Ep. 855: Clay's Utah Mountain Lion Hunt | 12 in '26

Clay Newcomb answers your questions and breaks down his Utah mountain lion hunt captured in MeatEater's brand new "12 in '26" film series. He hunts with mules and hounds in the mountains, testing his fortitude in some seriously steep and rugged terrain. Presented by @Moultrie. Products and @onXHunt Watch the film now on MeatEater's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n__5RhSB8Q&t=1547s Connect with MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAaa0mleeU128Ad5iM1RFIg, and YouTube Clips https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterClips Subscribe to MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:05Steven Rinella?

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• 1:43Speaker 03

  Wow, what a beautiful animal. Golly. Just to get a few moments to just watch that animal. Few people in the world will ever get to do that. You can be out, you can be out in this country your whole life, hiking, riding a mule, whatever. You might see a mountain lion in a lifetime. You know, they're just, you just don't see them. Only way you're gonna see them and look at them like this right here is with hunting with these dogs. And we are a long ways from the truck. Miles and miles in that country from the truck.

• 2:21Speaker 03

  Man, when I see an animal like that, I think about the country it came from. I mean, this is some true backcountry. And that sucker's made a living out here his whole life.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  What you just heard was a clip from my new film out on the MeatEater YouTube channel of my lion hunt on mules with some very legendary guys. McLean and Hunter Meacham and Ty Evans. We're gonna talk a ton about them. But this was episode two of MeatEater's 12 and 26 series. So MeatEater's always putting out videos. Every week we put out videos, but this year we're putting out 12 long-form films, everyone. Films, not episodes, not videos, not clips, films. Yeah, Yanis. Yeah, Yanis. Me and Yanis have this argument going on of are we making episodes?

• 3:19Speaker 03

  Yanis makes episodes.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  I make films. That's right. I think Yanis makes films. Yanis is incredible. This is MeatEater's 12 and 26. In the 12, 12 meaning 12 months of the year, 26 being the year of 2026, we're producing 12 full-length feature films. This film that we just released, mine, is 45 minutes long. Yanis's first film about his baited bear hunt, the first 12 and 26, was a full hour long. And these are presented by our sponsors, our big-time friends, products we use in the woods all the time, OnX and Multry. And this is the companion podcast, the companion show, called the 12 and 26 Podcast.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  That's where all this has been going, folks, ever since you started. This is the 12 and 26 Podcast, right? That's right. The companion show to the 12 and 26 film series where we go behind the scenes. You know, I've always been a big fan of... Long form audio, like podcasts, because when I started making films, you can go on some big expedition and make a 20 minute film and it really doesn't, it honestly doesn't capture the full story. As, as if you were just sitting there listening to me talk.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  Now, if you're just listening to me talk, you're not seeing the lion, you're not seeing the mountains, you're not, you're not, you're, you're kind of in the moment in a different way.

• 4:50Speaker 04

  Doesn't hit all your senses.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  Right, but I feel like a film sometimes doesn't capture the full thing. So what we're trying to do is just like fill in all the gaps. So you got the film, you can watch it, you can see the mules, you can see the lions, we've treated three lions. But

• 5:07Speaker 04

  Spoiler alert.

• 5:08Speaker 03

  This is behind the scenes.

• 5:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna, I'm gonna spill it all, folks. It's all gonna be on the table on this episode of the 12 and 26 podcast. I'm joined by my dear friend and producer, Josh Landbridge Spillmaker. And if some of you might be, if you, if you're not tuned into Bear Grease all the time, you might not know that Jo, I gave Josh this nickname, I mean, like in 2008.

• 5:38Speaker 04

  Long time ago.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  Like probably 20 years ago, I started calling him Landbridge because he's got such a good mustache that this is a true story. One day, we go to church together, at church, I saw Josh, and I was inspired to go learn about the Bering Land Bridge and went and ordered my first book on the Bering Land Bridge, I still got it.

• 5:59Speaker 04

  Inspired by my mustache.

• 6:00Speaker 03

  Inspired by Josh's mustache because it like links continents. So Josh Landbridge Spillmaker, who's deep in the weeds on the Bear Grease Podcast with me, so.

• 6:12Speaker 04

  Awesome. Well, Clay, this was, uh, this was a fantastic film, man. I'm really excited to kind of get into it, hear your thoughts on this specific hunt, lion hunting in general, and, uh, we've got some great questions from me and some great questions from, uh, some of our social media outlets, YouTube and Instagram. So we're gonna throw it all at you and give you an opportunity to respond. So, um, kind of just getting into it.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Can I, can I do a preamble?

• 6:39Speaker 04

  You can.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  That wasn't the preamble I just did?

• 6:42Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 6:42Speaker 03

  I just wanna, I wanna like set the wider picture for dry ground lion hunting, so. You're gonna hear that term used and that what that means is, is when you're, when you're hunting lions, 99% of lions harvested in this country, 95 to 99, I would say, would be lions that were harvested over dogs. And it's primarily in the west. There are no lion seasons east of the Mississippi, or even really east of the Rocky Mountains.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 7:14Speaker 03

  And so it's all happening out west. And in the northern part of the mountain lion range, there's snow. And when you are lion hunting in the snow with dogs, a human goes out and looks for a track in the snow. So you can drive roads, you could ride your equine animal, you could do whatever. However, you're gonna get across the country and cover vast amounts of ground. Half of, half of the hunt is finding a track. But when it's in the snow, you can see the track. You can tell what kind of lion it is, you know, if it's a male, female, typically.

• 7:46Speaker 04

  Right.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  And, but most importantly, scent holds better in the snow. And it's much easier to trail a lion in snow than it is on dry ground. It was described to me one time like this. Imagine a scent particle being essentially like a biologically active particle.

• 8:07Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  And if you put that particle in the refrigerator, it would last longer and not degrade.

• 8:15Speaker 04

  Which, that, this brings up a point. I was curious about that word, which I don't think is a word.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Degradate?

• 8:23Speaker 04

  Yeah. Oh dang. Yeah. So folks, English majors, forgive him.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  Well.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  It's a made up word.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Degradate's a word.

• 8:31Speaker 04

  Degraded.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  It's just pronunciation. Tomato, tomato. So the scent particle, if you were to take it and put it into the refrigerator.

• 8:40Speaker 04

  Well, that makes sense. I never thought about that, but it totally makes sense.

• 8:43Speaker 03

  And, and so. Lion hunting in the snow is easier. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's easier.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 8:49Speaker 03

  And it takes a dog that doesn't have to have as good a nose. You get into the arid southwest, like in Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, you used to could run hounds in California, can't anymore. They're having to start these lions on dry ground.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  And in the hound world, and people turn it up. If you're, if you're, what, turn up the volume on your device right now so you can hear this. In the hound world, the dry ground lion dogs are the Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James of, of, of the hound world. There I said it. I said it, okay? It takes a lot higher skill set to tree a lion on dry ground than it does to tree a coon.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  I can just see the comments that are gonna be stacking up.

• 9:44Speaker 03

  It's just, it's just, no, there's, every, every animal and dog used in hunting has to have a specific set of skill sets that make it wonderful and unique. But from my estimation, for whatever that's worth, and the estimation of many really great people in the hound world, for a, a dry ground lion dog, he's got to have an almost otherworldly nose.

• 10:09Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  And for instance, in coon hunting, you don't necessarily want one with a super cold nose. Because there's, there's coons everywhere. You don't want him to tree, uh, start a track that's 12 hours old.

