Pod Insights Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks Grizzly Bear Attack - The Hunters Become the Hunted About this episode Wilf and his son-in-law Skeet went out on what they were expecting to be a routine elk hunt, but ran into something much, much more dangerous. Wes then takes the opportunity to explore why bear spray is your best chance at deterring, avoiding, and surviving violent encounters with bears.
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Transcript 17,416 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:13 Jeff Larson? Hello everyone, welcome to Tooth and Claw Podcast and finally, back in studio, we have our wildlife biologist Wes Larson. Wes, I was claiming to be a wildlife biologist, or Bill while you were gone. I don't think you listened to any of that.
0:30 Wes Larson? That doesn't surprise me at all. I didn't.
0:32 Jeff Larson? I think we came up with more interesting stuff because you weren't here as far as like wildlife biology.
0:39 Wes Larson? Yeah, sure. I'll never know.
0:41 Jeff Larson? Like maybe spiders, maybe spiders can't see very well because they have too many eyes type of stuff, you know?
0:48 Wes Larson? Okay.
0:48 Mike Smith? Asking the real questions everyone else is afraid to ask.
0:52 Wes Larson? Yeah, I'm glad you took over.
0:53 Jeff Larson? I don't know, maybe you should just wing it more often.
0:58 Wes Larson? I would love to do that. That would definitely make my job a lot easier, but I'm not gonna do that because...
1:05 Jeff Larson? You're pretty interested in just the facts.
1:07 Wes Larson? I got my scruples Jeff and I gotta stick to them, you know? Is that, you use that word right, Mike?
1:12 Mike Smith? It sounds scrupulous, man. Yeah, I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention to the context in which you used it. I'm already tuned out, sorry.
1:21 Wes Larson? I've been in, I've been in Brazil for, I'd been in Brazil for 34 or 35 days. So it feels good to be back home, but I also really...
1:29 Jeff Larson? You look a more Brazilian than you did before you left.
1:33 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's great.
1:34 Jeff Larson? I rubbed off on you a little.
1:36 Wes Larson? I have been thinking in Portuguese.
1:38 Mike Smith? Mostly your, your BBL is what I was noticing.
1:41 Wes Larson? Yeah, I did get a BBL. Yeah, I've been thinking in Portuguese, so hopefully it doesn't slip into this at all. I, I was really excited to get home. I wasn't excited to leave the country of Brazil. I just think the people there are very happy and kind. And there's like a ton of diversity and it doesn't really affect how people treat each other and it just, I don't know, I just kind of, it was hard to get home, but I also was really happy to see Jesse and the pets and be back in the studio too, because I, recording on the road wasn't that easy this time around.
2:16 Mike Smith? No.
2:16 Wes Larson? Anyway.
2:17 Jeff Larson? Well, I mean, it's pretty easy.
2:18 Wes Larson? For you guys.
2:19 Jeff Larson? Didn't do it.
2:20 Wes Larson? Yeah, I once.
2:22 Mike Smith? The easiest.
2:23 Wes Larson? I tried once and that didn't, it was pretty hard, but I still thought the episode turned out great. Thanks Jeff for filling in for me.
2:30 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
2:30 Wes Larson? Bill, thanks for helping on those, those other episodes, if you're listening out there, but don't ever think about it again.
2:38 Mike Smith? Yeah.
2:38 Wes Larson? Ever.
2:39 Mike Smith? Well, you might not.
2:40 Jeff Larson? And for people just joining us, we are a wildlife themed podcast, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on out in the world, but our focus is conservation, animals, we think they have a right to be here and we tell you a lot of ways that they kill us and what we can do better to. That was pretty good up until then. Don't act like the whole thing was.
3:06 Wes Larson? Okay, you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right. I'm sorry.
3:10 Mike Smith? It's like running a marathon at world record pace and then just slamming your head into a telephone pole and losing right at the end.
3:17 Wes Larson? When you said, we were gonna tell you a lot of the ways that they kill us is where you lost me, but you're right, you did just stumble at the end.
3:24 Jeff Larson? We do do that.
3:25 Wes Larson? Okay.
3:26 Mike Smith? Sure.
3:26 Wes Larson? Yeah. We, our point is not to demonize wildlife here, so.
3:30 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
3:30 Wes Larson? We're, we love telling these stories, but we think people can learn from them.
3:34 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
3:35 Wes Larson? Yeah. Anyway, uh, we got a great story today, I think. Uh, it was one that wasn't really on my radar and I started putting it together in Brazil and then ran into some connection issues. So I've been sitting on it for a bit now and I'm excited to finally tell it. All right. So today's episode is about Wilf and Skeet. Two pretty normal names, you know, Wilf and Skeet.
4:03 Wes Larson? So imagine your name is Wilf Lloyd. Okay. So that's your name.
4:07 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
4:08 Wes Larson? And I imagine quite a bit, you're gonna have to tell people with an F. You're gonna have to say that a lot because you're gonna say, my name's Wilf. And people are gonna be like, Will? And you're gonna be like, no. Wilf with an F, you know?
4:20 Jeff Larson? Right.
4:21 Wes Larson? So you're gonna be slamming that F noise a lot on the end of your name.
4:25 Jeff Larson? Hard F.
4:25 Wes Larson? You might get, yeah, exactly. You might get so used to having to say the letter F that maybe when something really traumatic or scary happens to you, the F word would just naturally roll off your tongue. And that might be a reach, but it's just something I was thinking about. But that's not Wilf Lloyd.
4:44 Jeff Larson? Just because you're emphasizing F.
4:46 Wes Larson? Cause you're saying F so much. Yeah. It, you know, I'm reaching here, Jeff, but just stick with me.
4:53 Jeff Larson? I just wanna make sure that's what you're saying.
4:55 Wes Larson? I'm just saying that that's maybe what would happen, but that's not what happens with Wilf Lloyd. Because when he was both attacked by a grizzly bear and shot by a rifle in the exact same day, and his arms are ripped open and his leg is completely useless, he looked up at his son-in-law and his hunting buddy Skeet, who had just shot him and said,
5:17 Jeff Larson? No, no.
5:18 Wes Larson? We gotta get our crap together here or I'm gonna die.
5:22 Jeff Larson? Not the F word.
5:24 Wes Larson? Not the F word. The C R A P word.
5:26 Jeff Larson? So your assumption was wrong.
5:28 Wes Larson? Right. He didn't say the F word. Yeah.
5:30 Jeff Larson? You really pulled the rug out from under us there. Did I say it more because my name's Jeff?
5:35 Wes Larson? But you don't have to constantly say like Jeff with an F. You don't have to explain it, you know?
5:41 Jeff Larson? They'll say, did you say gel? And I'll be like, no, Jeff.
5:44 Wes Larson? I said Jeff. You.
5:49 Wes Larson? All right. That's just, it's just the kind of polite Canadian that Wilf really is, though. In 2014, he's living in his hometown of Cranbrook, British Columbia. And to be honest, Wilf just really seemed to be living his dream. He and his wife Georgette had two kids, a boy and a girl, both in their 30s and both still big parts of their lives. Wilf is a taxidermist and an avid hunter. And while he would often make trophies of the animals he shot, his main reason for hunting was to put meat on the table for his family and to create memories with some of the people that he loved the most. And one of those people was his son-in-law, Skeet. Skeet had married Wilf's daughter Harmony.
6:29 Jeff Larson? Come on.
6:30 Wes Larson? Yeah.
6:32 Wes Larson? And to Wilf, Skeet was essentially a second son. They had a great relationship. They would spend a lot of time together, especially during hunting season. And Skeet would join Wilf on all different types of hunts. But for the duo, one of their favorite times to hunt was during the elk season.
6:49 Jeff Larson? I guess when he got his name Skeet, it probably didn't really mean what it does today.
6:54 Wes Larson? Skeet, Skeet, Skeet. Yeah. Yeah. You know what's funny is when I think of the name Skeet, I think of Kanye West calling Pete Davidson Skeet. Yeah. I just, for whatever reason to me, that was so funny. I don't know. Yeah, anyway.
7:11 Mike Smith? We lost a good one when Kanye turned.
7:12 Wes Larson? Yeah, we did.
7:13 Jeff Larson? Me and Mike just saw Little John perform Skeet, Skeet, Skeet.
7:18 Wes Larson? Wait, when did you guys see that?
7:20 Jeff Larson? It was at halftime at the Chargers game we went to in Vegas.
7:24 Mike Smith? Down in Vegas.
7:25 Jeff Larson? They were just like, here's Little John. And he did like a full performance. Not full, but it's like pretty sick.
7:31 Mike Smith? It's like a 10-minute medley and he just had the whole crowd, we were all shouting Skeet at the top of our lungs.
7:37 Wes Larson? Was that just him? Or was it, it was him and someone else, right?
7:42 Mike Smith? Uh, Eastside Boys?
7:43 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's right.
7:44 Jeff Larson? To bring it full circle, he was shouting out the, the son-in-law quite a bit at the concert.
7:52 Wes Larson? Ah, Skeet, Skeet, Skeet. Yeah.
7:53 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
7:54 Wes Larson? Right. All right.
7:55 Mike Smith? I don't think Wilf is a part of that song.
7:57 Jeff Larson? A bad thing, though.
7:58 Wes Larson? Yeah. Yeah. If you don't know what Skeet means in the urban dictionary, go ahead and look it up and you'll figure it out.
8:05 Jeff Larson? He was saying Skeet is a motherfucker.
8:09 Mike Smith? You think skeet's just inherently a bad thing to call someone then?
8:13 Wes Larson? No, I don't. I think this skeet from our story isn't bad.
8:17 Mike Smith? I'm asking Jeff, you think just no matter what circumstance, skeet's a bad thing to be called?
8:23 Jeff Larson? Well, he says motherfucker. You think that's good?
8:27 Mike Smith? Sometimes, like if I'm calling my dad that.
8:30 Wes Larson? Yeah, or when like Samuel Jackson says it, sometimes it seems cool.
8:34 Jeff Larson? You call your dad that?
8:39 Wes Larson? He just comes in and you say it to him immediately.
8:42 Mike Smith? Right.
8:42 Wes Larson? All right, not anymore, but yeah. Getting back on track here. Jeff, why do you think people like hunting elk in the northern US more than probably any other animal? I feel like elk hunting, there's just kind of a certain sickness to it. Not sickness, that's the wrong word. But like when people are into hunting elk, I feel like they really get into it. And why do you think that is?
9:02 Jeff Larson? Obsession with it.
9:04 Wes Larson? Yeah.
9:05 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I mean, for one thing, I think the meat is really good. It's like elk steaks are delicious. If you cook them right, you gotta keep them pretty rare. Like real medium rare elk steak, delicious. And you know, you get some really cool antlers where it's kind of a little bit competitive even. The hunting community will be impressed with you if you get an elk with big antlers. But yeah, I think it's just like a beautiful animal, gives you a lot of really good meat. And it also has like some competition elements to it as well.
