The Naturalist’s Art of Animal Encounters
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Summary
Whether you see some deer, a fox cross your path, or spot a moose, there s something disproportionately delightful about encountering wildlife. As a result, my guest has some tips for making these kinds of encounters happen more often. His name is Dave Hall, and he s an outdoor educator and guide, as well as the author of The Naturalist Companion, a field guide to observing and understanding wildlife.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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whether you see some deer have a fox cross your path or spot a moose there's something
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disproportionately delightful about encountering wildlife even seeing something pedestrian like a
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possum feels really fun if you'd like to have more of these kinds of encounters and a deeper
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experience with nature as a result my guest has some tips for making them happen more often
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his name is dave hall and he's an outdoor educator and guide as well as the author of the naturalist
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companion a field guide to observing and understanding wildlife today on the show dave and i first talk
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about the safety and ethical considerations around observing wild animals we then discuss the best
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places to spot wildlife and how it can be in your own backyard whether it's the best time of day to
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encounter animals and the approach to take so that animals don't know you're there or if they do feel
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comfortable with your presence dave shares the gaze to adapt to spy more animals and the signs
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that will help you find them we enter conversation with how to practice what dave calls spontaneous
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acceptance which may allow you to chill with a beaver after the show's over check out our show notes at
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awim.is wildlife all right dave hall welcome back to the show thank you so much it's great to be here
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so we had you on the podcast a few years ago to talk about how to survive in the winter you got a new book
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out called the naturalist companion and it's all about getting out into nature and observing wildlife
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why do you feel like you need to write this book like why do you think it's important for people to
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get out not just into nature and like walk around and enjoy the trees but actually learn how to observe
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animals yeah it's funny i'm not a professional biologist by trade it's an obsession really and what
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i've noticed is that sure people do get outside they get out and they power walk they hike they go
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camping but it always seems like it's this mission driven thing and i'm very content with just being
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there and what happens when you're just there meaning you don't really have a goal it's really
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just to be a witness to be an observer is that i see a lot of things i see tons of things and i've
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talked to like professional biologists and birders and they're like wow how do you see all that stuff
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and so i felt it necessary to put down in words what i've been doing and you know i've literally
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had professionals say what do you do i want to know and so really when i wrote the book i had to
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think long and hard about what it was i was doing and what's cool is that it doesn't take any technology
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really it just takes a mindset the gift of giving yourself some time and getting out there and putting
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these skills into practice and really what's to me so cool is we are all here because of these skills
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you know i'm a primitive skills enthusiast as you know and we all came from a heritage that use these
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skills on a daily basis you know to hunt to fish to learn about their environment so that's kind of
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where i'm coming from yeah and i think you you talk about in the beginning of the book you know a lot
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of people get out into the woods and they'll enjoy the scenery but something something else happens when
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you encounter wildlife it never gets old for me even when i'm out in the wild and i come across
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an armadillo by surprise it's it's so delightful it never i'm 40 years old it's still as cool as when
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i was a little kid yeah no doubt and and to me it is an utterly complete joy to be in the presence
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of an animal especially when they don't know you're there just watching them do their thing hunt
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groom you know rest whatever it is they're doing it's just a complete joy and and for me it's it's
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really about one of the reasons anyway is about relaying that joy and getting people hooked on
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becoming better observers because it is so much fun okay so you talk about the book you can see
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wildlife anywhere you can go to a city park if you want but if you are planning to go out into the wild
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like out into the wilderness to observe animals the same safety precautions you take for you know any hike
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or if you're going to go camping overnight apply so you know bring survival gear dress for the weather
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dress for the elements know how to get in and out of where you're going but then also now you're
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observing animals you got to think about animal safety and people got to remember that these are
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wild animals and i i think people have probably seen those videos right of visitors that go to national
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parks and they get attacked by bison they get out of their car and they walk up to the bison
