Mm and so this is what they found. Like mm hmmm. On this episode of the Bear Grease Podcast, will journey into the realm of the most mysterious and rarest of beasts in the United States, like a ghost. Sometimes he's here and sometimes he isn't. We'll talk with a man who documented the first live one in the United States and see how it uprooted the conservation world and how the story rose to prominence in national media. You might recognize his voice when you hear him. We'll do a classic bear Grease nerd out with Arizona biologist Jim Heffelfinger to understand how this animal makes a living. And we'll meet yet another legendary man of the Southwest, though he's been gone for over thirty years. You'll hear his voice and receive an impartation from his passion. What we're talking about is panthera Anca, the eater of us, the Borderland's jaguar. I doubt you're gonna want to miss this one, But before we start, I've got a question for you. Before this intro, would you have known that there are jaguars in the United States? Well, the answer is kind of complicated. You would think like an orangeish cat with black spots would be so obvious, but very much not so. Those spots are there for a purpose, to hide them for a couple of months until they get big enough. This doesn't sound fair chase to me, Jim. They gotta give these coups deer and have Elena's and jaggerundi's a chance. My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Presented by f HF Gear, American made, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. Guys, we've got an exclusive bear Grease discount code for f h F Gear that's Fish Hunt Fight Gear. I've been using their products for the last year and I love carrying my gear in a chest rig or my binos and their bin no harness. It's easier and more accessible than a backpack and it doesn't get in the way when I'm riding my mule. For a limited time, you can head over to f h F Gear dot com. Forward slash bear Grease and listeners to this here podcast get a discount on purchases for your f h F Gear system and you can see how I build my gear system. So go to f h F gear dot com Forward slash bear grease for a special code. If you're buying stuff from f h F Gear, check it out Fish Hunt Fight f h F Gear. The topic at hand is a rare thing in modern times. I absolutely love it when the natural world jolts us back to a healthy posture of awe and mystery by revealing something we didn't think was possible. Jaguars are a jungle cat heavily mythologized by the indigenous people of Central and South America for millennia. The English word jaguar is derived from the Tupi Guarani language of Amazonia. Their word is ya guaria, and it means either of us. It's easy to understand why humans have been entranced by these beasts from the very beginning. A giant, yellow spotted cat with an oversized head and the mystical rosette pattern of his spotting makes him almost like a ghost. In Mexico, he's known as LT Gray and The Brazilian layman's term for the jaguar is Ownsa, but in science textbooks he's known as Panthera anca. The genus Panthera is the order of roaring cats. Yep I said, roaring, not purring. That's pretty cool. The tiger, lion, leopard, and jaguar are the only cat species anatomically outfitted to roar. For the record, don't let my perceived enthusiasm for felines be mistaken for having any love in my heart for domestic cats. I only like the big main ones that work for a living and put the or a god in every living thing in the jungle or the desert, I reckon. Jaguars are celebrated throughout their territory, which ranges from northern Argentina into Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, and then the cats continue up into Central America all the way into Mexico. In southern Mexico, jaguars are still very much at home in the dense, tropical like region. But as you had north, something very interesting begins to happen. The distribution of Panthera anca begins to hug the east and west coasts. The further north you go into Mexico. By the time you reach the geopolitical barrier of the US and Mexican border, jaguars are at the very fringe of their range, and I mean fringe in natural systems. Fringe habitat creates interesting populations of an alimos that are quite different than their ken at the core of the range. They're the outliers who utilize their survival strategies to the fullest point of leverage to make a living. You see, these jungle cats don't seem to particularly like living in arid regions, but it's just tolerable enough for some of them. I like to think of these fringe populations as special, almost like the frontiersman of the species testing the northern boundaries. It's a mystery, but in their travels they must perceive the nuanced limitations of the land as they head north, and perhaps their own limitations and the magnetism of the south overrides their wanderlust. And there is a point when they go no further, and that point is just barely inside the boundaries of the United States, and here these big cats are known as the borderland's jaguars. I want to understand these Borderlands, jaguars, their biology, and the overlap of how humans have interacted with the eater of us in the Southwest. But first we've got to hear a story that became a foundational piece of the jaguars modern North American story. It involves none other than our friend Warrener Glenn. I'll give you a head start to understanding the significance of what you're about to hear, because Mr Warner kind of plays it off like it's no big deal. But before this, we didn't think they came here anymore. This story took place in extreme southwest New Mexico. That was a completely new express So let me go back to a little bit. But Dad and I went to Mexico twice trying to catch the jaguar. I mean, it was their beautiful cat, and they're very hard to get, very hard to trail, little catch and uh dangerous for the Mexican jaguars down here or known for killing dogs. And we never had any luck, so Daddy never got to see a jaguary. Now, in nine Kelly and I were hunting in the telling Cia Mountains right east others, and we split up that morning and she actually took one dog with her maple, and she hit that track. She didn't know what it was, she thought she but she knew it was a cat. She knew it was either a line that line, and that's what we are, a bump cat that But the way it was pulling out, she figure was a line. So she told me which the way it was going, and I cut ahead of it, and and I finally got to where I could hear maple, and of course my dogs heard it and went tour. And what happened the track I read in the book. The track was very big, and you thought it was a big mountain, big old and so that when they all got with her, that thing evidently had heard my dogs and turned around and went back the other way, and it went along. We trailed that from that point on. We trailed in well, actually there was a junk track from then on, and we trapped probably another four miles before they had finally bade it. And of course I was trying to