Get Out There | 03 Black Bears In Southern Oregon
Hosted by Robert Biscarret and Billy Newman
Robert tells his story of navigating the technical rapids on the lower rogue river.
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Hello, and thank you for listening to this episode of The get out there podcast. My name is Billy Newman. I’m here today with Robert biskra. How you doing, Robert? Good, Billy, how you doing? I’m doing really good. Thanks a lot for doing another episode of this podcast. I think we’re doing episode number three today. We are. That’s pretty cool, man. Yeah, I was gonna say I wanted to talk to you about some stuff that will probably be in a few more weeks as we get into the nicer weather. But I wanted to talk to you about some of your past bear experiences. I was wondering what that was like for you, because you were doing guide stuff down on the lower Rogue River. And I know in Grants Pass really a lot of time, we didn’t have a lot of bear boxes, or a lot of bear concerns about the wildlife or the wilderness right around the area of town there. I think like if you go south, into the rescues, or over into the coastal range, there’s probably more stuff over there. But it was seemed always like a lot lighter than it was further south. Like when you got into California. I remember like when we went just a little bit east to like reading in the Mount Shasta area. And like up into the whiskey Lake area, there was like tons of bear boxes, it seemed like I was like a big thing that they had to protect against all the time. And it was sort of strange, because it wasn’t really that much exposure for me when I was doing a lot of camping stuff in Southern Oregon or in Eastern Oregon, especially, I guess Eastern Oregon to have much exposure with like bear encounters out there. And I think it wasn’t until I got into like go into the lower rogue before I even saw like the electric fences. So I was gonna ask Yeah, like, Yeah, well, what kind of stuff you had to run into when you’re checking out or like when you’re doing low rub trips? Well, yeah, I
mean, we have plenty of barren counters down there. And I think one of the big contributors to that is just the just the amount of people that are down there all the time. I mean, the bears really, really know when people are around, you know, there’s food, you know, a bunch of new smells, they have an incredible sense of smell. So you know, that traffic down there really kind of brings them into the area. And not to mention, and I could be a little off, but I’m fairly certain that the lower road Canyon, I know about 10 years ago was the highest black bear population in the lower 48. Really? Yeah. Wow. 10 years ago. Yeah. I’m Well, I mean, think about it. I mean, the road going out there to gold beach and Agnes that’s a that’s bear camp road. I mean, you see bear fences over there all over the place. But uh, yeah, I believe Forest Service did a study and like a flyover and found that in that Canyon, there’s more bears per square mile than anywhere else in the lower 48.
Wow, I wouldn’t have really thought about that. But yeah, I do understand like bear, bear Creek and bear camp road. Seems like a lot of beer references. I knew that there was a lot of bear activity in Southern Oregon in the past, like if we go back 100 years or so I think 150 years there’s a lot of talk about the bear population over in Oregon and over in this section of like the forested areas like a lot of the gold miners had to deal with them up in the up in the hills. And those areas I think even like in the like, what was it isn’t? Isn’t bear camp road. Park goldmine is you go up? Have you seen? Yeah, a lot of mining claims up there. Yeah, that’s what I had seen. I knew like up on Mount Baldy in Grants Pass. There’s a lot of a lot of claims in that area. And I’d heard about some bear encounters that happened up there like up by some loop and then over further into the hills like past Mount Baldy, kind of over in the Applegate area. It was like way back stuff or like, do you remember the story? We heard about this in high school? I think we went to the gravesite for this one time. But it was like this piece of local Yeah, rants past history, Laura. We went to this, the oldest gravesite in Grants Pass. It’s like in this little park. Now. It’s a really strange thing. But you go up and you see this tombstone. And it’s from 1856, like sometime before the Civil War. And there’s this tombstone that says that this man, bH Baird, died of a grizzly bear attack down by the Rogue River and what would today be River Park? Or like just the park downtown? Like, isn’t that nuts?