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to you know get a picture or selfie with the bison i'm thinking they're thinking well these are in a
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national park these must be domesticated but these are still wild animals you have to respect them as
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wild animals and you got an important safety rule when it comes to animals it's this at no time should
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you knowingly approach animals that have the ability to harm you so keep that in mind when you're out
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there observing animals yeah and i had that very thing almost well it did happen to me i was fortunate
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that the buffalo did not make contact with me but when i was 20 i was in custer state park
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and i thought i was safe i made a big semi-circle in this big open meadow and these two male bison that
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were way up by this visitor center decided it wasn't cool that i was nearby and it was just luck that i
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didn't get gored to death you know i played dead i didn't know what else to do but you literally i
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felt the ground rumble and tremble from their presence it was you know you start praying to
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anything that you can in that moment it's terrifying and and that was a wake-up call like i was ignorant
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and young and yeah i have a healthy respect for what an animal can do especially this big land
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herbivores they're incredibly powerful so safety keep your distance and don't approach animals that
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can harm you don't do anything that'll startle them yeah recognize the fact that there's wildlife
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out there that could possibly kill you what about ethical considerations are there any principles that
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people should take in or keep in mind about respecting wildlife while they're out there observing
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animals yeah and you know it's an interesting topic because on one hand all the skills that i'm
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putting in the book can be used for hunting assuming that what you're hunting is legal and you're following
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all the rules on the other hand we don't want to unnecessarily stress out an animal right we don't
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want to harm an animal and make its life harder it's pretty rough out there and so i think that really
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comes down to the individual in that situation what are your intentions because if you're deer hunting and
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everything's legal you know that's a management tool that for the most part has been used quite
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well and i'm thinking about new york state you know because that's where i live when it's an animal that
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is not say a game species and we're just trying to get experiences so that we can learn about that
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animal we do have to consider being invisible are we invisible to that animal if we're not and the
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animals aware of us are we stressing it out or does it notice us and it just keeps its distance and
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everything's fine and that's something where you really have to be aware of your own impact on the
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environment and the thing is is that people have adverse impacts on animals all the time and they
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don't even know it you know what i'm saying they literally tear through the woods on motorcycles or
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they're running or they're loud and animals are constantly moving away and so these skills will
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give you the the space in which you start to recognize your impact on animals because they
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won't necessarily be 200 yards away so yeah i think it's really important to always question
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your intent in the long-term impacts of what you're doing on animals i have beavers that live in my pond
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right now and i've actually befriended them to some degree and i have to ask is there going to
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be a long-term impact a negative impact on their lives and and my assessment was no and so i ended
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up befriending them and one of them comes over and visits me every night when i sit down there and
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that's she's not going to do that to anyone i'm the person in her life that she can do that with
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so yeah i think it's a very important question to consider yeah and this will come up too when we start
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talking about how there's things you can do to you know lure animals can kind of come closer to you
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yeah and sometimes that might be okay sometimes it might not we'll talk about that when we get to
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that point sure so let's talk about guidebooks are there any guidebooks that you recommend for people
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sure besides my own which is less a guidebook and more of a how-to i've got a stack here on my desk
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tom brown has a great series of field guides many of them having to do with nature awareness
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and tracking there's great field guides like the peterson field guides they have guides for
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everything and one of my favorites is eastern forests which isn't a field guide to animals so
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much as to habitats and symbiosis and things like that timber press is doing some amazingly beautiful
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guides to regional specific wildlife i feel like they've really upped the game and created a new
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baseline for what's awesome stokes they have a series of guides there's a book called the tracking
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tracking and the art of seeing by paul resendes and a couple books that aren't necessarily field
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guides but i highly recommend is john young's what the robin knows joe hutos touching the wild and then