keep up on the mule. Kelly had gone back to get our client, and I was trying to keep the dogs in here, and we didn't have tracking callers in on the bull. And when I first I finally caught up to where I could see him baying off in a across a big basin with the head of a canyon there on the other side, and I could tell they had it bade on top of this big boulder was kind of a small bluff cliff there, and it looked to me I could just see it crouched there is that it was probably I was looking a half a mile across and I couldn't really tell. I thought it's big old tom Land. So I told Kelly, I said, they've got that thing bade, and I'm gonna get over there to it so I can get with those dogs while you're bringing the client. So when I call over there, I tied my mule and I walked down about forty yards. It was really rough, steep mountain there, and I looked around the opinion tree there and I can see that thing right, And then that's the first time I realized it was Jaguar and it was crowd just on top of that, and I it looked over and saw me about the same time, and that's when I took the first I ran back up to my mule and got a camera out of my saddle horned pouch. And ran back down there where I wasn't. I took a picture. I took three of it there, and then the jaguars stood up and looked around, and then he went over this rock out of the side of me, and I thought that sudden. He was gonna jump off of there, and the dogs were all around the base of this cliff, but it was too far for him to jump. It would have been like a forty ft straight off jump. So he came back over. So I got pictures of him coming back over the rock, and then he jumped off the uphill side and took off, and the dogs camera had got on his track, so the chase was on. So I ran back, got the mule and went off of them, and I told Kelly what was going on. I said, Jelly to Jaguar, and he said, I've got to get those dogs stopped and and get before I get something hurt. Well, they bade it again off in a big canyon there, and when I caught up, and when I got I tied my mule bag. I could hear that thing. It was really mad. It was roaring at those dogs. And I tied the mule back of ways, and then I slipped down their foot was the camera and it was trying to get those dogs back. And that thing looked up and saw me and one day to word word could go back in to crevice, sir, and boy, here he came, but right his eyes locked onto mine, and here he came. He knew that I was a problem, and how I don't know, And those dogs made him head on. There was a billion I've got pictures of that meeting. And and then they all fell off back into that crevice and I went in there and he had one dog by the hind leg and he broke the It was Maple, and it ran in there on top of the shelf, and they kicked a bunch of loose gravel and stuff that oh, and it hit that that stuff. He hit the jaguar on the rear in and he whipped around. And I got back and got the dogs on top. And as soon as I got the dogs back, then he went ahead and left. And I tied four of those dogs to the only and Maple was hurt. She couldn't go. He had a broken leg. So two of the young dogs left with it, and I thought, boy, I didn't know what to do. I just went in and made sure if they and they came back before I got ready to go try to catch up thed I think it ran ran them back all sous and I was glad. I was glad for it to get out of there. But that was that was the first one. That was the that was the first documented jaguar in the first picture of a jaguar in the United States. It was the first picture of a live jaguar in the wild in the United States. That's why it got gained a little bit of notorat or whatever you call it, I don't know what, just because and really at that time they weren't on the endangered species list, but they were on the proposed endangered list, and so it wasn't of course they were protected state law and all side by the federal law, but but it was they weren't on the endangered species But I still I still didn't know for sure whether to make it come out in public with that picture, because I had some good pictures of that thing, and I just didn't know what the reaction would be. So I had a little meeting with some of the renters around in the Maltpipe Borderlands Group, and we decided to do that's a neat thing to have. But yeah, this win. Yeah, we thought it was a need and it's not gonna come up here and put some rentro out of business. I mean, they're just a few of the come through. Yeah, And so I went in and public with the pictures. The history of jaguars in the Southwest United States goes back a long ways, like to the plis to see kind of long ways, and it's a complex story. At this point, all you need to know is that this was the first live jaguar documented in the United States, and it started a tidal wave of interest in the Borderland jaguar. It was essentially like someone showing up with a legitimate photo of Bigfoot. The major news outlets in the country featured the old Cowboys jaguar story. The eyes of the global conservation world, We're on Mr Warner in the series of beautiful photos he took of the Borderland's jaguar, and it came with a flurry of research to feed America's new fascination. Jim Heffelfinger is the Wildlife Science Coordinator for the Arizona Department of Game and Fish. He's an author and a full research scientists at the University of Arizona. More than that, he's a wealth of information on all things wild. He's been stomping around the jaguar fringe habitat of Arizona and New Mexico for most of his life. And I want to understand jaguar biology. I think Jim can help us. I want to start off with Jim in some deep history, like way deep. The Pleistocene is a term used to describe a time period on Earth. It started roughly two point five million years ago and ended about ten thousand years ago, which was just like yesterday. This roughly corresponds with the glaciers of North America retreating, the climate warming in a bunch of species going extinct and Homo sapiens arriving. It truly was a fantastical period of North American biological history, the likes of which Marvel Studios couldn't rival. With a hundred million dollar budget and the world's most creative digital animators, the place was wild. When you see a jaguar today, know that he's got some deep history. Here's Jim, as I understand it. The jaguar used to be I mean, it was a different species of jaguar that's now extinct. But it was a very large jaguar, like like most things during that time period and what is now North America, they were giant. It's fascinating because I believe it was Panthera Augusta was the was the big like pleist to see jaguar, and then over time it got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller, as as the big animals as eating got smaller. I thought it was interesting that it out competed and survived all the big cats except for the Mountain lion, and those are the two big ones that we have left. Sure, we had a North American chea, we had North American lion, We had a North American