The Grizzly Mauling That Changed Yellowstone National Park

In June 1972, 23-year-old Harry Walker left Alabama for the adventure of a lifetime. Days after arriving in Yellowstone National Park, he was killed by a grizzly bear. Harry's death exposed decades of controversial bear management practices and sparked a legal battle against the federal government. At the center of it all was a question that Yellowstone had been struggling to answer for generations: how do you keep bears wild while keeping people safe? For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodes Book Recommendation: Engineering Eden by Jordan Fisher Smith and Taken By Bear in Yellowstone by Kathleen Snow For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials: Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdark Support the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to this week’s partners! Fora Travel: Love planning trips? Turn your passion for travel into a flexible source of income as a Fora Advisor. Learn more at https://www.foratravel.com/NPAD Nutrafol: Get $10 off your first month's subscription and free shipping when you use promo code NPAD at https://www.nutrafol.com Smalls: For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping, when you head to Fresh Human-Grade Cat Food Delivery | Smalls Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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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• 0:31Speaker 01

  Did you know that if your spouse goes missing, but you don't tell anyone, that's not necessarily a crime? That surprising fact is at the heart of the brand new season of Bear Brook, the award-winning true crime podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm your host, Jason Moon. In season three, A Private Matter, we investigate another New Hampshire mystery. A beloved Christmas tree farmer with dementia vanishes from his small town. His wife never reports him missing. Can he still be found?

• 1:03Speaker 02

  If you knew Jay as well as I do, he's private. He doesn't want everybody to know his business.

• 1:11Speaker 03

  Pat, I don't believe you.

• 1:14Speaker 04

  I kind of revert back to that Bear Brook saying, what if we were to just come across something? And I wrote down, she said,

• 1:21Speaker 01

  I found him. Follow Bear Brook on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  With more than 4 million visitors arriving from around the world each year, incidents are an inevitable part of life in Yellowstone National Park. Medical emergencies, lost hikers, vehicle accidents, wildlife encounters, and the constant risk posed by scalding thermal features, meaning there's rarely a dull day in Yellowstone. But on August 23, 1970, rangers received a report unlike any other. Visitors near the Fire Hole River Bridge, a scenic overlook not far from the Morning Glory Pool, had come across a blanket neatly spread out beside the river. At first glance, it looked as though someone had Laid it down to relax, enjoy a picnic, or take in the scenery.

• 2:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  But resting on top of the blanket was what appeared to be a human scalp. Only a small piece of flesh and hair remained crawling with maggots. The rest of whoever it once was, was gone. The discovery launched an investigation, but what happened next only deepened the mystery. The blanket was sent to the FBI for analysis, yet official reports never clearly state what happened to the scalp or where it was sent to. Some witnesses believed it belonged to an animal. Others insisted it was human. But whatever the truth was, it never made it into the public record. No conclusions were released, and the scalp mysteriously disappeared.

• 2:54Cassandra Yahnian?

  Then, just weeks later, on September 16th, 1970, rangers at Old Faithful received another troubling report. Along the Firehole River, an abandoned campsite had been discovered after being ransacked by a bear. Investigators noted that several food cans had been chewed on but not punctured, leading some to speculate that the bear may have been old and missing teeth. The campsite appeared to have been abandoned for at least five days. Yet despite containing valuable camping gear and personal belongings, no one had returned to claim it. Had the owner of the campsite fallen victim to a bear attack? And if so, was the scalp found near Firehole River Bridge, all that remained of that person?

• 3:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  Or were these two entirely separate animal encounters unfolding in Yellowstone at the same time? Could the same bear have mauled and killed two people? No one knows. Neither the owner of the campsite, nor the source of the scalp, has ever been identified. And this unsettling mystery was only the beginning. Only two years later, Yellowstone would become the site of a gruesome bear attack that would forever change how the National Park Service managed bears and human visitors. Welcome to National Park After Dark.

• 4:28Danielle LaRock?

  Hello and welcome to National Park After Dark. My name is Danielle.

• 4:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  And I'm Cassie. Welcome, everybody. We are back for another week. Happy official summer. We're in it.

• 4:38Danielle LaRock?

  And happy belated birthday.

• 4:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, it was my birthday a couple of days ago, June 20th, summer baby.

• 4:44Danielle LaRock?

  How does it feel?

• 4:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  Another year has gone by, just crazy, but it's good. Yeah, feels good.

• 4:51Danielle LaRock?

  You're 36. No, 35. Sorry.

• 4:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  Every year you're trying to age me. Every single year.

• 4:59Danielle LaRock?

  As soon as it came out of my mouth.

• 5:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  How old I am.

• 5:02Danielle LaRock?

  I was already saying sorry.

• 5:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  Not there yet.

• 5:05Danielle LaRock?

  That's me. I'll be 36 this year.

• 5:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 5:08Danielle LaRock?

  Well, you don't look a day over 31. I'm sorry, I have to place you in your 30s.

• 5:16Danielle LaRock?

  No matter what you've been doing to your skin, which looks great, by the way.

• 5:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  I'm leaving.

• 5:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  Just kidding. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Someone thought I was in my 20s the other day, though, so. I have you beat.

• 5:30Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, well, hold on to that compliment.

• 5:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  I will.

• 5:34Danielle LaRock?

  And cherish it forever.

• 5:38Danielle LaRock?

  So, uh, kinda going into the intro of the story, I have no idea what you're talking about, which is great.

• 5:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  That incident that happened or this whole story?

• 5:48Danielle LaRock?

  The whole thing. Most specifically, the unsolved part of the intro.

• 5:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, yeah. So we'll get into that a little bit later in the story because it's all connected. But it's a true story that there was a scalp visitors who were in Yellowstone were just hanging out and they saw a blanket just laying out. And rangers called in reporting that there were tourists looking at a scalp laying on a blanket.

• 6:13Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, and I can't wait. To circle back because I have a lot of questions, but yay. So highly requested episode.

• 6:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. Today, we're going to be talking about the grisly mauling of Harry Walker in Yellowstone National Park. And this took place in 1972 and it's a pretty well-known story. We've never covered on the podcast or I think even mentioned on the podcast before. But there's a very popular book called Engineering Eden, which is what I used primarily for this episode, along with a couple of other resources. But this book really dives into the animal practices going on. And in Yellowstone, as it first became a national park and all the bad things that Yellowstone did as the first national park. You know, they were, they were in unprecedented territory, trying to figure things out, especially with the wildlife and all the people visiting.

• 7:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  And a lot of things went wrong. And unfortunately for Harry Walker, a lot of those things that they were doing that were wrong, ultimately led to him being in a really bad situation in Yellowstone. So that's the story that I'm going to tell today.

• 7:21Danielle LaRock?

  Feels very parallel to Night of the Grizzlies in Glacier.

• 7:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  For sure. And it's around the same timeframe too. You know, Night of the Grizzlies was in 1967 and this one's in 1972. So it's not long after and actually is pretty closely tied because after, if you guys have listened to Night of the Grizzlies, if you haven't, go check it out. It was episode, I think, like 13. But after that, they, they did a lot of changes to the parks and how they managed bears. But some of those decisions after, following the next five years resulted in situations like this.

• 7:55Danielle LaRock?

  And I'm not sure if this is, was intentionally done by you as far as like when you wanted to cover this story or not, but it just feels very timely because of. All of the bear encounters that have been happening in the parks recently over the last few weeks and months that we've been hearing, both in Glacier, you know, and Yellowstone and different places like that. And so I don't know if that was an intentional decision.

• 8:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  No, so I've had this planned for a while, but I love that you say that because if people heard, and I think the last episode we talked about, I'm actually living out here in Yellowstone in the Tetons this summer, and I've seen a lot of the closures that are going on and a lot of the bear warnings that are happening because of the bear activity. And a lot of people are talking about it because there seems to be a lot more bear activity this year than, I mean, there always is in the spring, but it seems like it's kind of heightened. So it's a big topic of conversation at the moment around here. But what's funny that you also say that is this episode, I think, is coming out June 22. And this actually happened pretty much down to the day of

• 9:05Danielle LaRock?

  Oh.

• 9:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  the story. So this will be the anniversary. If I could do math, it happened in 1972. It's 2026, whatever that anniversary is, we're pretty much almost down to the day of when this all unfolded.