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a really great book called beaver sprite by a woman named dorothy richards and that's a story about her
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relationship with the beavers that lived on her property and it gives you a sense of the importance
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of making those contacts with individual animals so there's a few gotcha and you recommend people
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actually get a field book like a field guy where it has like the illustrations or the pictures instead
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of just relying on you know a google image search what's the benefit of having the book as opposed to
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relying on the internet to help you identify wildlife yeah i mean they're both out there these days i
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often refer to the internet but you know there's nothing like really reading about an author's
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experience for example paul resende's book he's a an amazing photographer an amazing naturalist and he
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has these great stories so it's not just you know otters do this a b and c he'll talk about his
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personal experiences and that to me just is much more interesting and less dry than a a field guide
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that doesn't mean i don't use field guides i do all the time but there's something to me that's much
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more appealing about that personal touch that you get with um a book like joe hutos paul resende's
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dorothy richards but yeah it's important and some of the books you simply want them for their density
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right you want as many mammals in there as you can for your region simply because you're going out
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trying to identify things and they're out there too lots of great books yeah yeah uh it made me think
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about theodore roosevelt wrote a couple books on wildlife observations and they're great because not only
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does he describe what the fauna look like but in his personal stories i mean yeah as you said it
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adds something to it that you wouldn't get if you just looked at the internet yeah for sure and that's
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always what i look for in a good book it's like yeah yeah we all know beavers chew uh bark and make
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dens but you know i want to hear something that's unique to them a unique story that makes them an
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individual let's talk about best places to observe wildlife so it can be done anywhere you can look out
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your backyard you'll probably see a squirrel or a rabbit but if you want to go beyond just the
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backyard observation thing where would you recommend people to go to increase their chances of spotting
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wildlife yeah well you know it's really funny i literally and i'm not being short with this but
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anywhere and the reason i say that is because most of our population lives in urban settings and when i
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have the chance when i have a little extra time i divide it when i'm looking for wildlife between urban
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areas and more rural areas and the reason is is there's just a density at least where i live which
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is in ithaca at the south end of one of the finger lakes there is a density of bird life wildlife and
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to some degree when you see these animals or birds they're somewhat used to people so that when you do
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happen to get that glimpse of a fox it might be willing to hang out at the edge of the golf course a
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little longer than a fox at the edge of say a cornfield and i've spent a ton of time in the last
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say two years seeing more mink than i have ever seen in my life and it's 100 not 100 but huge percent
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all urban mink and i've learned a ton from watching these animals in a semi-urban environment and so
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that's the short answer but really anywhere an animal can meet its needs right those basic needs
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of shelter water places to hide places to raise their young places to do whatever they need to do
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and so depending on what you might be interested in you may have to seek that out right for example i am
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going to look for moose up in northern new york and they're not down here in the finger lakes they're up
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in our mountainous area and that's more akin to oh you know northern ontario and so i have to go
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looking for that species and while i'm looking for that species i may also find other species that are
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akin to you know the burial forest like canada jays or blackback woodpeckers and things like that
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so really anywhere but when you get specific or you have a desire to find a certain animal you may
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have to seek out that habitat one tip you give i thought was really useful in the book is look for
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transition areas and ecosystems so like the line between forest and prairie or just grass or grass
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and water because those are areas where you know maybe the animals will hang out in the forest most of
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the time but they're going to go out to the grass to feed or they're going to go to the water to get
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water so look for those transition areas i think that's a really good yeah and they're all kinds of
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transition areas you know the bank of a creek right that is a one big fat transition area
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all kinds of them and they all offer something different and they can be big ones right like the
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ones you gave as an example which was a forest and then you have a more meadow type environment but
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they can also be miniature i was trying to show the kids that i work with a tiny little transition area