smilet on fatalis the big savor tooth cats, and everything was bigger. We had ninety pound beavers in the places seen. We had bison that has a very clearly demonstrated reduction in size through time to the to the bison we know from the eighteen hundreds and so a lot of things got smaller. So that was a pretty pretty typical kind of relationship. We had dire wolves, which were giant wolves in the place has seen. Why did things get smaller? I think it's probably just a change in productivity when in that glacial environment you had so much disturbance and you just had a lot of productivity, and you've got abundance of prey animals. We had so many different hooved animals in North America, many of them that evolved here and became extinct and and never never survived to anything else. What we have in North America's day is just the remnants of what it used to be. Even with the big cats. I mean, we have two big cats. The closest relative of the jaguar, as I understand it, is the African leopard. They kind of came from the same place, diverged from each other in the African leopard is still in Africa, but they're similar species. And I've read where they can breathe. They've read them in captivity and I actually produced fertile offspring, which is kind of wild, right, So the cats are prone to do that. You can you can cross tigers and um and lions. The Lager of Napoleon dynamite fame is actually a real thing. They can do that in captivity. So cats will sometimes cross, But the jaguars is from that group of panther, which is a roaring cats that are vocal and they roar like that. And so you're write there related to those old world cats that evolved over there, as a jaguar came over here. Talk to me about the roaring cats. Yeah, that's uh, just some class of cats, those big cats that they call roaring cats, and they make a vocalization, a lot of different vocalizations, and the jaguar kind of has an ug ug ug that it will repeat an increasing frequency and then fade off like that. So it's a it's a breeding call, is that what it would be, right? It's mostly a locating breeding call to breed because they're solitary animals and they will get together and and pair up just for the breeding season. But that's it. They don't they don't have male and female groups walking around together just hunting together. They just get together and breathe and it's about a one day affair and then they're separate again. So how big are jaguars? Yeah, in South America and what we say is the real jungle habitat, they're much bigger, more diversity of prey, a lot more bigger items, at a higher density. It's so jaguars down there would be two hundred, two hundred and fifty pounds for males. A hundred twenty five pounds for females is an average. But up in this northern what we call the borderland jaguars, they're much smaller than than you would find out at Central and South America. And they're not a whole lot actually not a whole lot bigger than that our mountain lions are here, and so some of the there's there's not a lot of figures, of course, because we don't have a huge sample size of jaguar weights from Arizona, New Mexico and the northern Mexico border lands. But some of the weights that we do have seemed to average around for males eighty pounds, two hundred pounds for for females, and so considerably smaller than Central, well in South American jaguars. Some indication that some of these at the northern end are a little bit heavier than those in Central Mexico. But again you're dealing with a sample size problem. And if you weigh a dead jaguar, does it have forty pounds of deer or elk inside its belly or has it maybe not eaten for two weeks. That can make a huge difference. I read that Dale Lee recorded his biggest male jaguars away a hundred and sixty two pounds. I think that's the record too. I just dropped a name that will need to know if we want to understand the robust swath of jaguar history. Dale Lee was from Arizona. He was a legendary mountain lion and jaguar hunter in the Southwest. We're going to learn more about dale and just a bit, but first I want to ask Jim about some fundamental jaguar biology. Talk to me about jaguar biology. Where do they live, what are they eating? What do they do to make a living? Yeah, so jaguar the epicenter of jaguar distribution is South America. If you look at their map that their core areas South America and Central America, they'll they'll be in little lower densities going down all the way to Argentina. So they're adapted to this several different tropical forest types down there. But that's that's really the core of where they live. But they're so adaptable they've been able to adapt northward and there's a if you look at the distribution. There's this long finger from South America that goes up the east coast of Mexico and goes into South Texas historically, and then there's another long finger that goes up the west coast of Mexico into just the southern part of Arizona and New Mexico. And it's really incredible that you've got an animal that is typically kind of a jungle animal that has adapted to some of these more arid forest types all the way up the east and west coast of Mexico and dipping into dipping into Arizona and New Mexico and dipping into Texas historically. So they're made prey because of that. That center of distribution is tapers and peckery is what we call have elena in the in the southwest, coatis armadillos, some of those things that you see kind of in a jungle environment. These northern borderline jaguars of course, are feeding mostly on Kyle's whitetail deer, the small version of white tail deer we have in the Southwest. We've got collared peckery that we call have alena that are up here in these mountain ranges, So those things probably make up a vast majority of their diets. For the borderline jaguars, interestingly, they're eating skunks, they're eating little coatis, they're eating basically anything they can get their hands on. And and I remember hearing that even UH warners jaguar encounter in NIX that he mentioned that that smelt like skunk described the morphology of jaguar, like what does he look like as compared to the mountain lion? Most people would be pretty familiar with the mountain lion. Proportion of that, the jaguar's head is going to be huge, and the proportion of the tail is going to be shorter actually than a mountain lion. So uh, a jaguars tail is it to be not longer than half of the body length of the head. If you take the head and the body together, and they have those those um the spotting which they call rosettes, which because they look like a flower, so they're kind of an open, broken rosette, but they have black dots on the inside, as opposed to a leopard would have those open rosettes but no spots on the inside. And so that that body pattern too is like a fingerprint. And that's why when we get trail camp pictures of a jaguar, and and and oftentimes they're setting up trail cam on both sides of where they think of jaguar might walk through because