I’ve seen that gravesite. Yeah. Back in elementary school. We used to walk over there on Well, we went over there on a field trip one time and we had to do like, you know, like crayon transcripts, you put the piece of transfer paper on the tombstone and do and then I and so we all had to make a rub of that of that tombstone. And but I mean, it’s crazy. I mean, if you’re going back that distance and time. I mean, at that time, what 1856 Oregon isn’t even a state yet. Yeah, a few years. Yeah. And so you’ve got California, the bear state, and I mean, Grizzlies used to be down here and pretty prominent in the area. I mean, it wasn’t until kind of like that, that settled. thing that happened was that that we
started kind of driving them all out. I was wondering about that, like how it was that we was, is that an extra patient when when you remove an animal from its range? Because it seems like we don’t we don’t even talk about grizzly bears in Southern Oregon and Oregon at all, right?
They’re not even acknowledged. And so that’s the thing is, I believe it was an Well, I know it was an Ashland, but I think around the it was like in the early 1900s. And I don’t know, the year for sure. But um, the last group actually was taken out of that area. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was actually roaming around up in the hills, and was having some major confrontation with people in the area.
Yeah, that’s, that seems like it would be a huge issue. Like as all those people moved in, and what I mean, like seven or eight, in every town in Oregon, it was a new town, like 1850. So yeah, sure. Yeah. You just had to think like, how many generations is that, that the animals and the wildlife that’s used to like go into that area to feed or to, you know, get access to the river or whatever it is, like whatever their, their natural range is, like how long it takes before those conflicts with people push them out, or kind of just where those animals get eliminated? Because of the people in the area?
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty mind boggling when you think about it, it really doesn’t take that much time. I mean, between 1858 and, you know, 1900, we eradicate pretty much all.
I think, like nuisance animals like that. You almost have to I mean, or it seems like at the time, you would have you would have had to in that frontiers mindset. My goodness, man, if I moved out here from the east coast, and I just had to be put plopped down in the mountains of Southern Oregon. fighting off grizzly bears coming through town, eaten a guy in the park downtown. Yeah. conservation.
Well, and that’s, that’s the thing, too, is back then, you know, everything was just, you know, as far as they were concerned, just an infinite resource. It wasn’t like we’re running out of anything. Yeah, the whole the whole West was fairly untouched. You know, I mean, I’m sure back then. Native peoples. But what’s funny is I just I just think of like current day ash lenders, you know, the, the say the same people that had a city council meeting about aggressive deer in the area, you know, dealing dealing with grizzly bears in the 1990s. Did they do that aggressive deer? Yeah, yeah, they’re having a big deer problem with with deer kind of taking over the city. And they had a city council meeting about how they were going to acknowledge these deer because they had kind of just lost their fear of people became very tame. Oh, wow. And, yeah, so this was just like, a year ago.
Yeah. No. So I mean, I mean, I always see are for the last few years, definitely, I’d see. Deer just kind of cruising through in big numbers in that Ashlyn lithia. Park. There, you just see, like, I’m just hanging out with everybody. But even that seems to be even like it is in Grants Pass. I remember, I swear, back in 2000, 2003 2004, I didn’t see deer at all in the neighborhood that I grew up in, like over it was, it was a recession. So they were were they they were drawn back during that time. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They’re financially unstable. But no, before that, like in, I talked to my grandpa about this, too. He, you know, he’s lived here all of his life. And he would talk about Yeah, like, we really never saw a deer come through the yard until the year 2004. Like, that’s the year they had to put up, like a high fence around the garden to keep it safe. They said, yeah, we just never had a problem with it before. We had like one or two come through. But it was never in these big groups that they had, like now, I guess they were saying that, like the population in town, it just exploded over the last two decades. And see, I wonder what that is. Because that could be that could be
you know, deer moving down to populated areas for for lack of predators, you know, you’re never typically going to see a lion in the area. I mean, there’s occasional sightings, but I wonder if they kind of come into these rural areas in these kind of urban settings to kind of escape that find gardens that are out and about, but I don’t know what, you know, 2004 you know, that would have how that would have correlated. You know,
it’s interesting, I guess that was the time that there was probably the most new development in that region that there had been in a long time so I bet it probably pushed out or disturbed some of the area that that that part of animals lived and then probably got pushed over another mountain range to VR, but then it seems interesting you know, if you stay in an area for long enough, you notice about some of the animals the kind of traffic, your backyard out there, but you notice that they’re kind of on a schedule like it seems like they they wander around, they have a range they kind of travel through, but it seems like that animal comes back around through the yard or something in the same way. Every day, every couple days, we see that with a with a family like a group of, of like dough. Oh, it goes through my parents yard. And they just come through, like every morning at 10am. And they just kind of cruise across the street and they go on their way. And I don’t know, they may make some kind of loopback through some some time. But it’s kind of funny. It’s readable.