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and there was a field and somebody had left a bunch of lumber there and it was starting to rot
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and that lumber offered a habitat shelter for the local voles but they would go out into the field
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to feed right and so sometimes those little transition areas are almost you know go unnoticed
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because they're so small so they're everywhere they're everywhere well so you mentioned the urban
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wildlife that you talk about in the book i think that's really interesting because that can lead people
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to think about like what's going on in their own environment in their backyard so here in tulsa you know
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i live in the suburbs of tulsa sort of semi urban but we have tons of coyote there's tons of deer
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there's foxes i've also seen bobcat and like nearby which is crazy every time i see a bobcat there's
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like a wild cat there's like wild cats out here in oklahoma it's crazy oh they're amazing and that's
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something that wasn't in our area say 25 30 years ago and their numbers have done really well and i think
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the last two sightings i had were both within city limits of ithaca so that's pretty cool yeah yeah
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okay so best place to find you can anywhere but look for transitional areas where maybe forest turns
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into meadow or meadow turns into a lake or a river are there best times of day to observe wildlife
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yeah and that that's funny because when you read a lot of the books they're going to say a lot of animals
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are nocturnal or a lot of animals are crepuscular which means they're active during the dawn or the
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dust kind of thing sun's coming up sun's going down and it's not necessarily true and i'm going to use
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mink for an example that's what the books will say they're crepuscular but what i have found is they're
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going to be active any time of the day as long as they're comfortable being active and what that means
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is if they're not too hot or they're not too cold they're going to be out hunting or they can be out
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hunting so for example in the winter when the coldest time of the day is typically in the middle
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of the night they're going to be out a whole lot more during the day because it makes sense in terms
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of energy conservation especially when it's sunny and bright if there's a storm out in the middle of
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day well they'll they'll hedge their bets and wait until night conversely if it's too cold you know
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they're going to wait it out and so a lot of animals are said to be this or that but really it has
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to do a lot with comfortable operating circumstances you know we know that before a storm for example
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animals such as deer are going to be out in the meadows grazing to fuel up so that they can ride
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out this storm with a bit more energy and then they'll come out after the storm so best time of day
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you know avoid it well not avoid it doesn't mean you should stay inside but if it's super hot
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super muggy things are going to be denning up riding out the heat in their den just kind of
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you know just trying to stay comfortable but when it's comfortable animals will be out you know i've
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seen foxes out during the day bears coyotes mink otter you name it middle of the day beavers even
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so a lot of that stuff is i think based on limited experience by whoever wrote the guidebook
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interesting okay so let's talk about staying invisible yeah animals anything you need to do
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to stay invisible camouflage what are your tips and tricks there yeah so one of the biggest problems
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especially for new people is i think a lack of self-awareness in the sense of recognizing that
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yourself not saying like you or i is enemy number one but people in general are seen as a threat
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to wildlife because they've been shot at and trapped and it can be hard and so understanding
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what baseline is baseline is when an animal is acting in a life-supporting way and so as you're
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moving into an environment a you want to be quiet you don't want to be loud and to some degree you want
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to be camouflaged although that's a somewhat a secondary concern because if you're loud or you know
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a parent you're going to get busted and those animals are going to go away but as you slow down
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and you're quiet you're going to start to see animals more and more and the idea is to ask yourself
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does the animal know i'm here and if not is it acting in a baseline manner baseline life supporting and
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if it's fleeing from you well maybe you're the cause of that and that's a good time to do a little
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self-reflection and assessment of your approach so those are the some of the tips and i see people
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who say you know in quote i love to get outside but they're constantly scaring things away whether
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they know it or not and so to slow down painfully is really important you know don't have an agenda
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of getting anywhere go 100 yards in your afternoon versus a mile and a half or whatever it might be and
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really go submit to the experience of just being quiet and slow and that will pay huge dividends
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and you talked about you don't even have to wear camouflage like you found come across plenty of