• 10:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 10:20Speaker 03

  You want him to go find a hot one.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  Right.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  And that's all in his ability to smell and his desire. You gotta have a lion dog that has an extremely cold nose. These dogs have got to be superb athletes. I mean, I'm telling you, McLean Meacham's dogs.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Were running, I mean, we were putting 12 to 20 miles a day on the mules.

• 10:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  We were following the dogs, not step for step, but I mean, those dogs had well over 100, probably 150 miles.

• 10:52Speaker 04

  You're gonna, you're gonna have to pump the brakes on this preamble a little bit.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  Come on!

• 10:55Speaker 04

  Getting into the content that we're gonna talk about. People got lots of questions.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Well, I hadn't even started the preamble yet. All that to say, dry ground lion hunting and the men and women that are dry ground lion hunters often are held in high esteem in, in, in the very small circles.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  And the Meekums are nationally known and respected as incredible dry ground lion hunters. And I'm telling you, they made it look easy.

• 11:26Speaker 04

  Really?

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  To go out in five days.

• 11:29Speaker 04

  It's amazing watching.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  Don't try to stop me, Josh. To go out in five days and tree three.

• 11:37Speaker 04

  Well, that actually kind of, kind of leads me into, into one of our first questions here is, you know, you say it's rare to, to, at first you say it's rare to, to, to tree two lions in three days.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  What, when you're getting into it, when, when you, before you went, what was your expectation? Did you have an expectation? Like, could I go five days and us not tree a lion? Or what, what did you think was gonna happen?

• 12:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I had a lot of confidence in the Meekums and they, they, we were coming at a good time. It was, it was a good time to come. We had optimal conditions. We had some snow. It was really cold. But is it possible to go out there for five days and not tree a lion, even with some of the best? Absolutely. I mean, I know, I know multiple people. Last night, a guy texted me and said, I've been on two guided lion hunts, like paid money to go on guided lion hunts, like week long hunts and never saw a lion.

• 12:32Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  And like presumably two five day hunts. I know another guy, um, I won't say his name, a dear friend of mine has been on two guided lion hunts with very reputable outfitters and has never killed a lion. I think they probably treat a female or something.

• 12:49Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Um, and so. Yeah, for us to treat three in five days was, you couldn't have asked for anything better.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Okay, okay. We've got some kind of, we've got some footage of, of kind of just of the terrain of where you were hunting in Utah. Um, have you hunted in this region before?

• 13:08Speaker 03

  Never have. This is my first time to Utah.

• 13:10Speaker 04

  So did you have an expectation of what the riding and the, and would be like before you got there?

• 13:15Speaker 03

  You know, yeah, it was, it was probably longer than I thought it was gonna be. Like, we rode over eighty miles per on X that we were tracking.

• 13:24Speaker 04

  That's a lot of miles. And you rode the same mule, didn't you?

• 13:28Speaker 03

  I rode the same mule.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable to me.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Yes, one of the mules, so our cameraman, one of our cameramen, um, was on a mule, uh, Lauren, Lauren Maltin. And on the fifth day, and he, I mean, this mule's riding right behind me. I mean, it's gone eighty miles.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  I asked McLean, "How old is that mule?" And he said, "Twenty-five years old."

• 13:51Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Rode, carried Lauren Maltin eighty, eighty miles. And, you know, not like eighty trail miles.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  I'm telling you, eighty miles of up and down and elevation gain and skidding down mountains. I mean, rough.

• 14:06Speaker 04

  Unbelievable.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  But it actually, to me, in some ways, is, I don't want to say easier, but when you ride long distance in the eastern deciduous forest, you're constantly fighting brush and

• 14:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 14:20Speaker 03

  getting scratched up.

• 14:21Speaker 04

  I wondered, was, was, what happened to your nose?

• 14:24Speaker 03

  I got banged by a cedar tree.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  But, but most of the time, we're just like out in the wide open.

• 14:29Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 14:30Speaker 03

  Most of the time.

• 14:31Speaker 04

  Well, the, well, the scenery was, I mean, spectacular. Um, so, well, that's, that's great. We're gonna, we're gonna watch another clip here.

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Three quarters of a century of selective breeding by the Meekums, and you'd have to sell your truck to buy one if they were ever for sale. Line dogs require a unique skill set of hunt drive, physical stamina, which borders on something supernatural, and an incredible nose topped with desire to tree game.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  I already covered this, Josh.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  Not just to run it.

• 15:03Speaker 04

  So you kind of got into it. Was there anything you wanted to add to?

• 15:07Speaker 03

  Well.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  You know, people would look at these dogs and just think, you know, they're, some of them are mixed breed, but they've just, they've bred these genetics into them to do what they're supposed to do. So you talked about cold nose. You talked about them being able just to trail and to have the drive and the athleticism. Anything else that would set apart a lion dog, a dry ground lion dog versus like a coon dog or a deer dog?

• 15:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, the, when you look at like some of the bigger hounds in the east, and there's some big dry ground lion dogs, but typically like McLean's dogs were probably 50, probably 45 to 65 pounds.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 15:55Speaker 03

  And I mean, some of these bigger coon dog breeds are bigger than that. And a bigger dog typically breaks down a little faster, just like doesn't have like the stamina, their feet break down. And so when you're going that many miles, day after day, you gotta have a dog with really good feet and that won't go lame on you, you know, way back out there.

• 16:16Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  And, and that comes after just selective breeding, you know, litter after litter and breeding the good ones to the good ones, you know? And eventually you get this, this dog that is kind of dialed itself in a way, you know? I mean, when these guys hunt so much, they really do. I mean, they, they hunt so much and they just really, their dogs express the potential that they have and, but.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  I think the dogs are endlessly fascinating.

• 16:53Speaker 04

  Another question, how would you respond to critics of hunting with hounds that would say, it's easy or there's no hunting taking place?

• 17:01Speaker 03

  Right. Man, I would say honestly, anybody that would say that has never.

• 17:07Speaker 03

  Maybe they've gone on a hound hunt, but they've never owned hounds or done it themselves. And I would, I would say that hunting with hounds is actually the most primitive method of hunting. Like if you take out a scope with a rifle on it and go sit in a deer stand and then you say that someone is not hunting when they're hunting with hounds, I mean, you kind of live, you know.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  There's a dichotomy there.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  There's some, this isn't going to work for you. But I'm a big proponent of hound hunting and it's a traditional use practice that goes back to the very beginning of the human story. And so this is a, this is a modified version of that. I mean, it's like, obviously we're not subsistence hunting, but it's, it's super hard, man.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  I mean, you load up a pack of hounds and try to go out to Utah by yourself and treat a lion. Good luck.

• 17:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  You know, it's, it's, it's very difficult. And then the beauty of it from a conservation perspective is you get to, you get to be selective on the animals that you harvest, which was pretty much the theme of our, of our, of our film.

• 18:11Speaker 04

  For sure. Okay, let's, uh, we got another clip here.

• 18:14Speaker 03

  Into the African tracker's ability to follow plains game. Hyper-focus on obscured details for decades produces uniqueness while following the dogs step for step. And there's a reason these western lion hunters typically use mules. They're more sure-footed, safer, and last longer in rough country than horses tip.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  There's a, it's a few clips put together.

• 18:42Speaker 03

  Temperatures are hovering in the single digits and we're going into a completely new canyon.

