September 29, 2025 • 37 mins
Tom Parker has been guiding in the Bob Marshall Wilderness since the 1970s, and local legend within his community- known for his hunting knowledge, expertise in the backcountry, and all around affinity and understanding of bears. Through his decades spent in the wilderness living with and around grizzlies, Tom has developed a unique perspective on how grizzly bears fit into the modern landscape. Come with us as we hear Tom's story from the 70s, to present day and start to piece together this grizzly story.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife,
wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to
conserving both. Big shout out to Onyx Hunt for their
support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle. On
this episode, we're going to start piecing together and understanding
where grizzly bears fit into the modern landscape and get
(00:23):
into some subjects of controversy, like their current placement on
the endangered Species list. But we're going to start all
of this off by hearing a conversation with one of
the most interesting human beings I have ever met. A
hunting guide, a local legend, a man who has spent
the majority of this life in the wilderness living around them,
and a man who has one of the most harrowing
(00:43):
bear charge stories I have ever heard. Do you remember
the first time you encounter under a grizzly bear?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I sure do. It wasn't a close range encounter, but
I was bear hunting, and it was here in the
valley floor, and it was not all that far from here,
and it was on the edge of a wetland meadow system,
and it was late in the day, early evening, and
(01:24):
I was watching some bears they'll graze on forbes and
grasses when they first come out of hibernation, and that's
what was going on there. And the mosquitoes were just hatching,
which I can tell you on average, the big hatches
on the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth of May historically here earlier now,
(01:46):
but I knew that from guiding, you know, hunters in
the spring. You had it pretty good until about the
twelfth of May. And then it was like they opened
the hangars.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
And mosquito clouds and with all the wetlands in here
that there was really unbelievable populations of mosquitoes.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
And I'll never forget I was in a cloud of
mosquitoes and watching these black bears feeding. Was number of
them actually in this meadow. Sism was quite big. And
I saw something move in the timber across the neck
(02:36):
of the metal where I was, and I looked and
I was like, wow, there was It looked like the
moon almost coming through the dark timber. And it was
the face and the and the rough on this big
silver tip and it was silver tip had to foot,
but it's it really struck me how that face rough
(03:02):
and head rough made that head so round appearing and
and you know how the moon is kind of an
off weight to silver, Yeah, that's exactly the color it was.
And I got to watch that. I watched that bear
until it was dark. It started to feed towards me,
(03:22):
and I thought, you know, I'm just gonna, you know,
head out.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
How far was he?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
You know that bear was under one hundred yards?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, so not like yeah, because at first I didn't
know if you were talking about you know, three hundred three,
four hundred yards away, but he's he's one hundred yards
or less. Yeah, and that was the first one you
ever encountered. Yep. Okay, Before we go any further, the
(03:59):
state age has to be set. There's just some information
that I think is essential for all of us to
have before we hear more from this guy. Two years ago,
my good friend Fred Finizi asked me to come up
and do a day's worth of ONEX hunt seminars at
the Youth Outdoor Education Rendezvous in Conden, Montana. It's a
pretty sweet event that happens during the summer that teaches kids'
(04:21):
real outdoor skills like backcountry first aid, fly casting, archery,
firearm safety, and a whole lot more. Throughout the day.
There after my class would end, I kept hearing this
enthusiastic voice coming from the class over next to me.
It was the wildlife conflict class, where kids were taught
how to handle themselves in a potential bear charge situation,
and the instructor was captivating, to say the least. I
(04:44):
couldn't help a watch and listen as he would go
over several different scenarios, all paired with examples from his
real life experience, and the class always concluded with giving
the kids the opportunity to try out their newly learned
skills with a simulated bear charge and a train ainting
can of bear spread. Kids loved that, as you could imagine.
After watching this unfold a few times, I finally went
(05:06):
to Fred and asked him who the instructor was and
his response was, oh, man, that's Tom Parker, a legend
in the Swan Valley. Now my curiosity was even more peaud.
Tom had been a well known hunting guide that had
been operating since the seventies and was known for his
time spent in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Mission Mountains.
Known for his expertise in the backcountry known for his
(05:28):
extensive amount of knowledge about all sorts of wildlife, particularly bears,
which is why Fred asked him to teach that wildlife
conflict class. He was a legitimate local legend. The more
I asked around that day, the more my beliefs got confirmed,
and I knew immediately that one day I needed to
sit down with Tom and talk to him, but I
didn't know exactly what about. As luck would have it,
(05:50):
when the summer of twenty twenty five year Old Around
and Backwoods University was now in existence and we had
planned already to do some episodes on Grizzlies, I immediately
thought of Tom Parker. This past July, when we were
back in the Swan Valley, I set up a time
to meet with Tom. This conversation takes place sitting in
(06:12):
the living room of Tom's cabin. My wife Lacy and
I rode over there one morning and we had coffee
with Tom, along with his son and his daughter, and
we talked for a bit as they shared with us
some old photo albums from Tom's early guiding days. As
I flipped through the pages looking at the different photographs,
I saw pictures of the Montana skyline, mule teams going
into the wilderness, successful hunt photos with moose, mountain goat,
(06:35):
mountain lion, black bears, elk, mule deer, along with several
photographs of live grizzlies. It was clear that this man
had a story to tell, probably several stories. Tom was
a houndsman at one point, and the story goes that
for several years Tom ran his hounds without the use
of GPS collars, and that he would rather just keep
(06:57):
up with his dogs on foot and physically track them himself.
This story is not grizzly related, but I still think
it's worth sharing because you'll get an idea of the
caliber person that we're dealing with before we get into
the bear talk, which is fully worth sticking around for.
Because I'm telling you this bear charge story that he
has will make the hair on your next stand up.
Here's Tom.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I just couldn't see the utility for the way I hunted.
You know, much of the hunting here. If you're guiding hunters,
you're hunting on snow. Even before the tracking callers, what
guys were using was a radio receiver. They had a
collar that would put out a radio pulse, and I
(07:41):
had never used ZoZ either, even though they were almost
universally used by most of the guys. I knew that
ran dogs.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
But how did you figure out that you could track
your dogs like that? Did someone teach you how to
do that when you were younger? Did you just figure
it out? No?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I just figured it out. I had some mentors that
were houndsmen. But I guess what it was was I
was in really good shape and I could largely keep
up with my dogs, and if not, you know, it
(08:18):
didn't take me long to close up whatever lead they
had on me.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And you're doing this mostly like in the wilderness.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, in this country here, you know, all around the
periphery of the Bob Marshall and Missions.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah. Wow, Yeah, I mean it's impressive.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, you're going right up the side of a mountain.