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wildlife and got pretty close with you know wearing a regular jacket or whatever it wasn't wasn't anything
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yeah special yeah as i said it's it's secondary because you could have the best camouflage on in
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the world but if you're loud and you're moving quickly you're going to get busted and yeah it's true
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most of my encounters i do tend to wear drab clothes but i don't specifically wear camouflage
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and i have incredibly consistent close encounters with animals that are not aware of me at all
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you know and i'm thinking about mink i've been watching a pair of otter all winter i don't think
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they've ever been aware that i've been standing offshore watching them because i'm still so you talk
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about this thing called the fox walk what's that yeah so that's something that tom brown coined
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although i would say that it's a walk that indigenous people those who are still living
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hunter gatherers still do but really it's a way of making sure that your senses are up meaning you
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don't have to look down at the ground because you're going too fast on your trip but what you're
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doing is you're basically holding your weight on your back leg your front foot comes forward much
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more slowly than a normal walk and you you gently touch the ground but before you roll it flat and
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commit you're saying to yourself am i going to crunch leaves or break twigs and announce myself
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and if that is the case you gracefully move your foot to a better spot and then you transition your
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weight and so it's probably you know 10 times slower than a normal walk but you're you're slower
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you're quieter allows your senses to be fully up and engaged and then when you see something then you
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can slow down even further and if your choices warrant you to go closer then you can move into a stalk or
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what i've been calling a stealth walk and that's where you know we get into the primitive skills of
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of getting painfully close to an animal if you need to or want to we're gonna take a quick break for
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and now back to the show so another tactic you recommend for people to get close to animals
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is just finding a spot and sitting there for a really long time what's been your experience with
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that technique oh my gosh yeah you know and if there's anybody out there who hunts this is the
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technique that the vast majority of hunters use you find a promising spot either on the ground or
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possibly in a safe tree stand and you wait and the idea is you know where you're going ahead of time
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not always but you pick a spot that is going to be promising right the middle of the woods may result
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in a place that you know where some deer comes through or a coyote but once again you're looking
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for a promising spot that offers the animal something so a transition area a spot near water and so what this
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can do is it forces you to be quiet it forces you to be still and it's amazing what can happen i mean
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i've literally had animals sitting on me nothing huge but you know like squirrel and mice and things
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like that sit on you and they don't even know you're you're there because you're just a stone you're a
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little sage sitting in the woods and i've had tons of things come by you know i've had fox at close
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quarters i've had bear i've had deer mink all kinds of things i mean it's just countless i've had
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snakes slither over my feet so yeah so if you're doing things right they don't know you're even
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there you're just a bump you are the log with a bump on it and if you play it cool they just keep
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going and you've just had this kind of crazy experience so yeah sitting can be an incredibly
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powerful thing to do it just requires it takes a lot of patience it does and that is something that
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i think a lot of people will find challenging we are a society that does not encourage sitting still
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or being just present and so some things that can help if you find yourself fidgeting or just
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drifting away from being present is work a very oh quiet craft in your hands for example like if you
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know how to make string or carve a stick or fidget with a you know a little piece of grass anything
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can help and then my experience is then once you kind of get in that zone which you've slowed down
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you've invested in that experience it's almost like you don't want to ruin it and things start
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magical start to happen you also recommend people change the way they look or view their environment
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when they're out there trying to observe wildlife and you talk about softening your gaze what do you
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mean by that yeah so that's another skill that i learned through both tom brown as well as john
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young tom calls it wide angle vision john young calls it owl eyes and the idea is instead of just
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looking directly at something which we do we we do that that's pretty much all we really do in the
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modern world where you're say looking at a screen looking at the road looking at the blackboard or
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whatever they use these days looking directly at something is one way to use your eyes but the other