9:40 Wes Larson? Yeah, and usually somewhat challenging too. It's not always like easy to find a good elk and to like take one down and everything. So yeah, anyway, I agree with everything you said. And on October 12th, 2014, on an early Saturday morning, Wilf and Skeet got in the truck and they headed up to the mountains of Elk Valley, which does seem like probably the right place to go elk hunting in that area.
10:05 Mike Smith? A little too obvious.
10:07 Wes Larson? Yeah.
10:08 Jeff Larson? They're like, they're like, I can't tell you where my hunting spot is.
10:12 Mike Smith? Yeah. Family secret.
10:15 Wes Larson? Valley? No. All right. They're going to hunt elk though. And this was right in the P of the rut for the local elk, which means that the bull elk were still doing a lot of bugling, both in order to attract females and to warn other males that they were in the territory. When I lived in Yellowstone, I lived in Mammoth, which is where a lot of the elk had during the rut. And I would just hear bugling from sunup to sundown every day because of the rut. And like, the, the bulls really just do go crazy, kind of all the hormones rush to their heads and they just really, not just their, yeah, their heads, both heads.
10:54 Wes Larson? And they just really want to mate. So they do a lot of bugling and it can be a really effective tool for hunters. With an artificial bugle, you can get the, the attention of one of these males, making him think that you're another male in his territory and he might want to come check you out and get you out of there.
11:12 Jeff Larson? So hunters are catfishing these elk.
11:15 Wes Larson? They are kind of catfishing them. Yeah. Yeah.
11:17 Mike Smith? What do you think the female elk, when they hear like, you know, cause sometimes the military has a little bugle boy in it? You think sometimes they get confused? Try to approach that little guy blowing the bugle?
11:28 Wes Larson? I don't think it sounds the same, the, the human bugle that we use versus like an elk's bugle. Cause a bugle in the military is like a trumpet, right?
11:37 Mike Smith? Yeah, they're do, do, do, do, do. Like the kid at the beginning of Last Crusade, Indiana Jones.
11:43 Wes Larson? Yeah.
11:43 Mike Smith? I love that guy.
11:44 Wes Larson? Brings in, I know.
11:46 Jeff Larson? Maybe we can switch catfishing to bugling, just like the term.
11:51 Wes Larson? Yeah.
11:51 Jeff Larson? You know, this girl bugled me.
11:53 Wes Larson? Cause catfish makes like no sense.
11:56 Mike Smith? I got bugled.
11:57 Jeff Larson? I got bugled again. Why do all these women want my credit card number?
12:02 Wes Larson? You'd be like showing up ready to fight is the difference, you know?
12:06 Mike Smith? Yeah, right.
12:07 Jeff Larson? I mean, Mike.
12:08 Wes Larson? But I get what you're saying.
12:09 Jeff Larson? Mike gets bugled.
12:10 Mike Smith? I wonder if bugle boys in the military are having a lot of sex, you think?
12:15 Wes Larson? Yeah, probably not. Remember bugles, those chips that you could put on your fingertips?
12:19 Mike Smith? Yeah, do the little Freddy Krueger fingers.
12:21 Jeff Larson? Mike will like go on dates and he'll see another person, like another girl on a date with a different guy. And he'll be like, no, you're my date now. And I'll just switch in the middle of a date.
12:33 Mike Smith? Really? It's crazy how often I do that. It's a real problem.
12:37 Jeff Larson? He's got that bull elk mentality.
12:41 Mike Smith? Right.
12:41 Wes Larson? All right. Anyway, for Wilf, let's go back to Wilf. Nothing really got his blood pumping more than hearing a big bull elk bugled him on the side of a beautiful British Columbia mountain. It's like music to his ears. So the day is getting longer as Wilf and Skeet hunted and bugled, and about 25 minutes before they were about to give up and go home, Wilf gets a response to one of his bugles, and it seems like an elk that's responding is actually pretty close. Almost immediately, Wilf and Skeet hear the footfalls of the elk as it comes in close to check out what it thought was probably a challenger. And the duo spots this large bull as it comes into view about 270 yards away.
13:21 Wes Larson? They both told each other to take the first shot, and then in unison, they raised their rifles and fire at the same time. So I think it was kind of just like, hey, you got, you take it. No, you take it. And then they both just shot.
13:33 Jeff Larson? You're right. That's funny.
13:34 Mike Smith? Like a firing squad, so they won't know who killed it?
13:37 Wes Larson? Sure. Yeah. Honestly, I've, I've heard of hunters doing that before where they both just shoot so they can kind of both say, you know, whatever. But what they didn't hear was the telltale sound of the thud of a bullet as it slammed into this mammal's body. So they hear nothing and they watch as the elk simply walks off into the forest. What Wilf and Skeet didn't know is that a large-
13:58 Jeff Larson? What do you mean by that?
13:59 Wes Larson? What do you mean?
14:00 Jeff Larson? The telltale sign of a bullet hitting the animal?
14:04 Wes Larson? Sound.
14:04 Jeff Larson? I feel like it makes a sound when it hits.
14:06 Wes Larson? It does. Yeah, you can hear like a thump when it hits.
14:10 Jeff Larson? Well, I mean, I-
14:10 Wes Larson? A lot of hunters listen for that.
14:12 Jeff Larson? Okay.
14:13 Wes Larson? Yeah, I mean, what?
14:15 Jeff Larson? Ah, no, I didn't realize that.
14:18 Wes Larson? Uh, all right. What Wilf and Skeet didn't know is that a large grizzly bear nearby had also heard the sound of the shots. And this bear, over the years, had come to associate rifle shots with free food. When hunters killed an elk, there'd be at least, the very least, a big pile of guts and organs left behind. And the bear that had been resting moments before rose to its feet, shook off some dust, and started walking in the direction of the shots and the bugling.
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17:39 Wes Larson? All right, so this was a pretty far shot for Wilfenski, and neither of them felt confident that they'd hit this elk. But they also knew that they had a responsibility to make sure that they hadn't hit it, because they would have to find it and finish it off if they'd simply injured it. So both men start walking toward the area where the elk had been standing and began looking for blood, or maybe the elk lying on the ground somewhere nearby. And they searched for about 10 to 15 minutes, but then the darkness closes in and they're no longer able to see the ground well enough to spot any blood, so they decide to give up.
18:12 Mike Smith? How much bigger do you think the artillery could get before the bear stops associating that sound with a free meal?
18:18 Wes Larson? With like-
18:18 Jeff Larson? With meals.
18:19 Wes Larson? Yeah.
18:20 Mike Smith? If someone like-
18:20 Jeff Larson? Like I think if they're like- I think a nuke would probably scare it off. I think like artillery shells would be enough to scare off a bear, too.
18:30 Mike Smith? Like a cannonball?
18:31 Wes Larson? Yeah, a cannonball would probably scare it off, but- Not every bear is going to respond to rifle shots in a positive way, like in the distance, but there are bears in a lot of these places that have come to associate rifle shots in hunting season with free food. And sometimes it's just gut piles.
18:50 Jeff Larson? And it stands to reason, like if we were shooting elk with cannonballs, they might associate cannonballs with food as well.
18:59 Wes Larson? Yeah.
18:59 Jeff Larson? So I don't think that, yeah.
19:02 Wes Larson? But we're not. So that's, it's a moot point for now.
19:06 Jeff Larson? For now.
19:06 Wes Larson? But yes, for now. Uh, but no, it is a real thing. And sometimes, you know, this is something that can get hunters into trouble too, because not only are they looking for gut piles, but if they find an elk before the hunter does, then you might come back to a bear on its carcass. Or if you shoot an elk, but you don't have the, you don't have the time to quarter it or clean it or whatever, and you have to come back the next day. And especially if you're in grizzly bear country, you have to be really careful about coming back to that elk because there's a decent chance a bear will find it.
19:36 Jeff Larson? If you're a hunter and you shoot an elk and like when you get to the body, there's a bear on it, like what is the protocol?
19:44 Wes Larson? If it's a grizzly bear, my protocol would be to get out of there and probably let it have the elk.
19:50 Jeff Larson? Yeah, like they can't like shoot the bear off of their.
19:53 Wes Larson? No.
19:53 Jeff Larson? Kill.
19:53 Wes Larson? No, they're not allowed, unless you were in a place where you're legally allowed to take a grizzly, but.
19:59 Jeff Larson? And you have a tag already and everything.
20:01 Wes Larson? Yeah.
20:02 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
20:02 Wes Larson? Uh, and I wouldn't try and scare it off either because that's a pretty, a pretty dicey situation. So these guys know that they have to at least figure out whether or not they'd killed this elk. They look for any kind of sign that they had shot it and they can't see anything. So they give up. And as they walk back to the truck, they make a plan to head out again early the next morning to search for the elk and really make sure that they hadn't killed it. Meanwhile, the bear continues walking in the area where it heard the shots and the bugling, but it also finds nothing. But this curious opportunist bends down to sniff at an old skull of a deer that was long past the time where it could provide anything to the bear. And then the grizzly also decides to abandon the hunt for the night.
20:44 Wes Larson? It beds down in some bushes nearby and falls asleep under the sprawling stars of the beautiful Canadian wilderness. Who knows what that bear maybe was thinking when it looked up at the endless night sky? But personally, I like to think that it's something that we can't even comprehend. When we were in Brazil recently, like, we saw some really beautiful stars with the Milky Way and everything. And it does always makes me, make me think of like, what are animals thinking when they're looking up at the night sky? You know?
21:14 Jeff Larson? They're probably seeing those constellations and being like, I wonder how this relates to me spiritually and like, what, what it says I should be, how it says I should be
21:25 Wes Larson? acting. How I should be acting on a day-to-day basis.
21:28 Jeff Larson? Like, I wonder what that shape in the sky means for how I should behave in my daily life.
21:35 Wes Larson? For my birthday.
21:35 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
21:36 Mike Smith? And then they look down at their paw and they're like, that wrinkle's gotta mean something.
21:44 Mike Smith? No, I imagine they're just probably dreaming of that meat pile or like another bear to have sex with.
21:50 Wes Larson? The gut pile. Yeah.
21:52 Mike Smith? Probably.
21:52 Wes Larson? But you know?
21:53 Mike Smith? Yeah, we all can relate.
21:54 Wes Larson? Something we can't say. And I, for me, it's just very peaceful to think of a bear like bedding up and looking at the stars maybe. Anyway.
22:01 Mike Smith? Sure.