I mean it's I couldn't do it today in the
same way.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
No way.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
I just don't have the same stamina that I had then,
which was, you know, I could go day and night
and largely not stop.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
If you're unfamiliar with the Bob Marshall Wilderness or the
Mission Mountains, it's some sea, serious, rugged country. And if
you've ever seen any modern houndsman work. Most of those
folks can cover some serious ground. I mean really, they
are typically some in shape dudes. The fact that Tom
did this for years, keeping up with his dogs with
nothing but his own tracking ability and bootsteps is wild
(09:17):
to me. This guy is the real deal, and he's
been at this for a long time. When did you
start guiding around here?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Nineteen seventy six. I went to work for a local
outfitter and I was packing and guiding full time. At
that time, you had to have worked three years full
time in the outfitter classifications you wanted licensed in, which
was I was hunting, fishing, and packing outfitter right, And
(09:50):
I tested in nineteen seventy eight, and I've been licensed
continuously as an outfitter ever since. I've been doing it
my entire adult life.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Did you guide any particular species more than others or
were you doing a pretty good swath of stuff?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
You know? I guided all species that tags were available for,
and it's changed substantially over the years. But back in
those days, we had a really robust white tail population,
of robust mule deer population, decent elk numbers, even though
(10:32):
we're not as Montana elk habitats go. We're not, you know,
the best black bear. We had really high black bear
numbers in this country, and mountain lions high numbers. Moose
tags were really tough to come by, and in fact
(10:53):
there's none here now, and there's very few goat tags.
They closed the grizzly hunting in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, and they've been they've been on the endangered species
ever since then. Correct.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Tom's guiding days began back in the nineteen seventies. And honestly,
it's impossible for us to wrap our heads around the
full extent of it, but I thought it was extremely
important that we get some understanding of the vast amount
of this man's experience spent in the mountains, hunting, guiding, tracking,
and truly living out there before we get into the
(11:30):
bear talk. But as you heard in the last few sentences,
we're about to dive off into it. But before we
start talking biology, ecology, endangered species delisting and all that stuff,
I want you to hear the closest call with the
grizzly that Tom has ever had.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I had one grizzly that you know, it could have
gone very wrong. If you know what to say. And
I surprised one at really close range, and you know
they can't help but believe that you came there purposely
for them, and they're going to be defensive about that.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
See that you think that they're responding out to like
self defense.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Oh, it's defensive.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
How long ago is this?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
This would have been late seventies early eightieses.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Were you on a hunt when this happened?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I was actually scouting. I had a hunter coming that day,
and I thought, I'm going to go in and scout
this area before he gets here, and just see what's there.
I learned a valuable lesson. It was May, mid to
late May, and we kind of we don't have a
lot of thunderstorms, at least in those days we didn't.
They're more common now. And but there was a little
(12:39):
thunder cell wasn't a big one that come over the
missions and was come in my way, and so there
was a lot of swirling air. Well, I just you know,
when the high density bear habitat was swirling air, I
just don't do that to this day. To this day,
it's just being cognizant of wind drift. I have my
(13:05):
whole career basically make a mental map as I'm out
which way my wind is drifting, so that I know
what I'll call is fouled or I'm probably recognized by
my scent stream or not. And that goes for deer hunting,
elk hunting, you know, you name it. That is particularly
(13:28):
important for bears, especially if you're going to be around grizzy,
because their nose is so good. What happened was I
was walking on a really fairly tight It was an
old logging trail that was really grown in and in
a really high quality habitat, and it had been logged
you know, I'm going to say probably fifteen or twenty
(13:50):
years before. So there's lots of spruce and fir that
gets quite thick. And I'm walking largely into the wind
and into where the thunderstorm is going. But the wind
is doing this, it's going in circles. And I had
walked by this thicket and the winds swirled my scent
into that thicket, and I was, you know, wanting to
(14:13):
go in and see if I could find much sign,
but I was like, you know, I want to get
out of here. And I had no more than told
myself that this probably isn't smart, and there was an
explosion out of this thicket that I had just walked by.
It was a very terrifying roar of this big I mean,
(14:34):
he just roared at like nothing I'd ever heard, And
at first I wasn't even sure what it was because
I'd never heard a bear quite sound like that. Like
I say, the cover is thick enough that I was
partially obscured by a spruce tree. When he came out
of the brush. He roared, brush and timber broke as
he come out of there, and his jaws are literally
(14:58):
fighting at the air. Oh yeah, he is not happy.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
He's mad.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
He is really mad. And I'm not that far. I'm
about to the back end of the woodshed.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I mean that's sub ten yards yea point, that's I
mean that's it's like eight feet, like ten to twelve feet.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
And I froze behind this tree. But what I realized
he is reacting to my sense the scent stream and
with this swirling and he's literally biting at the only
thing he can get a hold of at that point,
which is my scent. So I knew better than to move.
(15:35):
And this is before bear spray, and I did have
a pistol on me, and I know how to shoot
it well. This bear turned and faced away from me.
What took me a split second. And I was young,
adule and strong. There was a big down, large tree
that has blown down against a fir tree that had
(15:56):
some limbs just up from where I was. And when
I saw that bear go behind a little spruce tree
from where I was standing behind my tree, I jumped
up on there and jumped up into that as hard
and fast as I could go, and I started to climb,
and I broke a limb. But the thing I had
(16:18):
going for me, everything was moving because of the wind.
Everything was moving, so that was kind of covered me
right there. So the bear first he backtracked me in
little ways, and then he realized that he's on the
back track, and then he starts to come my way.
I'm like, man, I'm not high enough. He can probably
pluck me right out of here, which I could tell
(16:40):
he would have hippy could have got older, so and
so every time his head went behind, I'd make another,
you know, pull myself up a couple more feet. So
he came my way, and I thought, oh boy, here
he's going to just track me right here. And he
was all bristled up, and he's still going home. He's
(17:01):
really huffing and unhappy. So then he went behind the
tree and he just stopped like he was just he's
just gonna see what's going on here. And he didn't
track me to where I jumped up there. You know,
I'm still not sure that I'm quite high enough that
I cracked a couple of branches, and he come around
(17:22):
the corner of that tree, I mean, ready to charge something.