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way is this wide angle vision and the idea is and the way i coach people to do it is you put your hands
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up left and right as if you're like looking through a window and you notice each hand equally and you
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spread your hands slowly until you get to your periphery wiggling your fingers if you have to
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and if you're still paying attention equal left and right you're going to notice that you're not
00:25:17.860
really focused on any one thing and you can remove your hands but you want to stay in that headspace
00:25:22.680
and what that does is it makes you more sensitive to motion so for example you'll be in
00:25:28.540
wide angle vision and you'll notice say up to your upper right the flick of a robin's tail up in a tree
00:25:35.680
but then up to your left down you know the hill a little you see a flick of a deer's tail
00:25:41.060
and when you notice something that catches your interest then you can use your you know your
00:25:45.880
more focused vision and identify it but it's pretty amazing and it's a fun thing to do so for example when
00:25:52.220
i approach a new environment i just try to soak it in and i'll do a combination of those you know
00:25:59.480
focus vision as well as wide angle vision and it's amazing if you give it time what starts to pop out
00:26:06.020
and i do that in any environment it might not be a big landscape it might even be a thicket
00:26:10.560
and i've done that with the snakes that use my thicket as their little you know sanctuary and i'll
00:26:16.460
i'll look in and i see nothing and i just wait and i wait and then it's like ah i saw a little movement
00:26:22.520
of a tongue or i saw the that you know that animal move just a little bit and so once again that investment
00:26:28.620
of not rushing so yeah it seems like that's a good meditative practice i think so i think all of
00:26:35.560
these things are good meditative practice and perhaps a nice antidote to our frenzied selves
00:26:41.120
let's talk about animal behaviors and just understanding the life cycle behaviors of an
00:26:46.720
animal that can help us spot them more what are some life cycle behaviors that people should
00:26:51.000
key in on in general because every animal is going to be different right but in general what are some
00:26:56.220
things that people should think about if they want to increase their chances of encountering wildlife
00:27:00.660
yeah so to start at the very basics it's that fundamental asking of am i witnessing a baseline
00:27:08.900
behavior or a non-baseline behavior and non-baseline is interesting because that means the animal is
00:27:14.880
either in the very least concerned and the very most fighting for its life whereas baseline is life
00:27:21.760
supporting behaviors those are things like oh you know feeding young feeding yourself building a nest
00:27:27.800
sleeping preening all those things right and then it gets more interesting because you can start to ask
00:27:35.200
more in-depth questions and that's called an effigram and really that's just a list of all potential
00:27:40.660
behaviors and i like to go through like the yearly life cycle of animals when i think about it you know for
00:27:47.280
example right now birds are migrating they're going to be nesting soon they're going to be denning if
00:27:52.500
you're younger animals those things are being born right now you have young animals coming out all these
00:27:58.100
things need to make a living while they're making a living they might become prey it all becomes
00:28:03.380
incredibly dynamic and interesting and so for the rookie or the person who's really trying to wrap
00:28:09.340
their heads around it just be a witness you know and just ask basic questions because if you're not sure
00:28:15.900
you don't want to fill in the blank and be wrong so you might see an animal doing something and you're
00:28:21.580
not sure and really what i recommend is make a short list of potential things be open to maybe you're
00:28:27.800
wrong with your presumptions and give it time because animals are so dynamic and interesting that they
00:28:35.020
will constantly give you mysteries i have many mysteries that i'm really not sure about and you know
00:28:41.740
maybe with time they'll get answered and maybe not i don't know but the idea is don't rush trying to
00:28:48.220
just put a name on what you think you've seen but yeah and one of the more interesting behaviors that i
00:28:54.220
i've dubbed like cycles of vulnerability are these highlights in an animal's time when they are
00:28:59.740
especially vulnerable you know for me that i think about fish that are safe in the deep lakes
00:29:05.560
waters of cayuga are forced by biology to swim through the shallows to spawn it's not a conscious effort
00:29:14.000
or um thought they just have to do it biology is saying swim up that shallow creek breed lay eggs get
00:29:21.520
out of there but while they're up there they're incredibly vulnerable right and there's just things
00:29:26.280
like that that are when you think of any individual animal they go through these yearly life cycles and
00:29:32.380
points in their life when they're especially vulnerable to predation to being you know hit
00:29:39.020
by a car whatever it might be because they're moving they're young they're migrating whatever
00:29:44.400
it might be yeah yeah so uh yeah you talk about mating and spawning is a time when animals are
00:29:50.460
particularly vulnerable but then they're also very active so that's a good time to think about
00:29:54.600
but you also talk about like the environmental factors that can make animals vulnerable and will give
00:29:58.620
you maybe new opportunities to observe wildlife uh because they'll kind of basically put them out
00:30:03.420
of baseline so a flood or if there's a drought going on or any kind of inclement weather or like a
00:30:10.780
wildfire um that's going to change how the animals behave and you might find opportunities to spot them
00:30:17.880
more often no doubt and um one of the more striking examples that we had in the last few years when the
00:30:23.580
pandemic just started we were all working from home my wife was on the couch you know learning how to
00:30:30.820
use zoom and we were also in the east at least in new york we were in a bit of a drought and i waved to
00:30:37.520
her i was going to go up to the bedroom and read and it was right around dusk and i'll be polite but she
00:30:42.700
said there's an effing bear outside and and she was correct there was a bear outside and in the first 20
00:30:51.020
years of our living in our house we knew that we had seven bears on our property that spring alone
00:30:58.060
in early summer we had seven bears on our property and that was because there was this extra pressure
00:31:04.620
on bears because the the environment was forcing them to seek food and opportunities that were risky
00:31:11.820
because they were basically starving so yeah that's an example of the environment inflicting
00:31:17.480
you know something on them that isn't always there every year and so yeah we had some fun encounters
00:31:24.520
with bears that year and that bear actually had cubs in the tree so she was desperate trying to find
00:31:30.560
anything to feed these little bears and um fortunately we were able to take down our feeder while she was up
00:31:35.460