22:02 Wes Larson? So, the next day, on Sunday, October 13th, Wilf and Skeet once more get up early and they head into the mountains with their rifles. It's a gorgeous morning, and as they retrace their steps from the day before, they're looking for blood, tracks, any kind of indication whatsoever that maybe they had hit this elk or that it was still in the area. And after searching for about 45 minutes, they don't find anything, but Wilf does notice the skull of an old whitetail deer in the bushes. He's a 56-year-old taxidermist. He's curious. He bends down to pick up this skull. And as he does, he hears something that he describes as the sound of a 10-pound bag of flour hitting the ground. Kind of like a loud
22:43 Mike Smith? The telltale sound of a ten
22:45 Wes Larson? Okay, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like, you know, I think sometimes when people use such a blatant descriptive kind of thing, we kind of were like, oh, yeah. Like, when was the last time you hear that?
22:57 Mike Smith? Yeah.
22:58 Wes Larson? But, but I do really like it because you can picture it. So I do, I appreciate that. I thought it was weird until you made the noise. I was like, oh, that actually probably is pretty accurate. Yeah. And it kind of sounds like the woofing that a bear does when they're upset about something.
23:14 Mike Smith? I've always said Wes does an awesome impression of a 10 pound sack of flour.
23:20 Wes Larson? All right.
23:21 Mike Smith? You've always been good at that. This does make me think that maybe we should be using cannons to hunt these elk. Cause like you shoot one, then you have to track it for like eight months. I don't know.
23:31 Wes Larson? There'd be no doubt if you hit it with a cannon, whether or not you got it.
23:34 Mike Smith? It's like, you don't gotta chase it at all.
23:36 Wes Larson? Did you find any legs? Did you find its torso?
23:40 Mike Smith? Well, you gotta hit it in the heart.
23:42 Wes Larson? Yeah.
23:43 Mike Smith? Still, probably.
23:44 Wes Larson? All right. So he hears this sound and as he does, he looks up and he looks straight into the eyes of a 400 pound male grizzly that starts charging straight at him. Wilf stands up. He only has the time to yell the word bear to skeet before the bear crashes into him and violently rolls into the ground through the thick brush. Comes to a stop on his back and the bear has his front paws on Wilf's chest and is loudly roaring in his face. So not a great, not a great situation for Wilf right now. That's bad. Not necessarily where you want to be.
24:18 Mike Smith? Telltale sound of a bear roaring in your face.
24:21 Wes Larson? Yeah. I will say that. He's like, it sounded like a bag of flour roaring like a bear. Like, you know, when you rip a bag of flour open and like light it on fire at the same time?
24:39 Wes Larson? I do, I kind of, he talks about roaring a lot in this story and I haven't heard many bears roar. Like they kind of make like a like noise and they do a little bit of roaring, but I thought it was interesting how much he says roaring. But anyway.
24:55 Jeff Larson? Cause they can.
24:56 Wes Larson? They kind of roar. Yeah. Okay. So he's on his back. He puts up his dukes in order to get something between him and the bear. And to block actually the large amount of bear drool that was falling onto his face as the bear continues just vocalizing and roaring. Just inches away. And then it puts his ears back. It growls as it looks him in the face and he suddenly realizes that he is about to die. And he starts screaming for Skeet to shoot the bear and kill it. He just says, shoot him, get him off of me, shoot him as he screams at Skeet. Probably sounded a lot like Lil Jon, I imagine.
25:32 Mike Smith? Skeet, Skeet, Skeet, shoot him.
25:36 Wes Larson? I wonder if Skeet hates that song or loves it. I'd be so into it if I were him. Yeah. Uh, it made me think actually of Jurassic Park in the beginning where Muldoon's like, shoot. Yeah. Skeet has never shot a bear before. But he's only about 20, he's about 20 feet away and he knew that it would be hard to miss. So he chambers around and he raises his gun. Wilf knew that the bear's about to bite down and he knew enough about bear attacks to know that they often go for the throat, the face and the head when they're attacking. So he makes the split second decision to sacrifice his arm instead. This real what would Mike and Jeff do moment? He shoves his left hand, especially you Jeff. I feel like this is pretty commonly, yeah.
26:20 Wes Larson? He shoves his left hand into the bear's mouth. And the grizzly immediately bites down. He feels intense pain shoot through his left hand and arm. Pain that he describes as unlike anything he had felt so far in his life. And then he hears the loud noise of a gunshot and he actually feels the bear's body vibrate as a bullet passes through it.
26:41 Jeff Larson? Wow. That'd be a good magic trick if you like pulled the bullet out of its mouth.
26:47 Wes Larson? If like he caught it while his hand is in there. Yeah. That would be cool. All right, the bear drops Wilf's hand and it looks at Skeet. And Wilf says he could see its eyes roll back into the back of its head. It releases some of the pressure on Wilf because it's standing on him. And it had just been shot with a high caliber rifle round. I mean, this is a rifle that you're using to take down elk. So I'm guessing it's at least, uh, it didn't say what model Skeet's was. We'll hear what models Wilf was, but I'm guessing it's at least like a thirty thirty or thirty odd six. Which is a high powered rifle. And this bear had probably been fatally shot at this point, but even so, the adrenaline coursing through the bear. Made it so it hardly even registered this shot. It turns back, it woofs at Skeet.
27:32 Wes Larson? And then it goes right back to Wilf, who's now kicking up at the bear as hard as he can with his legs. He's kind of like pinwheeling his legs, trying to kick the bear, trying to get it to let him up. And he again screams at Skeet to shoot the bear as he kicks his left leg into the bear. And once again, Skeet raises his rifle and squeezes the trigger. Wilf's left knee explodes into fine splinters as the bullet slams into it. Now he has an even much more excruciating benchmark for what pain can feel like. It was so all consuming that he wants to pass out. But the bear was still on top of Wilf. And as he looks up at the huge animal, he realizes it's about to bite him again.
28:15 Wes Larson? So now he's dealing with his left arm being ripped to shreds. His knee has been exploded by this bullet and-
28:22 Jeff Larson? Did the bullet hit the bear at all or just his knee?
28:25 Wes Larson? Just him. Yeah. It actually, we'll talk about its path later, but it like essentially hit his shin and then like moved up into his knee and exploded his knee. Whoa. Yeah.
28:37 Jeff Larson? Did he not like give clear instructions to Skeet?
28:41 Wes Larson? Yeah, maybe he was just saying, shoot, shoot.
28:43 Jeff Larson? Shoot.
28:44 Wes Larson? And then he's like, not me, the bear.
28:49 Wes Larson? All right, we'll talk about that. But anyway, once again, he in the midst of all this pain, having just been shot even, he has the the sense to bring up his arms to block the bite. And this time, the bear bites into his right arm and its teeth going straight to the bone, separating skin, muscle and nerves on the way. And once again, a bullet now slams into the bear and it again releases its grip on Wilf. So the bear backs off of Wilf after having been shot the second time. And now it seems to finally be realizing that it had been mortally injured. So Wilf again yells at Skeet to shoot the bear, but Skeet at this point yells back that he's out of bullets. Wilf immediately thinks of his rifle, which he had dropped when he had first been charged by the bear, and he tells Skeet to find it.
29:35 Wes Larson? Skeet grabs it on the ground a few feet away, and he still has a round in the chamber, so he flips off the safety just as he turns to the right to watch the bear charge back in. Oh, okay, let's take a quick break and we're gonna talk a little bit about guns versus bear spray again.
29:52 Jeff Larson? Okay.
29:53 Wes Larson? So I know there's a lot of stuff right now about guns out there in the world. That when I put this episode together to begin with, I had just been sent an article in like the Wyoming Cowboy something or other all about how gun should be pushed instead of bear spray as far as like bear deterrence. And I think with the current political climate in the US, there's been a lot more pushback against anything that seems anti-gun. I'm curious to see how that's gonna change and then, you know, if it will change at all with recent events. But very surprisingly, or very not surprisingly, the gun lobby has actually done a lot to discredit bear spray as the better alternative for bear deterrence. I think like that lobby just kind of pushes back against anything
30:39 Wes Larson? that feels at all anti-gun. And it's it's that it's really interesting to me because a lot of bear biologists, including Tom and other people that had been like the main proponents of bear spray as a deterrent. It's not that they're anti-gun, like these aren't people that don't like guns or don't carry guns even. It's that they are promoting something they think is working better than guns for bears. So I just want to make this clear, a gun can stop a bear. I trained extensively with guns when I was working with bears so I could defend myself in a bad situation. Or if I ever had to kill a bear. But I think even with like the best training that money can buy and really high caliber powerful guns, you're still taking a much bigger risk when you use a firearm as your main bear deterrent,
31:25 Wes Larson? especially a long gun for me, like a rifle or a shotgun. And that's because most dangerous interactions with bears are at close range interactions. They're like the ones we're talking about. They're so quick and surprising that victims often don't even have the time to chamber around, to swing their gun in the right direction, to remove the safety and then deliver a shot in a kill zone. This is a great example of that, like Skeet shoots the bear twice, probably center mass, and it doesn't bring it down because it takes some time for animals to die sometimes. And often an injured bear is much more dangerous than it than one that's not been injured. Yeah.
32:02 Jeff Larson? You think in this situation, like had he, instead of that first bullet, had he bear sprayed the bear? You think it would have worked?
32:09 Wes Larson? I do. Yeah, I really do. So when I was in Yellowstone, we trained.
32:14 Jeff Larson? And that's just like based off of data or something?
32:17 Wes Larson? Yeah.
32:20 Mike Smith? Years of testing it in the field. I don't know.
32:22 Wes Larson? There, yeah, there isn't a ton of data on like, someone's already been mauled and then the bear is sprayed. There, there is some, and it does usually stop it. But like, that is kind of, it's a situation you'll want to get into in the first place, obviously.
32:37 Mike Smith? I remember, who was it? Todd Orr, one of our stories where he got attacked a couple of times and he did deploy his bear spray. And the bear still engaged with him, but ultimately he does credit the spray with making that bear ultimately disengage and leave him to live, right?
32:53 Wes Larson? For sure.
32:54 Mike Smith? Is that, am I remembering that right?
32:55 Jeff Larson? It's more like the momentum of the bear. He sprayed it, but the momentum of the bear still like tackled him. But it like ran off without really like.
33:04 Wes Larson? Even Shane, who got attacked in Teton that we interviewed. I mean, he was being mauled and then the bear bit into his bear spray and it stopped him.
33:12 Jeff Larson? Oh, yeah.
33:12 Wes Larson? You know, so.
33:14 Jeff Larson? Shout out Shane.
