Silvercore Podcast 184 George Bumann

[00:00:00] Travis Bader: I am often told that the hardest part of learning to hunt is the sheer volume of information out there, starting with what gear to use at Silvercore Outdoors. We help simplify that by making mentorship accessible and when it comes to gear, I personally rely on quality, dependable equipment. Brands like Sako, Tikka, Beretta, Norma.

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Details can be found there and on their website. And if you're a Silver Court Club member, this is one of those times where being part of the club really pays off Until July 1st, silver Court Club members get an exclusive 40% off OEC clothing and merchandise. That's not something you'll find anywhere else.

And if you're not a member yet, now is a great time to look into it. If you haven't already, it would mean a great deal to me and to this show. If you could hit the follow button on whatever app you're using to listen to this. It's simple, it's 

[00:01:46] George Bumann: free, and it helps us make the show better. Thank you so much.

Now let's get on with this podcast. 

[00:01:54] Travis Bader: Spring has sprung and with it the cacophony of animal sounds. Have you ever wondered what the animals may [00:02:00] be saying? If there may be order to the seemingly chaotic, what would the animals be saying about you? What if through decades of careful observation and the emergence of modern language tools we're able to quantifiably decipher exactly what was being said?

That's what today's guest has written extensively about. If you want to connect deeper with your natural world to understand animal language, you don't want to miss this episode. Welcome to the Silvercore Podcast, George Bauman. 

[00:02:30] George Bumann: Thanks, Travis. Great to be here. 

[00:02:32] Travis Bader: You've written this book, eavesdropping on Animals, and I just finished it up yesterday.

It's a great book. It covers a lot of things that I hold dear to my heart. I think it's a roadmap for people who want to be present, to be able to commune better with nature. And I would wholeheartedly recommend anybody who's kind of sitting on the fence, who, uh, wants to understand their natural [00:03:00] world and what's going on around 'em a bit better to pick up the book Eavesdropping on Animals.

George, what brought you to write such a book? 

[00:03:09] George Bumann: Well, I wanna save people time. You know, I grew up and I wanted to know exactly what you just said in the intro, like, what are those animals saying? How I, and without having folks having to spend decades. Basically four decades doing what I've been doing to get a, a foothold into really digging into seeing the place you live or wherever you travel in incredible ways that you, you can't possibly imagine.

You know, all these little hidden secrets that the non-human, or more than human beings show you are just ridiculously cool, and it takes a little while to get on board, but not as much as you'd think. You know, we're actually already wired for it, but like, it hit a, a crystalline moment for me when I was a kid, I, I grew up on a lake in upstate New York and, uh, I would go [00:04:00] off across the lake in the winter and I would track the foxes, and I got good enough at tracking.

I realized one day that this track of this fox. Immediately turned and took off in the other direction. Like I always assumed that the foxes were out at night and we didn't share the woods at any particular time. 'cause I never saw anything like I'm sure listeners can, you know, identify with. It's like you go for a walk on the beach, you go for a bike ride, you go for a hike, you're hunting.

You don't see squat. Right. But you know, and I realized through those tracks like that Fox wasn't just there at night. It was actually there at the same exact time I was, without the tracks, I wouldn't have known this. But the, the second realization was like, how the hell this thing, no, I was there and took off in the opposite direction when I was still on the Lakeshore, like hundreds of yards away.

Like it knew I was there. I'm being quiet. 

I'm 

not [00:05:00] stepping on sticks like I'm sneaking along, just being quiet. I'm trying to see what I conceive, but it knew I was there and I didn't know it was there. Like how does that magic work? And that's really what's propelled me for decades and trying to figure out exactly that kind of stuff.

[00:05:16] Travis Bader: You know, I think you hit on something there too. And so with my company, Silvercore, we do hunter education training, which is basically safety and ethics and rules, and it doesn't teach you how to hunt. That's a lifelong skill that people will learn over time. You wrote about hunting, but when you wrote about hunting, it was always in the past tense, as in you used to hunt.

Um, he didn't directly address it. I saw throughout the book the, uh, the transition between used to hunting and, and, um, possibly no longer hunting if I'm reading the subtext properly here. Um, but. There's a [00:06:00] lot of people will go out into the woods and do exactly what you say. They'll be looking for animals, intently looking for animals, and they won't be seeing what it is that they're looking for.

[00:06:09] George Bumann: Yeah. 

[00:06:10] Travis Bader: What advice would you give, it's sort of a, uh, a broad two part question, but what advice would you give for somebody who wants to have more success in seeing the animals that they're looking for? And maybe after that, um, if I'm corrected my assumption that you no longer hunt, what transpired that changed you from experience in the natural world in such an intimate way of hunting to the way you do now?

[00:06:36] George Bumann: Yeah. Yeah. Those are great questions, Travis. And, um, to address that one first I, I Hunting was life, like that's hunting, fishing, trapping. Even for years like that was, a lot of kids would go play football after school, you know, or, you know, get up together with friends. No way, man. I was on the bus as soon as I was off the bus.

I [00:07:00] was grabbing my ice auger and rods and I was out fishing. I was jumping in the F-150 going, checking the trap line, or, you know, that was life. And it still is part of me. And I, because I stopped doesn't mean I, I don't support that stuff anymore. I wholeheartedly do. 'cause I think for a lot of people, that's the only way.

And for our society, those are some of the, the key folks who understand wildlife among the best. Um, but I'm here to tell you, there's a lot more, even those who have been doing it a lot, maybe a whole lifetime, you, you've been missing things. And I, I hope the book, and you know, the podcast here will help people understand that the big thing that really sort of took me away from hunting was, um, health reasons.

Hmm. 

Um, my dad and some of the family members and his family line, going back, the men didn't make it much past 50. And I wanted to do everything I could to be around for my family. And so, um, that meant stopping eating [00:08:00] meat, um, which is almost like heresy in, in the circles that I grew up in. Right. Sure.