they want pictures of both sides of the cat to get a recording of that fingerprint of those spots, so those are with they'll pick out. They'll look at the side of a jaguar from a trail camp picture and they'll pick out a couple really unique spots. One particular jaguar had a spot they called the Pinocchio spot because it looked like two eyes and then this long nose coming off it. So they'll have some unique spots like that, and then um, whenever there's a photograph of the jaguar, they'll look for some of those unique markings to keep track of individual jaguars just from photographs. A rosette is a circular pattern of black spots. This could be a combination of four to six spots. A jaguar has a black spot in the middle of its rosettes. An African leopard has rosettes too, but not a black spot in the middle of the rosette. It doesn't sound like much difference, but standing side by side, a jaguar and a leopard look different. Google a picture of a jaguar and a leopard and you'll see what I mean. I've read that the spotting of a jaguar, specifically with these rosettes, is designed for dappled light, which is just incredible because having been down there with Warner, the sun is all. It's very rarely overcast down there. There's not a lot of rainfall, and so with direct sunlight and when you have vegetation, what you get is dappled light. And uh man, I bet they're just invisible out there. Yeah, you can picture them on the forest floor with all that dappled on an already kind of mosaic of brown leaves. You would think like an orange ish cat with black spots would be so obvious, but very much not. So. It's just like the fun like you get a fallen deer. Those spots are there for a for a purpose, to hide them for a couple of months until they get big enough that they can get away from predators. So, Jim, this, this doesn't sound fair chase to me. Jim, I think I'm calling bull on these jaguars. Many they got to give these cous deer and have Elena's and Jaggerundi's a chance we should make them wear bells when they walked through the wood. No, I was fascinated with that. It amazes me. With the greatest possible human technology and reasoning, us using our minds to try to develop camouflage, we really can't replicate the simplicity of nature. When I look at whitetail deer here by my house in Arkansas where I live, like, I'm amazed how they how they just they just disappear in the color tones are just right, and the color tones vary. You know, from Arkansas up in Canada, where a hunt the other deer, it looked just a little bit different. It just blows my mind. And then when you see something as complex as the coloring of a predator that makes his living not only by hiding from other stuff that my harmon, but hiding from prey, you kind of see the full gamut of nature doing its best work. I feel like, I know there's a burning question in your mind right now. You're saying, Clay, ask Jim about black panthers. In episode one of the Bear Grease podcasts, we established that the only large black cat documented by science that wouldn't have to swim an ocean to get to the United States would be a melanistic jaguar. So here's what Jim had to say, Gary Nucom, I hope you're listening. No offense to aunt Ali and the residents of Buck Snort, Arkansas, the black panther capital of the United States. Okay, I've got to bring this up. Melanistic jaguars. Okay, Jim, I'm not sure how much you much time you spend in Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, all these places, but you know there's all this talk of black panthers on the previous Barregheras podcast. We've established with biologists that there's no science has never documented a melanistic mountain lion, but everybody in their brother has seen a black one. Jim, the only possible wild large cat that could be black that would be within two thousand miles of Arkansas would be a melanistic jaguar. To increase that distance, it's not two thousand miles that jaguars do have a black face. Even the black jaguars have spots. You can see the spots when the sun hits the right even on the black face jaguar. But there has never been a black phase jaguar sited north of Chiapas, which is southern the very southern tip of Mexico, right where it touches Central America. So north of of right where Mexico runs into Central America. North of that, there has never been a black jaguar documented. It's been confirmed to be a wild jaguar. Now, I have seen there was a local sports and the warehouse that had a pure black mountain lion, full body mount and I knew the taxidervice had has played on there and I called. I called the tax service right away when I saw that, and I said, what is the deal with this black mountainlin because this is the first melanistic mountain lion I've ever seen documented at all. And he said, no, we just died the felt black just for a conversation. Peace. Oh man, he's stoke in the fire. Stoke in the fire. Now, I'm absolutely amazed at at the power of folklore and the power of people's imagination, and I think desire to believe people well. I worked as a wildlife research technician at Mississippi State university for a about a year and a half starting up a buck mortality to study around the whole state and spend a lot of time in the delta with a lot of good a lot of good folks, And so I'm no stranger. There's a black panther. How many black panthers did you see down there? Now that that's settled, we can move on to other pertinent jaguar biology questions. How does a jaguar hunt. There's certainly ambush predators, and they do seem to be focused, like we're talking around water because probvious reading the praise coming into water, especially in a narrowed ecosystem like this, and so they will ambush um certainly near water. But that's where the camouflage comes into play. They're hiding their ambushing a single animal. They're not a coursing predator like a wolf that would run and run and run. They're just gonna sneak out and and leap on the animal and then they're gonna deliver crushing bite, usually on the back of the neck. And the more experience of jaguar is, the better it is at at clipping that and incapacitate ing the prey. Well it holds onto it with the five switchblades that has in each front ball. Jim brought up the issue of water. Jaguars are considered the world's most aquatic big cat. Despite feline's reputation for hating water, jaguars are competent swimming and hunting in water. Of note two is that jaguars are the most nocturnal of the big cats. They just don't move much in the daytime, making them even more elusive and mysterious to humans. If you want to see some wild video, go search for jaguars hunting Cayman little alligator like things in South America. It's some of the wildest nature kill seeing stuff you'll ever see. Another interesting thing of note, when inspecting a livestock kill, it is possible to distinguish a jaguar from a mountain lion kill. Jaguar kills typically have the first and second vertebrae of the neck broke, and they eat in a