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36:16 Wes Larson? So something I wanted to bring up is in Yellowstone, when we were training, and I was really good with a 12-gauge. We would use shotguns for a lot of different hazing things and everything. But one of, one of our training exercises, we had this like pop-up bear that was on a track that would come at you really quickly. And we'd be standing there like, your shotgun's ready. You can't put a cartridge in yet until the bear starts coming at you. But you knew that it was gonna pop up and charge at you, which is something most people don't get to like know when they're charged by a bear. You don't, you don't know that you're about to be charged. And even knowing, most of the people that trained with that wouldn't deliver a kill shot into the bear by the time it reached the end of the track
37:01 Wes Larson? and was right next to you. And these are people that have just spent like three or four days training with shotguns intensively. Having this like big wooden bear charge at you would throw you off enough to where you'd miss. It was, I will say like, not toot my own horn. It was the thing I was best at in all that training, was getting two slugs into that bear before it got to me. But a lot of people that were really good with guns had a really hard time with that because it does throw you off. And something I just like Jeff, you brought up data a second ago. There is really good data to back all this up. And then my favorite papers to look at are two that were authored by my mentor, Tom Smith, who kind of did the preeminent examination of the efficacy of both bear sprays and firearms
37:46 Wes Larson? when it comes to bear encounters. And the results of these papers really speak for themselves. Both of these papers deal with encounters with bears in Alaska. And Tom and Steven Herrera did the work. They included all this data from negative encounters with all three bear species found in the state, although the polar bear data set's really small. And the results paint a pretty clear picture. So after analyzing hundreds of different encounters, they found that firearms were effective at deterring bears or ending the encounter about 76% of the time, which is pretty good. I feel like that's not bad. So a gun definitely can work at deterring a bear.
38:24 Jeff Larson? What is that? That's like LeBron's free throw percentage.
38:28 Wes Larson? Yeah, yeah.
38:29 Jeff Larson? Okay.
38:29 Wes Larson? But what's, uh, what's Steph Curry's free throw percentage?
38:32 Jeff Larson? Like 91%.
38:34 Wes Larson? All right. So bear spray is even better than Steph Curry when it comes to free throws.
38:38 Jeff Larson? No way.
38:39 Wes Larson? What? Bear spray was effective 98% of the time when they looked at these encounters. And a really interesting finding in their studies was that the outcome for the person in these encounters involving firearms, so the ones where people had guns, the outcome for the person wasn't statistically different based on whether or not they actually used their firearm. So the amount of non-injuries to people, injuries and fatality rates weren't affected by whether or not they actually even used their guns. But the outcomes for the bears were very much affected by whether or not people used their guns. 357 total bears were involved in that firearm study and 172 of those bears were killed
39:22 Wes Larson? in the encounters where firearms were used. So for bears, it's, it's not a great deterrent because you, there's a very good chance you're going to kill the animal. On the other hand, in the bear spray study, none of the bears involved in the incidents were killed and 98% of the people involved without any injuries or 98% of the people escaped without any injuries. The 2% that were injured only had minor injuries. So we've talked about this before, but it's kind of like the bear had enough momentum that it still made contact with them. And minor injuries in a bear mauling, you generally still end up in the hospital or something, but you're not going to have like injuries that affect you for the rest of your life necessarily.
40:05 Jeff Larson? Yeah. I think, for sure. I think a big problem with it, just in general, people who hunt especially, but guys, a lot of the times, like wilderness guys, just like having a gun.
40:18 Wes Larson? Yeah.
40:19 Jeff Larson? They think it's like, I, I mean, we had a gun on our black bear project. There is like a sense of power that you get from having a gun.
40:28 Wes Larson? Sure. That's like the main reason people like them.
40:31 Jeff Larson? Yeah. So then it's like, if I can't have my gun to protect me against bears, there's like hardly any use for having a gun anymore. So like they have to make an argument that actually this is the best way for bears because like they want to have that still, you know?
40:48 Wes Larson? Yeah. And I, I actually was going to talk about this in a little bit, but we might as well talk about it now. I do think there's like, kind of, I don't want to show to, I don't want to say it's ego, but um, I think there is this power thing that you're talking about, Jeff, that comes with carrying a gun. And I'm not saying that these people who want to carry a gun for bear safety shouldn't. I'm saying, consider going to your bear spray first, you know? Or if you have a bear at like a long distance that's charging, fire a couple warning shots and then go to your bear spray. I carried a gun in Yellowstone in really crazy kind of situations where maybe we're going into a carcass or something that seemed especially dangerous.
41:30 Wes Larson? But for me, it was if the bear is mauling me, I can pull out my pistol and put it against it and fire off a few rounds. That's what I carried it for. It was kind of my last case thing that I would use. But we'll talk about that a little bit more. I want to go into a few more of the stats before we get to that.
41:47 Mike Smith? Sure.
41:47 Jeff Larson? I've kind of started to think, feel that same power with bear spray too, just like having a bear spray on your hip. And it's like, skunks are pretty cool. Porcupines are pretty cool and they have like defense systems for predators.
42:01 Wes Larson? Right.
42:01 Jeff Larson? So it's kind of like you just get to use a better, a better version of that.
42:06 Wes Larson? Yeah, we're like human skunks.
42:09 Mike Smith? Cosplay.
42:10 Wes Larson? I do want to mention this study, these studies, their data range ends in like the late 2000s, like 2009 or 2010. I think with bear spray becoming much more popular in recent years, this study could definitely be done again. The data set would be a lot more robust. And there's definitely some instances now of people using spray and still getting mauled pretty badly. Uh, including one that happened this week in Yellowstone. But I would argue still that even those people or like Todd or are people that still save themselves a lot more punishment by using their spray. They probably would have been off, you know, worse, worse off had they not used it. And I think when a firearm is used and the person is still mauled, the mauling is almost always worse than it would have been otherwise.
42:56 Wes Larson? Like if you've injured that bear, but it's not enough to get it out of there, it's probably going to punish you for that. But with bear spray, it's, it's like so overwhelming for it that it just wants to leave.
43:06 Mike Smith? Yeah, that's what makes sense to someone like me who I'm not a gun guy. I'm not really an outdoors person at all. But even our story that we're telling today illustrates the point that a gun, you gotta, you have to be pretty accurate. This guy shot his father-in-law in the leg accidentally. We'll have to assume.
43:23 Wes Larson? And he's, and this guy's good with a gun.
43:25 Mike Smith? He's a hunter. He, he probably has used his gun a lot. And for me, I know how to use a can of Fabreeze. You know, you just spray it generally in the direction you want it to go. And that's kind of what bear spray at an exponential level is, right? It's just a big, easily deployed cloud. You don't have to be super accurate with it. You just spray it in the direction of the bear and it'll be effective, right?
43:48 Jeff Larson? But on the other hand, with the gun, he only got shot in the leg. With bear spray, he got, got shot in the head.
43:55 Mike Smith? That's true. He could have gotten full body.
43:56 Wes Larson? But he would have been okay. Yeah.
44:00 Wes Larson? All right. So yeah, that's something else I was going to get into, Mike, is ease of use, which we'll talk about in a second. But basically, the main thing that I wanted to say is that we talk about bear spray a lot on this podcast for a reason. And that reason is not that it's only effective, but it's also a conservation tool. Both parties get to leave that interaction when it's used correctly. So here are my bullet points for bear spray.
44:25 Wes Larson? It's much, much cheaper than a gun. It's much easier to learn how to use than a gun. It has fewer moving parts, so there's much less that can go wrong. You don't have to worry about chambering rounds or, you know, all these, all you have to do is remove the safety quickly. It covers a much bigger area, so you don't need to have great aim. You can use it at close range. And the bear gets to you to live. It gets to live through that interaction. But guns can still be effective deterrents, so I'm not saying you shouldn't carry a gun. And you probably should carry one in polar bear country. So here are a few red hot things to know about carrying a gun in bear country. Which I probably should have switched those two.
45:08 Mike Smith? Still funny, though. Don't think for one moment you're not funny, Wes.
45:13 Wes Larson? Okay, the data doesn't show a statistical difference between the effectiveness of long guns versus short guns. So if you prefer carrying a rifle or a pistol or whatever for bear deterrents, either of those can work. Proper training is really key, so you need to feel very comfortable with your gun before using it as your main deterrent in bear encounter. So in this study that Tom did, the things that were the biggest like contributing factors to problems were lack of time to respond to the bear. 27% of the people didn't have time to respond. 21% didn't use their gun, like there was some sort of mechanical issue or something.
45:53 Wes Larson? 9% of them, the bear was too close for deployment. Oh, no, sorry, that's 14%. It was too close. 9%, they missed the bear. And there's a few other reasons, like the gun was emptied and it could not be reloaded, the safety mechanism was a problem. There's all these different things that happened that basically boil down to people having an issue with the weapon itself or being too close. So there are a lot of things that can contribute to these attacks. And basically, just to wrap this all up a little, just so everyone knows out there, we're not being paid to promote bear spray. There's no benefit to us aside from passing along the information. Probably lose a little money. Yeah. Just as far as future stories go.
46:38 Wes Larson? Right. Yeah. We're, yeah, we're actually like destroying our subject matter. Yeah. We'll cut all this.
46:48 Wes Larson? Cut all this whole thing. All of it. Keep going. Uh, the other thing that I just want to mention is there's like, there's a lot of responsibility that comes with telling people what to do in these encounters that could potentially end their lives or forever change their lives. Like, that's not something I take lightly, and I know it's not something Jeff and Mike take lightly. At this point, we have lots of people that are listening to the show to try and learn what to do in, in like a really bad situation. So personally, I would never push a narrative that's based on how I feel about bigger issues facing gun ownership in the US. So like, what I'm trying to say is I wouldn't let my politics around gun control affect what I would tell people to
47:31 Wes Larson? do in a bear encounter, you know? Like, my bear spray, kind of, me pushing bear spray isn't because I don't like guns. It's because bear spray works better. I would always go to bear spray first. So that's kind of what I was trying to say. Well said. Well, if you have both too, like, you can just take your bear spray out first, throw it on the ground, shoot it with the gun, right under the bear. Like Jaws. Exactly.
47:57 Mike Smith? Sweet.
47:59 Wes Larson? All right. So I just think if you are trying to decide between these two things, do your best just to kind of separate any ego or politics or whatever from it, your decision-making, and then think about what makes the best sense for your own protection. All right. Okay, let's get back to the story. This grizzly had been shot twice. Wilf had been shot once. Uh, and now the grizzly's charging back in at full speed once again. Skeet steps over Wilf on the ground and raises Wilf's .306 and shoots the bear for a third time. This time, the bear visibly reacts to the shot and thrashes through the brush. Skeet looks down at Wilf and says, give me more bullets. And Wilf reaches up with two more rounds that Skeet awkwardly racks into the chamber of this
48:44 Wes Larson? left-handed rifle. He's right-handed, Wilf's left-handed, so it's kind of weird to try and rack a bolt on a left-handed rifle if you're right-handed. Sure. He had just finished getting the rounds loaded and he looks up to the bear who's once again in a full charge and less than 10 feet away. I think it's been shot three times at this point. Chill out. Yeah. He pulls the trigger again and now the bear falls to the ground in a motionless heap. The stars of that previous night would be the last that this bear would ever see. Skeet runs to the side of his father-in-law. You don't believe in heaven is in the stars? I don't know. You don't think bears go to heaven in the stars? It's the last that he would ever see in this mortal coil. Oh, thank you. Yeah.