You know, hunting, fishing, like that's part of life. And I, I, I took, uh, kind of a reference to the matrix. What are the blue pill or whatever it was like, mm. I had to look at some of the, the science and my own physiology. Like I had high cholesterol. 

Hmm. 

Same build and stuff, you know, always been slim and, you know, but I had high cholesterol.

They're gonna put me on drugs for the rest of my life. I'm like, no way. 

Mm-hmm. 

Whatever I have to do to avoid being on that. And I just turned 50, you know, and so the, the echoes of my dad's situation with cancer and his dad before him with cardiovascular disease, I'm like, I. I, I, I have to own up to the, the honest truth on some of this stuff Now, I, I still hunt.

Literally I hunt in my dreams all the time. I got this amazing gobbler [00:09:00] a week or so ago. I woke up and I was like, man, that was awesome. You know, and I still move through the woods as though I am, but stepping back from it has also allowed me to learn a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have if I continued hunting.

I know that sounds a bit paradoxical, um, but not having the end goal of firing the shop, then field dressing and, you know, all those sorts of things. You know, and I, when I wrote the book, I really tried to find this reference. There was a, a just so reference I heard at one point that said the most knowledgeable sportsmen in the field are archery hunters and trappers.

The archery hunter has to wait until the animal's in range and they have to watch a lot more. They see a lot more. And the trapper, of course, is having to read, sign really closely and predict where the animal's gonna go. And, and I never did find the study, but I think that Axiom holds that, you know, the more in depth you [00:10:00] look, the more you start to find, you know?

And as a kid, I started already noticing like, okay, there's a difference in the cadence to a gray squirrels movement through the leaves. And that's different from what a whitetailed deer, the cadence of its feet, going through those same leaves, which is different still than, you know, a mink or, you know, wild turkeys, you know, that scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.

You know, like there, there are already these, these constructs that I was aware of, but it really wasn't until I was, um. Almost in my early twenties till when some of this stuff broke wide open. Like you can know a lot more than that. And, and that's where the fun really starts. And I think for hunters, bikers, hikers, anybody, um, who wants to feel more a part of where they are, whether that's home or on on the road, [00:11:00] you, you gotta learn this stuff.

And the cool thing is you don't need equipment. Hmm. You don't need very much at all beyond just a shift in your perspective. And all of a sudden, like boom, things start opening up and you start knowing things that someone's standing right next to you is oblivious to. 

[00:11:19] Travis Bader: How did it break wide open in your early twenties?

[00:11:22] George Bumann: You know, I have to be honest, I love the outdoors. I love wildlife. I started a wildlife and fisheries major at SUNY ESF, the College of Forestry in Syracuse, New York. And I loved it. Like I dove in, I took an extra semester, I studied every class, I got into every class I could take. I was a TA for ornithology and homology and ology, you know, tree ID and all this stuff.

And I just, I ate it up and then I went to graduate school and it became more focused and more, um, rigorous for good reasons. [00:12:00] But I also found, and I had to be honest with myself, it started to take me away from what really made me interested about being outside. You know, I was focusing on p values and statistical analysis and a study design that was, you know, something that would get my paper into a journal and not.

Can I set up a blind to see? I studied rough grouse and predation on rough grouse. I'm like, I, I tried like crazy to just understand grouse better in that part of the country. You know, I grew up with certain grouse and the way they behaved in upstate New York and they behaved very differently in Virginia.

Interesting. And, um, things like that. And so I started just before I'd go into the office, or before I'd go in for classes, I would go out to this wild area, um, on the, the town land in Blacksburg and just sit [00:13:00] almost like that bow hunter would and just hang out. I started birding in years before that.

Nobody ever birded like who, who watches Dickie Birds, right? Like, growing up, like Right. Nobody does that 

[00:13:12] Travis Bader: right. 

[00:13:13] George Bumann: But as, as I learned in university, you know, there, there's a lot of cool stuff going on there. So I started watching more closely and, and started birding. But there was one day, one crystal and day.

I mentioned it in the book, I think, where I was sitting there in this little spot, a birder friend. He's a older guy who was a surgeon in, in World War ii. He was actually president on D-Day. And um, Ken wasn't there that day, so I dropped into what he called Eden. It was just this little bowl full of multi-floor rows and sassa frass and, you know, all it is just, and there's this beautiful grassy glade that went down to a marsh, just like idyllic spring setting about this time of year.

You know, and like the birds are singing everywhere and [00:14:00] you know, the sunlight through those young green leaves, it was just like gorgeous. And I'm sitting there and all of a sudden at one point I just get inundated with birds. I had sat in kind of this little el cove of multi-floor rows, which were about four feet high and kind of circled me on, on three sides and birds just like landed all almost on me all over.

Like there was a white, I remember the white-eyed verio most pointedly. 'cause I'd never had an unaided view of a white-eyed verio that close, no binoculars. Like I could see the eye and it was watching me. Wow. It was just, there were cardinals and Carolina rz and all these birds were just hanging out. And I was like, on one level was like, well, I must be kind of like St.

Francis here. Everybody wants to hang out with me. You know, the, the wild animals. And um, it was about, I can't remember the exact time, but minutes later. [00:15:00] I see some movement on the ridge top up above me, maybe, you know, like 80 yards away and through the, you know, you are only getting little pieces of it.

But I realized putting those pieces together, it was a, a dog, a golden retriever, and soon behind it was this woman, and it was just like this light bulb went off. I'm like, oh my gosh, those birds weren't coming to visit with me. They were escaping the disruption caused by this dog and this woman. 

Mm-hmm.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, I've been a hunter my whole life. I was still a hunter then. You know, like I'd never noticed this. Is this going on for the coyote? Can I tell there's a bobcat coming and you know, on and on and on. And so the next couple decades was really leaning into that and asking those hard questions.

But the cool thing was finding some really cre pretty [00:16:00] crazy cool answers. 

[00:16:02] Travis Bader: Well, you read about being able to tell if there's a wolf on the ridge, by the way. A coyote calls. 