• 9:19Danielle LaRock?

  All right. So top of mind all around. Got it.

• 9:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yes. All right. Let's dive into it. Back in 1972, 23 year old Harry Walker, a tall, handsome Alabama farm boy with dark brown hair and a big white smile ventured into Yellowstone National Park for the very first time. Growing up, Harry's little white farmhouse sat among the cotton fields and cow pastures of northern Alabama. The son of a dairy farmer named Wallace Walker, Harry was expected to one day carry on the family business, and he was perfectly content with that future. From the time he was eight years old, he worked alongside his father, waking up before dawn to help milk the cows before school. The two sang along to the radio in the barn each morning, and Harry knew every cow

• 10:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  in the herd by name. He loved animals and felt especially connected to his beagle Sloopy and his horse Comanche, whom he trained himself. In family videos, Harry can be seen leaping onto Comanche's bareback and racing across the pastures. Life on the farm revolved around hard work, and during the summer, Harry spent long days mowing fields and baling hay. As his father struggled with arthritis and chronic back pain, Harry pushed himself even harder to help shoulder the workload. However, when Harry was just 14 years old, a horse kicked him in the elbow. Doctors confirmed the bone was broken, but on a working dairy farm, there was little room for recovery. The cows still had to be milked, the fields still had to be worked, and Harry returned to the job before the injury had

• 10:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  properly healed. The damage never fully went away, and for the rest of his life, he dealt with chronic pain in the elbow, which was a constant reminder of the accident. By 1970, Harry was 23 years old and looked every bit the Alabama farm boy he had grown up to be. Standing over six feet tall with a powerful build from years of physical labor, he spent his days still milking the cows, baling the hay, and hunting in the woods and riding Comanche across the countryside. For a brief time, he was married to his high school sweetheart, largely to help her escape a difficult home life, but the marriage was short-lived. Even so, Harry remained optimistic about the future. He was hardworking, kind-hearted, deeply devoted

• 11:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  to his family, and fully expected that one day he would take over the dairy farm his father had spent his lifetime building. Unfortunately, his father Wallace couldn't afford to pay Harry a real salary for all the work he put into the family farm. So, if Harry wanted to earn money, he had to find it elsewhere. Over the next few years, Harry took just about any job that he could find. He joined the National Guard for the extra pay and worked a string of demanding jobs, including a metal foundry, a shrimp boat out of Mobile, an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and a construction crew operating a backhoe. At one point, he even worked as a substitute male Harry never shied away from hard work and was known to put in extraordinary long

• 12:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  days, but years of physical labor only aggravated the elbow that had never healed properly. By the early 1970s, Wallace realized that if Harry was going to stay on the farm long term, something needed to change. So he applied to take out a bank loan to pay Harry a salary, to buy more cows, lease additional land, and grow the family dairy operation. For the first time, Harry could actually see a future where making a living with his father was possible if this bank loan was to come through. But before settling into that life, he asked his father for one thing. He wanted a vacation with his friend Philip Bradbury, better known as Crow. So for the duration of the episode, I'm just going to call him Crow because that's what

• 12:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  all his friends called him, but his name is Philip. Harry said that he wanted time away to clear his head before returning home and committing himself to the farm for good. Crow was a Vietnam veteran who had been discharged after contracting a severe case of malaria that left him hospitalized for months. By the time he finally returned home, friends and family barely recognized him. The war had taken a toll, and in the years that followed, Crow drifted from place to place, drinking heavily, hitchhiking across the country, and searching for something he could never quite seem to find. Tall and lanky with long red hair hanging past his shoulders, Crow looked every bit the wandering drifter. While Crow had seen war, traveled the world, and lived a life full of uncertainty, Harry

• 13:42Cassandra Yahnian?

  had spent most of his life in the same corner of Alabama, leaving only for the National Guard training and occasional job opportunities. On paper, the two men couldn't have been more different. Crow was restless, unpredictable, and always looking for the next adventure. Harry was hardworking, grounded, and had spent his life preparing for a future on the family farm. Yet despite their differences, the two became close friends. Harry was beginning to feel the pull of the wider world, and Crow had already spent years wandering through it. When the opportunity arose to take a trip together, Harry jumped at the chance. However, Harry had other reasons for wanting to leave town as well. Harry hadn't actually told the National Guard about his plans.

• 14:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  In fact, he had been skipping his monthly military trainings for months because of the excruciating pain in his elbow. After attending a weekend muster in February of 1972, he failed to appear in March, then April, then May. After he no-showed in May, the National Guard officially declared him AWOL, or absent without leave. And now, of course, going AWOL in the military is a very serious offense. Depending on the circumstances, the punishment could range from a reduction in rank and extra duties to confinement or military prison. So he was facing pretty serious. I mean, you can't just go AWOL. You can't sign up for the military and then be like, never mind, I changed my mind. Yeah.

• 15:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  But for Harry at the time, he also had another reason to be worried. Like despite, like, forget military prison or reduction in rank or any of that at the time, the National Guard was actually, for people who were going AWOL, they were just switching them over to the Army and they were getting sent to Vietnam. Oh, okay. So he had to worry not only about getting in trouble, but he was worried that if they caught up with him, he was going to get deployed. And he saw everything that had happened to Crow and he saw that he was kind of the shadow of a person and all of his mental struggles that he had gone through since he returned from Vietnam, that he really didn't want that. So instead of staying in Alabama and facing that reality, because the National Guard

• 15:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  would find him eventually there, he decided to leave. One day, Harry and Crow climbed into a gray 1957 Buick with three other people they knew and drove away without telling anyone they were leaving and without any real destination in mind, but the plan was to leave the country. Maybe Canada, they said, or maybe Mexico. And I will say, he told his dad, so I did mention, he told his dad he was going on vacation and he asked his dad not to tell his mom what he was doing because he thought his mom wouldn't be okay with it. So he was like, I'm going on vacation, like, I'll be back. But other conversations are like, I think we're leaving the country.

• 16:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  On his way out of town, Harry made a stop to see his ex-wife and tell her goodbye. According to her, Harry claimed he had a terminal disease and was leaving to die somewhere he wouldn't be a burden to his family. The conversation had left her devastated, but also confused. Harry had been incredibly vague about his illness, and after thinking about it, she decided to contact the orthopedic surgeon who had been treating his elbow and ask about his medical records. When she did, that doctor had no evidence of any terminal illness in his chart. And to her, it kind of seemed like Harry was intentionally burning bridges before he left, like, "I'm going off to die." And she's like, "What? Like, what are you talking about?"

• 17:10Danielle LaRock?

  Also HIPAA? Like, can she?

• 17:13Cassandra Yahnian?

  I think because they were married. I think because they're married, you have, like, rights to that or something. It's the 70s.

• 17:20Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, he's like, "Oh, sure. I'll tell you everything."

• 17:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  You're his ex-wife. Sounds good.

• 17:25Danielle LaRock?

  You seem legit. Yeah.

• 17:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. That's such a good point. Well, they head out, and their first stop was Louisville, Kentucky, where Harry's older sister lived, and they spent the night at her house before continuing the following morning. Before they left, Harry gave his sister a big, long hug, and although this might not sound unusual, Harry was not a hugger. So when he gave her this big, extra-long hug, she was like, "Oh, this is nice," but odd. And when they finally pulled apart, she noticed that he actually had tears in his eyes. As the group climbed back into the Buick and prepared to leave, the old car refused to start. Harry's sister stood on the porch, watching as Harry looked up at her, flashed a huge grin, and gave a shrug.

• 18:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  A moment later, the engine sputtered, gurgled, and finally caught. The Buick rolled out of the driveway and disappeared down the road. It was the last time anyone in Harry's family would ever see him alive. The Buick meandered across the country, first to Ohio, then Buffalo, New York, back to Cleveland, and over to Chicago before finally making a beeline west to the Rockies of Colorado. At a campground near Aspen, they met a young woman who was on her way to Yellowstone National Park for a summer job. She told them about the mountains, the wildlife, the geysers, and the vast wilderness. The way she described it made Yellowstone sound magical, and before long, she had convinced them that they needed to see it for themselves.