So I'm like, I'm gonna be quiet and not do anything.
So he wondered actually away from me, towards towards a
big alder swamp there, and at that point anytime the
wind would blow harder to give me some cover on
(17:42):
the noise, I went from the top of this fir tree,
which wasn't tall enough, into a bare trunk lodge hole,
and I shinnied up that thing, and I made some
noise while I was shinnying, and he come right back
and stood kind of by that screw sh tree, and
we looked all around, but he never could see me,
(18:05):
and he didn't try. I couldn't believe he didn't track
me down right to that tree, which he could have,
but I think it was all because of the way
that my scent had been dispersed all through that area.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
From the wind swirling around.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yep. So I got up in the lodge pole and
I hadn't seen him for about, I don't know, thirty minutes.
I'm just hugging the tree, you know. And he got tiring,
and the thunderstorm had kind of gone through, and I
had started sliding down that bark out he comes out
(18:41):
of the alders and he ran up there and he
just and he just kept watching because at that point,
I'm not even drawing a breath, if you know what
I'm saying, I'm not gonna wrinkle any bark anymore. So well,
I just hung on. I'm gonna say double that time again.
And he had wandered back, and I thought, you know,
he's got a bed sight or something down in those alders,
(19:04):
and he's just waiting to see if I'm gonna show
up again. Because what this bears thinking. He came for
me once, he'll come for me again, and I'm gonna
be ready for him.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
So when I finally got too tired, I just super
quietly as quietly as I could. I got myself into
the fir tree which was a lot quieter on the
bark and stuff, and I had limbs and got down
and I made a big bee line out of there,
made a big like multi mile hike to get out
(19:38):
of there without going backtracking to where which is largely
where he was on my uh what had been my
forward track going in there.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Once you got down the ground, did you ever see
him again and you just make it out of there?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Nope? I made it out of there.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
That's a pretty harrowing one.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
It was pretty harrowing. If I would have done anything wrong,
made a sound, not had the cover of that wind.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
It was.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
It was largely luck of a lot of circumstances and
knowing enough not to move, you know, when he was
when he was actively looking for me, right, and only
move when he was behind another tree.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Not to take off running. Yeah, it wouldn't have gone well.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Moden have gone well, not at all. And I have
inadvertently bumped bears off of kills, you know, grizzlies where
they had every good reason to be defensive and field
threatened where there was no ravens to indicate and no
track sign until I just there. I am I'm right
(20:41):
on it. I didn't linger, if you know, as soon
as I saw what was going on. We've got a bear.
You know, this is a grizzly barried carcass, and that
noise we heard was him basically moving off the other
side of this thing. And I've jumped other grizzlies out
of beds literally from you're to the table in alder thickets.
(21:02):
That the bear just broke as soon as they saw
and so as soon as we saw them, they just
broke and run. And you know, knock on wood. I've
been fortunate to have the right bears on the right days.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
The right bear on the right day. I told y'all
wasn't exaggerating about that bear charge story. It's something, but
it's also a testament to how staying calm and thinking
through a situation can work out in your benefit. As
well as shining a light on Tom's unique perspective on bears.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Most outdoor people I know find tremendous. I'll call it enjoyment, satisfaction,
personal reward in seeing and interacting with nature of all kinds.
And I don't see if you have a healthy understanding
(21:57):
of the relative danger of that animal, which you go
to Yellowstone, I think most people would say they enjoy
seeing those bison and would enjoy seeing a grizzly bear
if they saw one, and it's no different anywhere else
(22:21):
in the habitat they exist. I would, you know, see
that as an enjoyable experience for most people rather than
an unpleasant one, if you know what I'm saying. It's
that if our understanding of interacting with these animals is
(22:43):
based on knowledge and what I'm gonna call a reality
based understanding of their behavior, which really changes the the
person if you will. For for the I think the
average person about the relative danger versus ability to enjoy
(23:10):
the experience. One of the things that we tell folks
in the instruction, every encounter is different when you have
a surprise encounter, even with a grizzly bear. You know,
if Fred Pinisi had asked me when we were on
a pack trip, you know, what do you do in
that situation a surprise encounter? I said, you know, largely
(23:34):
enjoy the opportunity to get to see that animal, because
you don't get to see many of them. You and
that animal just happened to cross paths on the on
the landscape and they're not typically unless you do something
really wrong a dangerous situation. But I can you know,
(23:57):
stay from my own experience that if if you stay
calm and you back up, give them space, that they
will realize that you're not a threat. Bears charge, and
most charges are false charges. I've never had a bear
touch me, but I've been charged by many, but they
(24:20):
always stopped and I never shot one of them.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Let's face it, today there's a lot of opinions around grizzlies.
They're an animal that just tends to pull out all
kinds of emotions across the board. I was particularly interested
in hearing Tom's, however, because his thoughts on them were
built off of countless years of first hand experience. And
like I said, this episode is just kicking off this subject,
(24:45):
and now that we have a grasp on Tom's knowledge
around the subject, I want to point the conversation towards
what is going on with them currently, such as their
current status on the endangered species list.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
This valley here, you know, back in the day when
I I first started guiding here, the density of black
bears was hard to believe. And on average, you know,
people would ask me, you know how many grizzlies. Would
you see to black bears? And I would generally on
(25:21):
a hunt, I could show somebody and this is all
hiking about twenty bears on an average hunt, and one
about twenty to one, we'd see a grizzly.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
One of the things that's very different is the habitat
use and selection by these bears. When I first started guiding,
one of the things you couldn't help but understand and
realize in this backcountry was the importance of high elevation
white bark pine to not only grizzly bears and black bears,
(26:06):
but many other species, but you know, bird species, mammal species,
and these pines produce you know, the cone produces a
large number of really high fat contents seeds. I learned
(26:26):
early on in the seventies because it was some of
the last great big pine nut years that were super
abundant production. Is that's where the all the bears in
the country were they go. And these trees occur from
sixty two hundred feet on up towards treeline and they
(26:47):
grow in in fairly you know, big stands where you're
in really good habitat for them, and they are fire resistant.
