains. They're high rugged peaks. There's 13 peaks in the San Wands that are higher than 14,000 feet. 14,000 feet. And there's a lot of almost shockingly blue high mountain lakes. The blueest lake I've ever seen in my life was Columbine Lake in the San Juan Mountains. It was almost unbelievably blue. They have some of the most beautiful mountains that I've ever personally been in and they really do seem like grizzly like prime grizzly bear habitat. And this rain stretches really far to it's about 150 miles from southwestern Colorado into northern New Mexico. Makes sense that this kind would kind of be the last stronghold of these grizzly bears in Colorado. That's where they reintroduced links I believe. They may have. Yeah I think there's something like 250. I forget how many they re-release but that was kind of a big story around the time we were living there. Yeah and I don't know if you could really even put grizzly bears back there because there are so many little mountain towns scattered throughout now but they would do great if they did go back in there. It's great habitat. But for these trappers 12 grizzlies was still 12 too many. One of the more successful government trappers was named Lloyd Anderson. He decided to wage a personal war on some of the last few remaining grizzlies in the San Wands. In 1952 he was called into the San Wands to the headwaters of the Los Pinos River where bear had killed over 30 sheep. He set a foothold trap in what's called a cubby which is like essentially a shoot that you build out of logs and stuff that funnels the bear into an area where the trap is set. And he managed to trap what was thought to be the last grizzly bear in the entire state of Colorado. A big cell with two yearling cubs which both escaped but people still thought this was the last grizzly. Doesn't make any sense don't ask me to explain that. He's still that great. Yeah the government pretty much said we got him all we got him all and he was even like just so you guys know there's two cubs that got away and they're like nope all the grizzlies are dead. It's kind of interesting how like Lloyd was a hero for that and now kind of a villain and at least our eyes. Yeah there's a really kind of pensive chapter of the book where the author interviews one of these guys that was a government trapper back in that day and he he had killed one of the last grizzlies and he like asked him how he felt about that and he's like I mean I regret it but back of the time that was my job you know and he kind of goes into I feel about it but the government the local government of Colorado is what the Nazis said yeah that's true I'm not excusing it but that's true that's what the old one yeah I'm not saying he's a Nazi but like I mean yeah that's what the Nazis said so you're come to your own conclusion and I'm just yeah I'm just gonna let you say that and I'm not gonna say anything else uh the government made a big deal out of saying that that this bear was the last grizzly in Colorado and two years later they officially declared the species extroverted in the state and Anderson was told that he could no longer shoot grizzlies even if he saw one and this begins the ghost grizzlies period of Colorado which basically was a span of time where people would report seeing grizzly bears in ranges like the sannwans or the sangrily decrease those but the state and federal government really didn't make too much of an effort to deny or to verify those claims they kind of just let them claim whatever but no one really checked into it hmm these white settlers that had never gotten permission from the great bear to go into the mounds had now slaughtered one of the most spiritually and biologically important animals of the Rockies and over the next 25 years from 1954 to 1979 officials received a lot of reports of grizzly sightings in Colorado from hunters from trappers from hikers from forest service workers some of these sightings were solitary males others were females with cubs somewhere just tracks in the mud even Lloyd Anderson this trapper who was certain they'd killed the last grizzly bear aside from those two cubs filed five reports of new grizzly bear sightings but they all went ignored and most of these reports came from the sannwans mountains and what the state would pretty much just say is oh you saw black bear it's hard to tell the difference between the two you saw black bear that's what you always say i do say that it's hard but i'm very good at telling those two apart whenever someone sees a bear in Colorado you say you saw a black bear it just looks brown yes and we're gonna talk about that in the next episode a little bit but you you scoffed erasively it's pretty insulting actually i don't usually scoffed erasively but maybe if it was like a bear biologist i would i would say you should know better man come on for the next 25 years grizzly bears were considered extinct in the state even though a lot of these people who knew the mountains best and had a lot of experience with grizzly bears were reporting sightings but as those sightings died down and were fewer and further in between just about everyone