Yeah, just kind of stuff. And it’s and that’s how it is, is just like they they have they’ve lost that kind of instinctive fear of people in this area. You know, we’re not we’re not an immediate threat to them. In his city setting. You know, same with turkeys. You see him in your backyard all the time. Oh, yeah. Or you’re driving down the road? Yeah, I mean, the Oh, yeah. So tell me about those turkeys. Yeah, so the other day I was driving through downtown Medford which is, you know, very populated. And I actually had to stop for a crossing of turkeys. And, and I mean, traffic just came to a complete halt. And we all just sat there and let these turkeys cross for about a minute and a half. Wow.
And then then everybody went about their day. How big was the group? What do you what would you call that? gaggle.
I was wondering, it’s like a gaggle of geese. Murder flies, a flock of seagulls. Birds of a feather. Right? Yeah, you know, I don’t know, all these. The avian types. They all have their own kind of segregated names that they really need all those different words to describe being in a group. So that they do. But good, how many are in a group that I mean, I’ve seen maybe like 20 or 30 or so. And I agree.
I would say this was about 20. I mean, it wasn’t a good size. Well, you know, yeah, yeah.
I’ve seen like little geese. It’s kind of funny. I like you know, when they’re really little they stay together. Like, what is it? I guess not like, I’ve seen the Partridge Family. Blake quail, Riley quail, like, yeah, groups of quail those families, like all stick together, you see, like, pods of those that are around like 12 or 15 in size? It’s kind of funny. Oh,
well, you know, what’s funny, we’re talking about the way animals move in and out of areas. Yeah, I’m where I’m at now. My grandparents lived out here. And I used to come up this area all the time as a kid. And there used to, we used to see tons of coil up on the driveway coming into our place. Oh, wow. But with the development of people kind of moving into the area. And this place is, I wouldn’t say blown up. But it there’s definitely an influx of people living out here now. Right. And with that has come some cats, you know, domestic house cats that people have brought in kind of let run wild and then they breed of feral cats. And at this point, now, I haven’t seen a quail out here in probably 10 years. Really? Wow. Yeah,
that’s interesting how that changes, you know, I’ve seen like that kind of move around to I remember when I was a kid, this seems like a silly thing to notice. But you probably believe me that I didn’t notice it. When I was a kid in the 90s. And maybe after like 2001 2002, there was every evening in the summertime, this, this stream, this Murder of Crows, this huge group of crows that would move south at like sunset, like every night, it seemed like they would come out from from like some section kind of down by the river, or like maybe like a mile or two south or something like that. And they’d come up that, that kind of draw around like Hamilton road or something like that. And they cruise up, they go right over our house over my grandparents house every night. And it seemed like they had been doing that for years. I talked to my grandparents about it. They said, Yeah, we’ve been watching him do it for decades now as we sit out here and in the evening and water the garden. And then for maybe the last 810, eight, nine years, maybe 10 years. They’re not there anymore. Not like they used to be at offices, we’d have a I mean, they might have just moved over, you know, boxes for whatever reason. But yeah, why are they like that? Yeah, for me, it’s like the air quality. It must be like, it must be new houses or new places. Or maybe they get disturbed at a you know, wherever they would they would go to whatever place they would, or trees. Well,
yeah, I mean, the housing developments really blown up in this area. And I think that, I mean, there’s there’s no denying that that’s going to have some kind of effect on wild, wild animals in the area.