[00:16:08] George Bumann: Yeah. 

[00:16:09] Travis Bader: Just by the, the vocalization it makes and you're like, oh, that's wolf as opposed to let's say something else. 

[00:16:14] George Bumann: Yeah. And it's not just there's trouble.

Like No, it is a wolf. Like, I don't even need to check. It's been so many years of verifying and checking and I always still, like last week I was walking the dog and we're on, on the trail and I hear this alarm. I'm like, that sounds like what a coyote would say for a wolf rather than a mountain lion.

[00:16:39] Travis Bader: What? So what's it sound like, 

[00:16:42] George Bumann: you know? Um. Everything's a comparison, right? 

[00:16:45] Travis Bader: Okay. If, 

[00:16:46] George Bumann: if you're painting your, your interior of your house, like you put the swatches up and compare it to what's there. So in, in a lot of ways, a lot of these things that you'll get to learn are in contrast to what's normal. 

Hmm.[00:17:00] 

You know, the big thing is like, I haven't heard that ever before. Like, that sounds crazy or that looks really weird. What's going on with that magpie, the coyote. And, and that's where it really starts, um, for anybody. And that's, it's pretty simple, but it's very true. And so the normal thing you hear from coyotes.

Their chorus, how it sounds like a group of yip yappy dogs down the road that just wokes it up. Right. And it's like,

right. Awesome. People have heard that, you know, if you're even in an urban setting, like since like 2010, every urban setting in North America that is in Coyote Range has coyotes. Mm-hmm. You very may well have heard that in Central Park or in LA or in Sacramento or you know, Victoria, you know, take a pick.

You know, there's so many, um, [00:18:00] coyotes out there now, but it's not just noise. Just like that. Dawn Corro, you sort of referenced that this time of year in the spring, it's like they're saying stuff. It's not in a language that's like English. It's a little different, but they're still saying stuff. Of course, at this time of year, a lot of it's about.

Mating. Right. But there's a lot, lot more in there. So that normal vocalization of the coyote transitions into something with a lot more barks, a great greater intensity, more barks. And to me, there's an upswing to the vocalization and pitch that I equate with the presence of a wolf. And that's what I was listening to the other day when I was walking with the dog.

And it, it sounds more like this,

and that, that upturn, [00:19:00] um, really is, is apparent to me having listened to them for a while. Hmm. You know, just continue listening, keep listening. And if you don't have wolves and coyotes around your place, listen to the most common animal. Listen to the most common thing. The most common animal says. And the reason I say that is it, it rewires your neurology.

We are wired for detecting this sort of stuff. This is an ancient, ancient, ancient skill. And to use it effectively, you have to be exposed, right? So expose yourself to deciphering patterns. What's normal, what's weird in the most common things around you, whether that's in a city, a suburb, a wilderness area, what is normal?

So when something breaks outta that, it's like the diamond in the rough. You're like, Hey, that's different. And there's a reason talk is cheap, but it still costs something for these animals. Like they can expose themselves and they're gonna get killed if they say something, [00:20:00] right? So there's still a risk and a, and a drain on them.

So they're doing it for a reason. And our job then is just to be good observers. You know, none of this is magic. How big? Standing next to somebody. And I said, I think, uh. I think a bald eagle might be coming. It'll, it, it's probably over there and a minute or two later it shows up and they're like, dude, wow, dude.

Like that's, that's like shamanism or something. I'm like, no, it's not it, it really is not. It's just better observation. So like checking yourself though, you start to figure something out. Look for that shifts. And for that day I was walking the dog just like five minutes later I hear, Ooh,

up that same drainage. I'm like, oh, yep, okay. Pretty good odds that I was right on that one. And the more you start to pay attention, the more of these, these [00:21:00] seeming coincidences will, will start to crop up. 

[00:21:03] Travis Bader: I think that's a really good point that you talk about, which is establishing a baseline, seeing what's normal and looking for the absence of normal.

And that's something that they'll teach to law enforcement, to military troops. Totally. A friend of mine was a sniper, British army, uh, and who's in Afghanistan, and he'd say, you know, we'd look for the absence of normal if we don't hear dogs barking. Dogs barking is normal, then we know Talibans in town and people are, are operating in a certain way.

They're bringing their dogs inside. And, and that was a key indicator when the dogs weren't barking. 

[00:21:37] George Bumann: Yep, yep. You're absolutely right. And that's there, there's, it's been called different things throughout the years, but the most current vernacular for some of these higher order senses to those little shifts is, is referred to as Spidey sense, you know, the us.

[00:21:55] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[00:21:55] George Bumann: Military is referred to as that. And in the past they've found [00:22:00] that, um, the. The people who are most proficient at trusting and acting on their spidey sense are military. 

Mm. 

Um, or ex, let me back up. When they go in the military, the backgrounds that most help them are rural kids who hunt and fish, and urban kids who live around gang violence.

And, and I think this speaks to a lot of what we miss because it's in the, the subconscious realm, right. We're, we're always gathering an infinite amount of information through our senses passively that we don't even realize. 

Mm-hmm. 

And all of a sudden you get this, ah, let's, you know, I know we said we were gonna hunt this ridge, but let's, let's drop off into that, that drainage over there.

Why? Like, I don't know. Let's 

mm-hmm. 

I just feel like it. You know, and as an artist, I think I, I make the analogy of someone walking into a [00:23:00] gallery and they're looking at a painting of a, a mule deer or an elk or a, a cowboy, and something's not right there. 

Mm-hmm. 

You know, they might not be able to identify it, but they know something is off.

And it might be something as simple as there's no birds singing over there on that side of that ridge and there are over there. 

Mm-hmm. 

And, and we, as human beings, as an animal ourselves, we act on these same impulses and stimuli in the same way. And so coming to realize that consciously and starting to intentionally dive into these things and amplify your ability to then not just make good choices, but know why and, and what for.