49:28 Wes Larson? Skeet immediately runs to the side of his father-in-law and starts crying and apologizing. And Wilf looks up at him and says, we gotta get our crap together here, man, or I'm gonna die. Crap. Yep. They call emergency services and Wilf's daughter Harmony, and then Wilf called Skeet over. He looks at him in the face and says, if I die here, it's not your fault. You did what you had to do and you saved me and don't let this wreck your life. Skeet assures Wilf that he would be okay. And then they call Wilf's wife so he could tell her he loved her. And I wonder if he's also quietly kind of like, hey, if I die here, watch out for Skeet. No, honestly, though, it's a very sweet moment in this interview that I watched.
50:12 Wes Larson? You can tell how much he loves his wife. And right as he's wanting her to know that, uh, he looks up and he sees her walking through the trees toward him. So I don't think they were very far and word had gotten to Georgette that Wilf had been shot and attacked by a bear. And so she'd already gotten there. And she lets, yeah, she lets Wilf know that help was coming. And when search and rescue did get there, they realized. If I was Wilf, I would think like, oh, this is it. Oh, I'm about to die. Yeah. I'm dead, like, she's not, can't actually be here right now. Yeah. I think he had like passed out for a bit too. Anyway, yeah, that would feel very strange.
50:52 Mike Smith? Anyway, when Search and Rescue does get there, they realize they aren't prepared to carry him out of this wilderness area. So they had to bring some chainsaws in to clear a line to be able to carry him out. So it takes a little bit longer than it should. Meanwhile, he's been on the ground for the better part of an hour. He's screaming for pain relief. One of the EMTs comes up to him and says, when I get you to the ambulance, I will relieve your pain. Which, to me, it's kind of like, maybe just give him a shot of morphine or something, you know?
51:23 Wes Larson? Yeah.
51:23 Jeff Larson? Yeah, for sure.
51:26 Mike Smith? It's crazy. He's been attacked by grizzly bear and shot, but I don't know what their protocols are.
51:31 Jeff Larson? Person type thing where he's like, I hear you. You need to be patient. I'm doing my job.
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53:08 Wes Larson? We all have really busy lives and I think it's really easy to forget to do even the most basic things like proper hydration. And when you don't have the right electrolytes, or you have an imbalance, that can cause headaches, cramps, fatigue, brain fog, and even weakness. And you really feel the difference when you get it right. And that's why I want to talk to you guys about Element. Element is a zero-sugar electrolyte drink mix and sparkling electrolyte drink, born from the growing body of research revealing that optimal health outcomes occur at sodium levels two to three times government recommendations. Each serving of Element delivers a meaningful dose of electrolytes, and it's formulated for anyone on a mission to restore health through hydration. It's perfectly suited
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54:32 Wes Larson? flavors are lemonade salt, citrus salt, watermelon salt, but I've liked almost all the flavors I've tried. I think they're refreshing. It kind of tastes very salty at first, but then very sweet afterward. I just really like it. I drink it much more than anything else at this point. I almost always have a bottle with some Element in it. So you can get a free eight-count sample pack of Element's most popular drink mix flavors with any purchase at drinkelement.com/tooth. You can find your favorite Element flavor or share with a friend. So try Element totally risk-free. If you don't like it, give it away to a friend, and they'll give you your money back, no questions asked. So you can go to drinklmnt.com/tooth. Again, that's drinklmnt.com/tooth.
55:19 Wes Larson? All right. When he gets to the hospital, doctors tell him that he had lost a lot of blood, about two liters worth, and they weren't sure they'd be able to save his leg. But ultimately, they were able to save it.
55:30 Jeff Larson? Oh.
55:30 Wes Larson? At the time of the interview I watched, he had over a hundred bone splinters still in his leg, from his thigh to his calf, and they show an X-ray. It's pretty crazy. You can just see all these tiny little white slivers all over his leg that are all little pieces of bone that are still in him, which has to just be like really painful and a weird thing to have to deal with your whole life.
55:53 Jeff Larson? Yeah, that's insane.
55:55 Wes Larson? Yeah.
55:55 Jeff Larson? I don't those out.
55:57 Wes Larson? Yeah, I just think like it like literally blew into tiny splinters his knees. So I just don't think they could get him.
56:04 Jeff Larson? Oh, from the gunshot?
56:05 Wes Larson? From the gunshot, yeah.
56:07 Jeff Larson? Uh, yeah.
56:09 Wes Larson? Easily like the his worst injury was from the gunshot. Um, the boy had entered his leg in the calf. It hit the lower bone and followed the bone up and shattered his knee, then exited out of the top half of his thigh.
56:22 Jeff Larson? That sucks.
56:23 Wes Larson? Yeah, the first surgery was to stabilize him.
56:25 Jeff Larson? Those rifle bullets too, like they put a big hole in like it's, that's a lot of damage.
56:30 Wes Larson? Especially if they're like hollow point or something like that. So they cleaned the damage and the soft tissue, then they put in a bar in his lower leg and upper leg. These bars like meet in his kneecap and there's this weird metal gel that's kind of holding everything together because he doesn't have a knee anymore. So at the time of the interview that I watched, he had a doctor's appointment in Calgary and they like kind of thought that he would end up healing all the way. But then he also had a bunch of skin grafts and everything. It was, it was a big mess. It like that was by far the worst injury for him. But I do just want to say, everything I read, everything I watched, he doesn't blame Skeet. Skeet felt terrible.
57:12 Wes Larson? But when you're kicking at a bear as it's mauling you, there's a lot going on. And it's totally like, this isn't the only time this has happened, that someone's been shot while they're trying to fend off a bear. This has happened in other instances too.
57:26 Jeff Larson? It's a thing where you gotta put yourself into the situation and that's where like the whole gun versus bear spray thing too. People don't understand the amount of panic that strikes when like a grizzly is just on you or on a friend. Yeah, you can shoot a target like 10 out of 10 times at a gun range, but like there's a grizzly bear right on you, you're not gonna have your nerves, you're not gonna be like a calm state of mind and it's gonna really put in a lot more variables and a gun can do a ton of damage.
58:01 Wes Larson? It's something you can't actually practice for. Like that thing I did on the track with the charging bear is as close as you can come and that's still not the same thing because I knew it was like a wooden bear that was and it still made me nervous. Like it still got my heartbeat up. So you just can't prepare for this and this goes back to what Mike said.
58:21 Jeff Larson? Ever at it.
58:22 Wes Larson? I was good at it. I really was.
58:24 Jeff Larson? Probably named it after you.
58:26 Wes Larson? I, I like on my, I had like a hole in the head and right in the chest on like in seconds. But Mike, what Mike was saying, ease of use. The thing about bear spray is that you aren't even necessarily trying to like hit the bear right in the face when you first deploy it. You were just getting a cloud of that spray in between you and the bear that the bear is gonna have to pass through to get to you and that works really, really well and it's really easy to do. You don't have to be a crack shot. You don't even have to have your wits about you. You just have to spray it in front of you and that's pretty easy. So that's why I think it's the best deterrent that we currently have. Okay. You guys got anything you wanna add before we move on to our categories?
59:11 Jeff Larson? I mean, it just, yeah, it's crazy that he got his arms like stripped off by a bear and his worst wound was from a gunshot.
59:20 Wes Larson? Yeah.
59:21 Jeff Larson? It's a crazy story.
59:22 Wes Larson? Yeah. His arm bites were mostly like punctures where it really got deep and did do a lot of nerve damage and stuff. But yeah, the rifle shot in the knee, that's gonna mess you up for a long time.
59:36 Mike Smith? Hmm. I wanna meet a Wilf someday.
59:39 Wes Larson? Me too.
59:39 Mike Smith? Just make it short for Wilfred. Okay. I feel it's kinda on him if he's gonna insist on going by Wilf.
59:46 Wes Larson? Going by Wilf. Yeah, I know.
59:48 Mike Smith? People are dropping that F. It's like, maybe just go with Will. But I respect that. I like Wilf. It's great.
59:55 Wes Larson? Me too. Wilford Brimley should have gone by that. Wilf Brimley. Anyway. Okay.
1:00:00 Jeff Larson? Wilford Woodruff.
1:00:01 Wes Larson? Oh yeah. Let's not forget him. Let's go on to our, uh, our categories. All right. So the first one I have for you guys is your most memorable leg shot in pop culture. So the most memorable time that someone got shot in the leg in pop culture.
1:00:18 Mike Smith? I have kind of a bad answer, I think, but it is the first one that came. So do you guys remember the movie Night and Day with Tom Cruise? It's like Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.
1:00:27 Jeff Larson? I never saw it.
1:00:27 Wes Larson? Yeah, I saw it, but I just remember there was like a scene where he comes to the restaurant and like sits down with her.
1:00:34 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:00:34 Wes Larson? In a date. Yeah.
1:00:35 Mike Smith? Right. That's actually the scene I'm talking about. I haven't seen it since it came out. I have vague memories of kind of enjoying it. So maybe I'll watch it again some tonight or something, but as he's leaving with Cameron Diaz, the guy that they're sitting at the diner with comes out and follows him and tries to take Cameron back from Tom Cruise. Cause Tom is seemingly kind of a bad actor at this point in the movie. But Tom pulls out his gun and shoots, I think he's a firefighter in the leg to kind of cripple him. But he's like, don't worry, it's a through shot. Yeah, I didn't hit any arteries or bones. You're gonna be, you're barely gonna feel anything and you're gonna be a hero. Because you took a bullet and then they drive off. It's always stuck with me.
1:01:13 Wes Larson? When you say bad actor, you mean like a villain?
1:01:16 Mike Smith? Right, yeah.
1:01:16 Wes Larson? He's a bad actor. Yeah.
1:01:18 Mike Smith? Sure. Never could Tom be a bad actor.
1:01:22 Wes Larson? Uh, yeah, I like that. That's funny because that movie's from a time where pre-streaming, where we just kind of watched every movie that came out.
1:01:30 Mike Smith? Yeah, right.
1:01:32 Wes Larson? And now it's like, that's definitely one I would have skipped. But back then it was like, yeah, sure, I'll watch this. Uh, Jeff, do you have an answer?
1:01:39 Jeff Larson? Yeah, I have a couple runner ups too. Maybe I'll just go NFL.
1:01:43 Wes Larson? Don't steal mine then. Okay.
1:01:45 Jeff Larson? Let's go with Bijon Robbins. Got shot in the leg when he was like a rookie. Uh, running back for the Washington commanders.