They're very long lived on the landscape. Some of them
are a thousand years old. These trees.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Early in my guiding career, I had been in some
what were extensive stands of white bark pines in these
high elevation basins and seen you know, up the seven
Grizzlies and a number of black bears exploiting these caches,
and you know, flocks of Clark's nutcrackers, you know, coming
(27:30):
and they're extracting the seeds, flying them to their you know,
individual food caches and returning and they're they're they're making
quite the ruckus. It was one of the most amazing
ecological relationships that I have ever observed. To this day,
(27:51):
it just teeming with life. These pine stands are gone.
This is the biggest ecological change in this part of
the world in my experience here.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Do you know what happened to him?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yes, it is a combination of an exotic fungus which
was brought here from Europe, pine in pine five needle
pine seedlings, and fire suppression at the landscape level. You know,
we effectively put out fires for a century, and that
fire suppression worked against the pines in other words, created
(28:30):
more competition and crowding for those trees, and they became
stressed from that, which is kind of the story of
the larger forest here. And it's at one level. And
then the other issue is with climate change, the amplification
(28:56):
of the bark beetle insects that are specific two various
tree species, and that would be mountain pine beetle and
western pine beetle for the ones that take out the
white bark pine.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Some multiple things working against it. Then all right, we
got a lot of information there, so let's quickly break
it down before we go any further forward. Grizzly bears
were listed on the Endangered Species list in nineteen seventy
five to prevent their extinction. If you remember from earlier,
Tom started guiding in nineteen seventy six, so he started
right after their listing, and he saw from his perspective
(29:33):
a key ecological shift in the large scale loss of
high elevation white bark pine habitat. And from this fact,
once again we've found our recurring theme without really looking
for it. How do humans influence grizzly bears today? You
may ask, Well, one way is the loss of those
white bark pines through a fungal disease called blister rust
(29:54):
that resulted from an exotic fungus being brought in from
Europe unintentionally, but we still brought it here. But I'm
curious how that affects grizzly bears today, as well as
Tom's thoughts on grizzly still being listed as endangered. Where
do you think the overall health.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Of grizzly bear populations are right now? You know today,
there's a lot of discussion to delist them, and I
would support that on the basis of numbers and proven
you know, population growth, which is low but there if
(30:38):
you will sure, and the evidence is you know that
they're growing. I think it's three percent a year, and
mortality is up because of that. The fact that these
(31:01):
bears are utilizing low elevation and what I'm gonna call
habitats that have lots of human activities and residents and
roads in them. That was the first thing, you know,
(31:22):
with the big pine die off here that was most
amplified in the mid and late nineties mainly from pine beeedle,
but also blister us, was that the bear habitat use
you know, shifted from those places and high elevation habitats
(31:45):
to low elevation and the periphery of these wildernesses and
mountain complexes a lot more time spent down here trying
to make up those laws calories.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
So you have basically a potential for more interactions with
humans and conflicts because they don't have that higher elevation
habitat anymore. Interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yep, and they're you know, I still get up there
quite a bit. And it isn't that there are not
food resources there. I mean there are glacier lilies that
they dig and eat, and all kinds of other plants
and forbes and berries on good berry years, but the
(32:35):
white bark pine component was a really big impact. I Mean,
these bears were, you know, places I'd never seen them before. Yeah,
you know, both grizzlies and black bears. And we had
really high bear mortality in you know, in both of
(32:55):
those food failure years, mainly from you know, bears just
death coming into people's places and getting into trouble, hit
on the highway, hit on other roads. And the bear
population has never really recovered since then. It's never really
come back. It's starting to show signs that it will,
(33:20):
but the grizzly use also at that time changed dramatically,
and you know, you saw bears all the way around
the proofery of the Bob Marshall Complex that were out
in the habitats where they previously they were just rarely seen,
(33:41):
and now that's become quite common there For quite a while.
It wasn't so much a population growth expansion as it
was an expansion of the landscape and habitats in which
they were willing to move to exploit and make up
(34:04):
those lost food resources.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Because they had to.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
They had to.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Quick ecology lesson here. Remember this because it applies to
virtually all elements of wildlife and wildlife management. You can
never just do one thing, meaning every single action within
an ecosystem has multiple, interconnected and sometimes unpredictable consequences. The
Storytime just shared with us is a perfect example. We
(34:31):
know that the wilderness in the mountains where he spent
most of his time lost the majority of its high
elevation white bark pine habitat. But what does that mean?
What means we lost those trees, of course, but it
also led to a lost food source for black bears
and grizzly bears, which resulted in them having to venture
out to areas and places where they had often not
been before, if they had even been there at all,
(34:53):
places at lower elevations, places where they crossed paths with humans,
more more highways, more home sites, and so on. Actions
have consequences, and that's important to note.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
It really is an amazing story of how small, unintended
actions by humans that had you know, good and different intentions.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
So does that mean is there any you know, white
pine left? Do you find it scattered in them ores?
It just pretty much gone.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
I've been up in some of these burns in the
white bark stands, and there's actually an encouraging amount of
white bark pine regeneration that is bird planted that you know,
they're finding some rush resistant trees on the landscape and
(35:49):
they're planting those.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
So there's a chance that some of that habitat could return.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yep, it's going to be a long time because they
they're usually at least fifty years old before they produce
a comany. Oh, you know, you got to take the
long view on this. But I'm i am more encouraged
and hopeful than I was after the big pine beetle
(36:15):
attack on these remnant trees. I'm based on the regeneration
hunt that I'm seeing.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Encouraged and hopeful to future for the bear populations going forward.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, in terms of it's it's going to be a
few generations out if you know what I'm saying, generations
of people. But you know, my children will live to
see hopefully some cone production on these trees regenerating in
some of these high elevation stands.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I think all of us would be better off in
life if we learned a thing or two from Tom Parker.
And I don't just mean learn how to behave if
he ever encounter Baron, although that would be some good
stuff to know, but rather his big picture view on
wildlife and the places that they call home, and his
hopefulness that we could see a return of better black
bear and grizzly bear populations, as well as a delisting
(37:14):
of them from the endangered species list. And speaking of
the endangered species list, and what do y'all think should
grizzlies be delisted or not? In fact, that's your homework
for the time being, because next time we're diving further
into the grizzly topic and how they fit into today's world.
(37:35):
I want to thank all of you for listening to
Backwoods University as well as Bear Grease in This Country Life.
If you like this episode, share it with a friend
this week that you think would get a real good
kick out of that bear charge story, and stick around
because there's a whole lot more on the way.