[00:23:45] Travis Bader: You know, women, they say have women's intuition and guys, guys have gut feelings, right? 

[00:23:51] George Bumann: Yeah. 

[00:23:52] Travis Bader: But often guys, they wanna quantify things, right? A woman's like, uh, no, my intuition says no, and I'm listening to it. And, uh, research has shown that [00:24:00] women tend to listen to those gut feelings, that intuition. Just because, 

[00:24:05] George Bumann: yeah, 

[00:24:06] Travis Bader: just because whereas guys will be like, you know, I feel like something's off here.

Like, I walked into this bar and it's full of full patch bikers. But, um, yeah, you know, you know, they're minding their own business and I'm, I'm not a threat to them. I'm not doing anything. And they'd start going through and I'm a tough guy and I can take care of myself. Whereas maybe their gut's saying.

This isn't the place for you right now. Right? Um, all the signs are there, everything's around them, but they haven't quite quantified what it is yet. And Gavin Becker wrote this book called The Gift of Fear, and it talks about people who've been in horrific crime instances and how all of the signs are there.

And afterwards they say, oh, I should have known because this, or I should have known 'cause of that. Well, if you should have known 'cause of these things, it means they're there to begin with, right? Maybe we just trust our gut. And if I'm out hunting or looking for animals, or even just looking for things, whether it's something I've misplaced in my [00:25:00] house, I find if I, if I lean on my gut feeling side, um, some people call it manifest destiny.

Oh, you manifested it, you made it, you've set it up in your head, and then there you go. And that's why it happened. Well, other people say, well, no, all the signs were there and you picked up on 'em and you just weren't able to quantify it. Whatever the, whatever the reason is. It still leads to the same conclusion.

[00:25:23] George Bumann: Right? 

[00:25:24] Travis Bader: I, I re I remember a hunting trip early on, uh, moose Hunt and a older, I think it was Austrian fellow, ended up bumping into him. And he says to the group, you guys, what you're doing wrong is you're thinking, I want to find a moose. I want to find a moose, and the moose will take off. You have to think happy thoughts, he says, and we're like, who is this?

What is this guy going on about? Right? But we thought, okay, we'll give it a shot. Is what happens. Moose comes walking into camp, right? So, uh, uh, was that coincidence? Was there something, uh, weird going on? Um, [00:26:00] and before I, and I'm talking for a bit here, but there's, there's two other points on that thing.

'cause you talk about the subconscious realm, uh, Nikki Van Shindell, um, past podcast guest who was on this. Show called Alone where they drop you off in the wild. She survived, I think it was 52 days or something out in the Arctic before she was medically pulled because uh, I guess she just wasn't eaten and lost too much weight and they said, oh, we're concerned for your health.

But she would say, I was taught. When I go into the wild, as cheesy as it sounds, I say, hello Forest, it's me, Nikki. And I put my arms wide open and I introduce myself and she says, for whatever reason when I do that, the little brown birds stop chirping me. And the squirrels stop alarming me and. And I thought, well, it's interesting.

I don't quite get what might be going on here. And it wasn't until I had Chance Burs on the podcast and he was talking about equine therapy. And he [00:27:00] says he, he uses it for his PTs, ds, uh, soldier. And he says, you know, I walk into a paddock and the horses they know right away they got that wildness to them.

They know if something off on you. And I'm thinking, okay, things are starting to click here. If that wild animal can pick up right away on something that's going on, this vibe that you're giving off, what are real wild animals do and how far can that vibe transmit? 

[00:27:25] George Bumann: Yeah. 

[00:27:26] Travis Bader: So I'll put that over to you. 

[00:27:27] George Bumann: Yeah.

Farther than you think. And it's not bs. It is not bs. I think a lot of those, and a lot of traditional cultures, land-based cultures, there are taboos or customs about the way you enter the woods, the way you enter the water, the way you enter the grassland, and. Um, at the outset, I think they do appear pretty oversimplified and maybe silly.

Um, but at the same time, those [00:28:00] practices have stuck around because I would argue they, they orient your mind around being where you actually are. You know, so many of us are not where we physically reside in this very moment. Yeah. Like, think about it, like, oh, I gotta check my text. Oh, shoot, God, she told me pick up this and that at the store, and oh, hey, what are you, you know, like, you're, you're constantly barrage mm-hmm.

From inside with all this shit. Mm-hmm. 

[00:28:29] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[00:28:30] George Bumann: And what you miss is that sparrow over there is now jumping up in the tree about four feet, or in the shrub and screaming its head off. Mm-hmm. Because something. If you look closer and you were not in your head, you would realize there's a weasel over there.

You wanna go see it? Now? How many times have you seen a weasel? How many times have you seen a weasel when you were looking for it? 

Mm. 

Now, if you're a photographer, think about, you know, if you're shooting wildlife, like wish, what if you could know what direction it was going, [00:29:00] what was before you could ever see it?

Get ahead of it, sit down and get that shot of a lifetime with the animal looking the other direction. Like, that's, that's the holy grail. But when you start paying attention to this stuff, you realize that there are so many nuances that give away your intentions. Um, there, there's a classic story in the field of animal behavior referred to the Kluger as the Kluger Hans Effect.

And to put it in, uh, a snapshot. Basically, there's this horse in Austria that in the early 19 hundreds could do math, could tell time, could uh, predict things, could use a calendar, tell someone the date of something or, you know, all number of things That, and Andrew crowds, like thousands of people would go to these community and, you know, fairs to watch this horse perform magic.

Right? And they had this whole, they had the [00:30:00] kluger Hans commission to see if it was legit, like horse trainers, circus, you know, um, leaders, trainers, calvary officers, school teachers. He was legit. They couldn't, couldn't disprove this. 

Hmm. 

And ultimately there was a fellow who started studying it after they kind of handed it off and he said, no, there's something here that this horse is keying in on.

And what he found was is he moved the person who was interacting with the horse away from the horse. 'cause basically what they do is hold up a card, right? 