• 18:47Speaker 04

  Oh, supposed, not supposed to hear the audio on this anyway. We'll just watch it. So that, that, that spot there.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  Um, Ty, when Ty's mule slips on the rock, that was, that could have been pretty hairy right there.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  You know, Ty Evans' heartbeat would not have skipped a beat.

• 19:16Speaker 04

  Really?

• 19:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 04

  He didn't.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  He wouldn't have even, and he knew that everything was okay because of that mule.

• 19:24Speaker 04

  Right.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  I mean, that, that's, that's when you want to have an animal that's very sure-footed, and that's when, where the mules thrive. And I mean, obviously, that mule slipped and fell, but it recovered, didn't tumble down the mountain.

• 19:39Speaker 04

  Sure. Would you say this is probably some of the roughest riding you've done?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  You know, it, and I have done, there was one section on day one that was super steep, and the camera just didn't pick it up.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  There were a couple of spots, though, where you, you could get a little bit of an idea of how steep it was. I mean, it scared me, you know, having been on a mule a little bit. It scared me looking at it.

• 20:04Speaker 03

  Well, the, the first, the first two hours we rode, the dogs just went over this mountain and bailed off, and, and it was, I mean, I, it's hard, I don't even know how to describe how steep it was. I would say ninety-five percent of people riding an equine animal would have walked the mule down.

• 20:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  And, and we knew we could have.

• 20:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  And, but I was there with Ty Evans and McLean Meacham, and I was like, hey, let's just ride.

• 20:33Speaker 04

  That scene where, I don't know if it was McLean or if it was Ty, um, where they're coming down, and you mentioned the brichin, that was steep.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:43Speaker 04

  I mean, that was really steep. And you mentioned the brichin, um, that, that you use the brichin on mules, and that's the strap that goes around the hindquarters of, of the mule. Would you ever use a brichin on a, on a horse?

• 20:55Speaker 03

  I typically don't, and the, I wasn't able, this is a prime example, people, of where a film doesn't give you the time to tell the whole story. So, the reason that you only see brichin on mules is because a mule's front shoulders are narrow. And so the saddle has a tendency to slide forward because the the the mule doesn't have very strong withers, which withers is an anatomical term for basically the front shoulders and like the hump on the neck of a horse or a mule. Right, right. So a horse has big, strong, broad, front shoulders. They do. A horse is more typically has more muscle. Right. Than a mule. And they have a lot of it up front.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  They have big, big hindquarters, sink's in, then big front shoulders. A mule has big, nice hindquarters and narrower front shoulders. The saddle slides forward. You need a britchin' to keep your saddle from sliding forward. Right. Yeah. Um, are these mules shooed? Did they? Yes, they, these mules were shod and had, had ice.

• 22:03Speaker 03

  I, I was unfamiliar with it because um, we don't have that here, but they had like ice cleats. Oh, really? Yes. They told me, when I was originally gonna bring Izzy, so Izzy is, is my nine, nine-year-old mule that, that you would see on the logo of the Bear Ridge Podcast. So that's the mule that I trained and still have. When I told, originally, we were gonna go out there and take our mules, me and Justin House, my friend Justin House from Arkansas, we're gonna drive out there. And uh, there was actually an equine disease. Mm-hmm. That was going around the rodeo world at that time and interstate travel of equine animals was in jeopardy. Like, it's possible we could've got out there and if it had escalated. Right.

• 22:48Speaker 03

  We might've like had to left our mules there or something. So we decided to fly and to ride his mules. But when we were gonna take mine, he was like. Which ended up being a good decision. I think it was. Yeah. When we got there, or he said, when, when you and Izzy get here, we'll put these, basically, snowshoes on her. Okay. Like, they were that serious. Okay. They were like, you need these. Wow. And man, when, in some of that stuff, I was very glad to have a, a grippy. Okay. A grippy shoe on those. Right. Mules. Right.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  We had a comment on YouTube by Brooke Anderson 1423 said, "This is the most unique camera work I've ever seen on a hunting show. Really makes you feel like you're riding along with them. I'd love to see more hunts on horseback filmed like this." And I just want to give a quick shout out to the camera guys.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, Drew Steckline and Lauren Maltin.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, they not only filmed, but they were, you know, they weren't just riding, but they were also filming. So.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  They were there the whole time. You know what?

• 23:49Speaker 04

  That's it to those guys.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  A lot of those, a lot of that riding stuff was done with those Osmo cameras.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  These little gimbal.

• 23:56Speaker 04

  Yeah, you're letting people see behind the curtain.

• 23:58Speaker 03

  Little gimbal cameras.

• 24:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, pretty slick. Pretty slick. Well, shout out to those guys.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  Hey, not to, I won't say which one, but this is behind the scenes, right?

• 24:08Speaker 04

  Behind the scenes.

• 24:09Speaker 03

  This is like unplugged.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Right?

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, this is like a backstage pass.

• 24:12Speaker 03

  One of our cameras got lost. Osmo cameras got lost underneath that lion tree, the first lion.

• 24:19Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:20Speaker 04

  So if you recognize that tree.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  If you find it out there in the Utah backcountry, let us know.

• 24:31Speaker 05

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• 25:01Steven Rinella?

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• 25:30Steven Rinella?

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• 26:12Steven Rinella?

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• 26:54Steven Rinella?

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• 27:00Speaker 04

  We've got another clip here.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  From the truck, we went down some steep stuff that might've deterred us if we didn't have to follow the dogs that bailed off the edge. Dogs often force your hand to go places you wouldn't choose.

• 27:16Speaker 03

  The strap around the back of the mule's hind.

• 27:18Speaker 04

  Oh, I guess that's it. So, um.

• 27:23Speaker 04

  Kind of help us understand, you kind of, you kind of described the, the qualities of a good dry ground lion dog, but when you're running dogs, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to maintain a certain distance from them? What, what's, what's that process? And, and you use the term a dog race. What, what does that mean?

• 27:43Speaker 03

  So, these guys are free casting hounds, which means they don't always know where the track is. If, if you, well, let me back up. Free casting hounds just means you just turn the dogs out.

• 27:57Speaker 04

  And have, they're just looking for a scent.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  They're not on a leash. They're just out hunting.

• 28:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  And so we free cast dogs and they have a ton of control over these dogs. And I mentioned in the film, you can, you know, they kind of hunt them like bird dogs.

• 28:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 28:12Speaker 03

  They want them to stay fairly close, but then, because when they, the dogs start running a track, they, they want to be able to go over to where the dog is barking and see if they can physically see a track.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  So they don't want a dog to go three miles in there without them and start a track that they can't immediately go and check out.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  Right.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Because these dogs will run bobcats and mountain lions and they don't, a, a dog is not gonna distinguish between, let's say, a, a female with kittens and a big tom. I mean, they'll run either one just the same. And so if it was a female with kittens, they would immediately pull the dogs off. And they, and they do that through, um, just training. I mean, vocal commands, but they can also tone the dog, which is not shocking it, but just beeping it.

• 29:04Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 29:05Speaker 03

  And getting the attention of the dog and, and they can, they can call them back from long distance. I, I want to say something about, that little clip talked about how when you're following hounds, you go places that you would have never gone otherwise. And that is, is a cool part of hound hunting because if you were just going on a pleasure ride through all those canyons that we went through, I mean, you would pretty much take the easiest route or, or maybe a route that went by some aesthetic point or something. Man, when you're following the dogs. You're, you just have to go where they go.