Welcome to Backwoods University, a place where we focus on wildlife,
wild places and the people who dedicate their lives to
conserving both. Big shout out to Onyx Hunt for their
support of this podcast. I'm your host, Lake Pickle. On
this episode, we're going to start piecing together and understanding
where grizzly bears fit into the modern landscape and get
(00:23):
into some subjects of controversy, like their current placement on
the endangered Species list. But we're going to start all
of this off by hearing a conversation with one of
the most interesting human beings I have ever met. A
hunting guide, a local legend, a man who has spent
the majority of this life in the wilderness living around them,
and a man who has one of the most harrowing
(00:43):
bear charge stories I have ever heard. Do you remember
the first time you encounter under a grizzly bear?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I sure do. It wasn't a close range encounter, but
I was bear hunting, and it was here in the
valley floor, and it was not all that far from here,
and it was on the edge of a wetland meadow system,
and it was late in the day, early evening, and
(01:24):
I was watching some bears they'll graze on forbes and
grasses when they first come out of hibernation, and that's
what was going on there. And the mosquitoes were just hatching,
which I can tell you on average, the big hatches
on the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth of May historically here earlier now,
(01:46):
but I knew that from guiding, you know, hunters in
the spring. You had it pretty good until about the
twelfth of May. And then it was like they opened
the hangars.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
And mosquito clouds and with all the wetlands in here
that there was really unbelievable populations of mosquitoes.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
And I'll never forget I was in a cloud of
mosquitoes and watching these black bears feeding. Was number of
them actually in this meadow. Sism was quite big. And
I saw something move in the timber across the neck
(02:36):
of the metal where I was, and I looked and
I was like, wow, there was It looked like the
moon almost coming through the dark timber. And it was
the face and the and the rough on this big
silver tip and it was silver tip had to foot,
but it's it really struck me how that face rough
(03:02):
and head rough made that head so round appearing and
and you know how the moon is kind of an
off weight to silver, Yeah, that's exactly the color it was.
And I got to watch that. I watched that bear
until it was dark. It started to feed towards me,
(03:22):
and I thought, you know, I'm just gonna, you know,
head out.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
How far was he?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
You know that bear was under one hundred yards?
Speaker 1 (03:33):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Yeah, so not like yeah, because at first I didn't
know if you were talking about you know, three hundred three,
four hundred yards away, but he's he's one hundred yards
or less. Yeah, and that was the first one you
ever encountered. Yep. Okay, Before we go any further, the
(03:59):
state age has to be set. There's just some information
that I think is essential for all of us to
have before we hear more from this guy. Two years ago,
my good friend Fred Finizi asked me to come up
and do a day's worth of ONEX hunt seminars at
the Youth Outdoor Education Rendezvous in Conden, Montana. It's a
pretty sweet event that happens during the summer that teaches kids'
(04:21):
real outdoor skills like backcountry first aid, fly casting, archery,
firearm safety, and a whole lot more. Throughout the day.
There after my class would end, I kept hearing this
enthusiastic voice coming from the class over next to me.
It was the wildlife conflict class, where kids were taught
how to handle themselves in a potential bear charge situation,
and the instructor was captivating, to say the least. I
(04:44):
couldn't help a watch and listen as he would go
over several different scenarios, all paired with examples from his
real life experience, and the class always concluded with giving
the kids the opportunity to try out their newly learned
skills with a simulated bear charge and a train ainting
can of bear spread. Kids loved that, as you could imagine.
After watching this unfold a few times, I finally went
(05:06):
to Fred and asked him who the instructor was and
his response was, oh, man, that's Tom Parker, a legend
in the Swan Valley. Now my curiosity was even more peaud.
Tom had been a well known hunting guide that had
been operating since the seventies and was known for his
time spent in the Bob Marshall Wilderness and Mission Mountains.
Known for his expertise in the backcountry known for his
(05:28):
extensive amount of knowledge about all sorts of wildlife, particularly bears,
which is why Fred asked him to teach that wildlife
conflict class. He was a legitimate local legend. The more
I asked around that day, the more my beliefs got confirmed,
and I knew immediately that one day I needed to
sit down with Tom and talk to him, but I
didn't know exactly what about. As luck would have it,
(05:50):
when the summer of twenty twenty five year Old Around
and Backwoods University was now in existence and we had
planned already to do some episodes on Grizzlies, I immediately
thought of Tom Parker. This past July, when we were
back in the Swan Valley, I set up a time
to meet with Tom. This conversation takes place sitting in
(06:12):
the living room of Tom's cabin. My wife Lacy and
I rode over there one morning and we had coffee
with Tom, along with his son and his daughter, and
we talked for a bit as they shared with us
some old photo albums from Tom's early guiding days. As
I flipped through the pages looking at the different photographs,
I saw pictures of the Montana skyline, mule teams going
into the wilderness, successful hunt photos with moose, mountain goat,
(06:35):
mountain lion, black bears, elk, mule deer, along with several
photographs of live grizzlies. It was clear that this man
had a story to tell, probably several stories. Tom was
a houndsman at one point, and the story goes that
for several years Tom ran his hounds without the use
of GPS collars, and that he would rather just keep
(06:57):
up with his dogs on foot and physically track them himself.
This story is not grizzly related, but I still think
it's worth sharing because you'll get an idea of the
caliber person that we're dealing with before we get into
the bear talk, which is fully worth sticking around for.
Because I'm telling you this bear charge story that he
has will make the hair on your next stand up.
Here's Tom.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
I just couldn't see the utility for the way I hunted.
You know, much of the hunting here. If you're guiding hunters,
you're hunting on snow. Even before the tracking callers, what
guys were using was a radio receiver. They had a
collar that would put out a radio pulse, and I
(07:41):
had never used ZoZ either, even though they were almost
universally used by most of the guys. I knew that
ran dogs.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
But how did you figure out that you could track
your dogs like that? Did someone teach you how to
do that when you were younger? Did you just figure
it out? No?
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I just figured it out. I had some mentors that
were houndsmen. But I guess what it was was I
was in really good shape and I could largely keep
up with my dogs, and if not, you know, it
(08:18):
didn't take me long to close up whatever lead they
had on me.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And you're doing this mostly like in the wilderness.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, in this country here, you know, all around the
periphery of the Bob Marshall and Missions.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah. Wow, Yeah, I mean it's impressive.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yeah, you're going right up the side of a mountain.