different order than a mountain lion. Jaguars start at the head and show an unusual preference for the tongue, ears, and nose. Mountain lions usually start eating a carcass just behind the rib cage and they prefer the internal organs to each his own. I guess. So they have a very big jaw structure that's bigger than a bigger than a mountain lion. That huge head is not fat, that's all muscle massiter muscle, and that's all those huge muscles that worked that jaw and and create that crushing power. There was an account of veterinarian that had what's called speculum, a thing that you put in an animal's mouth to hold his mouth open in order to get a tube in there take a sample, And he had a speculum in of jaguar's mouth that was a half inch steel, and the jaguar crushed that half inch steel. So I don't know what the bite strength is, but it's pretty amazing when you've got a head full of muscle that big like jaguars. A lot of people would understand what a mountain lion print would look like. How how would a jaguar print be different. Yeah, just to an experience mountaine hunter, jaguar print is gonna look different right away. And so they're they're larger overall, but that's that's not the only thing. Proportionately, they're different. The jaguar heel pad makes up a greater proportion of the overall print on the ground. And also the toes of the jaguar are are more roundish and also kind of larger in proportion to the print, where supposed to the mountain light toes might look a little more almond shaped, a little more oval shaped, and jaguars toe pads be a little bit a little bit rounder. Let's talk about the the range of jaguars. So pre European settlement, there would have been jaguars in Texas, New Mexico, in Arizona, and I want to talk about how far they naturally would have come up into the United States and kind of what records do we have and and and how do we know they were here? I did read that in the eighteen fifties jaguars would have been fairly common quote unquote common in Texas and that there were six jaguars killed in Texas in the nineteen hundreds. How far north did these jaguars go? Yeah, I don't think there are. All the evidence I've seen indicates they weren't common at any time. Even when the first European explorers were coming in and contacting you would have you would have a jaguar was killed, and it was it was often reported in the newspaper as the first one ever in the country, and sometimes it wasn't. It was just they were so far and few and far between that people weren't even aware of any other jaguars ever being killed in the country, and when one was cited or one was killed, it was big fanfare and people made a big deal out of it, which is which is evidence even in the eighteen fifties that there just wasn't um This wasn't a common animal that was a commonly part of our natural fauna. But there's evidence in Arizona all the way up to the Grand Canyon, which is the northern part of the state. And we have to clarify too, we're not talking about places scene distribution where they were all over the country. If we just talked about, say that eighteen hundreds or so on, when when Europeans were coming in and more importantly, when some of the stuff was being documented in writing, when we actually start getting records of what kind of things were killed. But we've got records all the way up to uh Actually it was a Hopie Native Americans that killed jaguar up by the Grand Canyon, and records from there south but extremely sparse and almost entirely male in in Arizona. We haven't the last female that was killed in Arizona was There's never been a documented female killed in in New Mexico in our in our written record. When you look at the distribution of jaguars and you see these little fingers coming way up through Mexico on the east and west coast and just touching the US, it's a pretty strong indication that we didn't have a big, robust breeding population of jaguars. We had just the fringe were feathered out as it got across the US border. We did have some females that were documented in the US near the border, and and actually that one by the Grand Canyon, and we did have some records of a few young and so there were females that probably bred in the US, but it would be a stretch to say that we had a breeding population of jaguars. We had a few that were feathering out into Arizona, New Mexico, and some of those happened to be females, and there were some kittens that were their their prime habitat is not this arid, open country habitat that you see in Arizona, New Mexico. I mean, they're a jungle cat, primarily a jungle cat. They've adapted to these uh, these mountain ranges up here, and so they'll live in small, isolated, usually fragmented populations and and they're persisting. Some people probably wouldn't want to argue that it's not their habitat because they're living here and they're doing okay. But boy, they're just they're just the jaguar distribution is reaching up on the tippy toes and just touching the United States that the at the very southern border. And and that was historically when you think of there's reports in the eighteen fifties where people make a complete scientists make a complete list of the carnivores and they don't list jaguars, and and then one one does show up. It's a it's a really big deal. And if you look at the Native American cultures in the Southwest, there's really not much jaguar motif. There's nothing much jaguar symbolism at all. That tells you that if the Native Americans, that's such a powerful animal. And in in Central American South America, it figures prominently in all of their culture and all of their stories. And you have some of the Native American tribes that have no stories that include the jaguar and really no symbolism that has a jaguar. Once in a while, there there are a few pictures of spotted cats, and so probably just like today, once in a while there would be a spotted cat that someone would kill or someone would see, and and that that was of course a big deal to them, and they would talk about it. They may make some symbolism. You know. It's kind of surprising to me that the indigenous cultures that region didn't make a bigger deal about it for the very reason that it was rare. Presumably they would have encountered them at different times. I've got a theory though, I think that they just said all the guys that saw them were liars, and so, just like we do today to people say I saw a jaguar down there, and you go, no, you didn't, you saw a mountain lion. I'm sure there was some some warrior braves around the campfire mocking some guy that said he saw the podcat. Yeah. Yeah, the absence of jaguar symbolism in the southwest United States is peculiar, but only as it's contrasted with the indigenous people more central to the range of Panthera anca in Central America. The Old Amec people adopted the jaguar as their principal totem. Totem means a natural item of spiritual significance. They dressed their nobles and warriors in jaguar skins. They