[00:30:38] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[00:30:38] George Bumann: With a question on it. And the horse would tap its foot for the number of times for the answer. But the further per part, that person was from the horse, the less accurate the horse was.

Like, he was like 90 plus percent accurate. It was like insane. This, this non-human being was doing all this stuff, but it started to [00:31:00] erode when the person was further away. And what they finally realized was, a, if the person holding the car didn't know the answer, neither did Kluger Hans. 

[00:31:12] Travis Bader: Interesting. 

[00:31:13] George Bumann: And.

What happened was, and and Conrad Loren, one of the greats in the world of animal behavior study had documented this in other places, is that we ourselves are giving signals we don't know we are. And in this case, the handler, the owner, when he started this, he would have the card, he would hold it up for Kluger Hans.

And as the horse got close to the answer, he would very slightly raise on the balls of his feet. He might tip his head head and he had a big grim hat back slightly. And then he'd drop almost imperceptively when the horse hit the right answer. And these tiny gestures that thousands and thousands of other human beings have [00:32:00] missed.

This horse was picking up with such, you know, this is another species and it is reading those gestures so acutely as to give the impression it can do algebra. 

[00:32:12] Travis Bader: Crazy. 

[00:32:14] George Bumann: And so it, we are doing that when you're going into the woods to hunt and go after that animal, you have the predator mindset. 

[00:32:23] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:24] George Bumann: If you are a photographer and you've got that big, huge glass eye and you're going after that thing for the shot, granted it's non consumptive, I don't care, but you're still acting like a predator.

Mm-hmm. 

And so a lot of cultures have this taboo about even talking about going hunting. They will say, I'm going for a long walk with a quiver full of arrows or something like that. Right. Because when you see stuff, you're like, oh, that's when I'm actually like laid back and not, you know, have no agenda and I'm just wandering totally.

And oh my gosh, totally. The moose is right [00:33:00] there. 

[00:33:00] Travis Bader: Yep. 

[00:33:01] George Bumann: Right. And, and that sort of breaks down those nearly imperceptible to us signals as modern humans that these wild animals whose lives. Clearly depend on reading those gestures. 

Mm-hmm. 

The way you stand, the way you look Like, we can tell if someone's paying attention to us when we're in a conversation.

Mm-hmm. 

But that conversation goes much further than even our own species. And like for a great example, I was, we had a mountain lion come through the yard, um, a couple springs ago and it was like the last perfect snow for tracking. I was like, canceled everything. I'm going on this track, I don't care how far it goes.

Mm-hmm. And I ended up, up following it for about four and a half miles and up about a couple thousand feet into the mountains behind our place here. But one of the neatest discoveries along that route was not far from the house. I'm following along the trail and I, I start just playing mind games. I'm like, [00:34:00] alright, the cat's going this route.

Can I predict exactly where it's gonna walk in this drainage? You know, is it gonna cut down through there along the creek? Is it gonna cross the creek? Is he gonna go over here near the dug fur trees? And I literally, I'm kind of getting low and looking at the tracks looking, trying the best I can from the cat's eye level.

'cause a lot of hunters will know if you're, you know, you're losing a blood trail, you gotta get to the animal's level 

mm-hmm. 

Their eye eye level. And you're like, oh, there's the hole it ran through. And then you, oh, yep. Yeah. There's the blood and you keep going. 

Mm-hmm. 

I was doing that and all of a sudden I noticed the Chickies Townsend solitaire, and there was a robin in there.

All immediately started alarming at me where they'd been doing nothing before. 

[00:34:49] Travis Bader: Interesting. 

[00:34:50] George Bumann: So, and I've had this happen a ton of times, but this just happens to be one of the, one of the fun, fun ones here is that by virtue of trying to get my [00:35:00] head inside that lion's head and getting down at its level and moving through that place the way the cat would've, these birds in essence acted the way they would around.

Catlike threat is the way I that, and so we have to think about that as, as someone who's hiking or biking or hunting or anything, is what are you projecting into this world? First off, you start realizing when you pay attention to this stuff, these animals are paying acute attention to each other. Even if they, the chicken e doesn't speak the nut Hatch's language or the Robins language.

It is definitely listening and interpreting what it is in those other bird sounds. 

Mm-hmm. 

So that's there, but then what you start realizing is they are commenting on you as much as anything from the moment or even before you hit the trail head and you open the door, [00:36:00] like sometimes it's your car.

Mm-hmm. 

Like I had a friend who, he was a falconer and he, um. And I don't think this made it in the book. He, he didn't have much to practice and train his, he had a goshawk on, you know, so what he'd do is, and he was in, in college, uh, in Colorado, was he'd drive off campus and he'd drive by, and there's this one, I think it was a church.

He said they'd drive by and there's always crows in the yard. And he'd open the door. He had a friend drive. He'd open the window actually and throw the goss hawk out and it would hammer one of these crows. Right. And they'd go ballistic, you know, if anybody's ever seen crows go something. 

[00:36:43] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[00:36:44] George Bumann: It happened around this.

Mm-hmm. And he, um. He only got to do that 2, 3, 4, maybe five times before the crows were like, ah, ah, ah, that pickup, that Toyota pickup with the cap on the topper uhhuh. You know? So he had to start [00:37:00] changing vehicles. 

[00:37:01] Travis Bader: Really? I believe that 

[00:37:02] George Bumann: because, I 

[00:37:03] Travis Bader: believe that 

[00:37:03] George Bumann: because the crows would follow him like he talked about one day pulling into the grocery store and there's just this cloud of angry crows over top of him, and some guy walks outta the store and looks at him, you know, as if to say, what the hell did you do?

You know? Yep. And these crows remembered. And so I, I just imagine and pity the people that. Loaned him cars that are like driving, gonna the pharmacy, like, what the hell is with all these crows? 

[00:37:33] Travis Bader: I believe it. Yeah. 

[00:37:35] George Bumann: That's what you get for, for letting him borrow your car. 