I mean it's I couldn't do it today in the
same way.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
No way.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
I just don't have the same stamina that I had then,
which was, you know, I could go day and night
and largely not stop.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
If you're unfamiliar with the Bob Marshall Wilderness or the
Mission Mountains, it's some sea, serious, rugged country. And if
you've ever seen any modern houndsman work. Most of those
folks can cover some serious ground. I mean really, they
are typically some in shape dudes. The fact that Tom
did this for years, keeping up with his dogs with
nothing but his own tracking ability and bootsteps is wild
(09:17):
to me. This guy is the real deal, and he's
been at this for a long time. When did you
start guiding around here?
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Nineteen seventy six. I went to work for a local
outfitter and I was packing and guiding full time. At
that time, you had to have worked three years full
time in the outfitter classifications you wanted licensed in, which
was I was hunting, fishing, and packing outfitter right, And
(09:50):
I tested in nineteen seventy eight, and I've been licensed
continuously as an outfitter ever since. I've been doing it
my entire adult life.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Did you guide any particular species more than others or
were you doing a pretty good swath of stuff?
Speaker 2 (10:09):
You know? I guided all species that tags were available for,
and it's changed substantially over the years. But back in
those days, we had a really robust white tail population,
of robust mule deer population, decent elk numbers, even though
(10:32):
we're not as Montana elk habitats go. We're not, you know,
the best black bear. We had really high black bear
numbers in this country, and mountain lions high numbers. Moose
tags were really tough to come by, and in fact
(10:53):
there's none here now, and there's very few goat tags.
They closed the grizzly hunting in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, and they've been they've been on the endangered species
ever since then. Correct.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Tom's guiding days began back in the nineteen seventies. And honestly,
it's impossible for us to wrap our heads around the
full extent of it, but I thought it was extremely
important that we get some understanding of the vast amount
of this man's experience spent in the mountains, hunting, guiding, tracking,
and truly living out there before we get into the
(11:30):
bear talk. But as you heard in the last few sentences,
we're about to dive off into it. But before we
start talking biology, ecology, endangered species delisting and all that stuff,
I want you to hear the closest call with the
grizzly that Tom has ever had.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
I had one grizzly that you know, it could have
gone very wrong. If you know what to say. And
I surprised one at really close range, and you know
they can't help but believe that you came there purposely
for them, and they're going to be defensive about that.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
See that you think that they're responding out to like
self defense.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Oh, it's defensive.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
How long ago is this?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
This would have been late seventies early eightieses.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Were you on a hunt when this happened?
Speaker 2 (12:17):
I was actually scouting. I had a hunter coming that day,
and I thought, I'm going to go in and scout
this area before he gets here, and just see what's there.
I learned a valuable lesson. It was May, mid to
late May, and we kind of we don't have a
lot of thunderstorms, at least in those days we didn't.
They're more common now. And but there was a little
(12:39):
thunder cell wasn't a big one that come over the
missions and was come in my way, and so there
was a lot of swirling air. Well, I just you know,
when the high density bear habitat was swirling air, I
just don't do that to this day. To this day,
it's just being cognizant of wind drift. I have my
(13:05):
whole career basically make a mental map as I'm out
which way my wind is drifting, so that I know
what I'll call is fouled or I'm probably recognized by
my scent stream or not. And that goes for deer hunting,
elk hunting, you know, you name it. That is particularly
(13:28):
important for bears, especially if you're going to be around grizzy,
because their nose is so good. What happened was I
was walking on a really fairly tight It was an
old logging trail that was really grown in and in
a really high quality habitat, and it had been logged
you know, I'm going to say probably fifteen or twenty
(13:50):
years before. So there's lots of spruce and fir that
gets quite thick. And I'm walking largely into the wind
and into where the thunderstorm is going. But the wind
is doing this, it's going in circles. And I had
walked by this thicket and the winds swirled my scent
into that thicket, and I was, you know, wanting to
(14:13):
go in and see if I could find much sign,
but I was like, you know, I want to get
out of here. And I had no more than told
myself that this probably isn't smart, and there was an
explosion out of this thicket that I had just walked by.
It was a very terrifying roar of this big I mean,
(14:34):
he just roared at like nothing I'd ever heard, And
at first I wasn't even sure what it was because
I'd never heard a bear quite sound like that. Like
I say, the cover is thick enough that I was
partially obscured by a spruce tree. When he came out
of the brush. He roared, brush and timber broke as
he come out of there, and his jaws are literally
(14:58):
fighting at the air. Oh yeah, he is not happy.
Speaker 1 (15:02):
He's mad.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
He is really mad. And I'm not that far. I'm
about to the back end of the woodshed.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I mean that's sub ten yards yea point, that's I
mean that's it's like eight feet, like ten to twelve feet.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
And I froze behind this tree. But what I realized
he is reacting to my sense the scent stream and
with this swirling and he's literally biting at the only
thing he can get a hold of at that point,
which is my scent. So I knew better than to move.
(15:35):
And this is before bear spray, and I did have
a pistol on me, and I know how to shoot
it well. This bear turned and faced away from me.
What took me a split second. And I was young,
adule and strong. There was a big down, large tree
that has blown down against a fir tree that had
(15:56):
some limbs just up from where I was. And when
I saw that bear go behind a little spruce tree
from where I was standing behind my tree, I jumped
up on there and jumped up into that as hard
and fast as I could go, and I started to climb,
and I broke a limb. But the thing I had
(16:18):
going for me, everything was moving because of the wind.
Everything was moving, so that was kind of covered me
right there. So the bear first he backtracked me in
little ways, and then he realized that he's on the
back track, and then he starts to come my way.
I'm like, man, I'm not high enough. He can probably
pluck me right out of here, which I could tell
(16:40):
he would have hippy could have got older, so and
so every time his head went behind, I'd make another,
you know, pull myself up a couple more feet. So
he came my way, and I thought, oh boy, here
he's going to just track me right here. And he
was all bristled up, and he's still going home. He's
(17:01):
really huffing and unhappy. So then he went behind the
tree and he just stopped like he was just he's
just gonna see what's going on here. And he didn't
track me to where I jumped up there. You know,
I'm still not sure that I'm quite high enough that
I cracked a couple of branches, and he come around
(17:22):
the corner of that tree, I mean, ready to charge something.