• 29:44Speaker 04

  Right.

• 29:46Speaker 03

  And so you find yourself in all kind of just places that just are off, literally off the beaten path. And, and that's what I've always liked about hound hunting is, you know, you just get a tour of the world. And that kind of goes as well to what I was so impressed with. We would be so far from the truck, Josh.

• 30:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  And McLean would be like, man, when we drop off in this little canyon, we're gonna pull up and there'll be a big bluff. And behind that bluff is a set of pine trees. And that's where those cats like to mark, the male cats like to scratch, and we're gonna go there. And, I mean, we've been, we're like, seven miles from the truck.

• 30:30Speaker 04

  Right.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  And, and he would just have this.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  And he knew exactly.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  Topographic memory.

• 30:36Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  Of just every detail of the land that, I mean, you just wouldn't, you just wouldn't be able to have that detailed of a map in your head, uh, without a lifetime. And McLean's in his 50s. And, uh, but also being on the back of a mule or horse, like you just, you can just cover so much ground. But they also elk hunt and mule deer hunt in these regions. And that's, I think that's an interesting place we ought to go probably sooner rather than later, is, is the, the, the, what the film dealt with so much, which, which was lion conservation.

• 31:17Speaker 04

  We, we've got that coming, and we've got a lot of comments about that.

• 31:19Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 31:20Speaker 04

  So, but we're, we're almost there.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Well, they, they, they mule deer hunt, elk hunt, this. I mean, they just know it every possible way in and out.

• 31:28Speaker 04

  Right. Um, yeah. At B spoke to said, this was much harder before GPS dog collars.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  He's correct.

• 31:36Speaker 04

  Yep. Um, okay, we're kind of, we're getting to the lion here.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Well, we got a lion, man. They started it way the heck over in that other canyon. And I, we can see it right up in the tree, just glowing up there.

• 32:11Speaker 06

  Try to get a look. Big old head, huh? Got his head and then about four inches under the base of his tail will be a black dot. If it's a tom, so we'll get up here and get a look at him. Let's look at him scream.

• 32:29Speaker 04

  So you got that first lion. How many days in was that?

• 32:34Speaker 03

  That was the second day.

• 32:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 32:38Speaker 04

  What's it like to be standing that close to a full grown mountain lion?

• 32:46Speaker 03

  Well, I noted it of just how rare it really is. Like, I mean, if you're a lion hunter, it's not because you see them.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  You have the dogs. But really, in a natural situation without dogs, just in a you would, it'd be very rare to be that close to a lion without it disappearing. I mean, lions are notorious for being unseen. And then in a lot of the GPS collared studies they've done, they see how close these lions let humans get to them and the lions never, you know, reveal their presence.

• 33:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 33:23Speaker 03

  Like, so a lot of people out west that live in lion country that are doing a lot of backcountry stuff have probably been within 20 to 50 yards of many lions that they never knew about.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  Which is interesting.

• 33:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  But no, this lion, when I first, I knew we weren't gonna shoot a small lion.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  Right.

• 33:47Speaker 03

  And we really hadn't talked about exactly what was acceptable. You know, I mean, I didn't know what kind of lion. We just knew we needed a male for sure.

• 33:58Speaker 04

  Right.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  And an adult, you know, a full grown one. And man, when I walked up to the tree, I was like, dang, that's a pretty good mountain lion. I mean, it had a pretty big head.

• 34:10Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  And

• 34:13Speaker 03

  But I could, I could just immediately tell, well, I mean, they told me, they're like, yeah, that's like a two-year-old lion, you know?

• 34:22Speaker 04

  Did you think it was older than that?

• 34:24Speaker 03

  I would have thought it was older than that, but I, I have no

• 34:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  basis.

• 34:28Speaker 04

  Cause you've, you've lion hunted before, you, you took a lion?

• 34:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is, this lion weighed 112 pounds.

• 34:34Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  It was a male.

• 34:35Speaker 04

  That was where?

• 34:36Speaker 03

  In, uh, in the Panhandle of Idaho.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:39Speaker 03

  Leon Brown, guy named Leon Brown, plot man. And, um, that, I mean, that's technically an adult. I mean, like, it wasn't, like, still with its mother, but

• 34:50Speaker 04

  Right.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  this was probably a two-year-old lion.

• 34:52Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:52Speaker 03

  Hundred, 112 pounds.

• 34:54Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 34:54Speaker 03

  Which is, you know, you're, you're, you're hoping to take out the, the big ones. And, and the biggest lions in North America, and these would be like phantoms, but would, you know, push 200 pounds. I mean, there, there have been 200-pound lions taken. But a, a big tom in Utah, I would say, would be in the 150-pound range, plus or minus. I mean, like, that would have been a

• 35:22Speaker 04

  And that's what they're, that's what they're looking for.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  That's what they're looking for. But then again, these guys, um, like I said, Hunter has never killed one. I mean, they're just not

• 35:32Speaker 04

  Did he say why? Did he say why? I mean, surely he's seen a mature cat. I mean,

• 35:39Speaker 03

  Well, number one, they're, they are outfitters.

• 35:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  Like, so they do take people that they're trying to get a lion. So presumably, a lot of the big ones, they've, they've, they've treed, they had a client with them.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  You know, so they would have shot the lion. But I, I get it. Like, it's just not, that's just not what they're in it for.

• 36:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:00Speaker 03

  Like, just to, to shoot a lion just doesn't Mean that much to them. They'd rather let it go and treat again, or, or someone, someone else.

• 36:11Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  Take it.

• 36:12Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:12Speaker 03

  And so, I, I thought, I thought that was interesting. And that, that made me feel good when I passed that line.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Right.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  Cause it was hard. I would have been so happy with that line. Uh, I, I think it was probably bigger. You know, McLean said it was between 110 and 120 pounds. And, um, I feel like it looked quite a bit bigger than.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 36:34Speaker 03

  Than this one.

• 36:35Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 36:35Speaker 03

  I do. This, this hunt is on the Bear Grease YouTube channel.

• 36:40Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  My lion hunt from like 2016 or something, probably 10 years ago. Uh, I went up to the Panhandle of Idaho. I killed that one with a traditional bow with Leon Brown.

• 36:50Speaker 04

  So, um, we have another, another comment from YouTube, I believe.

• 36:58Speaker 04

  S3V3ND3TT, lots of threes.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 37:02Speaker 04

  In that username. How does passing on a kill affect the dogs? How do you reward them and also disengage them from a successful hunt when you don't understand the harvest of an animal? When you don't harvest an animal?

• 37:14Speaker 03

  Right. You know what? I think it's, that's a good question. Cause it would seem like those dogs.

• 37:20Speaker 04

  I like how he says successful hunt too. I mean, the, the dogs did their job.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  Right, right. Well, I think the reward for those dogs is just to look at it.

• 37:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 03

  And see it up in the tree.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  Were you, were you able to get them pulled off and, and get them disengaged from that lion to move on?

• 37:37Speaker 03

  Oh yeah. They, they just call them. I mean, they lead, they would lead some of the younger dogs away. Some of the older dogs, they'd just be like, let's go on to the next one.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 37:47Speaker 03

  And, um, now I hope that we're soon getting to lion management.

• 37:53Speaker 04

  We've got one more clip. We've got one more clip with a short question and then we're getting into lion management.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  Cause I have some insider information.