[00:37:38] Travis Bader: Totally. 

[00:37:39] George Bumann: So that stuff's out there in, in really fine minute ways.

That's just so fun when you start realizing those connections. 

[00:37:48] Travis Bader: You know, my neighbor, uh, had a battle going with some crows. 

[00:37:52] George Bumann: Oh, 

[00:37:53] Travis Bader: and tried, tried to, uh, kill one, or he did kill one. I don't know what, what was going on. But, uh, [00:38:00] he says, I hate these things. They keep following me up and down the road. They're all over my vehicle and they're, they're, they're crafting.

Meanwhile in, this is in our old house, um, something alerted our cameras. I said, what's going on? And my wife goes out, she looks and she looks at the garbage, and I sh, I think we still got the clip somewhere 'cause it scared the crap out of her. But there's some, uh, baby crow in the, in the, uh, in the garbage there that had, I don't know how it got in there.

It was alive. And so, of course it. Anyways, we let the thing out. It's, uh, had these deep kind of blue eyes. It was pretty young. And, um, um, anyways, eventually it goes off and it's with, with these other crows. And now these were neighbors, hated my neighbor would follow 'em up and down, would come in and seemingly have friendly gestures around us.

And, uh, he couldn't understand. He is like, I don't know what's going on with these sakes, but these crows are bloody intelligent. Yeah. And I, and I, I spent some [00:39:00] time, number one, trying to befriend crows and ravens and, uh, it takes a long time to even get a little bit of trust from them. Yeah. Uh, but, but they're, they're quick and they start, they start clueing in.

And I've also spent a bit of time trying to understand what they're saying, and I'm, I'm not there yet. Like we did a, uh, elk hunt this last year and, um. And they, there's this one area where we were successful and we knew there's more elk in the area 'cause another team was successful and there's, I think there's three elk down in this area.

And anyways, the ravens in there were just just going crazy and so loud and, and we figured, well, like are we ever gonna see, we didn't see any more elk in there. Like are we, it was a beautiful area, a great couple wallows around there thinking like, is all of this noise gonna scare off the elk? Are the elk gonna be used to it and come into this?

Like, we we're still trying to figure it out. Um 

[00:39:59] George Bumann: [00:40:00] hmm. 

[00:40:01] Travis Bader: What are your thoughts on that?

[00:40:06] George Bumann: I don't know. Fair enough. I would have to pepper you with a, a ton of questions that would be too long for this podcast. But there, it's interesting because those, those questions don't always have simple answers because it really depends on where it is. It really depends on, uh, when it is, it really depends on who else is there.

Mm. And by who I mean everything. Like, I'd guide here in Yellowstone some, and in the past when I was teaching a lot, um, you know, I might be doing a wolf watching class. 

Mm. You 

know, I, people think we're just gonna go watch wolves. Well, we can't find them. And like, what are the ducks doing? Like what? 

Mm.

Like we're, this is a wolf class, we wanna watch wolves. I'm like, no. Everything else here adjusts according to the circumstances that are [00:41:00] happening right now. Mm-hmm. In the. And you see those ducks that were just dabbling and feeding in that pond over there. Now they're all swimming away from the pond edge.

Mm. 

Do you see the coyote now? Oh yeah. Could that have been a wolf? Oh yeah. 

Yeah. 

You know, the bison react a certain way. And so there's a lot to this. Were those ravens that you were watching, were they all residents? Were some of them migratory? Um, you know, the questions could go on infinitum. Mm-hmm.

Because it all matters. As you start to realize, you know, we kind of in high school and, you know, middle school biology class always learned that there's a web of life, well. 

Mm-hmm. 

This is a place where you can actually touch it. 

Mm-hmm. 

It's not theoretical. It's, it's a functional thing, like tracking is great.[00:42:00] 

But the moment the, the elk steps out of the mud, that track is a sign of something in the past. 

Mm-hmm. 

Whether it was 10 seconds or 10 years or 10 million years in the case of Dyna, or 60 million years, 65 million years. The case if it's dinosaur tracks, you know what I mean? 

Mm-hmm. 

Um, but sound, when you're eavesdropping on these conversations, it's now all of those factors are at play right now.

Mm-hmm. Not at some point in the past. So as you start to integrate these different ways of knowing, you figure out cool stuff. 

[00:42:37] Travis Bader: So Norse mythology, they have the wolves and the ravens. Hunting together, and 

[00:42:44] George Bumann: Yeah, 

[00:42:45] Travis Bader: I've, I've seen it, you know, hunting, like the ravens will be drawn to a gut pile and they'll make noise.

Okay. So there's an animal down. I think, and this is just my, my supposition, that the [00:43:00] ravens are smart enough to know that if they want a gut pile, they can direct, let's say a wolf or a hunter towards an animal. And I've found success in the past, hunting by listening to the ravens and looking at the direction.

It's like, are you trying to guide me somewhere? And I'll, I'll talk to 'em like that. And, uh, anyways, I'll, uh, I'll follow 'em along and sure enough, I'll, I'll find success that way. Not always, but, uh, yeah. Enough that it's been noticeable. 

[00:43:29] George Bumann: Yeah. And this is exactly why it's stuck in so many cultural traditions, is it's there.

You know, if you're asked some of the scientists out there, no, no. You know, the data does not support that wolves are drawn to prey or, you know, carrying by ravens. Well, it's not quite true. You know, when you think about the way a lot of sciences done these days, let's say a master's or a PhD program, how long does that last?

Mm-hmm. [00:44:00] 

There's very few long-term studies of almost anything. Mm-hmm. That goes beyond four or five, six years. 10, 20, 30 years. When you think about how indigenous cultures operated around the world, they were observing this stuff and passing it on for not years, not even decades, but. Thousands of years.

Mm-hmm. 

And these things that are kept and codified in their lore are there for a reason. It's to help your kids survive. 

Mm-hmm. 