started to agree that the grizzly bear was truly forever gone from the centennial state but the ghost grizzly would make one last appearance 1979 and it would be one that was soaked in blood and that's on next week's episode yeah yeah it's a crazy story geez i thought they were all dead nope that's what you think Jeff but they're not oh my god well they are now but they weren't in 1979 so i think yeah yeah maybe i'm pretty pretty confident now i would say like 99.9% confidence that there's no grizzly zincola but again we're going to talk about that next week okay you frankers gonna eat questions but but no okay because of how i asked yeah yeah yeah you think i've been thinking about grizzly bear with infinity stones i forget why i was thinking about those two things together bears can't snap though so i don't think that would really do anything i feel like if i had the infinity stones it would just they're just suddenly be like hawkleberries everywhere you know what they had two fingers yeah and they're like hard ones to snap like a pinky and a pointer you can't at least snap with those yeah it might be wasted on a grizzly yeah it makes sense that that's not what happened in the movies that it wasn't in frisly bear to me that makes sense but i'm glad we finally talked about it uh any other questions that was your question is just what if they had the infinity stones yeah it's a good one now i got my answer i'm satisfied um all right uh well let's go on to our categories then great i'm curious what your favorite culture favorite pop culture that takes place in calirado is terrible that's that what you get your favorite pop culture that takes place in calirado sorry i feel like Yoda you look like a brogood i kind of do which one um i'm gonna go with dumb and dumb i think that was like the one that really it made some good jokes about calirado it was actually like pretty scenic you know it makes you feel like oh i'm in calirado right now yeah right and i feel like it was during a close when calirado was like super bougie it was like the place to go if you're like wanting to like have a ski vacation you know aspen to seem like the nicest place in the country i don't know maybe i'm wrong which one was dumb and which one was dumber that's a good question Lloyd Christmas seems like the dumber of the two yeah i think but i don't know they're both really dumb they're so dumb that's the yeah that's the crux of the humor in fact yeah i thought that was the funniest movie ever for most of my life and it is really funny yeah but it doesn't quite hit like it used to that was my pick two but i'm gonna i have a backup but mike why don't you go next i'm gonna go so basically i'm just gonna say pick your favorite band and go watch a live recording at red rocks of their performance because basically every band of note has a really high quality live recording but for the intent of this category i'm going to promise is actually what no primus their 2010 show at red rocks uh they played golden boy which is my favorite song soft their brown album they just rarely play it live and larry larry has like the sickest guitar part and the solos just amazing um and primus they always put on a good show so yeah that's mine did they play the south park theme song in calrato they should have you would hope so they would have written it by then yeah so maybe oh a south park i didn't even think about south park um but i'm gonna say the shining shining singlorado and dr sleep they're both great they're both in calrato so those being picks yeah the overlook broke back is that in calrato no that's in Wyoming uh yeah wrong those states are shaped the same though so it's basically they're both squaring in calrato yeah uh all right next category is your favorite movie that is a last movie so for example the last Jedi or the last of the mohicans gone with indiana jones oh the last crusade yeah it's the it's my favorite of the three i won't say it's the best because that's a a dumb and an anything to say plus i think objectively it kind of in our youable that raiders is like maybe the most perfect yeah action movie i don't know that's uh i'm getting into dangerous territory but i do prefer last crusade it's just got rid of it feels like an action movie in last crusade it's almost like a buddy movie you know it is a little shan yeah shan connery's so funny in it oh my gosh yeah what's yours jeth i feel like it's crazy use the last of mohicans as a you can use it example you can use it that's like the phoenix for men do speaking of really boring that night in the chamber of the goblets just like sitting there for a billion years yeah not doing anything staring at those goblets probably jerked off a lot all right you got to imagine and jeth what's your last stuff movie um no it's probably the last of mohicans the last survivor last podcast on the left yeah i like that the last dance was uh oh yeah there you go i'm going to pick uh fern goalie the last rainforest hey i loved that movie when it came out and i loved you remember the like guy the bad guy that's like all made of like grime and smoke and stuff right is so good is that so i i