• 38:00Speaker 04

  I love insider information.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  Okay. Next clip.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  We have, we've ridden six or seven miles from the truck. And man, they've got that cat tree. You can see him through Bono's down there. Thought he might be baiting one of these rocks. We got one of the guys going to him. We're gonna try to figure out how to get down there. Looks like a tom. Just from the track, but just unbelievable country. When you come to Utah, this is where you'd hope to tree one.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  I already don't like it.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Pretty sketchy getting down here, but we're gonna try to look this line over. We don't, we think it's probably the same caliber of line as yesterday. But we really don't know if one we're gonna try to take or not.

• 39:08Speaker 04

  So you, you mentioned how steep it is and, and that you don't like it. Where'd that come from?

• 39:16Speaker 03

  Well, you know, Justin House was there, Hunter, Hunter Meekum was there. Dustin from Arizona was there. Uh, there were, there were multiple people there that went down with us. And it was not that big of a deal. Like there was parts where we had to slide.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  And there were, there was always handholds. But I was, I just, I was trying to just be vulnerable and honest. It, it just kind of fluttered my heart. Like one of those flutters that you can't control.

• 39:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:49Speaker 03

  And, uh, and I was just like, what is going on? Like this is not even that bad. It was bad. Like, like Ty, Ty Evans had cowboy boots on that day. And he chose not to go down because he had like slick cowboy boots. And, and the consequences of falling were, were high. I mean, like.

• 40:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 40:09Speaker 03

  It, it was, it was just almost straight down in several spots in snow. And, uh, no, it get, I had, I had, I had my buddy Justin carry my gun. He could tell I was kind of wigged out. I was like, sorry.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  Well, you had a pretty harrowing, harrowing situation with your mountain, mountain gun hunt.

• 40:26Speaker 03

  Well, that's what I, that's what I. Well, I, I know is, is part of it is, uh, yeah, we were, me and Dirt Myth were hanging on the side of the cliff for two hours.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Retrieving that goat.

• 40:40Speaker 04

  Okay, the moment you've been waiting for.

• 40:41Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 40:42Speaker 04

  We're gonna talk about conservation.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  These cats are, I mean, they're carnivores, 100% living off meat. And they, they, they follow these elk herds. And what's kind of interesting being here in Utah is that they really liberalize the lion hunting. And, I mean, they're, you can trap them, snare them, year-round season, don't need a tag, just need a license. And you'd think that the lion hunters would be happy about that, but they're, they're not. You know, they feel like they should be managed a little more conservatively. But the game of fish has done it because the mule deer populations are down, they're trying to save some mule deer.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  So, you know, there's probably like two sides of it, but when you're with lion hunters, they're the ones who are, you know, wanting to be more conservative, but.

• 41:39Speaker 07

  Taking a beating, you know, and we, everything needs to be regulated, you know, every species. But just open, wide open for one species is not gonna change our mule deer.

• 41:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:51Speaker 07

  Um, there's so many other factors, there's highways, there's drought, there's habitat law, there's so many other things, and I think as humans, we play more in the part in hurting the mule deer.

• 42:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:01Speaker 07

  Population than these lions are. You take an area like this where there's quite a lot of elk, so they take, they eat elk also.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:09Speaker 07

  They eat coyotes, they eat bobcats, they eat skunks, they eat porcupines, they eat all kinds of things, but, um, it's amazing how many people I take out in the hills and the first thing they see some bones, it's automatically a lion kill, so everything, you know, so they're getting.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  The theme of the film really was lion conservation. And in the last year, Utah has opened up mountain lion hunting to, to the widest gate possible. It's a year-round season, there's no quotas.

• 42:43Speaker 03

  You don't have to have a tag, you don't have to buy a tag to hunt one. Even as a non-resident, all I had to do was buy a non-resident hunting license and it was legal for me to harvest a mountain lion. Now, after you kill it, you did have, you do have to check it. And they pull a tooth and they, they, they, they gather biological data. Right. But basically, th- this is, this is my understanding of it, which is, is, is not the full picture, but there was a time when there were probably 500,000 mule deer in Utah. Okay? Like in the glory days, which that would have been, you know, I don't know, 50, 60, 70s.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  At some point in time, there were 500,000 mule deer in Utah. With whatever is happening ecologically, management-wise today, as I understand it, they have roughly around 300,000 mule deer. Okay? Wow. And, and it's been that way for a long time. Well, Utah is a trophy elk and mule deer state, big time. They also have about 3,000 mountain lions. In 2007, 20 years ago, and, and, and it's, the guy I talked to believed it was probably similar to that today, 3,000 mountain lions. So that's one mountain lion for every 100 deer. Okay?

• 44:08Speaker 03

  And lions undoubtedly are eating deer. And when I talked to, uh, I talked to Chuck, um, oh boy, let me, uh, I'm not even gonna say his name, he's a great guy. He, he, he's helped, he's worked with state agencies, knows a lot about lions. Basically, li- the lions typically are after the mule deer more than the elk. And Okay. And they don't just prey upon the, the mule deer in, in uniformity. They trend heavier towards males.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 44:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, because males are solitary, more solitary, they're traveling more, they're just more vulnerable. So they're definitely eating does and fawns, but they, there would be a higher percentage of the males that they eat. And so that actually, there's a biological term for it, but that, it sounds bad for a sportsman to think of a, of a lion killing a big trophy mule deer, but from a population level, it's actually less consequential than if that lion killed a doe, because if a lion kills a doe, you're not only killing that doe, but you're killing her reproduction potential for the rest of her life.

• 45:29Speaker 03

  And so, basically, when they introduced elk, the first lion studies in Utah were back in the 1960s, and all the, the lions like exclusively ate mule deer, and it was because there were hardly any elk there. They introduced elk, and they, they started taking primarily juvenile, juvenile elk, okay? But this is the most interesting thing that he said, is that what you really, if you're thinking about mule deer populations, what you really have to be focused on is the amount of, of mule deer fawns getting killed, okay? And he said, what kills a bunch of mule deer fawns is coyotes.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Huh.

• 46:13Speaker 03

  And so he said, he said, it, it was, it's, it's very complicated, but basically, it's the, he believed Chuck, uh, I gotta find Chuck's name, hold on.

• 46:24Speaker 04

  Here, it's Chuck Bodenkirch, Bodenchuck, Mike Bodenchuck.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  Mike, I was calling him Chuck.

• 46:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, Mike Bodenchuck.

• 46:32Speaker 03

  Mike Bodenchuck, he's a,

• 46:34Speaker 04

  Sorry, Mike.

• 46:35Speaker 03

  He's a consultant, has worked with state game agencies, with, uh, uh, carnivore, um, management for his entire career, like, super knowledgeable guy, and, and I'm not quoting directly, I just had a conversation with, with, with Mike today, but basically,

• 46:53Speaker 03

  It feels like there's a lot of pressure coming from the sportsmen of Utah to hammer down on the lions. And, um, and basically, Mike Bodenchuk, and I'm not going to quote him, you can ask him yourself, but he doesn't think that this, he thinks that this is unsustainable, what Utah's doing.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  Really?

• 47:14Speaker 03

  He, he, I actually thought he was calling me to tell me I got it wrong. Cause he, somehow we got hooked up with him and he watched the film.