Right? And so, yeah, there are instances where actually Behren Heinrich, one of the world's authorities on Ravens, uh, published an account of a woman. It was either in Colorado or maybe here in Montana, who was in her backyard.

And this raven was going nuts, making all this weird noise and stuff. And all of a sudden she saw a mountain lion in the bushes along her property, you know, and she's like, it saved me, you know? And Jim was telling me the line was [00:45:00] there. And Barr and, and my own interpretation of things like that, that I've seen are like.

That's, that's nice. What that probably was was like the raven going like, yes, yes. Better. Better. That's true. We're about to eat. I, you know, it's hard 'cause we, obviously, we aren't interviewing ravens, but the point being is they, they have enough and, and documented predictive power within those powerful brains that are every bit as sharp as, as chimpanzees or, or more.

Mm-hmm. 

You know, they, they remember stuff. They remember you, especially if you've done something wrong, maybe for the rest of their lives. And these birds that are living a decade, 20 years, maybe they're operating on that every single day of their lives. So, you know, I was, I was hiking with a friend and we took off into the mountains, just north of Yellowstone here, near our home.

And, uh, we split up. He was wanting to see if [00:46:00] he could find some sheds. Or maybe a, a, a skull from a bull elk that died in the winter. And we arranged to meet at the head of this drainage, and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna go up there. I'm gonna follow this elk trail. I'm gonna, you know, I'll, I'll just hang out and wait for you to, to come.

And I'm sitting there and I knew he was getting close and we had two-way radios. I said, Hey, are you, are you coming? You know, he is like, oh yeah, I just stopped for a snack and sat down for a second, pull off a layer and, and, um, put it in my pack. And all of a sudden, this raven is making this sound. And I've told him enough of, you know, the sort of stuff that I dig into with ravens that he radios and says, is that thing talking to you?

And I, and I radioed back. I said, are you sure it's not talking about you? And as I'm sitting there waiting for him. I just happened to look up and up the bowl of this drainage and [00:47:00] is a broking mule. Deer buck still had his antlers on, and they only do that when there's something bad going down. But he was running toward, actually in my direction, in the direction of the drainage.

I'm like, huh, what the hell's going on there? And there was a ridge, small little ridge in the bowl right before the creek. So he, he went behind that and disappeared. I'm like, oh, I won't even mention it to this buddy. 'cause he, he probably won't see it. Well, seconds later he says, oh my gosh. Mul deer ran right across the creek right in front of me.

You know, like, he was like, maybe a hundred meters down. 

[00:47:35] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[00:47:36] George Bumann: And I'm like, awesome. Cool. I saw that thing coming down the hill and I glance up again and I catch movement and it was so fast. I, I got the ox up, but I, I couldn't quite see it. I just saw what was dark. 

Mm. 

But it wasn't another deer. And I'm like, stay right there.

Stay right there. I don't know if this is a wolf or a lion or something's coming right there. Stay right there at that crossing. [00:48:00] And then he radios back like minutes later. He is like, oh my God. It was a lion. And he, it was so close that he got photos with his iPhone unaided like, 

[00:48:12] Travis Bader: wow. 

[00:48:13] George Bumann: He's like, check this out.

You know? 

[00:48:15] Travis Bader: Wow. 

[00:48:16] George Bumann: And I really, really wonder because it's matched similar ones. But going back to that idea of how often and how long research is done, I've heard that call maybe half a dozen times over the last decade, 

[00:48:36] Travis Bader: huh? 

[00:48:37] George Bumann: Right. 

[00:48:38] Travis Bader: Interesting. 

[00:48:41] George Bumann: Think of trying to arrange a PhD study around that call. 

[00:48:45] Travis Bader: Right.

[00:48:46] George Bumann: Like you, good 

[00:48:47] Travis Bader: luck 

[00:48:47] George Bumann: you. You're good luck finding funding for that buddy. Right? You do. But if you pay attention out there, it's like the last time I heard something like this, this happened. Mm-hmm. So let's pay attention again. Holy [00:49:00] cow. Something really similar just happened again. And so you can see over the span of hundreds or thousands of years, people are like, yeah, you need to really listen to, to the Ravens.

[00:49:13] Travis Bader: I was on a spring bear hunt a number of years ago with my wife, and we're coming down from one location and we see. A, a whitetailed deer kind of in front of us. And I thought, oh, this is kind of neat. We'll just watch it for a bit. It's springtime, it's, it's a non-game species here for us, but, and it just kept walking up and looking, walking up and looking, and I'm like, oh, I wonder how close it'll get.

And then it looks like it's gonna go into the bushes. And then I'm like, well, let's see if I can, I got a little, little dough call here. Let's see if I can make some noises and see how it reacts if I could talk with this thing, or, or what. So I'm, I'm making these noises and then it's coming back and it's interesting.

It's trying to figure out what's going on. And in the distance I hear what sounds like a, um, [00:50:00] like a little elk call, you know, those little squeeze calls that then that's it. There you 

[00:50:07] George Bumann: Yeah, 

[00:50:08] Travis Bader: that's right. Kind of like that. I hear the sound every time. Every time I give a little, uh, uh, ble on this thing, I'm like, oh, that.

That's weird. I wonder what that is. Right? And then the deer goes off into the bushes a little bit and can't quite see it, and we hear this other thing moving and getting closer. And I go to my wife, I'm like, that's not moving like an ungulate. It's not moving like a deer. That sounds like a bear, right?

And, uh, anyways, I said, well, let's get ready because you might have a bear here, but what the hell's making that that does it sound? And then we see it's just flash of, um, this tawny colored go screaming across. And I'm, I'm mentally trying to process 'cause we're, we got so many black bears in their area.

The color phase, phase ones are few and far between. And I'm thinking cougar or what? Like, it was just outta the corner of the eye [00:51:00] flashed through and, and like, what the, what's going on? And anyways, then it came running back and it was about 20 yards from us just. Giant grizzly bear. Wow. And I've never heard a grizzly bear make that noise before, but it was, wow.