• 18:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  Somewhere along the way, Harry found a payphone and called home and told his father that he was the happiest he had ever been. He told his dad about everything he had seen and said he hoped his father would get the chance to see the Rocky Mountains someday, too. And Wallace, his father, had good news of his own. He told Harry that he had gotten the bank loan that would allow him to pay for his work on the farm. When his son came home, he wouldn't have to bounce between odd jobs anymore. They could buy more cows, lease the land, and continue growing the family dairy operation. And Harry, of course, agreed that that was great news. Following the call, at Harry's request, Wallace mailed some of his camping gear to the post office in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

• 19:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  There, the group picked up Harry's green two-person army tent, along with his pots and pans, a sheath knife, and a 22-caliber rifle. After that, Harry and Crow parted ways with the rest of their friends and began hitchhiking north towards Yellowstone. Along the way, they found a spot at a KOA campground outside Livingston, Montana. While there, Harry headed into town to pick up some groceries. Later, as he stood outside a Dairy Queen, thumbing a ride towards camp, a young woman named Vicky Schlilt spotted him and pulled over. Vicky was 18 years old, beautiful, with long, wavy brown hair, and like Harry, she was experiencing her first real taste of independence.

• 20:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  She had grown up on a wheat farm along the Montana-North Dakota border and was spending the summer working at the historic Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park. When she saw Harry standing beside the road, she decided to offer him a ride. The two immediately hit it off. They discovered they had a lot in common, from their rural upbringings to the excitement and uncertainty that came with being away from home for the very first time. Before long, Vicky had agreed to drive both Harry and Crow into Yellowstone so they could find a new campsite. As Crow slept in the backseat, Harry and Vicky spent the drive talking and getting to know one another. As they made their way through the park, traffic suddenly slowed. Looking ahead, they saw cars lined up along the roadside and people gathered at their

• 21:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  windows. Crow woke up and looked outside just in time to see visitors feeding black bears by hand. Neither Harry nor Crow could believe what they were seeing. Crow had never seen a bear before in his entire life, and neither of them had ever imagined people casually feeding one through a car window. As far as the two young men were concerned, wild animals belonged in the wilderness, not standing beside the road waiting for food from tourists. The whole thing struck them as strange. In Alabama, they had always lived under the philosophy of, if you leave the wildlife alone, they won't bother you. What they didn't realize was that they had just arrived in a park that was in the middle of a major transition.

• 21:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  And here I would just want to take a few minutes to talk about some of the history in the park and what they're seeing with this bear feedings. And I know we've kind of talked about this in the past. We did an episode with Tooth and Claw where we dove into a lot of the Yellowstone practices and what was going on with bear feedings and this hand feedings that they're witnessing. So maybe some of this information will be familiar to you guys listening, but maybe this will be new information too. But either way, this is really pertinent to the story. Who doesn't love a little refresher from time to time? That's right. And who doesn't love talking about hand feeding bears and why that was happening in Yellowstone National Park? That's right. Well, for decades, Yellowstone had managed wildlife in ways that would seem shocking

• 22:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  today. Bears were fed by tourists, predators were routinely killed, and park officials often prioritized visitor experiences over natural animal behavior. By the early 1970s, those policies were beginning to change, but the effects of decades of wildlife management decisions were still being felt throughout the park. And unbeknownst to them, they were about to become victims because of these poor practices. Yellowstone was established in 1872. The idea of a national park was far more romantic than practical. The park's first superintendent, Nathaniel Langford, had no staff, he had no budget, and no real authority to protect the land. As a result, market hunters poured into Yellowstone

• 23:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  throughout the 1870s and 1880s, killing wildlife on a massive scale. Elk, deer, bighorn sheep, bison, wolves, bears, and mountain lions were slaughtered for meat, hides, horns, and pelts. Historic accounts estimate that more than 3,000 buffalo and mule deer were poached in and around Yellowstone during the winter of 1874 to 1875 alone. Across the West, bison were being wiped out by commercial hunting and US westward expansion, leaving Yellowstone's herd as one of the last wild populations in the country by the late 1880s. And one thing that I read in this book, Engineering Eden, that just kind of stuck with me and how they worded it, is that

• 23:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  they said that during this time, there were areas of the park where you could literally walk across the ground and only be walking on top of carcasses, because that's how much of a death toll that was going on here.

• 24:11Danielle LaRock?

  It's really startling to see the stark difference of management practices. And I know this is separated by a couple centuries now, approaching a couple centuries, but every time I go to Yellowstone, or I think of Yellowstone, especially, you know, Lamar Valley and America's Serengeti that it's crowned now, it's just such a comeback story, not just for wolves. And I think we really think about the wolf comeback in Yellowstone because of the famous reintroduction, but it's so much more than that. It's all of these different species that had a comeback in one way or another because of practices like this. And that's why I think I love Yellowstone

• 24:56Danielle LaRock?

  so much, and I have such like this emotional bond to it, other than just like a really cool experience there with my family. I just think it's such a success story and righting wrongs, and just a really pivotal time in understanding conservation and doing better. I think a lot of that transpired in this park, you know, doing really bad things, and also recognizing that and moving forward in different ways. So I just think it's just such a cool place for so many reasons. So I love that you brought that up, you know?

• 25:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, totally. And I think that everything that you just said, because it was the world's first national park, you kind of saw this huge contrast here because it was also the first place in the world where there was truly a massive conservation effort, but also America Serenketi, a huge hunting opportunity is also here. So it's just like, there are so many things happening in one place. And definitely, it was a different world that we see today because of a lot of these stories that we're talking about today. But going a little bit back into the hunting practices that were happening during this time, even after hunting restrictions were put in place, Yellowstone was so vast and remote that poachers continued

• 26:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  to kill wildlife with little fear of being caught. I mean, Yellowstone, I think, is the size of Switzerland. I mean, how are you going to patrol all of that land? It actually wasn't until 1886, when the US Army took over management of the park, that the large-scale poaching began to slow. Public pressure helped, too. Conservationist George Bird Grinnell used his magazine Forest and Stream to expose the slaughter taking place inside Yellowstone, helping build support for strong protections. By the turn of the century, officials were desperately trying to save what remained of the park's wildlife, especially bison, whose numbers had dwindled to just a few dozen animals, which is crazy to think because now

• 26:59Danielle LaRock?

  I know.

• 27:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  and you and I got stuck in a bison jam of like thousands of bison.

• 27:05Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, like you lose count. And I'm sure, you know, there's, there's definitely like caveats to with the practices of the park. And I think that the bison, and I don't know, but for sure, but bison being one of the first species for them to be like, oh, let's put on the brakes and do a 180 here. And maybe instead of killing all of them, let's start to protect them. Because you're, right now, we're in the beginning of the 1900s, right? In your timeline of where we're at?

• 27:33Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 27:33Danielle LaRock?

  And, you know, I know that the last wolves in Yellowstone were killed by park rangers in 1926. So I'm sure there's still Practices of killing wildlife, but those are more of the predators that came like at the very end of like, oh, them too. Let's protect them too. But it's again, like, America's mammal is the bison. And we just think of like this iconic species of this is such a true American, you know, symbol. Yeah, the open plains should be filled with bison kind of thing. When you picture America, there's. Yeah. Plains and a bison. In 1900, it's like, oh, we only have a handful left. Let's get this back. What did we do? Yeah.

• 28:18Danielle LaRock?