1:01:55 Wes Larson? That's not where you want to get shot.
1:01:56 Jeff Larson? And is like right when he was about to, or not Bijon Robbins.
1:02:00 Mike Smith? Bijon, oh, Bri, okay.
1:02:02 Jeff Larson? Brian Robinson. Yeah, the backup running back in San Francisco. But he started for the Washington commanders and got shot in the leg. And everyone's like, oh, man. And then he played like three weeks later and he's really good.
1:02:16 Wes Larson? What?
1:02:16 Jeff Larson? It's crazy.
1:02:17 Wes Larson? End of his career? Wow.
1:02:19 Mike Smith? Really good.
1:02:20 Wes Larson? Yeah. That's like 50 Cent getting shot nine times and not walking with a limp, you know?
1:02:25 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:02:25 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:02:26 Wes Larson? I picked Taken, the movie Taken, where Liam Neeson's like trying to interrogate that French dude that was like his friend. So they just like invited him over for a nice dinner. And then when he's not answering his question, he shoots his wife in the leg.
1:02:42 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:02:43 Wes Larson? Which, at the time, I just, I was like, holy shit, what just happened? You know?
1:02:50 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:02:50 Wes Larson? I feel like now that's kind of, a lot of things from that movie had become tropes, but at the time, it was so shocking to me that he would shoot this innocent woman just to get information, but.
1:03:00 Mike Smith? She was so nice, too.
1:03:02 Wes Larson? I know.
1:03:02 Mike Smith? She didn't know what was going on.
1:03:04 Wes Larson? No.
1:03:04 Jeff Larson? But I mean, he needed to do something.
1:03:08 Wes Larson? It made you feel something.
1:03:09 Jeff Larson? The ends, he got the ends justified.
1:03:12 Wes Larson? Justified. Yeah. Sometimes you gotta shoot a couple legs to get some answers.
1:03:19 Jeff Larson? I always like when someone like drops down under a car and shoots like a foot or like in Kill Bill. I really like the cartoon one of the, uh, what's her name? The Asian assassin.
1:03:32 Wes Larson? Us. Lucy Liu?
1:03:34 Jeff Larson? Lucy Liu, like the cartoon part of the movie where like she drops down and shoots the guy in the leg and then kills him.
1:03:43 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:03:44 Jeff Larson? Uh.
1:03:44 Wes Larson? That's a great part.
1:03:46 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:03:46 Wes Larson? Cool.
1:03:46 Mike Smith? There's a scene in the Patriot where Cannonball takes that guy's leg off. Speaking of cannons, it's such an effective piece of artillery.
1:03:54 Wes Larson? It is. Hard to load and, and like.
1:03:57 Mike Smith? That's true.
1:03:58 Wes Larson? Get many shots off, but yeah.
1:04:00 Jeff Larson? We did the Freedom Tour. Dog got its leg blown off by Cannonball.
1:04:06 Wes Larson? The Freedom Tour.
1:04:06 Jeff Larson? In Boston, the Freedom Trail.
1:04:10 Wes Larson? Yeah, it was not a dog.
1:04:11 Jeff Larson? Guy's leg blown up by Cannonball.
1:04:14 Mike Smith? Jeff is a little mistaken.
1:04:15 Jeff Larson? William.
1:04:17 Mike Smith? Johnson or something.
1:04:21 Jeff Larson? I read a sign that had a picture of a dog on it and I read it completely wrong as if the dog was talking. Um, wait, one other one was The Sopranos. I like when the rapper asked one of the Soprano guys to like shoot him so that his rap career will go better.
1:04:38 Wes Larson? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Does he shoot him in the leg?
1:04:42 Jeff Larson? In the butt, yeah.
1:04:43 Wes Larson? Okay. Yeah, we'll count that. Butts or legs. Ah, most memorable friendly fire incident in pop culture. Did you guys find one for this? I had a hard time thinking of a good one, but then I found one that I liked.
1:04:56 Jeff Larson? I, I'm just gonna go with Full Metal Jacket. The training guy who's like in the bathroom and shoots the sergeant.
1:05:05 Wes Larson? Yeah, I like that.
1:05:06 Mike Smith? Um, I'm actually now realizing maybe this doesn't. So at the end of, well, halfway through Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Sean Connery shoots the tail of the plane they're escaping in, they like, he doesn't shoot someone on his team, but kind of shoots themselves out of the air in the plane. He's like, sorry, they got us. And his face is just so funny in that moment, but like he shoots the entire tail fin off of their biplane. It's so funny.
1:05:35 Wes Larson? I do like that. Yeah, I guess Jeff, I don't know if yours counts as friendly fire because he meant to kill him.
1:05:41 Jeff Larson? Uh, like accidental friendly fire?
1:05:44 Wes Larson? Yeah, like friendly fires usually, well, I guess mine, I don't know if mine really counts then either. Um, we all did a bad job, it sounds like. Yeah, mine's from Desperado where Danny Trejo's character, you remember he's throwing all the knives and stuff? He'd been hired by the same people as like the, the gangsters. But then when they see him, they don't know who he is and they end up like fighting each other and he kills a bunch of them and they end up killing him and they're on the same team. So I counted that as friendly fire.
1:06:17 Mike Smith? You know what? At the end of the movie, one of my favorite movies ever, Hard Boiled, Tony Lung's character accidentally shoots one of the policemen that's on their side. Just like they turn the corner really quick and just instinct pulls up his gun and shoots him. And it's like a really, it's a really strong moment and it's not that kind of movie per se, like where you're trying to get in your feelings about like, you know.
1:06:40 Jeff Larson? Right.
1:06:40 Mike Smith? You're not really, so more people die in that movie than really any movie I've ever watched, I think, that isn't just like a large scale war film, but like, that they can still make a death in the middle of all that carnage, still like a very poignant moment. I thought it was just like really, really great filmmaking from John Woo.
1:06:59 Jeff Larson? Yeah. All right. Maybe like Goku with his Kami Kamiha, he gets his friends a few times.
1:07:06 Mike Smith? Oh, sure. Piccolo shoots Goku with the special beam cannon through Raditz. That's iconic.
1:07:12 Wes Larson? I didn't know you guys were into Dragon Ball. This is kind of new.
1:07:15 Mike Smith? Are you kidding me? Oh, my gosh.
1:07:17 Jeff Larson? You, you remember that time when you were babysitting me and you came home from school and there's like fire trucks in front of the house?
1:07:24 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:07:25 Jeff Larson? I was just watching Dragon Ball Z and the lady came over with her son's like dislocated elbow.
1:07:31 Wes Larson? Uh huh.
1:07:31 Jeff Larson? And it was like a crazy part in the show. So I was just like, yeah, come in and use the phone. This kid had like a broken elbow and I just like turned the volume up so I could still watch.
1:07:46 Wes Larson? Oh, that's pretty funny. All right. Next thing is your favorite usage of your name in a song because of ski, you know? I'll go first. Mine's really quick. Uh, the song Wesley's Theory by Kendrick Lamar. Which is a song I really liked even outside of the fact that my name's in it because Wes and Wesley aren't like that commonly used names.
1:08:08 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:08:08 Wes Larson? So it is always kind of like fun when I hear my name in a movie or something or a song. It's like, I really genuinely like that song. Yeah.
1:08:15 Mike Smith? I think it's what the opening song off of Wesley's Theory. It's the opening track off of Damn, right? Man.
1:08:21 Wes Larson? Yeah, I believe so. Um, it's a great song. Yeah. George Clinton's in it. We'll have Bill play a quick clip from it.
1:08:29 Mike Smith? Let's nip it.
1:08:34 Jeff Larson? There's not a ton of Jeff ones, but I went with Katy Perry's Dark Horse. And Juicy J sings about eat your heart like Jeffrey Dahmer.
1:08:44 Wes Larson? Jeffrey Dahmer. That's right. Yeah. Most of my references were Wesley Snipes. So, because he didn't pay his taxes.
1:08:51 Jeff Larson? Most of mine were Jeffrey Dahmer.
1:08:53 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:08:54 Jeff Larson? I got one Jeff Gordon and like six Jeffrey Dahmer.
1:08:59 Mike Smith? In that Young Thug song, I think it's called Kanye West. I don't even know who Jeffrey is, but they say Jeffrey like a million times in that song.
1:09:07 Wes Larson? Oh, really?
1:09:07 Mike Smith? But it's just kind of like an ad lib. I don't really get it, really. It's a good song. I like that. The whole album is called Jeffrey, I think, actually. It's great. I'm going with MGMT song, Me and Michael. It's maybe my favorite off of that album, the Little Dark Age album. And I like it because it's like a vague reference to a Michael. It's not really, because Michael is always a reference to like Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson.
1:09:30 Wes Larson? Michael Jordan, Michael, yeah.
1:09:31 Mike Smith? But with Me and Michael, it's just like, yeah, I could be, I could be that Michael, you know? I can put myself in that song and that's fun.
1:09:39 Wes Larson? Great. Next category is something you recommend right this instant. I'm gonna go last.
1:09:46 Mike Smith? Okay. I, oh man, I have two things I'm really into. So the first one is I'm secretly taking part in one of our listeners' reading clubs. It's just her and her grandma. They told me they're gonna read Dostoevsky's Brother Karamazov and it's been, it's been a while since I read that.
1:10:05 Wes Larson? Secretly taking part in it?
1:10:06 Mike Smith? Yeah, I don't want to like intrude because it's just like her and her grandma and that sounds like really pleasant and fun. But I'm reading in the background along with them and I forgot, like I had read it a long time ago and I love Dostoevsky, but like the character descriptions and the small little details is really where the wit and the humor comes through. And I just, there's something about his writing style that really resonates with me. So if you're looking for a cat, a classic to read, highly recommend that. And if you're looking for something a little more maybe accessible and fun, I watched an anime called Metalist. It's about a young girl trying to figure out how to figure skate and it's just really inspiring. It's really fun. Sports shows are kind of my favorite because it's, it's just the easiest storyline to get behind and root for someone like the protagonist.
1:10:51 Mike Smith? You want them to do well and there's a lot more. Mechanisms at work than just a young girl figure skating, but that's kind of the driving force of the show. And it's just really, really well done, beautifully animated. All of the figure skating animation is just like, I don't know, they did a great job animating it. It's really invested in her story. So, metalist.
1:11:12 Wes Larson? Mine is, um, the thing I want to recommend is trusting your friends with recommendations because, uh, Mike recently recommended K-pop Demon Hunters, which when it came out on Netflix and I saw the slide for it, I was like, I'm not at all interested in seeing that. And then when you recommended it, I was like, all right, I'll give this a shot. And I really, really liked it. And then also Randy, who did artwork for us.
1:11:39 Jeff Larson? Demon boy, babe?