had a big crush on frangully oh yeah what was their name what if you said like the bat yeah really what's the bat i'm thinking of the bat from anesthesia the bat was robin williams oh baddie his name was batty not very um not very creative hexus was the victim played by tim curry always good horse it was tim curry yeah all right um oh yeah and toneloc was the the big lizard which is really cool don't look toneloc am i saying it wrong okay the wrapper yeah toneloc my bad okay if someone is trying to trap you personally what would they use for bait and i for your answers i want a food thing and a non food thing what are just two things you wouldn't be able to turn down even though you maybe are worried that there might be a trap nearby yeah i mean for food it'd be like a box of pizza with one slice missing yeah why is one slice missing just because like it's not my pizza but it shows me someone are eight of slice so it's like fair game now yeah it's not poison so how that works yeah whenever there's a slice the first person to eat someone else's pizza like they ordered the pizza okay you know yeah yeah sure that's that's on the yeah yeah yeah and then your non food thing non food thing i would probably have like that's tough actually the ring of power yeah it's hard to turn that down just because it's called to me yeah right that's a good one you know it would call to me i don't think i could resist that no there's no way yeah i had picked a maple bar donate for my food because i just feel like that's the hardest thing for me not to take it's not like it's my favorite thing but if there's just one out i think like nine ninety nine times out of a hundred i'm taking it you know you at least can check it out yeah i'm gonna take a bite and then that's my donut i take when i'm just shopping and i just want a little snack while i'm shopping and then um literally take yeah yeah um with that my my non food thing would be just a really pretty rock i think would be the trickiest thing because i'm gonna want to take it and pick it up but it's not gonna throw off any alarms or make me feel like i'm about to get trapped so that'd be the thing that would trap me about like a t-rex school oh that's good it'd be hard not to pick up a t-rex school if one is hard to pick one up right aren't they pretty heavy they're very necklace cage does it this is a t-rex school or was that Leo look the someone it's someone i know i think the Leo has one two i should yeah what kind of pretty stone are we talking like gemstone or i'm talking like just a really pretty like bluest like a piece of turquoise or something would be really hard for me not to pick up or like a really pretty green stone blues and greens always catch my eye okay yeah i'm gonna go with a nice plump slice of carrot cake been into that recently i love carrot cake oh man with the one we had in coaster ego it was pretty good i had real legit cream cheese frosting on it great time with that the ratio sometimes they load too many raisins in there and i'm not too big a fan of that so you need to get that i don't know like six raisins per slice is what i'm thinking right yeah sure okay and then i'm speaking speaking a neck cage i think i'm gonna take the declaration of independence because what man amongst us would not be tempted to procure the declaration of independence true there might be some like some some stuff on there some treasure maps yeah just like a treasure map would be a good answer to yeah that's true the answer in a way i'm turning that down because then i want to have that people won't probably won't be chasing me at least like government officials maybe they would i don't know well like all right and i'm just thinking delect the declaration of independence like there's pretty good chances a treasure map on it but you could just say a treasure map yeah that's true there's no guarantee i could if anyone infringed on my basic human rights like it just pull it out that and be like i don't know what to tell you i've got this declaration here that says i'm i'm allowed to exercise my rights as a human here in this country that's true you you'd always have that right uh so when when me and mike first started being friends and Jeff uh but Jeff and Mike started a little earlier than than me but when i first met Mike i was pretty proud of being from the state of Montana which i still am and Jeff is too and we we bragged about it a lot and Mike would talk about Colorado and as kind of a joke Mike would send me the most depressing photos ever of Colorado we've talked about this before but it would just be like a kind of brownish stream with like in november late November and just like no real context uh-huh just really weird photos like photos that if you got from a friend that wasn't Mike you'd be like hey are you okay man like are you doing all right and it makes me want to visit yeah and you'd say look at Colorado so i asked Mike to do five reasons to visit Colorado kind of like this is like a blurb you would read on an airport magazine or something all right what do we got for us should we adjust it to say to visit Colorado instead of Montana sure yeah