  Oopsies. Which episode is coming on that? So. Yeah, stay tuned. We'll talk more about bison. But I do love that you brought up the wolves and, uh, and how predators were being eradicated because that's my next paragraph. Oh. Yeah. Here we go. It's like, I do this for a living. It's crazy. That's crazy. Well, the irony of all of this, that they were trying to bring back bison and now they're talking about protecting and they were trying to stop all these poachers. The irony of all that is that Yellowstone and the park service and park employees were employed to actually eliminate other species in the park. So wolves, coyotes, and mountain lions were trapped, poisoned, and shot because they were viewed as threats to game animals

• 29:03Danielle LaRock?

  like elk and deer, and they were thought to be a hindrance to the visitor experience. By the 1920s, you said 1926, wolves had been virtually eradicated from the park. Bears, however, were largely spared because visitors loved seeing them. As other predators disappeared, bears became one of Yellowstone's biggest attractions, photographed, fed, and eventually showcased at hotel garbage dumps as entertainment for tourists. As tourism grew in Yellowstone, so did the number of hotels, restaurants, and resorts built inside the park. Along with them came enormous amounts of garbage. After decades of hunting had reduced many natural food sources, bears discovered an easier meal at hotel dumps and quickly learned that

• 29:48Danielle LaRock?

  humans often meant food. By the early 1900s, tourists were regularly feeding bears from stagecoaches and automobiles, and many visitors considered it one of Yellowstone's must-see attractions. Businesses soon turned feeding bears into entertainment. Hotels built viewing areas where hundreds of people would gather to watch bears feed on wagonloads of garbage. The practice continued for nearly 70 years, conditioning generations of bears to seek out human food and teaching generations of visitors that close encounters with bears were perfectly normal. One Yellowstone superintendent, Horace Albright, even described the bears as tame, a belief

• 30:30Danielle LaRock?

  that would have serious consequences in the decades to come. So you're having these bears who are conditioned to see people, and you're having people conditioned to see bears. And it's just creating a lot of bad things in the park. The perfect storm, if you will. Truly. By 1937, there had already been more than 500 documented incidences of bears injuring people in Yellowstone. Tourists teased bears with food, tried to get dangerously close for photographs, or startled them, and then seemed shocked when the animals responded with claws and teeth. At first, most of the incidents involved black bears. An adult male black bear typically weighs between 150 and 600 pounds.

• 31:14Danielle LaRock?

  Grizzlies, on the other hand, can weigh anywhere from 700 to more than 1,000 pounds. Grizzlies typically remained far more wary of people. They frequented the garbage dumps, but otherwise tended to avoid human contact whenever possible. Even so, the number of bear incidents continued to rise. Fatal attacks remained rare because bears are naturally shy, solitary animals that generally prefer to avoid conflict. But decades of feeding programs, garbage dumps, and close interactions were slowly teaching bears to seek out people rather than avoid them. The first confirmed fatal grizzly bear attack in Yellowstone occurred in 1916.

• 31:56Danielle LaRock?

  The incident took place at a remote campsite where three men were sleeping outdoors. Some Time during the night, a grizzly bear that had been reportedly involved in previous encounters with people wandered into their camp. Without warning, it attacked one of the sleeping men, inflicting severe injuries before dragging him a short distance away and beginning to feed on him. Awakened by the commotion, the victim's companions scrambled to defend their friend, shouting and fighting to drive the bear off. After a tense struggle, they succeeded in chasing it away and rushed the badly wounded man to receive medical treatment. Despite their efforts, his injuries were too severe and he later died. The attack shocked both park officials and

• 32:38Danielle LaRock?

  visitors, reinforcing fears about the dangers posed by large predators that had become accustomed to human activity. Determined to kill the bear responsible, the surviving men returned for revenge. They prepared a baited trap containing sticks of dynamite hidden inside an animal carcass. When the grizzly returned and fed on the bait, the explosives detonated, killing the animal instantly and blowing it to pieces.

• 33:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  I remember reading this in Death in Yellowstone. Shout out Lee H. Whittlesey, my prayer candle. So funny. It's so funny because I, we've been doing this podcast for five years and I have never owned that book. I've seen it in places. I know, I know. I've never had that book. I do, I have never owned it. And I've been seeing it in bookshops around, just kind of around here. And I was like, I'm still not buying it because if I'm gonna be here, I'm gonna buy it in Yellowstone. So I finally purchased the book when I went to Yellowstone Visitor Center the other day and I officially have the book on my shelf now.

• 33:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I was embarrassed to tell you. Okay, I understand. Yeah, I get that. I'm glad you waited because you're so close, right? You have to get it in the park. Yeah, I was like, it feels like, I know you got it when you saw it for the first time in the park and I kept seeing it park adjacent bookstores and I was like, I gotta get it in the park. So I officially own it. Thank you. I feel like we're finally unified.

• 34:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  We're finally a unified front.

• 34:24Danielle LaRock?

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• 35:09Danielle LaRock?

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• 35:53Danielle LaRock?

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• 36:37Danielle LaRock?

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• 36:54Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, so basically going back into the story. So all of this is, I mean, someone died, people are taking it out on the animal. There's no control here. Things are just getting a little bit crazy. You can't have visitors killing bears and, and bears killing visitors and with dynamite. Yeah, it's just getting, it's just getting a little crazy. By the mid 20th century, a new philosophy about how wild places should be managed was taking hold. Influential naturalists like Aldo Leopold and Alice Murray argued that national parks should interfere with nature as little as possible, allowing ecosystems to function on their own. The problem was that Yellowstone was no longer truly natural. Decades of hunting, predator eradication, artificial feeding, and tourism had already

• 37:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  fundamentally altered the landscape and its wildlife. Some of the most outspoken critics of Yellowstone's evolving management philosophy were twin brothers Frank and John Craighead, who were pioneering grizzly bear researchers. Using some of the first radio collars ever placed on bears, they discovered that grizzlies ranged far beyond Yellowstone's boundaries and warned that generations of bears had become dependent on human food. When the park began shutting down garbage dumps and feeding operations, the Craigheads urged managers to make the transition gradually. The park chose not to follow that advice. The results were almost immediate. As the dumps closed, more bears began entering campgrounds

• 38:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  in search of food, and the park responded by killing so-called problem bears. In 1942 alone, Yellowstone killed 41 black bears and 22 grizzlies, roughly double the number killed the previous year. That same summer, a grizzly near Old Faithful fatally attacked a woman named Martha Hansen. Similar incidents continued in the decades that followed, and despite efforts to fence campgrounds and control garbage, Yellowstone struggled to keep bears and people apart. By 1960, so many grizzlies had been killed in conflict-related incidents that biologists began to worry about the future of the populations.

• 39:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  Challenges extended beyond Yellowstone. That same year, a grizzly sow in Glacier National Park severely injured a young boy known as Smitty and killed a woman named Britta after park officials failed to warn visitors about a known dangerous bear. When the sow charged, panic erupted. Smitty was knocked to the ground and mauled so badly that he lost an eye and would endure years of reconstructive surgeries. Britta was dragged into the woods and killed. The attack shocked the nation and led to a lawsuit alleging that park officials had failed to adequately warn visitors about a bear they already knew posed a risk. Yet, little changed.

• 39:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  Park officials largely treated the incident as an unfortunate anomaly rather than evidence of a larger problem. The lawsuit failed to force any major reforms and similar conflicts between people and grizzlies continued to occur in the years that followed. One of the strangest incidents occurred in the summer of 1970 that I mentioned at the very beginning of this episode. On August 23rd, visitors near the Firehole River Bridge discovered a blanket neatly spread beside the river. Resting on top was what appeared to be a human scalp. Little more than a patch of flesh and hair crawling with maggots. No other remains were ever found.

• 40:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  The blanket was sent to the FBI, but official records never clearly explained what happened to the scalp or what investigators ultimately concluded. Some believed it was human, others thought it belonged to an animal. Whatever the truth was, the evidence disappeared and no conclusions were ever released.

• 40:41Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, question. Because we're back and I said.

• 40:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yes, we're back. Yes.

• 40:46Danielle LaRock?

  So is there any more information about that? The piece of scalp aside, as far as the scene goes, like, is it indicative of a bear mauling? Was there any drag marks, any signs of a scuffle, any sort of anything else? It was just a piece of scalp on a neat.

• 41:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  It was just a piece of scalp on a neat blanket. There was nothing nearby. But people in the area said that that would be a really common remain to find from a bear attack because a lot of times they'll scalp their victims.

• 41:18Danielle LaRock?

  Right.

• 41:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  And they, so their thought is that that was the last remaining piece. Why it was so neatly spread and just neatly placed on a blanket, I think is part of the big mystery. Because there wasn't. Anything else at the scene by the time they found it, but they also don't know how long it had been sitting there for when they when they discovered it.

• 41:41Danielle LaRock?

  This is gonna sound maybe a little morbid and obviously there is no answer. So I'm not expecting you to be like, oh, actually, and then tell me more. Cause I know that that's it.

• 41:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 41:52Danielle LaRock?