So I'm like, I'm gonna be quiet and not do anything.
So he wondered actually away from me, towards towards a
big alder swamp there, and at that point anytime the
wind would blow harder to give me some cover on
(17:42):
the noise, I went from the top of this fir tree,
which wasn't tall enough, into a bare trunk lodge hole,
and I shinnied up that thing, and I made some
noise while I was shinnying, and he come right back
and stood kind of by that screw sh tree, and
we looked all around, but he never could see me,
(18:05):
and he didn't try. I couldn't believe he didn't track
me down right to that tree, which he could have,
but I think it was all because of the way
that my scent had been dispersed all through that area.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
From the wind swirling around.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yep. So I got up in the lodge pole and
I hadn't seen him for about, I don't know, thirty minutes.
I'm just hugging the tree, you know. And he got tiring,
and the thunderstorm had kind of gone through, and I
had started sliding down that bark out he comes out
(18:41):
of the alders and he ran up there and he
just and he just kept watching because at that point,
I'm not even drawing a breath, if you know what
I'm saying, I'm not gonna wrinkle any bark anymore. So well,
I just hung on. I'm gonna say double that time again.
And he had wandered back, and I thought, you know,
he's got a bed sight or something down in those alders,
(19:04):
and he's just waiting to see if I'm gonna show
up again. Because what this bears thinking. He came for
me once, he'll come for me again, and I'm gonna
be ready for him.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
So when I finally got too tired, I just super
quietly as quietly as I could. I got myself into
the fir tree which was a lot quieter on the
bark and stuff, and I had limbs and got down
and I made a big bee line out of there,
made a big like multi mile hike to get out
(19:38):
of there without going backtracking to where which is largely
where he was on my uh what had been my
forward track going in there.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Once you got down the ground, did you ever see
him again and you just make it out of there?
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Nope? I made it out of there.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
That's a pretty harrowing one.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
It was pretty harrowing. If I would have done anything wrong,
made a sound, not had the cover of that wind.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
It was.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
It was largely luck of a lot of circumstances and
knowing enough not to move, you know, when he was
when he was actively looking for me, right, and only
move when he was behind another tree.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Not to take off running. Yeah, it wouldn't have gone well.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
Moden have gone well, not at all. And I have
inadvertently bumped bears off of kills, you know, grizzlies where
they had every good reason to be defensive and field
threatened where there was no ravens to indicate and no
track sign until I just there. I am I'm right
(20:41):
on it. I didn't linger, if you know, as soon
as I saw what was going on. We've got a bear.
You know, this is a grizzly barried carcass, and that
noise we heard was him basically moving off the other
side of this thing. And I've jumped other grizzlies out
of beds literally from you're to the table in alder thickets.
(21:02):
That the bear just broke as soon as they saw
and so as soon as we saw them, they just
broke and run. And you know, knock on wood. I've
been fortunate to have the right bears on the right days.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
The right bear on the right day. I told y'all
wasn't exaggerating about that bear charge story. It's something, but
it's also a testament to how staying calm and thinking
through a situation can work out in your benefit. As
well as shining a light on Tom's unique perspective on bears.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Most outdoor people I know find tremendous. I'll call it enjoyment, satisfaction,
personal reward in seeing and interacting with nature of all kinds.
And I don't see if you have a healthy understanding
(21:57):
of the relative danger of that animal, which you go
to Yellowstone, I think most people would say they enjoy
seeing those bison and would enjoy seeing a grizzly bear
if they saw one, and it's no different anywhere else
(22:21):
in the habitat they exist. I would, you know, see
that as an enjoyable experience for most people rather than
an unpleasant one, if you know what I'm saying. It's
that if our understanding of interacting with these animals is
(22:43):
based on knowledge and what I'm gonna call a reality
based understanding of their behavior, which really changes the the
person if you will. For for the I think the
average person about the relative danger versus ability to enjoy
(23:10):
the experience. One of the things that we tell folks
in the instruction, every encounter is different when you have
a surprise encounter, even with a grizzly bear. You know,
if Fred Pinisi had asked me when we were on
a pack trip, you know, what do you do in
that situation a surprise encounter? I said, you know, largely
(23:34):
enjoy the opportunity to get to see that animal, because
you don't get to see many of them. You and
that animal just happened to cross paths on the on
the landscape and they're not typically unless you do something
really wrong a dangerous situation. But I can you know,
(23:57):
stay from my own experience that if if you stay
calm and you back up, give them space, that they
will realize that you're not a threat. Bears charge, and
most charges are false charges. I've never had a bear
touch me, but I've been charged by many, but they
(24:20):
always stopped and I never shot one of them.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Let's face it, today there's a lot of opinions around grizzlies.
They're an animal that just tends to pull out all
kinds of emotions across the board. I was particularly interested
in hearing Tom's, however, because his thoughts on them were
built off of countless years of first hand experience. And
like I said, this episode is just kicking off this subject,
(24:45):
and now that we have a grasp on Tom's knowledge
around the subject, I want to point the conversation towards
what is going on with them currently, such as their
current status on the endangered species list.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
This valley here, you know, back in the day when
I I first started guiding here, the density of black
bears was hard to believe. And on average, you know,
people would ask me, you know how many grizzlies. Would
you see to black bears? And I would generally on
(25:21):
a hunt, I could show somebody and this is all
hiking about twenty bears on an average hunt, and one
about twenty to one, we'd see a grizzly.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
One of the things that's very different is the habitat
use and selection by these bears. When I first started guiding,
one of the things you couldn't help but understand and
realize in this backcountry was the importance of high elevation
white bark pine to not only grizzly bears and black bears,
(26:06):
but many other species, but you know, bird species, mammal species,
and these pines produce you know, the cone produces a
large number of really high fat contents seeds. I learned
(26:26):
early on in the seventies because it was some of
the last great big pine nut years that were super
abundant production. Is that's where the all the bears in
the country were they go. And these trees occur from
sixty two hundred feet on up towards treeline and they
(26:47):
grow in in fairly you know, big stands where you're
in really good habitat for them, and they are fire resistant.