in the tree and and um taught her that this isn't a place to get a free meal because that's a bad thing
00:31:40.760
when the bear learns where there's a you know easy access to grain or garbage or anything like that
00:31:46.000
no it's funny you mentioned the pandemic i remember what it when like lockdown was at the very beginning
00:31:50.640
and pretty much no one was going out you'd see these reports of just wildlife in downtown areas
00:31:57.040
that you know they're like what the heck is why is there a deer in the middle of this downtown we
00:32:00.840
haven't seen that but the deer were like well there's no humans here there's no cars i'm gonna go check
00:32:04.880
things out oh no doubt i think that happened everywhere we found that in ithaca um like
00:32:10.860
everywhere else we had bear we had raccoons out during the day there were deer in the center of
00:32:16.680
the city where there were never deer yeah it was it was remarkably interesting so a fun way to track
00:32:23.160
animals is actually look at their tracks and that's where the field guides can come in handy because
00:32:27.620
i can show you okay was this a fox or is this a coyote etc etc but besides tracks are there any other
00:32:33.480
signs to be on the lookout for to help you spot wildlife yeah no doubt there are so many so many
00:32:39.280
cool things that um can be discovered and um it's interesting because you know a track if we're going
00:32:45.680
to get really kind of specific most people think it was a track right is the footprint but things to
00:32:50.800
look for and some of these are seasonal and some of these aren't but like for example otter and beaver
00:32:55.520
will push up through thin ice and leave plates of ice off to the side so you can be like something came up
00:33:01.800
through there and depending on its size you can usually narrow it down to like is it a beaver is
00:33:06.620
it an otter possibly a muskrat or a mink but there's things like chews there's scat rubs the dens and nests
00:33:14.680
that these animals create there's kill sites you know so you might find evidence of bones or feathers
00:33:20.740
or hair the otters that i've been watching have left some beautiful slides down this slope near where they
00:33:27.220
live and that's a fun different kind of a track that we don't often get to see because they're not
00:33:33.940
the animal isn't that common where we live and then there's things to do that aren't exactly physical
00:33:39.100
you know the idea of listening and being tuned into animals that way because animals right they're
00:33:45.380
either baseline or they're not and when you're listening for that you can also be pointed towards
00:33:51.840
literal animals so if animals are acting as if they're scared or agitated it's good to pay
00:33:57.800
attention because they literally may show you where the fox is or where the owl is or whatever
00:34:02.780
and so that's another way to tune in and learn from animals yeah my favorite ones to be on the lookout for
00:34:08.680
are uh runs so in my backyard it backs up into a green belt um and you can see the coyote runs
00:34:16.240
right you're like why is this weird trail there there's no one walks there oh those are coyotes
00:34:20.200
oh that's fantastic the other one i like to spot when i'm out just hiking is looking for uh resting
00:34:26.160
sites so just seeing where you see a bunch of grass you know pressed down and you think well that's
00:34:32.860
probably where a deer was resting so there might be deer nearby those are my favorite ones to key in on
00:34:37.620
so yeah look for different signs besides the animal prints but look for things like on you know
00:34:41.960
runs look for chew marks uh bears will claw things uh deer when they're rutting they're going to
00:34:48.300
scrape their antlers on stuff and you can see that on the trees as well that's another one i like to
00:34:53.040
look for when i'm out and about oh my gosh and speaking of bears so when the bears came to our
00:34:57.560
house i still wanted a bird feeder but i couldn't just hang it off a branch so i put up a cable
00:35:02.440
and now i lower it and raise it on a cable with the idea that it's out of reach of the bears and so
00:35:09.540
last summer one of our dogs who's a hound was sniffing the tree like more than she might normally
00:35:16.940
and i looked and a bear had come at some point and i could see the claw marks as it went up the tree
00:35:22.820
but my system worked you know and so yeah we get bear um sign and we've had you know left their scat on
00:35:30.300
our property it's amazing they've really made a strong comeback in the last decade or so what's your
00:35:36.400
take on calling or influencing animals so they come closer to you yeah so once again that's something
00:35:41.900
that really needs to be done with some great consideration if an animal is legal to hunt
00:35:47.460
and you're in season there are lots of products right that you can buy deer calls and grunts and
00:35:54.180
duck calls and that sort of thing for the person like myself i generally do it as a way to understand
00:35:59.900
their language and motivation and i largely do these things sparingly meaning i want to understand
00:36:06.700
this animal and so i want to know if my theory is correct will this sound or putting out this bait
00:36:13.460
work and if it does and i'm satisfied i typically stop doing it but i've learned something and i'm that
00:36:21.400
much more aware of that animal's motivations and it's and everything that goes on to um you know
00:36:27.500
that's part of its life and i'll give you an example um so we long ago when we moved into our
00:36:32.340
house we had this big big garter snake that i named helen and helen i could tell was a female because
00:36:39.340
she was much much bigger than the males and she had one eye the other eye had been like scabbed over
00:36:44.500
and scaled over and she couldn't see and she was really cool and rather intimidating size for a garter
00:36:50.480
snake but we got comfortable with her around the side of our house and she would bask in the sun
00:36:56.260
along the foundation and i thought to myself well how can i call her can i call her i didn't know if
00:37:03.480
i could because i knew a if i made too much noise because i was thinking of using sound that she would
00:37:10.420
take that as a threat because she's not only a predator but she's a prey species but i thought well
00:37:15.160
what does she eat what would she be interested in so i took a small twig and i kind of crept in and i
00:37:21.140
took that twig and i just raked it gently against some dry leaves and she immediately perked right
00:37:28.360
up lifted her head and came to me you know and i have this big snake for a garter several feet away
00:37:36.160
from me and and and then the question is well what was she thinking what did that sound like to her
00:37:41.080
you know and in my mind it sounded like oh an earthworm or some bug that she'd be interested in
00:37:46.800
and it worked you know and then another way that we used to you know i'm going to say in quotes call
00:37:51.760
her is we would hold an earthworm and sneak over her and hold it in our hands and she would notice
00:37:58.860
this twitching worm she never questioned why there was a worm in the air and she would literally take
00:38:05.120
it out of our hands you know and she didn't really notice that it was our hand she just noticed
00:38:09.440
there was something to eat you know so calling is a very interesting thing right you do have to be
00:38:14.320