You know, the one that my grandpa pointed out was a fox. I don’t know what we used to see. But he said that like when he was a kid, and all the way up through through him growing up and being out here. He had never seen a fox out in that area, like out over on clover lawn. And he said like you saw when maybe six or seven years ago. He was like wow, that’s like the first Fox like that we’ve ever seen out here. Do you guys see fox is that you know, I’ve
seen you know, not out here and I think that’s probably because we have dogs
Yeah, so we’ve got, we’ve got dogs in the area, which I think kind of keep a lot of probably Fox out of the area also makes sense. But yeah, I’ve seen a couple Fox down near the Applegate. And then another thing is we have coyotes that show up. I was curious. Do you see coyotes pass through that area? much? Not not frequently, but there has been. Okay, so when we first got Layla, our little Australian Shepherd, right, yeah. Um, and she was just a puppy. She would bark. And there was this. There’s this little pack of coyotes that was up the hill from us. And they were it was a little spooky, but a little cool at the same time. They would have one, and I watched this, they had one coyote, sit up the hill and respond to her barking. Ooh, I’ve heard about this. Yeah, she would bark and it would bark back to her. almost kind of enticing her to kind of go up the hill. Hey, come hang out. Do you want of us? Yeah, one of us. Were just were some dogs up here. I mean, she’s about the size of a coyote. Yeah. So you know, she’s gonna get up there, and there’s gonna be 20 of them. And she’s gonna be in trouble.
Yeah, do they go for dogs? Is that what they do? Are they are like, because they’re not their own? Or? Or how’s that work?
Yeah, so you kind of got to worry about that situation. You know, there’s a pack of 20. And they’re obviously going to take advantage of a domesticated animal. And a lot of times in urban settings, you’ll see kind of the way coyotes and other different predators will actually prey on these domestic animals, because they’re so familiar with humans and have kind of, in a sense, lost their natural instinct to find fear from these animals. Oh, interesting,
huh? You know, I’ve heard a story about, I think, maybe kind of similar to the dynamic, you were talking about how there was a pot of coyotes, there’s one that came out, and it was kind of calling out, you’re enticing the dog at this guy’s house. And it’s like, I don’t know, they had like a dog conversation. And this coyote kind of convinced the bad attitude out of this domesticated dog. Like there’s chickens in the property. And so this coyote kind of like, talked to him for a couple days, like the kind of sound like get a little closer, a little friendlier with each other as like different dogs. And then a couple days into it, the house dog like attacked a chicken. I think like the coyote got into and they both like got chickens and then like, took off and hung out together. And like, killed the chickens. Now you think like, Oh, that’s a nuts thing like this. This guy, coyote, this other wild dog came in, and then like, taught like a new kind of behavior to a domesticated dog. Like, you know, got away with a bunch of livestock. It’s crazy.
That’s funny. It’s just like, yeah, invoking that that natural predatorial sense. In a house dog.
Yeah, yeah. Hey, follow with the pack or something. But yeah, it was like, Yeah, kinda like, Hey, come here can be with us. We’re crazy. Wild. Yeah. Got it to you real fast. Some of the bear stuff that we’re talking about. So like, even in your backyard there where we’re talking about the coyotes, you seen bears out there, right. Did you guys have one out there? Like even right now? We’re not right now. But like within our last year, don’t you see? Where that kind of roams that area?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do. Like, so I’m out. He’s a pain man. So basically, I don’t have a trash service out here. So we keep all of our, our trash. Yeah, all of our trash cans. And then, you know, once a month or so, I’ll take it down to the landfill and then pay your fee and take care of that. But the problem with that is, is these bears with incredible sense of smell, smell all of your waste, and they want to come in because they’re curious animals. ager, and they want to get a little, little taste of what you’ve been cooking in the kitchen. And so it’s great, you know, you’ll go to work and then you come home and you’ll just find like three trash cans dumped over and you know, three trash cans worth of garbage just spread around your property. And that’s great. Yeah, so you get to spend the next couple hours sitting outside just picking up trash that you already so carefully placed into a garbage bag a week
before, that’d be so frustrating. So what do you guys have to keep it inside or something? Or is there like a what do you do?
Well, so this past spring, I got really fed up with it. I actually built a little like 10 by 12 shed. Oh, that’s this man. Yeah, yeah, and Yeah, so now I keep all the cans in there under lock. So I Yeah, and that’s, that’s honestly that’s cut down significantly, I actually haven’t dealt with him knock on wood for about a year now but for a while there was like every other night about three o’clock in the morning you wake up to the sound of you know, trash cans get knocked over and stuff.
And then furthermore, let’s go ahead. Oh, you go ahead.