They're very long lived on the landscape. Some of them
are a thousand years old. These trees.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Early in my guiding career, I had been in some
what were extensive stands of white bark pines in these
high elevation basins and seen you know, up the seven
Grizzlies and a number of black bears exploiting these caches,
and you know, flocks of Clark's nutcrackers, you know, coming
(27:30):
and they're extracting the seeds, flying them to their you know,
individual food caches and returning and they're they're they're making
quite the ruckus. It was one of the most amazing
ecological relationships that I have ever observed. To this day,
(27:51):
it just teeming with life. These pine stands are gone.
This is the biggest ecological change in this part of
the world in my experience here.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Do you know what happened to him?
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Yes, it is a combination of an exotic fungus which
was brought here from Europe, pine in pine five needle
pine seedlings, and fire suppression at the landscape level. You know,
we effectively put out fires for a century, and that
fire suppression worked against the pines in other words, created
(28:30):
more competition and crowding for those trees, and they became
stressed from that, which is kind of the story of
the larger forest here. And it's at one level. And
then the other issue is with climate change, the amplification
(28:56):
of the bark beetle insects that are specific two various
tree species, and that would be mountain pine beetle and
western pine beetle for the ones that take out the
white bark pine.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Some multiple things working against it. Then all right, we
got a lot of information there, so let's quickly break
it down before we go any further forward. Grizzly bears
were listed on the Endangered Species list in nineteen seventy
five to prevent their extinction. If you remember from earlier,
Tom started guiding in nineteen seventy six, so he started
right after their listing, and he saw from his perspective
(29:33):
a key ecological shift in the large scale loss of
high elevation white bark pine habitat. And from this fact,
once again we've found our recurring theme without really looking
for it. How do humans influence grizzly bears today? You
may ask, Well, one way is the loss of those
white bark pines through a fungal disease called blister rust
(29:54):
that resulted from an exotic fungus being brought in from
Europe unintentionally, but we still brought it here. But I'm
curious how that affects grizzly bears today, as well as
Tom's thoughts on grizzly still being listed as endangered. Where
do you think the overall health.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Of grizzly bear populations are right now? You know today,
there's a lot of discussion to delist them, and I
would support that on the basis of numbers and proven
you know, population growth, which is low but there if
(30:38):
you will sure, and the evidence is you know that
they're growing. I think it's three percent a year, and
mortality is up because of that. The fact that these
(31:01):
bears are utilizing low elevation and what I'm gonna call
habitats that have lots of human activities and residents and
roads in them. That was the first thing, you know,
(31:22):
with the big pine die off here that was most
amplified in the mid and late nineties mainly from pine beeedle,
but also blister us, was that the bear habitat use
you know, shifted from those places and high elevation habitats
(31:45):
to low elevation and the periphery of these wildernesses and
mountain complexes a lot more time spent down here trying
to make up those laws calories.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
So you have basically a potential for more interactions with
humans and conflicts because they don't have that higher elevation
habitat anymore. Interesting.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Yep, and they're you know, I still get up there
quite a bit. And it isn't that there are not
food resources there. I mean there are glacier lilies that
they dig and eat, and all kinds of other plants
and forbes and berries on good berry years, but the
(32:35):
white bark pine component was a really big impact. I Mean,
these bears were, you know, places I'd never seen them before. Yeah,
you know, both grizzlies and black bears. And we had
really high bear mortality in you know, in both of
(32:55):
those food failure years, mainly from you know, bears just
death coming into people's places and getting into trouble, hit
on the highway, hit on other roads. And the bear
population has never really recovered since then. It's never really
come back. It's starting to show signs that it will,
(33:20):
but the grizzly use also at that time changed dramatically,
and you know, you saw bears all the way around
the proofery of the Bob Marshall Complex that were out
in the habitats where they previously they were just rarely seen,
(33:41):
and now that's become quite common there For quite a while.
It wasn't so much a population growth expansion as it
was an expansion of the landscape and habitats in which
they were willing to move to exploit and make up
(34:04):
those lost food resources.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Because they had to.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
They had to.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Quick ecology lesson here. Remember this because it applies to
virtually all elements of wildlife and wildlife management. You can
never just do one thing, meaning every single action within
an ecosystem has multiple, interconnected and sometimes unpredictable consequences. The
Storytime just shared with us is a perfect example. We
(34:31):
know that the wilderness in the mountains where he spent
most of his time lost the majority of its high
elevation white bark pine habitat. But what does that mean?
What means we lost those trees, of course, but it
also led to a lost food source for black bears
and grizzly bears, which resulted in them having to venture
out to areas and places where they had often not
been before, if they had even been there at all,
(34:53):
places at lower elevations, places where they crossed paths with humans,
more more highways, more home sites, and so on. Actions
have consequences, and that's important to note.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
It really is an amazing story of how small, unintended
actions by humans that had you know, good and different intentions.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
So does that mean is there any you know, white
pine left? Do you find it scattered in them ores?
It just pretty much gone.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
I've been up in some of these burns in the
white bark stands, and there's actually an encouraging amount of
white bark pine regeneration that is bird planted that you know,
they're finding some rush resistant trees on the landscape and
(35:49):
they're planting those.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
So there's a chance that some of that habitat could return.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Yep, it's going to be a long time because they
they're usually at least fifty years old before they produce
a comany. Oh, you know, you got to take the
long view on this. But I'm i am more encouraged
and hopeful than I was after the big pine beetle
(36:15):
attack on these remnant trees. I'm based on the regeneration
hunt that I'm seeing.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Encouraged and hopeful to future for the bear populations going forward.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, in terms of it's it's going to be a
few generations out if you know what I'm saying, generations
of people. But you know, my children will live to
see hopefully some cone production on these trees regenerating in
some of these high elevation stands.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I think all of us would be better off in
life if we learned a thing or two from Tom Parker.
And I don't just mean learn how to behave if
he ever encounter Baron, although that would be some good
stuff to know, but rather his big picture view on
wildlife and the places that they call home, and his
hopefulness that we could see a return of better black
bear and grizzly bear populations, as well as a delisting
(37:14):
of them from the endangered species list. And speaking of
the endangered species list, and what do y'all think should
grizzlies be delisted or not? In fact, that's your homework
for the time being, because next time we're diving further
into the grizzly topic and how they fit into today's world.
(37:35):
I want to thank all of you for listening to
Backwoods University as well as Bear Grease in This Country Life.
If you like this episode, share it with a friend
this week that you think would get a real good
kick out of that bear charge story, and stick around
because there's a whole lot more on the way.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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