made art that depicted half human half jaguar deities. They named temples after jaguars. They believed that jaguars could impart hunting prowess to humans when humans dreamed about them, and they had rights involving sacrificing jaguars and humans. There is evidence that they raise captive jaguars just for this purpose. That's some wild stuff right there. But you know what they say, when in jaguar country do what they do in jaguar country, that's a joke. But the point is that where there are a lot of jaguars, they dominate the culture, and then the tribal cultures of the southwest US they don't. I think now is an appropriate time to try to understand how humans are interacting with jaguars in modern times. Here's what Jim said, Talk to me about the greatest threats to jaguars today. The jaguars range wide, Um, it doesn't really matter where they are. One of the greatest threats is loss of habitat, especially in the rainforest. UM. That's that's not new news, the rainforest destruction, but also other stresses on their habitat and in other places that fragment their habitat, even the north. But the second really big issue is just retaliatory killings for livestock depredation. You have people living very close to the land, living on the landscape. Their entire bank account is that little herd of cattle that they have, and you get a jaguar coming and start killing and it's just like removing money out of their bank account, and so they they're they're just trying to make a living. You're talking about Mexico, right, not in not in the US, but Mexico and Central America and South America. You have these people living with small groups of cattle and that's their entire income, and when a jaguar comes in and just start taking all their money away, UM, that doesn't go over very well. And it's a retaliatory killing. That is, there's a drain on the local population. Now, there's a lot of really good conservation groups that are working hard and working with local landowners to increase tolerance and to compensate. But in some of these countries, they don't have a lot of money for compensation. They don't have a lot of money for some of these programs, and so it's it's difficult. And that's that's really where the rubber meets a road in conservation these days, is is finding innovative solutions to allow people to coexist with large carnivores that are impacting natively impacting their their existence. Here's the bottom line for conservation. The fate of jaguars in the United States is dependent upon the population in Sonora, Mexico, where they're way more jaguars. All our jaguars come from there, and they all return there at some point. There's a lot of good conservation work going on in Mexico for the jaguars. However, a big consideration on the migration pattern is the border wall between the United States and Mexico. Here's the low down. Currently, there's about six hundred and fifty miles of the two thousand mile long border that is fenced. Of the six hundred and fifty fenced miles, three hundred of it is just a vehicle barrier, meaning wildlife can pass through it. More, that means that three d and fifty miles of the border wall has a wall meant to keep out people. This type of wall is definitely difficult for wildlife to cross. However, I saw it with my own eyes creek crossings on the border wall while I was down there in Arizona that a bullout could have walked through. It is a complex issue, no doubt. Do you think we really have a bead on if there's lions here right now? We have all of these mountain ranges completely full of cameras. There's a lot of cameras out there, and people have come to understand how jaguars use the landscape and how they move through and they and they can most efficiently place some cameras where they can. Is this the agency that's got cameras? I mean, like like Arizona Game and Fish, Well, the agency has some. Of the University of Arizona has some. There's a whole bunch of different entities that all have UM cameras out there, and then you have a lot of um sportsmen out there with with their cameras. So do we think there are jaguars? They're here right now. There's one that I know of that has been here a while and last photographed in December, so that jaguar may still be there. But the last one I knew about was up to photographed up to December, so it could be as few as like one jaguar in the United States. Because of the way that the cameras are canvassed in all of these mountain ranges along the border, and a lot in Sonora in Chihuahua on the southern part of the border, I feel pretty confident that if there's a jag we're walking around these these mountain ranges, we're gonna get some photos of it. Jim, I'll tell you the only way I'll believe that there's no jaguars in Arizona if Warner Glenn tells me he went down there hunting and didn't tree one. I know. I don't buy into your fancy camera stuff. Jim, Warner is better than any camera, but hey, we need to go back further and map out the regulatory history of jaguar ours in the United States and Mexico. If we want to make sense of all this, here's the short version. There's been a fair bit of legal jaguar hunting in semi modern times. Until nineteen sixty six, jaguars were game animals in Mexico and could be hunted from November one through December thirty one, and the limit was one per person. In nineteen sixty seven, the season was closed except for depredation purposes by farmers or those with livestock. In nineteen eighty the jaguar was classified as an endangered species in In In nineteen eighty seven, all legal methods of jaguar hunting were banned in Mexico. Here's Arizona's history. In nineteen nineteen, jags were classified as a fur bearing animal, meaning it could be hunted. Between nineteen twenty nine and nineteen sixty nine, they were classified as predators and could be killed by anyone at any time. In nineteen sixty nine, how over, they were protected by the state. The last legally killed jaguar was in the Patagonia Mountains of Arizona in nineteen sixty five. Federally, in nineteen seventy two, the jaguar was listed on the endangered species list, so it got federal protection. Now for New Mexico's history, stay with me. The last known jaguar killed here was in nineteen o nine, and they were officially protected by the law starting in nineteen ninety nine. There just weren't that many there, so they didn't have much reason to make regulations about them. And what I haven't told you yet is that Mr Warner actually caught two jaguars. We heard his first story from nineteen but he caught another jaguar in New Mexico in two thousand six, ten years later. That's a big deal. I want to hear Mr Warner's opinion regarding the intersection of conservation and government regulation. He has something to say. We're going a little further on the jaguar deal. There's a lot of after the one. About two years later, they put him on the danger species list. So far, they haven't declared critical habitat. I tell you the endangered species. That