• 47:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 47:22Speaker 03

  It's this expert. And I actually thought he was gonna say, Clay, you painted this in the wrong light. This is actually good. And he was like, he was like, well, he said, I don't think it's sustainable. Um, and what he, the only positive thing that he did say about this new rule, the, the new regulations is that it does just open up a lot of sportsman opportunity and, um, the, the state agencies aren't going to be killing problem lions. A sportsman could actually go kill a problem lion. So they do have livestock depredation in Utah. Sheep, cattle, stuff gets killed, less than it has been in a long time.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  But in the past, if you had a sheep get killed by a lion, you would call the, the state agency and they would send out a government hunter to come kill that lion. Today, with 365 day a year season, you could call your buddy that's got lion dogs any day of the year and go trail a lion and kill it. And you know, he said, you know, that's positive for sportsmen.

• 48:29Speaker 04

  Right. Um, so the, the total reported harvest of mountain lions in Utah from November 2023 to 24th, 530.

• 48:38Speaker 03

  530 lions. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  It doesn't, I mean, in some really simplistic way, you would just go, well, a lion on the, that lion that I passed on the second day, he's killing probably a deer a week. So that's 52 deer a year. And you're like, remove that lion, you have plus 52 deer. Well, I think what McLean and what others are saying is that mule deer populations, even thriving mule deer populations, they have natural systems built for some level of mortality. And there's a whole lot more mortality coming from

• 49:30Speaker 03

  human induced stuff and stuff beyond our control, droughts that are producing degraded habitat and and just increased people in the state hitting deer on roads.

• 49:45Speaker 03

  Hunters taking deer. There's just a lot of little points and basically the lions are one data point that are taking, taking deer off the landscape and to just smash in that button is

• 50:01Speaker 03

  to the people that I've talked to that are in the know, think that that's not really helping.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  We've got a comment here from Joe Pruitt 6063. I'm sure that the game commission knows that lions aren't the only factor, but they're most likely the easiest factor to control.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  That's probably a fair statement.

• 50:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  And it, and it's, and the other thing is that, you know, how many very serious lion hunters are there in the state of Utah? I don't know, a couple hundred maybe?

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 50:31Speaker 03

  Thousand? How many serious mule deer and elk hunters are there in the state of Utah?

• 50:36Speaker 04

  Lot.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  Hundreds of thousands.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 50:38Speaker 03

  And so it's one of these things where

• 50:42Speaker 03

  It it may not be best practice, but it's it's it just seems like the easy thing. And honestly, it's a philosophical question, too. If there were no lions in Utah, there would be more mule deer.

• 50:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 50:58Speaker 03

  I mean, period.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  But so it's like, it raises the question, do we want a Utah with no mountain lions? And I think the answer in 2026 to to the modern sportsman is no, we want wild landscapes with intact trophic structure inside of, I mean, we want some predators on the landscape. Our ability to manage those predators is essential. Take that away from us and we're in bad trouble and we're gonna fight to the to to to the bare dirt to to to get it back. But in in and there's places where they've done that. In California, they've completely just like taken the legs out of predator management.

• 51:44Speaker 03

  And it's it's wild over there, what's going on.

• 51:48Speaker 04

  And just to just to be clear, the only way to actively hunt mountain lion would be with dogs.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  Well, no. So this is

• 51:59Speaker 03

  in in in open landscapes like in Utah. And now there will be a lot of

• 52:08Speaker 03

  just happenstance hunting. Like if you're elk hunting with a rifle and you see a lion over there 300 yards stalking across the ridge, you can shoot it legally.

• 52:18Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 52:18Speaker 03

  And so there is going to be quite a bit of harvest that's gonna come from

• 52:27Speaker 03

  just kind of by accident. There's a term I'm looking for. What's the term?

• 52:34Speaker 03

  Secondly, there's a lot of trapping going on in Utah.

• 52:37Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 52:38Speaker 03

  Lot lot of guys are trapping mountain lions.

• 52:41Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 52:41Speaker 03

  And so in the past, pretty much the the the only way you would have done it would have been with dogs. But now everybody that's got a tag and a weapon in their hand could shoot a lion. And I mean, I would if I was out there elk hunting and saw a big mountain lion walking across the ridge.

• 53:00Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 53:01Speaker 03

  Oh, I I mean, that's that's pretty cool.

• 53:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 03

  But so what it what it.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  Mike BodenChuck, he watched the film and he said, Clay, your experience there in Utah was exactly what I would have predicted. He said the top end of male mountain lions is gone out of Utah.

• 53:27Speaker 04

  Because of the open season?

• 53:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, or will be gone.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  Because year round, no quota, so in the past, they would have had the state separated into quota zones for lions. So like maybe where the, and I don't know this, but perhaps like where the Meekums were hunting, there would have been a 30 lion quota with a female quota too. So like maybe you could kill 30 lions, but if you killed 15 females, it shut off.

• 53:57Speaker 04

  Right.

• 53:58Speaker 03

  But you could kill 30 males.

• 54:00Speaker 04

  Right.

• 54:00Speaker 03

  So they regulated it pretty tightly. And so this is essentially going to take that top end because guys are gonna go there, run dogs, and the big ones, they're gonna get. Cause you can hunt them 365 days a year.

• 54:19Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 54:20Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. You can hunt them every day.

• 54:21Speaker 04

  Wow. Wow, that's a big deal.

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so he said, us seeing juveniles like this or subadults, he said, was pretty typical. And honestly, McLean and them and Hunter, you know, just kind of said, Clay, probably a lot of lion hunters in Utah would have shot those two cats, those two males. Like they're just looking for, you know, a grown male. So.

• 54:51Speaker 04

  A couple of other comments. Austin Sikich says, as a Utah hunter, I appreciate you guys bringing awareness to our backwards approach to predator management, killing lions to help mule dealers like putting water in a grease fire. We need to prioritize water and habitat, not killing lions. I thought that was a good comment.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 04

  We had another comment that talks about wild horses even.

• 55:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:17Speaker 04

  He says, "The mule deer in Utah have a lot of competition for feed and water as well. Elk, pronghorn, and tons of wild horses. I've watched a group of wild horses run a herd of deer off of a water hole a couple years ago. Those horses just hung out guarding that water like they owned it. DNR will remove every lion from the state but leave the horses alone. Seems really off to me."

• 55:39Speaker 03

  Woo. Guys bringing the heat.

• 55:41Speaker 04

  So, anyway, it's definitely, it's definitely a controversial topic.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:51Speaker 04

  But I think the film kind of shed some light on some good practices, so.

• 55:58Speaker 03

  I've got a quote. Mike, Mike told me this quote, and this wasn't from him. He was quoting somebody else, one of a biologist that he once knew. He said, "In the absence of wolves," he said, "the way to save elk is to reduce the amount of lead in the air."

• 56:22Speaker 03

  Basically, this biologist was saying, "Hey, well, in the absence of wolves," he said, "the way that you manage basically deer and elk populations is by how many get killed by human hunters."

• 56:36Speaker 04

  Well, we had another comment. Andrew Ferris 2205 said, "Limit the mule deer tags. Easiest way to control."

• 56:43Speaker 03

  And they have done that to the point that you can hardly hunt mule deer in the state.

• 56:49Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 56:50Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah, like, anybody that, that knows the draw system or has played in the draw system knows that Utah's one of the hardest states to draw. It's also some of the best mule deer hunting in the country, so everybody wants to go there, but even residents don't get tags every year in, in good zones. Typically, the residents get priority, like, in some of the premium western states, let's take for instance, Montana. If you're a Montana resident, every year you get a general Montana elk license.