you won't find any of these things in well yeah we'll see uh i'm going sick oh mode on this one you guys by the end of the first bullet point you guys can be like oh my gosh she was right all along so first up is Glenwood Canyon you've been you drive through that canyon you'll be that you'll think you're driving through a movie set basically that is a beautiful canyon yeah and if you want to take that little off shoot up towards hanging lake uh pretty cool hike and then at the end of Glenwood Canyon lies Glenwood Springs and visit doc holidays graves down that's pretty sick right it is this one is not like you can't really go there in order to visit this place specifically at least not all the way but if you're ever flying into Denver yeah uh the airport it's kind of cool you know there's blusifer the haunted horse the haunted stallion there's gargoyles there's all kinds of cool arts and the luminati conspiracy going on in there dead leopard with like women's clothing around it you'll get that yeah in the baggage claim that the international ingestion point that was a weird that was a weird you get to hike if you really want to hike and call right out yes well get your steps in just go to customs you get to hike about three miles yeah as wild longest walk i've ever done in uh in airports somehow beaver creek is my favorite mountain upon which to snowboard i think it's the best but that's just a personal preference but there's all kinds of awesome skiers or it's wrecking ridge we got steamboat veil right next door aspen of course uh rare but like i brought up earlier that it is not impossible that you'll cross paths with a links while you're up in those them their mountains in the veil valley we got palisade peaches which is one of those fruits you know peaches i love peaches when like nick cage at the start of face off he's talking about eating a peach very nice i love i think he's i think he's talking about palisade peaches but i'm not sure or call you call call me by your name also a great peach scene in that movie true yeah what do you think just what peach you know he's kind of doing like an indywanda indywanda oh is that is that what he's doing i thought it said yeah that's our sensual fruit turns out yeah it's true and while you're in palisade you can see the cool little plateaus that's a pretty little pocket a Colorado this is mostly this is like the western slope this is where i spent most of my time when i lived in Colorado so nothing really on the eastern half and then last point is the winter x games which are held every year in aspen that's fun that's always a good time the snowmobile there's like uh that's a big air snowmobile that's a wild event that's worth seeing live at least once it's really weird when they switch faces he probably still like peaches just as much with the new face right like they said the same tongues and stuff you think oh you're right yeah it's the taste buds don't change they didn't do it yeah taste buds are kind of fun to eat peaches with someone's new face you know that john trivalt is wife just love that peach you see it seems like yeah really wow all right if you ate a peach with someone else's face you wouldn't have to worry about like how gross and slimy you got it and stuff i know i wish i could borrow someone's face every time i eat a peach right your favorite wildlife moment from Costa Rica i'm gonna go first mine okay was the first red eye tree frogs that we saw i like i know they're really common there i know they're easy to find but that's just like an an iconic frog that i had just seen in photos and videos and movies at the rainforest cafe over and over and over again my entire life and just like a symbol of the rainforest and seeing the first ones we saw in live which seem seeing them live on the Caribbean side with like the bright blue down the sides and stuff i was just like pretty mesmerized by how cool they look so that was my favorite i think they were sweet yeah how about you guys i'm gonna say and this is a shout out to an episode Jeff and i did by ourselves which you've probably listened to by now west i'm sure we saw the court of seps mushroom zombie ant happening on a night hike and it was like far from the most head turning kind of thing you could see out on a hike like that but just the fact that i had talked a little bit about it in episode and it just slipped from my brain as one of those things that's that's cool but i'll probably never see that really and then we did and our our guide said it was actually really rare so i felt that was really kind of a lucky and special moment for me at least but it's really cool just to see some mushrooms sprouting out of the back of this ant and waiting to spread its spores yeah it's really sweet yeah he did say that about like 10 things we saw that's true yeah it does that when i've seen that in documentaries i always thought like this probably happened like five times you know it probably hardly ever happens but then see it made me think like oh out this is like we're witnessing something really cool here it's so cool yeah i'll go with the third sloth we saw just like a really good