didn't bother me. If that's okay, critical habit that bothers me, because what they do when they declared critical habitat, then they penalize anything else, like the hunters or the renters, or the whatever they start, or the log and guys, they stopped that all that activity just for this one animal. And that's the worst thing that you can do for the animal, because that makes the people there want to shoot, shovel and shut up. I mean, why should they say they got one if they're going to get penalized for having it. If we're looking at a global overview of wildlife management across the planet, a unique part of the North American model of wildlife conservation has been the system's ability to incentivize the average person to value wildlife because they've got stake in its well being. The stakeholders personal well being benefits from the animal's presence. That has been a valuable cog in our model. What Mr Warner is saying that by penalizing landowners with overbearing quote critical habitat regulation, you de incentivize people's willingness to cooperate. There's a strong argument by biologist the experts that Arizona and New Mexico aren't critical habitat and never were there simply have never been very many jaguars here. So let's do a little inventory and I'll tell you what we're gonna do. We heard Mr Warner's story of baying a jaguar, and we learned that he actually caught another one in two thousand six. Jim has given us the lowdown on jaguar biology and their current status, and we've explored the regulatory history of jaguar hunting. I think we've now built a platform that will allow us to go back in time a bit. We couldn't do a podcast on Borderland's jaguars without talking about Dale Lee. Remember his name. Dale was from Tucson, Arizona, and died at age seventy nine in nine. I wanted to learn a thing or two about Dale so I connected with my friend Brett Vaughan. He's a dry ground lion hunter himself from New Mexico. Here's what Brett had to say about Dale Lee. There was like seven of those brothers, those Lee brothers, and I guess at one time or another they all hunted Dell. I mean, he was the one who took it serious, and he was the one who went on and and made a living doing it. And they started out catching lions. They were right there by Warner, you know. They were on the east side of the Cherich Howa's shoot. I think they caught their first lion, or what they call tied up their first lion when when Dale was really young and and and they had a brother named Ernest, and Ernest was the one who kind of took care of the business. They started guiding hunters and taking hunters, and one thing led to another. They caught lots lots of lions and lots of bears, and uh then they started going down in Mexico and catching jaguars. It was a totally different deal. The way they hunted down there. You know, they had canoe or they called them canoes with their flat bottom boats, and they had a gourd that they and I guess they learned this from the natives down there, and it was a gourd, and they had a raw hide thong and they would pull that. They would they'd float down this swampy country and on the rivers, and they pulled that thong through the gourd and it would make a roar or a sound like a jaguar, and these these jaguars would answer it, and that's how they would locate them. And then after they located them, they would they would go out and uh from talking to several people that had hunted with them. They would go out and keep the dogs on the leash until they got the jaguars started, and then they let the dogs loose. And they had some natives guys down there that were just phenomenal endurance athletes. Those guys would more or less go with the dogs and and dale them. I think would stay with the hunters for they quit going I think in about nineteen sixty two due to regulations. They said the regulations just got too tough for them to go down there. But in that period of time they've caught and harvested I think over a hundred and twenty four jaguars, and their best year was I think they caught thirteen or fourteen jaguars one year. That was their best year. The Lee Brothers were commercial outfitters for jaguars, mountain lions, and bears. They hunted jaguars from the nineteen forties into the early nineteen sixties in Mexico and bears and lions through the nineteen eighties in the United States. I asked Brett about the difference between hunting mountain lions and jaguars. He talked about how jaguars typically don't but will pay on the ground, and how they're much more dangerous for the dogs. And then he said this, So I think that is probably one of the main differences. And then the conditions of the area where they hunted. I'm sure it was terrible. I hunted with a man one time that hunted some jaguar down there. He's an older man, Mr Fletcher, and I, you know, I was pretty young, and I told him, I said, man, I'd love to go down there and hunt jaguars one of these days. And he just looked at me and he said, man, you're not tough enough. He just straight up told you that, straight up told me, he said you're not tough enough. And I probably believe him. Why is Deli and name that we still talk about. What was he known for? Just being an a houndsman, I mean being ahounsement and a lion hunter mainly. I mean he caught a lot of bears. I read somewhere where they caught he had caught over a thousand bears and cut over a thousand lions. He just devoted his life to it, you know. And and and I listened to a story told about you know, they had to learn the heart. They just had to learn on their own. They have nobody to teach him, and Dale devoted his life to it. And he was also real instrumental in developing the blue Tech breed as lion Hounds. Daily hasn't been around to chase lions or jaguars for over thirty years, but we're in for a treat. Brett hooked us up with something really special. We're about to meet Dale Lee. For those of you who did not know Dale, these tapes are in Dale's own voice. For those of you that were fortunate enough to have met Dale, you will recognize his distinctive voice and his unique way of telling these true stories. I can still visualized Dale even now around the campfire telling these stories. So please enjoy these true stories and realize they were told by the greatest lion hunter ever lived. Daily. Well, now, this is about a hunt that took place somewhere around fifty six fifty seven, and it was in the swamps of Nowyarit, Mexico. And our guests were two our farmers. Now, one of them was a man that was around sixty five years old, and he was tall and slim and wasn't carrying any extra weight, and his partner was a man that was probably around maybe forty five, and he was tall and firety slender, but he was carrying a lot more extra weight than the older man. And so then I was a talking to him about the hunt, and I told him, I said, well, now here is the procedures of the hunt, and about how we would call at night and then if we didn't get an answer, we would take our dogs and make a circle