• 57:28Speaker 03

  Which means that every year you can hunt elk. You may not be able to go to the premium zones.

• 57:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 57:34Speaker 03

  But there's a lot of general elk zones. Okay. And, and, I mean, in Arkansas, can you imagine if we couldn't hunt deer and turkey every year?

• 57:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:46Speaker 03

  Like if like, once every five years, we got to deer hunt. I mean, that sounds like

• 57:50Speaker 04

  There'd be a civil war.

• 57:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so in Utah, and it's other places too, New Mexico and Arizona and, and other, other states. But there are plenty of places out west where even the residents have to draw a tag to be able to hunt and may not even get a tag to hunt.

• 58:09Speaker 04

  South Dakota's like that?

• 58:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. So it's like, well, not hunting this year, didn't get a tag. I mean, to, to those, those of us in the east, hunting deer and turkeys and bear, that just sounds

• 58:21Speaker 04

  That is a, a God given right.

• 58:23Speaker 03

  It just sounds unbelievable, but it's the reality out there. And, um, so they are regulating the tags.

• 58:33Speaker 00

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• 1:00:48Speaker 04

  Okay, let's watch another clip.

• 1:01:13Speaker 04

  So that was a tom also?

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was.

• 1:01:17Speaker 04

  Not quite as big as the other one, or was it similar size?

• 1:01:19Speaker 03

  It was similar size. It didn't look as big. It didn't look quite as big. But it was a male inside of that same range. So when you're dealing with cervids like elk or deer, you have these rut windows that produce very specific fawning times. And so all the juveniles of a given year, a cohort, are basically the same age, okay?

• 1:01:44Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  With lions, it's not like that. Like, you know, it's not like they breed in this window and they have kittens in the spring. It's not like a bear.

• 1:01:55Speaker 04

  So there's a lot of speculation when you see one?

• 1:01:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you might be looking at, you might treat two lions that were born... Four months apart or five months apart when typically in, in, in other species that have these really regulated breeding windows, you would be looking at animals that would be a cohort of a year.

• 1:02:14Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Like bears, like you'd be like, that's a two-year-old bear, a three-year-old bear, a four-year-old bear. Does that make sense?

• 1:02:21Speaker 04

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 1:02:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, because the breeding with the cats, as I understand it, they can basically breed any time of the year.

• 1:02:28Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  Just when that female comes in. I actually learned that an adult female lion is basically constantly pregnant or with kittens her entire life once she reaches sexual maturity.

• 1:02:44Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:02:45Speaker 03

  She's either pregnant or nursing or rearing kittens.

• 1:02:50Speaker 04

  Now, do you know, will they typically have a litter of kittens? I mean, will they have multiples?

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I, I'm not a lion expert. You know who was? Teddy Roosevelt. It'd be nice to point him up. He was, he was the premier lion, mountain lion guy in America in the early 1900s.

• 1:03:09Speaker 04

  We'll see if Steve Rinaldo has his phone number.

• 1:03:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, but I'm, they have like two kittens.

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  And then obviously could have three or four.

• 1:03:18Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:03:19Speaker 03

  Could have one, but typically two. Kind of, kind of like bears.

• 1:03:23Speaker 04

  Okay. Let's look at this last clip here.

• 1:03:36Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:00Speaker 04

  So you, you, that was obviously a female. Is there a term for a female cat?

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I don't think we can use it on this podcast.

• 1:04:10Speaker 04

  Okay, got it, got it.

• 1:04:11Speaker 03

  Wait, nevermind.

• 1:04:13Speaker 04

  Um, so you said that dog stayed treed for hours?

• 1:04:18Speaker 03

  Yes, that, I, this is again where video just doesn't really allow you to tell the whole story. We started that day on the track of a Magnum Tom, like one that we didn't think we were gonna find.

• 1:04:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  And they were running it. And I mean, McLean was like, hey, this, this might happen. And we were going into good country. Every time that you're there with them, they're, the dogs are going in a direction. They're like, well, boy, if they get over into there, it's gonna be tough, or, or, or man, if they go that way, we're in the chips. And so last day, find a big track, dogs are running it. And I go, well, well, tell me about the direction. And I think they're gonna say, oh, Clay, that it's gonna be really tough for them to catch that line going that way. And they go, this is great. This is fantastic. They're going the right way.

• 1:05:16Speaker 03

  And it's like mid morning, so we got plenty of time. A lot of times you just run out of daylight.

• 1:05:20Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:05:21Speaker 03

  You just, you just trail it, trail it, trail it, trail it. And it gets dark and your dogs are still running. You gotta call them off. And so it's, it's mid morning, we're running a big lion track, bigger than the ones, like, they were like, you'll, you'll shoot this one, Clay. You know, I mean, that was the idea. And as we're going, we're, we're like seeing the lions' tracks and the dogs' tracks.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  And you can tell it's big because of a big track and the distance between the steps, right?

• 1:05:49Speaker 03

  Yes, they, they can just glance at a track and like tell you the, you know, what that dude had for breakfast, you know? I mean, it's unbelievable. And so as we're going.

• 1:06:03Speaker 03

  It was like fate and we couldn't show it in the film. It just was too hard to capture. A female crossed that lion's, the big lion's track. Oh. And, uh, and the dogs turned and I think actually might've gone backwards on the female. Okay. Even the best dogs in the world sometimes. But Waylon broke off and just drifted into no man's land. And so we actually followed the dogs and McLean immediately smelled a rat. He was like, something's wrong. He's like, they're not doing it right. And then he sees the female track and sees they went the wrong way.

• 1:06:48Speaker 03

  And we spent a bunch of time going down to them. And Dustin, uh, from Arizona was with us, Dustin Clark. And he looks at his Garmin and he says, McLean, Waylon is like two miles away showing treed. And we were, we thought maybe it was an error on the GPS. Who, it just, the likelihood of this dog treeing a lion by himself. And I, I was like, was it a good dog? And Dustin's like, man, that's one of my best. I was like, really? I was like, do you think it's treed? And he said, he was like, who knows? I think he wanted to say, yeah, it's treed. He was being, he was being reasonable and it's like hard to say.

• 1:07:33Speaker 03

  Well, the dog is so far away that it, we almost didn't go to it. I mean, that's what it felt like. But we finally get the dogs gathered back up from kind of going the wrong way on this track. And I remember it was late in the afternoon and we could have, it would have been way easier to just go back to the truck. And McLean said, what do you want to do? And I was like, well, I want to go see what that dog's got. Right. I want to keep going. And he said, okay. And so we head off and go on a multi-mile, very treacherous, you know, like up this canyon and across and down and back up. And the dogs still treed.

• 1:08:17Speaker 03

  And we think it's possible that it's got that big male treed.

• 1:08:23Speaker 03

  It's possible.

• 1:08:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  That's what I thought, anyway. These guys were looking at their garments and I think they kinda had it figured out what had happened. They just, it's like they're playing chess and I'm just kinda like watching the game board. Don't really know exactly what's going on. And when we got to about a hundred and two hundred yards from the tree, we could hear the dogs. By this time, all the other dogs went to join Waylon, that English red.

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:08:49Speaker 03

  And so that, you know, all the dogs are going and we know they've got a lion treed and McLean is like, I think it's that female. And so we get down there and sure enough.

• 1:09:00Speaker 04

  It's a female.