1:11:40 Wes Larson? Yeah. Genuinely loved it. Randy, who did artwork for us, uh, recommended a book called Chain Gang All-Stars by, and I'm going to slaughter this name, I'm sorry, Nana Kwame Ajay Brenea, Ajay Brenea. It was a book that I hadn't heard of, that honestly, like, I don't know if ever would have been on my radar, but Randy had said, hey, I think you'd really like this book. And I just really, really loved this book. It was so good. It's all about a kind of a near future where convicts are forced to go through this kind of gladiator style fighting ring to earn their freedom. And it is very topical to a lot of stuff going on right now and just like really beautifully written, but also an incredible story that's
1:12:25 Wes Larson? really gripping. And I just loved it. Like, I inhaled that book, read it really quick because it was so good. So because of those two recommendations, the thing I'm recommending is listening to your friends' recommendations because they know you best.
1:12:39 Mike Smith? I'm gonna check, you told me about that book. I have, I got it downloaded, ready to go.
1:12:44 Wes Larson? I think you'll like it. I really do.
1:12:46 Jeff Larson? I was thinking about doing Demon Hunters, but, uh, you know, I'm going to just go with a real. Recent one, but let's just say the Las Vegas Allegiant Stadium.
1:12:58 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:12:58 Jeff Larson? It's so cool. It looks like they call it the Death Star. And it's just like, the atmosphere in there was like so cool and like, I like NFL, so it's fun to go to a game. So, but I feel like even if you don't like NFL like that would have been like a fun situation.
1:13:16 Wes Larson? Yeah, I was jealous when I saw you guys there.
1:13:18 Jeff Larson? And you know, we've, we've talked about how there's a lot of contention in the air in the United States, but I just feel like at sporting events, everyone kinda is able to get along, but well.
1:13:32 Wes Larson? In a fun way. Yeah.
1:13:33 Jeff Larson? Every like, I guess.
1:13:36 Wes Larson? You're saying, well adjusted.
1:13:37 Jeff Larson? Like you hate the visiting team and stuff, but like,
1:13:40 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:13:41 Jeff Larson? There's a sense of community and inclusion that's kind of fun. So, ah, go to a sporting event is my recommendation.
1:13:48 Wes Larson? Okay, that's a good one. Great. All right. And then I also just wanted you guys to throw out something that makes you happy right now, like something that just because of what we keep, what we keep bringing up is, you know, things are a little crazy. So just something that, that genuinely just makes you happy.
1:14:06 Mike Smith? I've been swimming a lot recently and it's been really just aside from just the, the cardio, the athletic or working out aspect to it. It's really nice because it's kind of the one time in my day when I just don't have any choice but to be with myself and my own thoughts. Cause I'm not wearing headphones. I'm not looking at a screen or somebody else or something else. I'm just head down swimming laps. And I think that's just like such a good meditative thing to have on a daily basis is just kinda have a moment to yourself like that. And of course, I think working out generally just improves everything about your life. And I go through peaks and valleys with that. But, uh, you just feel better, feel a lot healthier mentally and physically.
1:14:48 Wes Larson? For sure.
1:14:49 Mike Smith? It doesn't have to be too hard either. It's not like I'm, you know, cranking miles out every day, just thousands of laps, just like seven, eight hundred yards, maybe a thousand at the very most and call it a day.
1:15:00 Wes Larson? Cool.
1:15:00 Jeff Larson? I'll take a different route. I'm going to say pizza. Pizza just always makes me happy.
1:15:07 Jeff Larson? Especially like I've been doing hot yoga. If you like earn it a little bit, oh, it's so good.
1:15:14 Wes Larson? Or do it at the same time during your hot yoga. Pizza and hot yoga. Yeah. Mine's also kind of a food, but also just kind of a routine thing. Lately, I've just really enjoyed the routine of making my own coffee in the morning. And I've kind of nailed this iced coffee recipe that I really like. And I really enjoy just kind of having that be the first thing that I do in the day is just kind of going and going through this little routine. And being just kind of precise about certain things. And I kind of always made fun of people that were really into that, but I do get it now. I understand the kind of like. Ritual. Yeah, the ritual of it and how like sometimes ritual really helps you to kind of start your day in the right way. So.
1:15:59 Wes Larson? Are you gonna try any pumpkin spice now that it's getting? I'm not a big pumpkin spice guy. I've never been that into it. I don't really like it in cookies or anything. So. What? Yeah, I know. Oh. I'm ready for spooky season, but the pumpkin spice thing never really did it for me. I love it. Yeah. Pumpkin. Anyway, pumpkin. Alright. Pumpkin. Alright, uh, let's do a couple of listener questions. I know one of you grabbed some from Patreon. Sure enough, did. Hurry up with them questions, Jeff. Read them. Not going that slow. Are you looking at your text in someone? I don't know what you're doing. Alright, uh, this one's from Trez. Tress? Tress?
1:16:42 Wes Larson? Uh, can bears smell food in sealed containers such as canned food? Um, no, like not a canned food container. But if you had like a thin enough Ziploc bag with something that smells strong enough, I think it probably could. But like a canned food, I don't believe they can smell it. But to be honest, and this is a project I wanted to do when I was working with Tom. We don't know exactly how well bears can smell like we don't know what parts per million or parts per trillion of a scent they can pick up in the air. What we have is anecdotal stuff. So we know like, you know, we've seen them like the polar bear one that I constantly bring up where a polar bear was so many miles out on ice.
1:17:26 Wes Larson? And when a whale was brought up on shore, immediately beelined for the whale. So there are like, there's things out there that kind of show us that we think they have and like their nasal cavity and stuff, but we don't know exactly. But I would say if you're worried about it, you don't really have to worry about canned food, but I still personally wouldn't like keep it in my tent or something.
1:17:48 Jeff Larson? Well, and like, they can probably smell a campsite, which is like, you know, they're once they get into the campsite, maybe they'll see a can and
1:17:57 Wes Larson? They're curious. Yeah. So they'd bite into a can and they'd bite like they do that really commonly. So, and then once they learn that canned food has food inside, then that's something they're going to be actively looking for.
1:18:10 Jeff Larson? They're, they're just like, you should, we should do a campsite in bear country, but do like the is this cake type of thing? Make like a tent out of cake, but then like a bunch of stuff's just metal and they have to bite it all to see if it's cake or not.
1:18:27 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:18:29 Jeff Larson? It'd be fun. Uh, all right. From Riley. Hi. Question. Watching the Eagles game right now and they have an actual bald eagle fly around the stadium. Can bald eagles even be fully trained? Is it stressful for them to fly around a huge stadium?
1:18:44 Wes Larson? They can be fully trained. So a trained bald eagle, it wouldn't be stressful for it because it has been doing stuff like that. So.
1:18:53 Jeff Larson? I do feel like there's been instances with like sporting events where they do the training, but there's no one in the stadium. And then like, once it's a full stadium, the bird gets like a little confused with like all the noise and peep for sure and stuff. But, yeah.
1:19:11 Wes Larson? Has anyone told these bald eagles about hair transplants, you think?
1:19:16 Jeff Larson? Just go to Romania, Turkey.
1:19:21 Wes Larson? It is kind of like an unfortunate name, you know, because there are lots of animals that actually are bald that are called like bald whatevers. But for eagle, I feel like it should be like the white headed eagle or the black or the white capped eagle or whatever.
1:19:33 Jeff Larson? I don't know. I think it kind of works though. I think it like.
1:19:36 Wes Larson? Yeah, it's kind of cool.
1:19:38 Mike Smith? I like to think about they go get their hand, their hair transplant turkey and then like, well, they're there. They may as well hit up one of those bathhouses. So they got their like wings spread out on the baths and the little towel around their waist.
1:19:50 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:19:51 Mike Smith? There's so much to live for, for these birds and they just don't even know it.
1:19:55 Wes Larson? They haven't been to Turkish bathhouses yet.
1:19:58 Jeff Larson? So Alex, Alex asks, uh, he says, or they say that dogs, like you know how dogs will greet them each other and they sniff each other's butts? And it's almost like a, like how like, nice to meet you. Let's do business together. So his question is, if you had to pick a method that other animals greet and acknowledge each other, what would it be? So like besides a handshake for us, what would we do that animals do?
1:20:27 Wes Larson? Oh, for people like what?
1:20:28 Jeff Larson? So like, for example, rubbing necks like giraffes, touching bills like penguins, et cetera. So we're replacing handshakes with something animals do.
1:20:38 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:20:39 Mike Smith? I like the territorial ones where if they see each other, they just fight until one of them leaves. That would be sweet.
1:20:45 Wes Larson? Like just knock heads.
1:20:47 Jeff Larson? Yours is like a bighorn sheep.
1:20:49 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:20:50 Mike Smith? Right. Yeah.
1:20:51 Wes Larson? This isn't like the exact same thing, but it'd be kind of funny if we did like courtship dances, you know? Like if you just saw someone you're interested in, you just immediately started like putting your hands up and doing like a funny little dance to try and attract them. But that's not so much a greeting as it is like a courtship thing. So.
1:21:09 Jeff Larson? Yeah. If we were doing courtship, I'd do like the frigate birds. Cause I can like puff my neck out pretty well compared to humans.
1:21:18 Wes Larson? All right.
1:21:18 Jeff Larson? I'd get so much action if it's all about just getting your neck big.
1:21:22 Wes Larson? For greetings, they all sound really bad to me, where you have to like touch faces or get somewhere like gross. I don't know.
1:21:29 Mike Smith? They kind of do it like the Bezu in France. They just kiss each other three times on the face or twice. I don't know about that.
1:21:35 Wes Larson? Which we need, I feel like we need to practice that in the US because when I go somewhere where they do that and I'm forced to do it, I do it so awkwardly. It's always just the worst.
1:21:44 Mike Smith? There's a lot of like real close lip to lip calls because you both go the same way and you're just not sure. Yeah, I got pretty good at it in France though.
1:21:52 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:21:53 Jeff Larson? Maybe like, just like a whale, just sing to each other. I like that.
1:21:59 Mike Smith? Fifteen minute long songs.
1:22:00 Wes Larson? It's pretty much what they do in Tolkien's universe too.
1:22:03 Mike Smith? That's true.
1:22:04 Jeff Larson? Uh, and then I have a few listener questions from Instagram. Dakota Moberg asks Paddington versus Ted, who wins in a cage match?
1:22:14 Wes Larson? I'm saying Paddington. First of all, because I like him a lot more and second, because I feel like no matter what you throw at Paddington, he comes out on top. He just kind of fumbles his way through it, you know?
1:22:24 Jeff Larson? I'd say Ted, just because I don't think Paddington has any violence in him, but I think Paddington might get them both out of the cage just as friends, like, you know?
1:22:33 Wes Larson? Yeah. Paddington doesn't have the violence in him, but he's gonna like slip on like a banana peel and like make the cage fall on Ted or something.