view of it my sloth episode i did forever go gave me like such an appreciation for them being able to survive so i don't know i thought it was really cool to like see how well they blend into their surroundings and like how well they've adapted to the world yeah yeah i like that for sure it's a good pick all right uh i've got a couple listener questions from patreon uh this one is from hanna hanna says could you please tell me who you would f marry and kill out of quint hooper and brody from jaws f yeah all of them i think i think i'm i'd kill hooper he's kind of annoying that's what i was gonna say a little annoying yeah critical part of the team of course but yeah i'm gonna frank quint i'm gonna kill hooper i'm marrying brody married marine brody's good i know yeah he's kind of like some weird stuff going on there that's true and he's kind of anxious like you're you're gonna get tired like him telling you what to do all the time yeah in part two jaws two he loses job and he's kind of a burnout alcoholic type so i'd be married to quint because he's gone all the time anyway right that's what i was about to say quints always out like chasing his demons you just raced it out you're married i'd marry quint oh frack brody married quint because quint gets eaten by the shark life insurance policy probably paid out pretty decent on that if you're married to a good call yeah and plus like yeah it's suck though whenever he wants to get your attention he just scratches nails on a chalkboard though that yeah pretty annoying just anytime he wants to talk about anything he just carries a little like he chalkboard around his waist everywhere he goes uh i think i'm a frack hooper because in the book he has sex with brody's wife so he must be like quite the latario if he's able to pull that off so quickly and i'll kill brody marrying we're all marrying quint wow you know am i gonna kill my guy Roy i love Roy though yeah nope i'm still yeah i'm killing hooper still okay all right i've got a few more here this one is from Derek Derek says Jeff and Mike did you see tom Brady wearing a one-piece shirt on one of his interviews does that make up for him smooching his son on the lips wait i did uh i thought it was really cool and i hope that he's a fan of it and not just like having a person dress him and what the kids think is cool or something i think it's 50 50 chance either way like he does have kids that would be into it so i could see that being like bonding thing as and also kissing his kid is a bonding thing right listen he had a Brazilian wife he did i'm sure she brought that culture into the household i don't know a lot of people kiss they love kissing their kids you know is a little weird but i don't shame kid kissers because i don't think it would i thought is obviously a non sexual thing and just a loving thing of course i agree i i can't imagine i love my dad he is the best person i know but like if he had kissed me on the lips we would be estranged right oh yeah i'd stick my head in one of those keg traps if my dad kissed me the cyanide bomb myself or whatever yeah i mean but your dad's pretty cool but he's no tom Brady that's true i can't if i'm tom Brady's kid when dad goes to bed i'd be like what no kiss yeah exactly it's like oh what the greatest quarterback of all time case you on the lips and you're good complaint about it to your therapist i don't think so dude that's a good point all right this one's from bear again bear called bear first time question hey guys it finally happened at the time of writing i've listened to every single episode i'm pretty sure this makes me an official bonafide wildlife biologist just like Jeff i've been sitting on this question for 200 episodes because i want to make sure no one had asked it yet i hope that each of you has had the wonderful experience of delivering a perfect slap on the ass to someone at least once in your life not in a sexual way but in a way that a good high five just feels so good we're gonna say we're i'm gonna throw a consensual slap in the ass there with this in mind the question is if you could smack one animal on the butt without any negative consequences to you or the animal what animal would you choose mine is a hippo that's what they said not me okay hippo's a good choice yeah that's a really good question i have smacked a bison on the butt before um i would smack i mean my mind always goes to pandas because they're so rare really it just feels like such a nice butt to smack you know whose butts i was really impressed by with or zebra they got like a sturdy thick romp they do have a mouse butt or sput yeah and and like if you smack a zebra you're expecting to get kicked really hard afterwards so if you get a free smack that's got to feel really good that's a good pick it's a great pick i think i'll go mandrel oh i like that okay does red blue like nasty butts yeah yeah how cool smack that yeah that's a good like good lumpy but cool all right yeah uh this one is from uh Emily Emily says question for west please explain how are wise centipedes are so freaky for you they're not so freaky they're just like the one thing when you lick the