Oh, for the most part, you know they’re pretty skittish you go out there and yell at them and kind of charge them, and they’ll take off. But this particular bear that I was dealing with kind of got to the point where it was really standing its ground with me. That’s, that’s, that’s a rough one. Yeah, I wasn’t really a big fan of it. I mean, one one account that I can really sticks out in my mind. It’s about three o’clock in the morning, and we got a heavy snow and this is two years ago. And you know, the area Southern Oregon. That’s, that’s not real typical of a winter. Right? But he must have been hungry, and you know who bears hibernate in the winter? Well, no, they just are less active in the winter. But he must have been hungrier for some.
You know, I grabbed my shotgun and run out in the yard. I’m just, I’m in my boxers and my boots. And I run out there with just my, my iPhone flashlight. You know about how powerful are nothing? Yeah, and I just and I just meet him in the yard. Standing there, you know, he’s about 20 feet away, and I’m yelling at him and stuff. And he’s just kind of like, what are you gonna do? You know, what do you get? Yeah, every every hour of the day, you would have done something by now. matted. Exactly, man. That’s tough. So no, he stood his ground on me. And if you’ve been around bears that are getting fairly aggressive, they’ll kind of do like a bark. It’s kind of a grunt. I mean, it doesn’t sound like a like a dog bark, but it’s just kind of like a low grunt. Yeah. And so I kind of extra snowball out of my thing. You know, and he kind of, he grunted at me, and then I yelled at him again. Yeah, you get out of your bed. They will snowball.
So I was gonna ask you, I said a snowballs What? What’s, what would you use as a bear deterrent? Like, did you have to bring a bear to turn with you down on the lower road to?
You know, and when we guide? were discouraged to bring firearms with us. Yeah, I figured I won’t name any names, but some some of us do. Um, just because these bears have been so introduced the people that they’ve really lost that instinct of fear. And they’re really kind of become quite a nuisance down there. So some of the guides, definitely not me, will carry a firearm down there.
So as I said, like, lethal deterrent? What do you think of the bear spray, like the pepper spray canisters that you pick up?
You know, I mean, we’re not Grizzly country and black bears by nature are pretty skittish. I mean, they don’t. They don’t really want anything to do with you. They just want.
That’s what I’ve seen before, too. I mean, like, I’ve seen a black bear maybe three times. And as soon as it even noticed, we were 100 feet around there just bolt as fast as it could, it was just scrambling up the side of the hill. And you think, Oh, my God, I can climb like that so fast. But
so there’s a couple of points on that. I want to I want to answer your question, but then I also kind of want to talk about Oh, yeah. So to answer your question. Okay. Yeah, so to answer your question, um, when we’re down there in the canyon, a lot of times, what we’ll do is, you know, you want to make yourself large and loud. Typically, we’ll take our coolers full of food, we’ll stack them in a pile. Okay. And then we’ll stack pots and pans on top of them. And then so that way, if they’re getting into them, we can hear them. We would take everything out of the boat because we don’t want them getting in there pop in a raft or anything like that. Yeah. But then what we’ll do is we all go to sleep with like a couple of Dutch oven lids next to our cots. Oh, really? So yeah. And you got your headlamp ready so when you hear that that rustling in the pots and pans falling and stuff, you know, all the guides jump up and everybody grabs their lids and starts cleaning them together and yelling at them and and they’ll take off.
Yeah, so the noise is enough of a deterrent. And yeah, and you said you had like a nuisance bear one night that like had come up and was like snapping Yeah, story. Yeah. What happened was that, Oh, well.
We had a we had a philan guide, she guides for another company on the rug. And she was with us. And this is funny too, because we cook this big salmon dinner. Nice. And you know, we have salmon drippings everywhere and all we got salmons skin everything all over the camp. And, and so typically, one of us always sleeps in the kitchen to kind of watch over everything. And that was me that night. And it was a lazy night. I think we probably had too many beers. And, you know, it was like, I’m not gonna pick this up. I’m just gonna play the odds and say, we’re not going to get a Baron camp tonight. So I go to
do that. Yeah. So I’ve done it. Well, yeah, you have to I mean, it’s, you know, if you can
I never run into a bear. I think we did it. Like, when we were doing a backpacking trip, we had to put our food into a bear safe container, and then like, put it hoisted into a tree, more than 50 metres away from our tent, something like that. And I think like we pulled in, we set up super late and we put it out always, but man, we did not do whatever we whatever absolute thing we were supposed to do for our bear Food Protection.