1:22:42 Jeff Larson? What if they mean Ted Bundy? Does that change it for you?
1:22:45 Wes Larson? Paddington wins. I think you can't bring Paddington down no matter how hard you try. That's the whole thing.
1:22:51 Jeff Larson? And Ted Bundy, I don't think he ever killed any males.
1:22:55 Wes Larson? Yeah. Paddington's kind of a Jesus figure, I would say.
1:22:59 Jeff Larson? Uh huh. The Jack Todd.
1:23:02 Mike Smith? Good place to have that one.
1:23:05 Jeff Larson? Dear Jeff, any tips for dealing with bird blindness? Um, so yeah, I did a joke on my Instagram from the new Peacemaker show.
1:23:15 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:23:15 Jeff Larson? Where one of them has bird blindness, but you gotta, you gotta get the Merlin app, you know? Turns out some of the birds are different than other birds.
1:23:28 Wes Larson? I've been watching that show and I have realized I've really slept on Tim Meadows my whole life. Cause when I think back on him now, like everything that he's in, he's kind of the funniest one. Like everything. He's so funny.
1:23:42 Mike Smith? His character in Hubie Halloween. Oh my gosh. Just like so briefly at the drive-in theater, but it's the funniest part.
1:23:49 Jeff Larson? Larissa, or this one's hard. Larissa Isimo? Uh, or Larissa Isimo? Got it. What are you guys going to watch this fall?
1:24:00 Wes Larson? A lot of horror movies.
1:24:02 Jeff Larson? First of all, I'm excited for the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie.
1:24:06 Wes Larson? Oh, I can't wait for that.
1:24:08 Jeff Larson? Great things. I've been wanting to watch The Shining again. It's been a little while for me. Probably watch that. Yeah.
1:24:15 Wes Larson? Yeah. I'm just, I realized the other day I was listening to a lot of AFI and that always happens to me this time of year too. And so I'm like, ooh, spooky seasons. It's working its way into my bones. And so I already am starting to watch horror movies and that's probably almost exclusively what I'll be watching for the next month and a half.
1:24:35 Mike Smith? I've been watching, I've been going back and re-watching all of just the classic slasher movies, just to kind of really see where they stack up. Cause it's never been my favorite genre of movie. And it's crazy, cause I've watched, you know, some Mike Myers, some, some Jason stuff. And the ones I'm having by far the most fun with are the child's play movies.
1:24:57 Wes Larson? Really?
1:24:57 Jeff Larson? Really?
1:24:58 Mike Smith? Cause it's like, because it's, I feel like it's a humor first kind of thing. And then a scare comes secondary. And if that's not what they were trying to do, then they, I think they failed pretty miserably. But those movies are so funny.
1:25:12 Wes Larson? They scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. Like really scared me. But you love Brad Durif too.
1:25:18 Mike Smith? Oh, my guy. I love Brad. He's so fun, dude. He just calls a little kid a
1:25:27 Jeff Larson? I got two more. Sunny laughs as opinion on mullet hairstyles.
1:25:32 Wes Larson? I'm typically not a big fan, but I've been watching the movie Together. I fell asleep, but I'm gonna finish it today. Which is the one with Dave Franco and Alison Brie and the new horror movie. And he's kind of got a little mullet in it and I like it. Like, I generally don't like him that much, but I kind of like his in that movie. So maybe I'm coming around a little bit.
1:25:52 Jeff Larson? I've always been a big fan. I think they're sick. I think they're really, I like, I like.
1:25:56 Wes Larson? I think real mullets are sick, but these Gen Z ones, I think what kind of.
1:26:00 Jeff Larson? I'm in on all of it.
1:26:01 Mike Smith? Yeah, I, anything interesting you want to do for your hair, I'm gonna 100% support you. I'm just so into weird, fun hair. So yeah, mullets are great, dude. It's like, I don't know, it's, it's not something that should make people as upset as it seems to. I don't understand that. Like, people are so viscerally repulsed by them and it's like, oh, hair.
1:26:26 Jeff Larson? Yeah, it's something. Business up front, party in the back.
1:26:28 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:26:28 Mike Smith? Right.
1:26:30 Jeff Larson? Archeo Alex asks, uh, which one of you has eaten the most donuts in their lifetime?
1:26:36 Wes Larson? Phew, I've eaten a lot of donuts.
1:26:39 Jeff Larson? I kind of have too.
1:26:40 Mike Smith? It's not my go-to, so it's probably one of you guys.
1:26:43 Wes Larson? I've definitely stolen the most donuts out of the three of us. Cause I used to, whenever I'd go to the grocery store, just eat a donut while I was shopping.
1:26:51 Jeff Larson? I had a friend do that and like, I was out on a church trip and it blew my socks off. I couldn't believe anyone would like eat a donut in the store that blatantly, you know?
1:27:02 Wes Larson? You're just allowed to have one donut while you're shopping.
1:27:05 Mike Smith? Yeah.
1:27:06 Wes Larson? I, I've eaten a lot, but yeah, I don't know. I think all of us have eaten our fair share of donuts.
1:27:12 Mike Smith? What's your one single favorite donut?
1:27:15 Wes Larson? My single favorite donut is just like, uh, like a typical raised donut, not like the, I like cake donuts, but I like a raised donut with just like a chocolate icing. So just like a chocolate ring. Yeah.
1:27:29 Jeff Larson? I would say like, if I'm going to just any donut store, the most likely I am to like it is just like a maple bar.
1:27:37 Mike Smith? Maple bars are great. Those are always consistent.
1:27:40 Jeff Larson? A glazed can, like just a normal glazed can be the very best. I'd say the best donut experience in my life was probably the first Krispy Kreme I ever had. Anymore, it's like not as much anymore, but the first time ever when you're a kid, it's just like, oh, like this is incredible.
1:28:01 Mike Smith? What do you guys think of fritters? Like apple fritter? That's like, I like them an apple fritter.
1:28:06 Wes Larson? I like them if they don't taste greasy. Like fritters, if you, if the grease has penetrated them at all, they taste too greasy to me. But when you get a good apple fritter, I agree there like that's hard to beat.
1:28:18 Mike Smith? That's my favorite.
1:28:18 Jeff Larson? I'm never picking an apple fritter, fritter in a donut shop. Like someone would have to buy me one for me to try it.
1:28:26 Wes Larson? Yeah, that's like pick three for me. If I'm like, if I'm getting a dozen, my third or fourth pick is gonna be a fritter. So, yeah.
1:28:34 Mike Smith? Cool.
1:28:34 Wes Larson? Frit. Our last thing I wanted to say, uh, just a category about wildlife, because we've done a lot of conservation for grizzly bears, so we haven't really talked too much about our Brazil trip, our Tooth and Claw Brazil trip. We brought it up a few times, but um, I wanted to ask you guys just to tell, like a beautiful or memorable moment from that trip that involved wildlife.
1:28:57 Jeff Larson? Yeah, for me, it'd be the second jaguar we saw, uh, because the first one is cool, but is really hard to see. It's like a male deep in the brush. But it like kinda got me like excited. Okay, this is real now.
1:29:11 Wes Larson? This is real, yeah.
1:29:12 Jeff Larson? And then the next one we saw was just like, we got so close to it. She started like swimming in the water. The lighting was like perfect and it's just beautiful. I was like.
1:29:23 Mike Smith? Marcella.
1:29:24 Jeff Larson? Man.
1:29:25 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:29:25 Jeff Larson? Look at that.
1:29:27 Mike Smith? Look at her.
1:29:28 Wes Larson? Mike?
1:29:29 Mike Smith? Yeah, there's, there's, there's some animals. I don't.
1:29:34 Wes Larson? Do you have an answer?
1:29:35 Mike Smith? It's just like what, if it's not the jaguars, which it obviously that it needs to be, I think. But there, we saw a lot of really cool stuff. The tapir, the first tapir we saw just kinda happened really suddenly and out of nowhere. And that's always an animal I've harbored some affection for, just because it's like a weird little guy.
1:29:54 Jeff Larson? You'd think you could beat one in a fight.
1:29:56 Mike Smith? Yeah, I totally could. I don't think it would even be that hard, honestly. But no, it's just, it's an animal that kinda looks like it's not fully rendered in quite yet. Like when you're watching a PlayStation game, like load the graphics in, but it's like not quite there yet. It's some of the surfaces and textures are a little smooth somehow. It just looks like an incomplete animal almost. But it's just such a curious and funny little.
1:30:20 Wes Larson? Sometimes really big animal.
1:30:22 Jeff Larson? It might have ended up being an anteater for you had we seen one.
1:30:26 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:30:27 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:30:28 Wes Larson? I gotta do a live correction too that I think on the trip, I told multiple people that their closest living relative is elephants. It's actually rhinoceroses and horses that are closest to tapirs.
1:30:40 Jeff Larson? Oh, really?
1:30:41 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:30:42 Jeff Larson? Look at that.
1:30:42 Wes Larson? Yeah. Mine honestly, so yeah, like it's hard to beat jaguars. I got to see mained wolves and anteaters and tons of stuff as I stayed in Brazil. But for our tooth and claw trip, I think one of my favorite moments and Mike, this is probably one of your least favorite. But one of the first things that we did that was like a wildlife activity is we all just drove in these open air safari vehicles to a watering hole and we just got to sit for a couple hours and kind of watch all these different species that people had heard about their entire lives show up to get a drink, mostly birds. And it was cool just to sit and like hear everything and watch as like toucans came in and a guti and all these different little critters.
1:31:26 Wes Larson? And for me, the excitement of our group doing something that was kind of like a little boring and a little kind of required some patience. Seeing our group get so excited for these different birds and whatnot that would show up. It was like the moment where I realized, okay, this is going to be a really good trip because these guys are enjoying this, you know? And I was enjoying it, but seeing that our group was enjoying it made me realize it was going to be a really beautiful, amazing week, and it was.
1:31:55 Jeff Larson? There's a really funny photo of all of us looking at something and Mike just like not even try. Someone got a picture of our vehicles or just like every, there's like 16 of us all like intently looking at something and Mike's just like not even like trying at all.
1:32:15 Wes Larson? It was hot and it wasn't for everyone, but it did. I did find it to be like peaceful and affirming.
1:32:23 Jeff Larson? Yeah.
1:32:23 Wes Larson? So.
1:32:24 Jeff Larson? I've always loved toucans as my first real.
1:32:26 Wes Larson? Yeah.
1:32:26 Jeff Larson? Good experience with them.
1:32:28 Wes Larson? Yeah. All right, well, uh, it's good to be back, boys and listeners, and thanks for being patient with us while I was gone and you know, all three of us travel a fair amount, but we're gonna do our best to always prioritize this here show, but we love you all for sticking with us this long. Love you. Love you. We'll see you later. Bye. Bye.
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