smush spider right off the floor is it the legs did you ever eat a centipede the spider floor snack is the most unhinged thing i've ever heard i just think about that every at least every other day uh at that time had i had the opportunity to eat a centipede i definitely would have eaten a centipede like nothing was stopping me from eating those bugs that fear it's not even a fear it's more just like they kind of give me the willies that's for whatever reason that just started later in life for me so yeah i definitely would have done it i'm still thinking about the spank question real quick i want to spank she lob from lord of the rings because it turns out she's like a really hot lady from that one video game into the game yeah so there we go okay fast forward let's get back to whatever the hell we're talking about okay this one's for kind of obvious why a centipede would keep someone out right even like even with me where they don't i'd like get it yeah i think they were just saying like why a centipede if you're willing to lick a spider off the floor if you eat bugs yeah i get that all right this one's from Rachel and it's just for you to if you could remake any movie but cast the muppets what movie would it be i'll go with sunset boulevard i think muppets in a film noir would just really do it for me let's agree and play it straight you know the dialogue doesn't change a single iota we're just going straight deep dark heavy smokey detective fallen from grace film noir stuff we did think we've answered this before but there's a million possibilities so i think i'll go with saving private right that's another really pretty i can just see like a muppet slowly driving a knife into the chest of another muppet that betrayed it yeah that's perfect perfect dancers imagine kermit just face down in a pool in sunset boulevard just opening narration over it oh that's just really doing it for i'm gonna think about this a lot you know you don't have one per minute old kermit like crying by a grave because he's hoping he's lived oh that the aging effect he gets from like young kermit old that's so good now i just wanted that one to be for you guys all right one more question this maybe paranormal activity just so there's like something entertaining to watch all right this was from paula paula says question i've never heard west mention that once once you change from the clothes you wore while cooking and or eaten in prior to going to sleep in your tent at night when backpacking in bear country recently however i've heard this from two different sources i tend to trust what does west think about this it's a great question um that's the kind that's like upper level kind of stuff like if i were camping or backpacking in a place with a high likelihood of of running into a grizzly that's the kind of stuff i would think about i think it's just kind of you have to make those decisions based on your level of threat and there's a baseline like these are things you should do everywhere you go every single time and then there's things that you kind of add to that if you're in a place with a higher risk and that would be something i would include in that list so it's not bad advice but if i'm camping in like yosemite i'm not doing that because i'm not gonna have a problem that necessits necessitates that so it just kind of have to use some judgment for that sort of thing all right that's all i got for today i hope you guys liked part one i loved it personally yeah and part two has a real humdinger of an attack story that i'm excited to tell and then we'll get into a little bit about the search for ghost grizzlies after that last recorded attack thanks daniel all right well yeah i love that that's great all right i've always been curious about the history of bears and different states in other states and we are we're gonna go into that a little bit as well just kind of like when other states lost their last bear it's get you know i think it's gonna be a fun it's i think that's the number one thing that like makes Montana better than carada in my dreams yes yes grizzlies we have a lot more wolves they've reintroduced wolves but we have a lot more but yeah for me it's grizzlies quick pitch again as always if you want to sign up for our subscription channels the great they're 10 bucks a month they make a great Christmas present there actually is a way to gift our patreon channel now you can gift a year membership or a monthly membership makes for a great gift for that toothy in your life and we've had some really fun recent episodes might just talked about one where animals with either really short lifespan i think it was all short life spans right did you do any long life spans yeah no that's maybe Jeff can do that for me some yeah some later date yeah we've had some fun ones and Jeff just reupped and did a second beaver episode so yeah it's been great um for go check it out that you get access to rebeaver rebeaver yeah beaver some part do all right see you guys we love you all right love you guys birds will sleep on the end of a branch to avoid predators just birds huh any bird some birds all right see you bye you