  Where my mind goes is so if this person, oh, wait, was the camp connected to this? Or we're not sure. Or you're getting it to that?

• 42:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, so the camp happened right around the same time. It was within the same week, but the scalp was never identified to whom it belonged to. And the camp, no one ever came back and no one was ever able to connect a person to that. They didn't have a registered camper. They have no idea who that campsite. So it could have been the same person or it could have been two totally separate incidents.

• 42:28Danielle LaRock?

  And they were along the same stretch of river?

• 42:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, they're really close to each other.

• 42:34Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, this is, this is what came to my mind.

• 42:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay.

• 42:38Danielle LaRock?

  And I feel like it's maybe not likely, but it makes sense. Maybe so.

• 42:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay.

• 42:45Danielle LaRock?

  What if this person had camp? And then you know, you set up your little base camp and then you have during the day, you go off and do either day hikes or just different activities. You're not just always hunkered down at your same camp. What if this person set up camp? And then had their blanket over by the river in a different area and was spending the day there and maybe either on their way back or their way there, they ran into a bear and there was some sort of altercation, a mauling and that bear in a different area, not on the blanket or at camp, but somewhere in between.

• 43:23Danielle LaRock?

  Drag them off, consumed them. Their remains were never found because there was nowhere for any people, because you said there was, days went by before these things were discovered. But if it was close by enough, different scavenging birds, like maybe a raven or something, picked up that piece of scalp and dropped it on the blanket.

• 43:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  I think that's totally possible.

• 43:48Danielle LaRock?

  Like, I just don't see the actual mauling happening either near or on that blanket. Like, that person was laying out and having a picnic or just, like, enjoying the sun.

• 43:59Cassandra Yahnian?

  I agree.

• 44:00Danielle LaRock?

  And also, the camp seemed just like somebody got up and walked away and there was nothing disturbed there, other than, I know you said there was some, like, it looked like something tried to get into the food canisters unsuccessfully.

• 44:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, yeah, the camp was ransacked by a bear and that was pretty obvious.

• 44:16Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 44:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  Uh, but there was no human remains or like-

• 44:18Danielle LaRock?

  Like signs of struggle.

• 44:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  Or a sign of someone being killed there.

• 44:22Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, so that's what I think my, uh, early thoughts are on that.

• 44:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, and I think that that's kind of, that aligns definitely with people's thoughts, is that the scalp and the camp are connected and that it was someone was attacked by a grizzly that also took over their camp. But other people are also like, what if they're two different people? What if this was just some person enjoying? And then also, could the owner of this campsite have also been mauled by a grizzly? Like, could there be one grizzly that killed two people? And these are totally separate incidents, because they're not, they're very close to each other, but they're not, like-

• 45:03Danielle LaRock?

  Who's to say they're actually-

• 45:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  Who's to say that they're linked? Yeah, so that's kind of the big question mark is, who, who did the campsite belong to and who does this remain belong to as well? And they don't have those answers. It's still totally open because no one knows what happened to the scalp, because- They thought that the scalp was sent with the blanket, but it wasn't. There's no record of the scalp ever making it to the FBI for investigation. So no one knows and no one ever linked the campsite. But what they did find near this area at the very same time is they found an aging grizzly sow known as Bear 1792.

• 45:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  Her teeth had been worn down to little more than nubs, yet she had developed a reputation as a persistent problem bear. She had been getting into food. She had interactions with people. And so the park decided that she shouldn't be in that area anymore. So in 1970, park officials captured her and airlifted her 18 miles away, hoping to remove her from the area. However, grizzlies roam enormous territories and a grizzly can cover 18 miles easily in a day. In a day. Like that's barely, yeah, that's barely relocating her. So it wasn't long until she was back and she returned. She was older, hungrier, and she was still searching for food. Meanwhile, bear conflicts continued to mount.

• 46:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  Bears were being struck by vehicles, shot illegally, killed by sheep herders, or destroyed after encounters with people. By the end of the year, 57 grizzlies had been killed by humans, including 17 bears from the Craighead Brothers study. So those ones that they had collared had been killed. The losses were so severe that the brothers began publicly warning that Yellowstone's grizzly population could be headed towards collapse. In response to what was happening in 1971, they published a highly critical article in the New York Times, arguing that the National Park Service had mishandled the transition away from garbage dumps and food rewards. Their research suggested that gradually weaning bears from human food sources had reduced

• 47:13Cassandra Yahnian?

  conflicts, but their criticism only deepened the rift with park management. Soon afterward, John Craighead was barred by his employer from speaking publicly on the issue and Yellowstone superintendent informed the brothers that because they had publicly challenged the park's policy, their grizzly bear study was effectively over.

• 47:35Danielle LaRock?

  When have we talked about them before? Did you bring them up in Night of the Grizzlies? It seems so long ago, but I know we've discussed them.

• 47:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  I think we talked about them with Tooth and Claw because they were really prominent during this time and they were really highly critical of the way that they were handling bear management.

• 47:53Danielle LaRock?

  Okay. They just, I feel like-

• 47:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  We spoke about them then.

• 47:58Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they were right.

• 48:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, totally right. And they basically, I mean, they're just saying, hey, you've been feeding them for 70 years, hand feeding them. You can't just take all their food away when they associate people and then think it's gonna be good and-

• 48:13Danielle LaRock?

  Overnight, virtually.

• 48:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  Overnight, yeah. And basically, the crackheads were like, hey, why don't we still feed them, but do it very far from people and like slowly wean them off and make it so they're not associating these dumps with people and keep it away from tourism, away from this like whole circus you've created. Like, why don't we slowly wean them off to go back to their natural ways? And the park service was like, no, we're not feeding them anymore. End of story. And obviously, that's causing a lot of issues because that's how all of these bears for generations have been eating, has been through this way. As Yellowstone entered its centennial year in 1972 and Harry and Crow explored the park for

• 48:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  the first time, the debate over grizzly management had reached a breaking point. Years of controversial wildlife policies, poor natural food years, and increasing conflicts between bears and people had left the park searching for answers. The warning signs had been building for years. Harry and Crow, of course, knew none of this. Like millions of visitors before them, they had come to Yellowstone because they had heard how beautiful it was. Because Vicky, the girl giving them a ride, worked in the park, she was able to bring them through the entrance using her employee pass, meaning they bypassed the normal visitor process. They never received pamphlets, warnings, or bear safety information that many visitors

• 49:42Cassandra Yahnian?

  may have encountered upon entering Yellowstone. After Vicky dropped them off, Harry and Crow headed towards the Old Faithful campground, only to discover it had been closed because of ongoing bear problems. Harry wanted to stay close to where Vicky worked, and neither of them had much interest in crowded campgrounds, anyway. They had come to Yellowstone to experience the wilderness. They had talked about going into the backcountry, so they shouldered their packs and headed into the woods. Backcountry camping was allowed in Yellowstone, but it required a permit, which was something that neither of them obtained. And it's kind of unclear if they knew they were supposed to get one. They knew they didn't want to spend money on a campground, and they're like, "Let's just camp in the woods. It's free." And it's their first time in Yellowstone.

• 50:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  They don't really know the practices here. They probably kind of had an inkling they weren't supposed to do it, but I don't think they realized that it was so frowned upon. They even had, when they had enough staff, they would have rangers that would patrol the Old Faithful area to look for people with campfires and who were illegally camping, because it was so popular for people to just set up camp around the Old Faithful area without permission. However, the area around Old Faithful was strictly off limits to camping outside designated campgrounds. The two crossed the Fire Hole River, left the trail behind, and climbed a ridge overlooking the Geyser Basin. Just beyond Geyser Hill, directly across from Old Faithful, among the trees and out of sight of the crowds below,

• 51:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  they pitched their tent and settled in for the night. As the campfire burned low, they found themselves talking about life, death, and what they wanted to leave behind. Harry and Crow made a pact. If one of them died out in the wilderness, the other wouldn't tell anyone where the body was. Neither wanted a funeral or a grave. They wanted to be left where they fell and returned to nature. On the morning of June 23, 1972, Harry and Philip awoke to a damp tent after a night full of rain. It wasn't long before they headed down to the Old Faithful Inn for snacks and a chance to warm up after the chilly night. They spent the day doing what most first-time visitors to Yellowstone do: watching geysers erupt, explore the area around Old

• 51:54Cassandra Yahnian?