from our main camp. We went down about two hours by boat. Now we had our men and all in one boat, and then two Mexican boys and our dogs and another one. And these were kind of flat bottomed canoes that I had had special made out of a special kind of flywood with plastic glass. While we went down and we call that night from about two o'clock until daylight, and didn't hear anything. So we the next morning it just as it started breaking day. We took our dogs and started out well within them an hour or less time we hit the tracks of a big mail jag work and it was a winning track and it went into one of the worst parts of the swamps in that area. Well, anyway, when they went down into there, they they went at least two miles right straight away, and they were going fast. And I was coming along with one old Mexican fella and Marseille and these two hunters is fast I could go. And I had charteris settle from over Tennessee and and uh, Mexican are running the dogs to protect them. Always sent some fleet footed people with those dogs to keep them from all getting killed and losing them. And I had the little curt had six hounds and a curd dog. And this curd dog was a friend of Spaniel and shepherd, real long hard, and he was a jagguer dog, but he didn't bark on anything but a jump track. Now in a minute, they just went right straight away and they were running, and this little old curd dog was saying, yef, yef, yef, And I said, boys, they're jumped, let's go. And that thing running in front of them for at least i'd say at least three quarters of a model before they stopped him, and uh, they treating them, and he was a good specimen. And we came up and walked right up to the within pointy feet at the foot of the tree and up about i'd say thirty ft twenty five to thirty to this jag where right broadside. Well, he raised old gun up and gorge it would just be shaken in the shimmering is it? Put it up to his shoulders, and he pulled that trigger, and that jagg were just died out that three and hit right in front of Charteris settled, And Old Charlie shot at him and missed him right right in front of him, and away the dog and the jaggers went went, and they did go down into an awful bad place. Why you're going through that mud up to your waist and if you wasn't careful, it's a lot deeper. And they but they didn't go. We're about seventy five yards and they stopped him, and old that jagger was a growling in them dogs with a hollering and the balling and the screaming. Now that the noise was something terrible. And now the minute I heard the shot down there, Old Dale seems like a well put together man with a mind like a steel trap. He tells a hunting story like he's calling a horse race. This was a very condensed version of this single story. I mainly just wanted us to hear Dale's voice and sample his passion. This man, like Mr Warner, was a no doubt lion and jaguar hunting legend. Mr Warner actually knew Dale e. These recordings were put together by Dale's nephew Mike actually in the nineteen eighties. They're a real treasure and they're over fifteen hours of his recordings. I'll tell you how to get those at the end. In this final recording, Mr Dale uses a gourd and a piece of leather to make a jaguar call. It's a pretty amazing clip. Now this is supposed to be another jaguar, and that's what they think it is. And they will not all the time. They will laughter. But I'll call up watch government. I've had other men call them up and it al really work. And yet when you're hunting them, but you can call them up and have a good break track to put your dogs on them. And so this is what they sound like. Mm hmmm mm hmmm mmm mm hmmm. Well, now this is the way that they go when you're calling them trying to get them up. In one there's a massive celebration going on in the hearts of those who love wild places. And it's because the mysterious visitors from the South still roam into the American Southwest. Though the beasts are few in number, like we believe they've always been, the rarity of the Borderland's jack wuire makes it the most unique large mammal on our continent. In my opinion. I'll never see one, and I doubt you will either, but my dreams will be ripe with the possibility of a fantastical encounter when I close my eyes because of the knowledge that they're here. Maybe in the night watches, I'll find myself a jaguar hunter with the Olamech people or Mr Dale, And like the dream of a jaguar imparting hunting prowess to the sleeper. My hope is that our jaguar dreams would make us stronger as we seek to protect the wild places of North America and fortify the life ways of the American hunter. Hunting is such a complex thing that can't be understood at a glance. It's nuanced and layered. Part of me longs to be a jaguar hunter, but I know that I would never take one even if I could. I also know they'll never ever be legally hunted again in the United States, and that is a great thing. As hunters, we value wildlife and will be the first to say we're done. That. Mr Warner let two jaguars go that he bade is no small thing. He didn't shoot, shovel and shut up, but rather use the encounter to fuel conservation. This is the template for the modern American hunter. But in the same breath, we can look back and celebrate the life of a great hunter like Dale Lee, who traveled down into Mexico and lived an incredibly adventurous life. The dedication toughness both mental and physical, the planning of such a hunt, and the spirit of adventure of men like all the lead brothers is admirable, and I know that they have character traits in their lives that we do well to adapt into our own. This is the final podcast that will have Mr Warner on, and I hope that you've enjoyed them as much as I have. Mr Warner and Kelly will be people that I'll never forget. My hope is that these discussions will garner a deeper appreciation in us for wild places and beasts, and that will become smarter and wiser and more inspired to help them thrive. My hope also is that will find deeper value in the human relationships that we have in our lives, because they are of great value. Long live the beast, the chief of which on this continent is the mighty Borderland's jaguar, And long live the great men and women who seek to partake an impartation from the wildness of that sucker's life. Thank you so much for listening to Bear Grease. Please leave us a review on iTunes and tell a buddy about this podcast. This week, I've got a couple of housekeeping items. You can buy Mr Warner's book Eyes of Fire at this website www dot Roots Run Deep a z dot com. That's Roots Run Deep a z dot com. Secondly, check out my friend Brett Vaughn's YouTube channel called Born one hundred Years Too Late. Lastly, you can buy the recordings of Mr Dalles Stories, which encompasses at least fifteen hours of content, but you'll need to contact Brett through Facebook or Instagram at Born a hundred Years Too Late. So check out the book from Mr Warner and check out Born a hundred Years Too Late with old Brett Vaughn