Well, you know what I mean, most of the time, I mean, you’re gonna see very less times and you will, or
you’re going to not see bear more than you will see bear. Now that seems like it’s been how it is in my life. I mean, if we’re talking about the most bears in that area, I mean, that was kinda like where we grew up in that area, Southern Oregon. I have only seen a bear a couple times in that area. I mean, I think I saw it. I think on two of the hikes I did down on the lower road. I think I saw another one out in the Applegate or out you know, past Applegate lake. That was California and the skis. I guess we saw a black bear out there. And then maybe one other time on the road while I was driving. That’s it. That’s really all I’ve seen. So I hardly ever see or have a black bear counter at all. But you’re down there more so so Okay, so we’re back. We’re camping. There’s salmon spread across this campsite. It’s nighttime. Robert played the odds.
Yeah, so return over the next Cod. Yeah, no. Man. Next thing I know, I’m getting woken up not by a bear, but by a dove. And she’s kicking me. And she’s gonna wake up wake up and I got a flashlight in my face. And I’m like, What are you doing right now? And she’s like, this bear just came over was sniffing my face. Oh, see, weighs in her face. And so she jumps up. She smokes the barrier runs off a few yards. And she’s yelling at it, I guess. And and so she’s yelling at it throwing stuff at it. And if if you’ve kind of provoked provoked the bear enough, they’ll do this. This kind of like jaw grinding, they’ll grind their job. This is this is kind of fast, the little barking stage that they’ll do. And that’s that’s really a situation where you kind of need to be on point. Wow. So anyway, somehow she got this bear to kind of lose immediate interest. And she’s waking me up. And honestly, the times that I have slept through bear situations and camp are way too many
eggs. wake up the next morning, and they’re like, oh, man, where are we?
Robert faded again. Rob is gonna be back in just one second. We’re having trouble with Robin come back into what you’re talking about. I want to reset it but but so we’re seeing like, Where were you last night? When are you you were just coming into that how many times you slept through a bear walking through camp?
Yeah, yeah, there’s been multiple times that people have, you know, other guys were just like, Where were you last night? We had that bearing camp. And most most of the time, you know, stop.
We just dropped out for a second. But Robert, I was gonna ask you to come back with that story that we were talking about. Where the bear was sniffing this girl’s head she woke up she moved back she got your attention you woke up? What happens next?
Well, at that point, she had got it to leave, and she was freaked out you know she wanted anybody awake with her? Yeah, absolutely. I guess I wouldn’t know man and she she was so pissed off because I’m laying right next to the trash and all all this salmon skin and everything. And I never got bothered and she’s she’s sleeping on the outskirts of Captain Roberts face So, yeah, anyway, it left me alone. But But you’re saying it started snapping? Did you see it snap? No, I was snapping at her. Yeah, and not not necessarily snapping but doing like a jog or jog. Right? Like it’s john and almost like grind its teeth.
Oh, and I first see that. No, I especially in the dark when you can’t see it. Yeah, I feel so.
Yeah. So anyway, it was it’s just one of those things, you know, you got to get people awake, make noise, do stuff. But you know, the problem is with with people being with with barren, high populated areas like that, you know, they’re they’re losing that instinct of fear. And that can that can
nuisance dire situation. Yeah. And I hear like, you see the signs of the say, like nuisance bears will be destroyed. Yeah. Oh, man, that is a final sentence that’s like,
zero. That’s the Bureau of Land Management. You know, that’s what their signs are all down there. Right. Yeah. You know, a Fed bears a dead bear. You know, as you start feeding these bears and leaving food around, they’re gonna start showing up more and more. And then as a nuisance bear, they have to try to relocate. And if that’s not going to work, then they have to exterminate that bear.