  Faithful, and taking in the sights. But Harry was excited for something else as well. He was waiting for Vicky to get off work so they could continue seeing each other. When her shift ended, they met up again, and Vicky gave Harry and Philip, or Crow, a personal tour of the historic Old Faithful Inn. Later that evening, she came out to visit their campsite. Harry told her about the dairy farm in Alabama, the animals he loved working with, and his horse Comanche. He told her he hoped she might meet him someday. Vicky thought he was sweet, and with every conversation, it felt more and more like something real could grow between them. The following evening, on June 24, Harry and Crow cooked dinner at their campsite

• 52:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  before hurrying off to meet Vicky again. When they finished eating, they placed a pot of leftovers in the crook of a tree and stashed the rest of their groceries beneath a tarp beside their tent. Today, anyone familiar with bear country would obviously cringe at the thought of doing that. Food should be stored well away from a camp and hung high above the ground, but in Yellowstone in 1972, many visitors were still casual about food storage, even though they were starting to have conversations veering away from keeping food out for bears. The three spent the evening at the Old Faithful Inn, drinking, talking, and laughing together. Around midnight, Harry walked Vicky back to her dorm. Along the way, they held hands

• 53:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  and talked about everything from their families to the places they hoped to see one day. When they reached a grove of pine trees near Vicky's dormitory, Harry stopped and asked if it would be okay to kiss her. No one had ever asked her that before, and she said yes. Later, Vicky would remember feeling as though she had known Harry forever. For a brief moment, she could picture a future together: life on a Montana ranch or an Alabama dairy farm, riding horses, traveling, and building a life side by side. Eventually, Harry said goodnight and watched her disappear inside. Harry and Crowe wandered back to their campsite, smoking cigarettes, possibly a little tipsy

• 54:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  from drinking at the Old Faithful Inn, and one report mentioned that they had also taken LSD that night. And I wanted to add that for some context because Crowe mentions it later, but it's really briefly mentioned. So I don't know how true that is or not. There's, there was one source that said that everything else doesn't really talk about it too much. So I wanted to mention that it might be true, but I can't fully verify. They definitely were drinking, but the LSD is kind of up in the air.

• 54:36Cassandra Yahnian?

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• 55:17Cassandra Yahnian?

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• 55:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  As they walked, Harry sang a song, one which he had been singing ever since they hit the Rockies. It was a theme song to a Davy Crockett TV show, but he added a line about a bear that was not originally in the song. So the song he was singing went, "Davy Crockett, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier, met a bear and got a great big bear hug." Davy Crockett, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier. The two walked close together through the darkness so they wouldn't lose each other on their way back to their tent. Harry kept singing and the two laughed as they headed back to their hidden campsite. As they approached camp, Harry suddenly caught sight of movement in the flashlight beam. Quickly, they realized it was a bear, and it was so close, they could

• 56:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  almost reach out and touch it. The next few seconds passed in a blur. The bear charged, and Crow either jumped backward or was knocked off balance trying to get away. He tumbled down the hillside and immediately began running through the darkness. Then he heard Harry's voice somewhere up on the slope shouting, "Help me, Crow!" Crow stopped and shouted back, asking if the bear was still there, but there was no response. Harry didn't answer, and everything went silent. Meanwhile, back in Alabama, Harry's oldest sister Betty was having a nightmare. She dreamt that Harry was crawling towards her, dragging his backpack and pleading, "Help

• 57:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  me, Betty!" The dream was so vivid that she woke up sobbing. Back in Yellowstone, at 1:10 a.m., shortly after the bear encounter, Crow stumbled back to the Old Faithful Inn and collapsed at the registration desk, sobbing for help. When the Rangers came to question him, he was too frazzled to give them directions back to the campsite. They woke up Vicki and asked her to lead them there, but once she heard that Harry had been attacked by a bear, she fell to pieces and was also no help guiding the search party. They attempted to find the campsite, based on what they could describe, but were unable to in the dark. Around 3:30 in the morning, Rangers returned with better

• 58:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  flashlights and additional first aid supplies and resumed the search. Two hours later, at approximately 5:30 a.m., they found Harry's body.

• 58:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  He was found laying on his back in a triangle of fallen trees about 165 feet away from their tent. One of the searchers later remarked that his face looked peaceful as though he were sleeping. But as they moved closer, the reality of what had happened became clear. His shirt had been pulled up, his pants pulled down, and his abdomen was torn open. Many of his internal organs, along with his genitals, had been consumed. Even so, he was still wearing his raincoat. The campsite offered clues of what had unfolded. The groceries Harry and Crow had stored beneath a tarp had been torn into and scattered around the camp.

• 58:54Cassandra Yahnian?

  The pot of leftovers they had tucked into the crook of a tree the night before had been ripped apart and eaten. Rangers spent the morning photographing the scene, collecting evidence, and documenting a trail of personal belongings that had fallen from Harry's pockets as the bear dragged him through the forest. Then, around 7 o'clock, someone spotted a bear standing at the edge of the woods overlooking the investigation. A worker shouted, "Bear!" and ran while the Rangers instinctively reached for their firearms, but the bear took off. The following day, in the same area, park staff trapped and killed Bear 1792.

• 59:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  The same aging grizzly sow that had been captured and relocated from the area two years earlier and may have been connected to both the mysterious scalp discovered near Old Faithful and the raided campsite. She was then sent for a necropsy. Meanwhile, Harry's body was transported to Livingston, Montana, where a pathologist performed an autopsy. The findings suggested his death had come pretty instantly. There were no defensive wounds on his hands or arms, indicating the attack had been so sudden that he never had the opportunity to fight back. The cause of death was determined to be suffocation resulting from a crushing injury to the neck

• 1:00:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  that likely happened as Crow had been yelling to him, asking if there was a bear with him when he received no response. Although there were none of the deep puncture wounds normally associated with a large carnivore attack, the tissue inside Harry's neck had been so thoroughly crushed that the pathologist could not distinguish individual anatomical structures. The examination, also just to note, found no evidence of the terminal illness Harry had claimed to have before leaving Alabama. Shortly after, the necropsy of Bear 1792 revealed that the grizzly was more than 20 years old. Her canine teeth had been broken off and worn down to little more than stumps.

• 1:01:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  Human hair was found both on her claws and in her stomach. Perfectly preserved, rolled inside some tinfoil that they had found in her stomach was a ball of pubic hair belonging to Harry. After this entire ordeal, the cops came and picked up Crow from the Old Faithful Inn and charged him with illegal camping and failure to properly store food. Rather than examining their own animal management practices, park officials were quick to place the blame entirely on the boys. In their report, they wrote that Harry and Crow had "done everything wrong." Once they let him go, they bought Crow a bus ticket back to Alabama.

• 1:01:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  For him, it was a shock for him to realize that he had only been in Yellowstone for five days and then his entire life was changed. And when he got home, he fell into a deep depression. While park officials wrapped up their investigation and filed their reports, Harry's family was just beginning to grapple with the reality of what had happened. His father used the money he had borrowed from the bank to help grow the dairy farm operation, instead to bring his son's body home. Harry was shipped back to Alabama by air freight, retracing the thousands of miles he had traveled only weeks before in search of adventure. Despite having gone AWOL from the National Guard, Harry was given a military funeral.

• 1:02:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  His family buried him in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains he had called home all his life, and when the service was over, Wallace and his mother Louise carried home the folded American flag that had rested atop their son's coffin.

• 1:02:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  And the months that followed, Harry's death became the center of a growing national debate. The National Park Service insisted that the tragedy was the result of two inexperienced young men camping illegally and failing to properly store food in bear country. To many wildlife advocates, however, Harry's death looked like the predictable outcome of decades of flawed bear management. One of the loudest voices was wildlife activist Martha Shell. Working alongside the Craighead brothers, she had become convinced that the Yellowstone Grizzlies' policies were creating dangerous conditions for both bears and for people. She contacted Harry's family and urged them to fight back.