ethical you don't want to be leaving piles of donuts out for bears and habituating them but it
00:38:19.780
can be a real good lens in which to view wildlife and really start to understand what influences them
00:38:26.620
what appeals to them what it gives you a greater lens to their greater life cycle because it's a really
00:38:33.160
great um lens to look at an animal through you know they have their yearly influences so for example
00:38:41.100
foxes around here their urine gets very skunky you could move that and put it somewhere else and
00:38:47.900
then the fox over there might be interested and then make mark on that we have porcupines we have
00:38:53.580
deer that all can be influenced uh you have this one chapter on this idea of spontaneous acceptance
00:38:58.840
what is that and walk us through that so that chapter diverges greatly from the other ones because
00:39:05.280
everything else is based on for the most part in being a fly on the wall being invisible
00:39:09.700
being quiet and all that spontaneous acceptance is a much different approach and there's really two
00:39:17.760
big categories and the first one is well in both categories the animal knows you're there so it's
00:39:23.840
very different you're there the animal knows you're there and in the first approach you're really trying
00:39:29.100
to express through body language that you are a benign indifferent force you know so for example
00:39:37.340
our friend sarah who is our neighbor she farms on our land and she does this unintentionally but
00:39:43.980
because she's up in the fields every day working in her little barn working with her horses working
00:39:48.960
in the fields the local turkey or the fox we're like oh it's just sarah and they see her as just part
00:39:54.660
of the landscape for somebody who's not always on the landscape so much you really want to check in
00:40:00.760
and watch that animal you're probably not real close and you're just pretending to forage or you're
00:40:07.140
digging a hole gently or you're just doing something that looks like you're indifferent to them
00:40:12.440
you're not you're not a threat the other way and this is a little bit more oh i don't want to say new
00:40:19.100
agey we all prickle when you hear that but when for example you spend time in wilderness to the point
00:40:26.840
where you've really slowed down animals perceive that mentally if a person really slows down
00:40:33.660
and their brain waves are different than the harried modern brain waves animals can sense that and they
00:40:39.960
can sense your intention and they may actually come to you and in both cases they may actually come to
00:40:45.580
you because they're seeing you as a non-threat and they know what your intentions are and i can only
00:40:49.780
say that because i've had enough experience in these realms where it's like this seems like a real
00:40:53.940
phenomenon and so it's a hard thing to quantify but i was in algonquin park for 15 days on a solo and
00:41:02.600
man as soon as i kind of got past the agenda of having to go and i just submitted to being in that
00:41:10.260
wilderness you know magical things happen and i've had animals you know enter my campsite and they hang
00:41:16.360
out and they're like whatever i've been able to paddle past things like beaver and herons without
00:41:22.500
them acting in the least bit alarmed and it's you know and that's an odd thing because normally they
00:41:28.420
should be alarmed and they'll hear you coming and fly away or take off so that's a very different
00:41:33.520
concept and it's something that i think when a reader is interested um they have to really check
00:41:40.040
in with themselves and be willing to do a little bit of soul searching if you will and just slow down
00:41:46.240
and give themselves time to really um sink into the experience because animals are not fools you know
00:41:53.480
you can be slow and pretending and somehow they'll know if your intentions are are not necessarily
00:41:59.620
wholesome or or good you know yeah they they know yeah you talk about you had this experience with the
00:42:05.040
beaver in your pond you called him merle merle yeah merle the beaver and he just kind of he got used to
00:42:10.960
you'd come into the pond and he wouldn't get freaked out he's kind of like well you're just part of this
00:42:14.960
environment that i'm that i'm in yeah and i'm glad you brought that up because merle was kind of one
00:42:20.700
of my more significant introductions into the work that people like diane fossey or jane goodall or joe
00:42:27.660
hutto do where they really learn about an animal not because they're looking through a scope but because
00:42:34.560
that animal has accepted them and they're allowed access into that animal's world and so with me i really
00:42:42.160
became obsessed and actually i have a pair in the pond right now that i'm still observing but merle
00:42:48.720
gave me the gift of allowing me presence and i had to earn that because if i had done anything to
00:42:55.920
threaten him or to make him think that i was anything less than a friendly force i would have
00:43:02.160
breached that trust and he may have just left the pond or gone completely nocturnal but what merle
00:43:08.300
did allow me was you know in a way an odd friendship i would um it took a while but i would
00:43:16.100
go down and i would tell him i was coming i'd say hello i'm you know who's a beaver i had this funny
00:43:21.760
routine but the idea was to get him used to my body shape the way i walked to know that i'm just here
00:43:28.900
hanging out and before you know it within i forget the timeline but he would slowly got closer and
00:43:35.900
closer and within six weeks or a couple months he was eating on shore grooming on shore within five
00:43:43.080
feet of me total baseline behaviors because he saw me as a non-threat and then that allowed me access
00:43:48.800
to things that you know beavers do and beyond the things that we typically know you know so yeah it's
00:43:55.620
an incredibly valuable thing and what the beavers have done is i've now become an advocate for beavers
00:44:01.820
because i do lectures on beavers now and i talk about how important they are and how utterly valuable
00:44:07.560
to our planet they are they're probably the most important species we have in north america and a lot
00:44:13.620
of people don't think of them that way but they're really just remarkable animals so yeah merle was an
00:44:18.740
awesome experience well dave this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more
00:44:22.800
about the book in your work yeah so my website is davehalloutdoors.com there's you know the book
00:44:30.420
links and i don't know it's a fairly new site but i plan to put up lectures and if i'm going to be
00:44:35.720
running any classes so yeah that's that's my website fantastic well dave hall thanks for your time it's
00:44:40.360
been a pleasure appreciate it this has been awesome thanks so much my guest today was dave hall he's the
00:44:45.840
author of the book the naturalist companion it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere
00:44:50.280
you can find more information about his work at his website davehalloutdoors.com also check out our
00:44:55.220
show notes at aom.is wildlife where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic
00:45:00.140
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at
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00:45:15.540
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