• 1:09:00Speaker 03

  And when you look at her in the tree, you can see how slender she is. I mean, she actually has a

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  a feminine kinda face, you know, I mean, just like the, the lines on.

• 1:09:13Speaker 04

  A little more petite, less.

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  Smaller head, smaller feet. She was very nervous. Those males would just sit up in the tree and just kinda.

• 1:09:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, they seemed, the tom seemed unfazed.

• 1:09:23Speaker 03

  They were just, they were just sitting up there, just, they didn't care. That female was just constantly.

• 1:09:29Speaker 04

  On edge.

• 1:09:30Speaker 03

  Just kinda acting like she, and she ended up jumping.

• 1:09:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Speaker 03

  You know?

• 1:09:33Speaker 04

  Did the dogs chase her when she?

• 1:09:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, we, we tried to catch most of the dogs back, you know, but they, they actually, yeah, they, they actually chased her and treed her just like a hundred yards away. And then we gathered up all the dogs and took out of there.

• 1:09:47Speaker 04

  And you said, you know, this animal's legal to take, but we're not gonna.

• 1:09:50Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:09:51Speaker 04

  And I think, I think you've covered it well enough, but just, just to be clear, you wouldn't take a female because?

• 1:09:57Speaker 03

  So the only lion that is illegal to take under current structure is you cannot shoot a female with kittens.

• 1:10:05Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:10:06Speaker 03

  And typically, a female is gonna tree with her kittens.

• 1:10:11Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:10:11Speaker 03

  If she's got kittens. That's the way I understand it. And, and, and lion hunters in general are not gonna shoot a female. I mean, they're just, it's kinda the, the code of the West.

• 1:10:22Speaker 04

  Because like you said, the reproductive potential of that cat.

• 1:10:25Speaker 03

  Right. And in most places, there's the quotas, the female quotas. And there has been. So, I mean, these, these regulations create culture inside of states. And so there's been female quotas all over the place. So for generations, it's been. Not okay to shoot a female. Or, you know, you kind of get, I mean, people do because the female quotas get met.

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:10:45Speaker 03

  But it's like, don't shoot a female. I mean, the guys that are serious pretty much are saying that. There would be exceptions. I mean, maybe you're with a kid or maybe you have some reason to want to take in a whole female. And I, I don't, that could happen and be legit. But in general, guys are after the males.

• 1:11:01Speaker 04

  Sure. Okay, last question. So, looking back, you decided to pass that first cat?

• 1:11:08Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:11:09Speaker 04

  If you had to do it again, would you change your mind?

• 1:11:13Speaker 03

  Well, no, I would do it just the same. But would I have liked to have taken that cat? Yeah. If, if I had, uh, if I wasn't with these guys that were so knowledgeable and I respected so much and had such strong opinions on the deal.

• 1:11:38Speaker 03

  I mean, I could see a scenario where I was with different people that would have just been like, shoot that one, man. That's the best one we're gonna get. This is awesome. I mean, I think to a lot of people, uh, to a lot of lion hunters, that would have been like, what you, the best of what you expected.

• 1:11:54Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  You understand? I mean, so, so, uh, but again, you're, you're a product of the context that you're in. And I was these people's guest and they told me, Hunter, yeah, what's not on film is that Hunter and McLean both were like, Clay, take that, shoot that cat.

• 1:12:11Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 1:12:11Speaker 03

  They were like, do, do what you want.

• 1:12:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:12:14Speaker 03

  I mean, and yeah, I mean, they were, they were like, yeah, if you want to shoot that cat, you can.

• 1:12:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:12:21Speaker 03

  I mean, this is legal. Like, they know what's happening. And I think they knew that the chances of us treating a bigger one were

• 1:12:30Speaker 04

  Slim.

• 1:12:30Speaker 03

  Slim.

• 1:12:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Speaker 03

  And so, uh, but I could tell they, they

• 1:12:38Speaker 03

  They didn't, I mean, I don't, I don't want to put the blame on them. I made the decision.

• 1:12:43Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:12:43Speaker 03

  Cause I mean, they told, McLean told me, he was like, you do whatever you want. But I was like.

• 1:12:49Speaker 04

  Kind of taking your cues from him.

• 1:12:51Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 1:12:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:12:52Speaker 03

  Which I would, I think, you know, somebody new to hunting or, I mean, that's what you do. You know, I mean, when you're with people, you know, I guess other parts of life are like this, but in the hunting world, I feel like there's this hierarchy of knowledge, kind of on any hunt. And there's usually somebody that's the de facto leader. Just based upon their experience, the respect they have with the group. And I mean, I kind of typically would kind of hat tip to the, to the leader.

• 1:13:27Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:13:28Speaker 03

  You know?

• 1:13:29Speaker 04

  Well, they've got a long history and.

• 1:13:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:30Speaker 04

  Legacy in that region for what they do.

• 1:13:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:33Speaker 04

  Well, great. That's all the questions I've got.

• 1:13:36Speaker 03

  Man, I thank you guys so much for watching Meat Eaters 12 and 26. We've got 10 more films coming out this year. Two of them will be with me and Bear John. And the, the rest of the team, I mean, Brent's got some, Yannis has more. There's a bunch of really great films that are coming out. And there was a little bit of a snafu on the release of this one. For the first five hours that this, that this line film was out, we actually had the wrong version of the film up on YouTube. So we, we replaced it late on the first night.

• 1:14:17Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:14:17Speaker 03

  It's kind of a bummer.

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:19Speaker 03

  It happened, but the current film that's up is the, is the one to watch. If you watched it in the first five hours, you would have seen a film with no narration. And I mean, I watched part of it. So did you. I mean, it kind of made sense.

• 1:14:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Speaker 03

  It was just kind of odd, long musical pauses.

• 1:14:39Speaker 04

  Yeah. You kind of filled in the blanks with your emotions.

• 1:14:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I had a couple of people be like, they're like, man, that was awesome. And I was like, maybe I shouldn't talk. But no, it means, it means the world to us and everybody watches what we do. I mean, we, we never take that for granted. And, um, and, and just what a, I mean, every time I relive some of these moments. I mean, I'm just grateful to be an American sportsman and I want to be responsible. I want to be knowledgeable. I want to be ethical. I want to, to, to steward this opportunity that we have in modern times to be the caretakers

• 1:15:21Speaker 03

  of wildlife and wild places and the culture of American hunting, which is deeply, deeply part of our national identity, which we just have to foster in the coming days. Because, you know, I think, I think hunting and being actively engaged in wild, in, in wild places is, it's good for society. It's good, you know, Teddy Roosevelt believed, you know, his strenuous life doctrine. He believed that, that to, to go and test yourself in the, in the wilds was essential to the national character, you know?

• 1:16:06Speaker 03

  And I think there's part of that that's, that's probably true. Not everybody in the world gets to do what we do. And whether it's going turkey hunting in your backyard or going on a, a, a lion hunt in Utah or an elk hunt, whatever version of your excursion into the wild, whatever version that is, is awesome. Whether you're squirrel hunting or small game hunting or whitetail hunting. And I'll never, we get to do some cool stuff and I realize we're kind of anomalies in a way, kind of propped up by, I mean, this is my job.

• 1:16:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:16:43Speaker 03

  Working for Meat Eater. So I realize I get to see a lot of cool things, but my favorite things in the world to do are right here within 30 minute drive of my house. And that's the truth. So, thank you so much for watching this 12 and 26 podcast, the companion series to Meat Eaters 12 and 26 films.

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  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.