• 1:03:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  According to Shell, the focus shouldn't be on the mistakes the boys had made, but instead, they should be questioning whether Yellowstone had created a situation where a tragedy like this had become inevitable. Eventually, the Walker family agreed to sue the federal government. Their attorney was the same lawyer who had represented the family of Smitty, the young boy mauled in Glacier National Park years earlier that had lost his eye. The case quickly became a public examination of Yellowstone's entire grizzly management program. Lawyers questioned the closure of the garbage dumps, the relocation of problem bears, the growing number of human-bear conflicts, and the repeated warnings issued by the Craighead

• 1:04:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  brothers that had largely gone ignored, and the two brothers actually testified at the trial as well. The trial lasted for weeks. Government attorneys argued that Harry and Crow had assumed the risks of bear country by camping illegally and storing food improperly. The Walker family attorney argued that Yellowstone knew it was facing a growing grizzly problem and had failed to adequately warn visitors while continuing policies that place both humans and bears in danger. The proceedings took a heavy toll on Harry's family. In the middle of the trial, Harry's mother Louise was hospitalized with severe heart pain and underwent a cardiac procedure. Looking at a photograph taken of her during the recovery, she later remarked, "That's

• 1:04:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  me in the hospital with the heart pain after my son Harry had his heart eaten by a bear."

• 1:05:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  Whoa, yeah. Federal Judge A. Andrew Hawk ruled in favor of the Walkers, finding that the government's negligence had contributed to Harry's death. The attorney had also brought up the mystery of the scalp on the blanket and the tie to Bear 1792, saying that the bear had exhibited very alarming behavior prior and was never dealt with properly. Because they had just, remember, the same exact bear. They had only moved 18 miles away and it just came right back. And this was also brought up in the trial. While there wasn't much evidence surrounding those incidents connecting Bear 1792, the judge rejected the argument that Harry himself was responsible for what happened

• 1:05:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  and awarded the family $87,417.67 in damages. For a brief moment, it seemed as though the Walkers had been vindicated and Yellowstone's bear policies had finally been held accountable. But the victory didn't last. The federal government appealed and a higher court overturned the ruling. The judges did not decide whether Yellowstone's bear policies were good or bad. Instead, they ruled that the decisions about how the government manages wildlife are protected by federal law and generally cannot be the basis for a lawsuit. In other words, even if the government had made mistakes, those decisions could not be second guessed through a lawsuit.

• 1:06:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  The Supreme Court later declined to hear the case, leaving the ruling in place. Although the court overturned the Walkers family's judgment, the outcome did not sit well with many people back home in Alabama. In an unusual move, the Alabama legislature later passed the Walker family relief bill, providing Wallace and Louise with compensation roughly equivalent to what they had been originally awarded, along with enough money to cover their attorney fees. After years of litigation, the family finally received some measure of financial relief. Because basically, originally, they're like, "Yeah, we're gonna award you $87,000." But then they appealed and never got that money.

• 1:07:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  And Alabama was basically like, "You can't do this to these hardworking people."

• 1:07:16Danielle LaRock?

  Who just went through an unimaginable tragedy.

• 1:07:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. And you're just basically saying that they have no basis here. And Alabama helped them out. At the same time, the national conversation around grizzly bears was beginning to change. In 1973, Congress passed the Endangered Species Act, one of the most significant wildlife protection laws in America's history. Just two years later, grizzly bears in the lower 48 states were listed as a threatened species. Responsibility for managing grizzlies no longer rested solely with Yellowstone and its wildlife biologists. Decisions about killing bears now faced federal oversight, and park officials increasingly had to justify why a bear needed to be destroyed.

• 1:08:03Cassandra Yahnian?

  The changes went far beyond legal protections. The era of feeding bears, open garbage dumps, and treating wildlife as tourist attractions was finally coming to an end. Campgrounds were redesigned, garbage systems were bear-proofed, food storage regulations became stricter, and bear-resistant containers became commonplace throughout grizzly country. Rangers focused on keeping bears away from human food in the first place, recognizing that a bear condition to seek handouts was ultimately a danger to both people and bears. For decades, Yellowstone had alternated between feeding bears, relocating bears, and killing bears, all while struggling to understand the consequences of those decisions. Increasingly, managers embraced the idea that the best way to protect grizzlies was

• 1:08:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  to keep them wild. Scientific monitoring expanded. The concept of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem gained traction, and wildlife management became more data-driven than ever before. None of those changes happened because of Harry Walker alone, but his death became part of a larger reckoning. His case forced Yellowstone bear policies into the public spotlight and became another chapter in the long debate over how humans should coexist with one of North America's most powerful predators. Today roughly 600 grizzly bears roam the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem and more than 3,000 live across the lower 48 states. The debate over their future continues, but many

• 1:09:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  of the lessons learned during that turbulent period still shape how Yellowstone manages bears today. And that is my story of Harry Walker and the mulling that kind of changed how bear practices are done in Yellowstone National Park and around the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.

• 1:09:51Danielle LaRock?

  Well, you know, that's my favorite type of story.

• 1:09:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Danielle LaRock?

  So I think it goes without saying that I absolutely loved this episode. I think it just brings up so many different topics of conversation. I mean, the debate is one that's been going on for decades now for a reason, because there is no clear cut answer. And there are so many different ways to slice it and look at it and just kind of going back to the trial and how they're trying to pit, you know, is it the park's fault? Is it their fault? You know, they did everything wrong versus it with the park's shortcomings. And, you know, I think from where we're sitting and with perspective, I think, you know,

• 1:10:38Danielle LaRock?

  both parties had some shortcomings, but to victim blame is ridiculous. I mean, I think you brought up a good point of earlier on, you were like, who knows if they even knew they needed a permit? Who knows if they knew what proper, I mean, they're kids from Alabama who had never even seen a bear, let alone camped in grizzly country. I don't think they knew that by storing your leftovers or your food near your tent, but you know, like, I think it's just to place blame on them and be like, well, they did everything wrong. I don't think that's entirely fair. They didn't know.

• 1:11:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, you don't know what you don't know, right? And I love that you brought that up because there's actually another book that I used for this and I'm blanking on the name of it, but I will think of it. But basically it's an entire book of a lot of different grizzly encounters in Yellowstone and it has Harry Walker's case in it. And it actually has the interview that was conducted with Crow or Philip afterwards with investigators before they charged him.

• 1:11:48Danielle LaRock?

  And it has, they were like, did you not know this? Do you not know that you're supposed to do this? And it kind of sounds like it was a little bit in a condescending way. Like, do you not know about bears? Do you not know? Why would you do that? Kind of thing? And he says in it, they were like, do you not know not to store your food like that? That bears will get into it? Do you not know that? And he was like, where I'm from, you leave wildlife alone and it leaves you alone. And that was the end of story. And that's all he knew is just like, where I'm from, you don't, you don't mess with the wildlife. They don't mess with you. Like, the fact of a bear attack was totally not in his scope of what he thought could even be possible.

• 1:12:28Danielle LaRock?

  Well, and, you know, we are in, even with that mind of like, well, you, you know, he's from a different place. And from today's perspective, it's kind of like, yeah, but they didn't have the access of, to information that we do. Right? Like, they have- And the park didn't have signs. The park didn't have signs. They didn't get, and again, like, here's the flip side of the coin, where it's like, well, the park didn't tell them. The park didn't inform them. And yes, with a problem bear and not having signage up for that, I think that's a separate conversation that like, yes, that should have been done. But regarding,

• 1:13:09Danielle LaRock?

  because there have been other cases of people who have either fallen victim to a predatory attack, or have just gotten hurt by some sort, whether it's a bison, or whatever, or, you know, falling into a thermal feature, or something like that. And they've tried to say, well, no one came up and told me this was going to be, you know, a risk. And it's kind of like, the other half of it is, okay, well, we can provide you with this informational- Pamphlets and their signage posted throughout the park, but no one's going to come up and tell you and have, give you a lecture about A to Z, everything that could happen and make sure

• 1:13:51Danielle LaRock?

  you're okay with it before you go camping or hiking or whatever you're doing in a park. And I think that's why I loved Death in Yellowstone so much, that book, because it does go, you know, it starts off with an excerpt from a newspaper, I think from the seventies of people being like just so confused of no one told us this, or like, when do the animals come out, or when do they lock them up? And, you know, like, oh, I didn't see it. You know, it's just kind of like the park service can't hold your hand through everything and you do assume a risk.