Man. That sounds so tough. I just like we were talking about Stephen Ellis podcast earlier, I just listened to an episode from a bear scientists that works at Yellowstone National Park studying the bear population there. Okay, they were talking about this big upset that happened years ago, when the I think the the establishment that we’re in Yellowstone, like the restaurants and the lodges, and the towns just outside of Yellowstone, that were part of that ecosystem, they would all have these food dumps where they would like they would just throw it, they would have like a pit that we put all the food that people didn’t need in the park or whatever went bad. And it would be this feeding frenzy or this feeding area for all the bears that were in that ecosystem, they all kind of worked off of this. And it was just kind of like an attraction for a while where bears would come in and eat the food. And so they made a decision that they were going to stop the food drops, as it were like and like change, it wasn’t really intentional. At first, it was just like a dumpster is like the, you know, the area that that the trash was gonna go. I think it was kind of like the trash area of Yellowstone, which is kind of weird to think that there’s such a thing, but I guess without the people that go through, there would be something like this. And this is way back to book they so they stopped these feeding sites. And then a big part of that population of bears like died off or had other types of conflicts that happened when he was trying to seek out different places to get food that had now become more scarce. But really interesting others conflicts Come on
see that. That’s what happens is you’ve got you’ve got bear coming into this to this, you know, infinite food source that they keep coming back to you because we leave all this waste. And what happens is, you know, not that generation, but a generation or two down the road, these bears are used to feeding off of our waste, and then don’t really know how to fend for themselves in the wild. And it’s all fun while it’s a tourist attract tree, and then people get to snap pictures. But then you’ve got these bears that are dying in the wild. And also you’re getting your carwin
Alright, we’re back now we faded out for one second with with Roberts call his Skype call and for us. But we were talking about that last little bit of how, how there’s there were the bears in the Yellowstone range that had difficulties a couple generations after they’ve become dependent on these food sources, these food drops. And it’s really weird this types of conflicts that happen when people enter an area that’s just been wilderness and wildlife before. It’s interesting how that goes for us. But there’s always been types of conflicts.
Yeah, and as long as there’s people, there will still continue to be that, that conflict between natural wildlife and, and us.
Yeah, it’ll be interesting. You know, I think in future podcasts we should talk about, we should talk about some of the wildlife management stuff that we’ve learned about some of the ways that BLM works or fishing game or some of these other departments and how they they manage some of that stuff. That’s a lot of that’s a big learning curve for me. I’m a pretty simple hiker. Yeah. But I think part of it prior to this podcast, I think is really interesting. To learn a little bit more about some of those, maybe more serious aspects or just more, the more the governance side of how wildlife and outdoor recreation management goes. This kind of interesting stuff. I think it’s, it’s cool to talk about, it’s been fun talking about with you to the new school.
Yeah. And I think that’d be something great to elaborate on. I think that’s something that more and more people need to understand and acknowledge the way our national parks and public lands are run. Yeah,
I think it’d be cool to talk about some of that stuff and maybe give me a chance to learn about it a little bit more. But thanks for thanks for doing this podcast. Talking about some bear stuff in the past, and we have way more stories to go through. Maybe we need to make more stories to bat. I think there’s a couple we can talk about in the future that be kind of fun. But thanks. Oh, yeah, looking forward to it. Yeah, I think there’s some of those some of those lower rogue encounters that are kind of cool, or even like some of the stuff on an old backpacking trip that we were on. I think we had like a couple Bear Bear sightings at that one, too.
So yeah, we’ve, we’ve had our share of backpacking adventures, not just in the lower road, but other places do, I’d like to talk to you more about that feature as well?
Oh, yeah, I want to do that, too. I think that’d be really cool. Thanks, Robert. I really appreciate you doing this podcast with me. We’re, we’re coming together. We’re finally putting together I guess, what might be, you know, like a pretty consistent outdoors podcast. It’s pretty sweet, man. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I’m hoping it works out. It’s cool, man. No, it’s, it’s just the beginning. But but we got to keep doing them. And I appreciate you doing it with me. Every week here, we got to get the site going the the the stream map, it’s really cool. And anybody that’s bothered to listen to, to these episodes, it’s, it’s great. I really appreciate you taking the time to do it. Yeah. And,
and, you know, as I think, I think as time develops, and we continue doing this more and more frequently, you know, we’re gonna have more more pressing topics and things that, you know, very entertaining.
We’re going to be the most entertaining really, Robert, and I mean, you probably learned this a little bit about going through the podcasting. There’s not that much entertainment in some podcasts out there. I mean, like to kind of breakthrough, it seems like at least it was talent-wise, or to be entertaining, we would be, I think in the in the running for it. So I think I think it’s it’s cool that we’re doing a podcast about this stuff together. So Robert, I wanted to say thank you very much for doing this podcast with me and on behalf of Robert discret. My name is Billy Newman. And I want to say thank you guys very much for listening to this episode. of the good out there podcast. Thank you.