• 1:14:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  Totally.

• 1:14:26Danielle LaRock?

  When you're entering wild places. And

• 1:14:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  For sure.

• 1:14:32Danielle LaRock?

  So I don't know. It's just kind of like, I think it's total bullshit, to be frank, that they put the blame on Crow and Harry. But at the same time, I do understand a little bit of their perspective of like, hey, you have to do some sort of, you can't just like blindly walk in somewhere and not know anything either. But I don't know.

• 1:14:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  Totally. I do think, I agree. I think that they're definitely at fault a little bit. You know, they're camping illegally. They knew that they weren't in a designated campsite and they did leave their food out and that ultimately led to that bear finding them and wanting to be in that area. But I agree that to completely blame it on them when they had this history of poorly managing bears, this bear that mauled him already might be linked to killing someone else only two years prior to that, you know, and was a noted problem bear that they relocated and didn't handle correctly. So

• 1:15:31Danielle LaRock?

  And also, sorry, one more thing?

• 1:15:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:35Danielle LaRock?

  Okay. Can we have a little bit more tack, like decorum and not just fine Crow immediately after his friend just got mauled to death in front of him?

• 1:15:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  Literally. So can we not arrest?

• 1:15:47Danielle LaRock?

  Come on.

• 1:15:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:49Danielle LaRock?

  That is just so insulting and so insensitive.

• 1:15:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, he just went through the worst day of his life.

• 1:15:55Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, it's like, okay, maybe like Just wait a little bit instead of I just I and I don't know the specifics of like the specific conversations he had or whatever. It just feels by your telling. It's just like, okay, sorry that happened to you, but you owe us money and you're being fined.

• 1:16:13Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, it's so true because when you read the investigation that they did, it was it sounded really condescending. Like the person were like, are you serious? Like you didn't know this? You don't know about bears? Like, why would you do that? And it was just like, it felt kind of condescending, but it also kind of, and I don't know for sure. This is just me speculating, but it kind of felt like they were trying to clean up after themselves too. Like, why would you do that? That was really bad. You did this kind of thing to kind of cover their own.

• 1:16:41Danielle LaRock?

  Like shift blame.

• 1:16:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, a little bit. Because of course, then now there's a lawsuit and probably was something they were trying to avoid. And

• 1:16:50Danielle LaRock?

  Not a good look. Yeah.

• 1:16:52Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, but of course, I think that the story is really important. Like you mentioned at the beginning of the story where already this year, as of this recording, we've already seen a couple of maulings happen and people have died in glacier this year so far. And it just goes to show that this is an ongoing conversation and issue that is happening in the parks. And, and I think that management will continue to evolve and change as we learn more and as more studies. I mean, there's a lot of people who are actively studying grizzly populations and human bear conflict that's going on. So I think it will continue to change and shift. But

• 1:17:29Danielle LaRock?

  I did the math. Fifty four years.

• 1:17:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:17:33Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:33Cassandra Yahnian?

  Fifty four years.

• 1:17:35Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:36Danielle LaRock?

  So it just goes to show how much has changed and how much

• 1:17:39Cassandra Yahnian?

  For sure.

• 1:17:40Danielle LaRock?

  we have learned and not to go here, but also to kind of just dip our toe in it and just acknowledge it that when we're cutting a lot of different funding to the parks and the scientific community and all of the research that's being done, it has real life impacts. Like, we can change and evolve and grow in our understanding of how to have safer

• 1:18:05Danielle LaRock?

  Human wildlife interactions without knowledge.

• 1:18:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  Funding.

• 1:18:10Danielle LaRock?

  And funding. So.

• 1:18:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:12Danielle LaRock?

  Just to say that, and we can leave that there, but I just.

• 1:18:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. And it's something to keep in mind when you're all visiting. I know, I'm sure people who are listening are probably visiting Yellowstone Glacier and going into bear country this year, which is exciting. I mean, it's really cool to be in these locations, but to be as informed as you can be and to also keep in mind, I mean, like you just mentioned, funding and short staffing that's still going on. I mean, make good decisions while you're out there and make sure that you are really strictly following these bear safety protocols that are now so readily available. You can, the park service is really good about giving you guides when you get there, but you can also just look it up online really easily and just be making sure that you are truly prepared to be in these places when you go into them and

• 1:19:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  not saying being prepared will 100% make you safe because things happen and it is a risk going in, but there are things that you can do to make sure you're in a better position. Carry bear spray, be careful about your food and, and travel in groups of people.

• 1:19:17Danielle LaRock?

  And have fun.

• 1:19:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  And have fun. Yeah. And have a nice time because, I mean, at the heart of the story, this was two, I mean, basically teenagers who were just off exploring the world for the first time. And I think we can all relate to that on a level where you leave your hometown for the first time and you see this wild world that is here and you are just so blown away and excited and, and that is a really exciting time in life. So.

• 1:19:44Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, God. I can remember, like going to Colorado and being like, wow, my life could be like, this is my life now. This is absolutely amazing. I like every day was an adventure, everything, even just like normal stuff. You know, I remember going to the Walmart, um, out like near, it's like outside of Manitou Springs and just like.

• 1:20:10Danielle LaRock?

  Pike's Peak is like in the background. I'm like, oh my God, people live like this. This is the most beautiful Walmart I've ever seen. You know, just, and just being like, wow, this is the first true adventure of my life.

• 1:20:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:25Danielle LaRock?

  You know, what a feeling.

• 1:20:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. Yeah. I remember my first like adventure, I guess, like after um, high school was, was the summer before, or it was the summer after college um, had started and me and my friends did a road trip down south to north and South Carolina. It was the first time we'd ever like really gone anywhere without adult supervision.

• 1:20:49Danielle LaRock?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  And I remember being like, wow, what is this place? And you know, and she's like, oh my God, we're free to just do things and there's no one like telling us, we rented a hotel like by ourselves without parents with us, you know, it was just like opening up to the world and we drank Four Loko's and what, probably they were legal and it was not good. Um, but.

• 1:21:11Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, for everyone who is like, oh Danielle, like Cassie is like so sweet and innocent, whatever. And like Danielle looks like she does coke, you know, I have never drank a Four Loko in my life.

• 1:21:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  And you'll never get a chance to because the Four Loko I drank is illegal now, so.

• 1:21:28Danielle LaRock?

  The time has come and gone and I've also never done cocaine.

• 1:21:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  Just to continue to put it out there.

• 1:21:35Danielle LaRock?

  Just to keep my name clean.

• 1:21:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  A yearly check in, a yearly check in. I still have not tried cocaine.

• 1:21:41Danielle LaRock?

  It could change, like, you know, so I just have to make sure I keep everyone up to date. But yeah, no, I've never done, I've never tried a Four Loko. And there was a time that I felt like I missed out, like I, that, that ship had sailed. And I felt a little bummed out about that, that I didn't get the experience, but I feel like I'm okay now.

• 1:22:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. I mean, it was an experience and uh, I could have lived the rest of my life without it. I will tell you that much. Um, I don't remember a ton from that day, but I do remember that we collectively, as a group of me and my girlfriends, got kicked out of a family restaurant that had live music because we were grinding on each other in front of children. So.

• 1:22:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  Just know that you will never have to live with knowing that you did that.

• 1:22:32Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, that makes me feel a lot better.

• 1:22:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Danielle LaRock?

  So much better, actually. Well, thank you for sharing all of that with us. We've learned so much from bear management to Cassie's embarrassing moments.

• 1:22:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:47Danielle LaRock?

  And that's what National Park After Dark is. So thanks for joining us and we'll see you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the view.

• 1:22:55Cassandra Yahnian?

  We'll watch your back.

• 1:22:56Danielle LaRock?

  Bye.

• 1:22:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Bye.

• 1:23:00Danielle LaRock?

  Thanks for joining us for another episode. We hope you learned something new and have another location to put on your list. If you want more NPAD content, make sure to follow along with our adventures on all socials at National Park After Dark. For more stories just like this one with the added bonus of exclusive content, you can join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. If you prefer to watch our episodes, head over to our YouTube channel. And if you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform.

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