It, it was a really weird experience and I, and I captured it. You can hear it. Uh, 'cause I was filming the, uh, the deer and I crank the audio a little bit and you can hear the noise that the, uh, the grizzlies making. And maybe I'll send it over afterwards. Oh, I'd 

[00:51:28] George Bumann: love to hear that. That's awesome. 

[00:51:30] Travis Bader: It, it was just a, it was an odd experience and number.

We can't hunt grizzlies in British Columbia. We've got a moratorium on it. So we're in a situation now where we've got an animal that we don't wanna have around us, especially at 20 yards. And it was standing there looking, it was like, okay, let's hope it get, gave it a couple shouts and off of wind. But, uh, uh, that, that was, I thought, kind of an interesting experience.

Oh, 

wow. 

[00:51:54] George Bumann: Yeah. When it's fun that some research, like a friend of mine, um, [00:52:00] John Young had written a book in 2012 called What the Robin Knows. Like, there's very few books that talk about what we're talking about here. You can't find it very readily at all. Um, like there's a book, uh, written by a English gentleman, Jim Corbitt.

Uh, called Jungle Lore. Most people would be familiar with his book. Um, the Man Eating Tigers of Kon. Right, okay. In related titles. Right. But he could kill the man eating tigers when droves of, of horse and, uh, hunters on feet, uh, on foot and on the backs of elephants could not corral these, these tigers.

And through that language of the environment, he by himself could go in and find these lions, or excuse me, tigers. And, um, he talks about a lot of these things in detail, which he grew up hanging out with the indigenous folks in that area who had that background and that history to say, [00:53:00] yeah, you, this stuff's worth.

Checking into, but the contemporary science wasn't there. Like John had a hard time finding much at all to back up what he'd experienced. You know, it was fun meeting him. 'cause he, he and I both came at it similarly in that we noticed different things and we filled in different pieces of this picture for each other.

But, um, modern Science hadn't really been doing that. And since he wrote that book and up to the time I wrote mine, like, there's so much out there now. You can't keep up with it. 

[00:53:33] Travis Bader: Mm. 

[00:53:34] George Bumann: Like they've even found, there was a paper I ran across of, I think it was Ocelots in South America mimicking monkeys. 

[00:53:43] Travis Bader: Wow. 

[00:53:43] George Bumann: As a hunting strategy.

[00:53:45] Travis Bader: Wow. 

[00:53:46] George Bumann: Yeah. And, um, moth, moth larvae, caterpillars screaming 

[00:53:54] Travis Bader: really 

[00:53:55] George Bumann: in high frequency tones that mimic the. [00:54:00] Code, red alarm call that birds make when there's a fast moving predator imminently upon 'em. 

[00:54:07] Travis Bader: Ah. 

[00:54:09] George Bumann: So you start seeing like this spy versus spy. Right. And some of it thankfully is, is documented in some of the newer scientific research, which at times does trickle down into the popular literature.

So we can be like, oh yeah, actually that that is a thing. 

[00:54:25] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[00:54:26] George Bumann: That is possible. 

[00:54:28] Travis Bader: I had an indigenous woman one time tell me that she swears that whenever the squirrels are alarming her, the whole area is burnt, she might as well move or go somewhere else. 

[00:54:39] George Bumann: Yep. Pretty much. 

[00:54:41] Travis Bader: Yeah. Okay. 

[00:54:42] George Bumann: Pretty much, you know, and, and in the scientific literature there's still kind of debate over like, okay, when a, a red squirrel does, right?

Mm-hmm. 

That's most often labeled as a ground predator. Versus when they go,[00:55:00] 

you know that higher pitch stuff? Yeah. Something in the air. But so tell them, do we see that stuff, you know, as one photographer friends, and he's one of the rare ones that actually pays attention to this stuff. He's like, yeah, one in 13, 12 or 13 times. Do you hear alarms like that? Do you actually get to see what's causing it?

[00:55:19] Travis Bader: Right. 

[00:55:20] George Bumann: But you really remember it that one time that you do see or hear that and you're like, okay, last time, you know, you just like we were talking about before. Um, but the squirrels, they are not clueless as to what these others squirrels are saying. Yeah. They might be squawking at each other at times, but there's a difference.

I don't know that exact difference, but I do know that, yeah, you don't even have to get in the woods and the squirrels are going berserk. The cool thing to know though, is that as you. Spend time out there figuring out what the normal is, [00:56:00] the more, how should we say this best, the more that your nervous system and your awareness settles into a pattern that you start to not be seen as a threat.

[00:56:12] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[00:56:13] George Bumann: So a great example of this is with chickies, like we can actually monitor and count, like the guys out there who wanna want, want some data. 

[00:56:21] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[00:56:22] George Bumann: Play with this. If you're in the area with black cap chickies, 

[00:56:25] Travis Bader: which we are, 

[00:56:27] George Bumann: go for a walk. You go for a walk and you hear Chick Chick, you can eat. Eat, okay?

Mm-hmm. This is not their song. The song is the. 

[00:56:39] Travis Bader: That's right. 

[00:56:41] George Bumann: Right. Yeah. That's the song you hear in Spring. But Chick EDD is used for a lot of stuff, but it's often used as an alarm. The severity of the alarm is indicated by the number of Ds in the chain. 

[00:56:55] Travis Bader: Interesting. 

[00:56:56] George Bumann: So like when I walk with my dog, Hobbes, he's a goofy [00:57:00] black Labrador, a hundred pounds of, of nuts.

So, you know, he is running through the creek and you know, picking up sticks that are way too big for him. And you know,

you know, four to six if I count, 

Hmm. 

If I go by myself and leave him at home, he's pissed. 

Mm-hmm. 

But what I hear is chickadee. Took it. And, and, and mind you, I'm not walking like I'm going to an office meeting. Mm-hmm. I'm walking, like I've got Saturday to myself and I'm just wandering. 

[00:57:39] Travis Bader: Hmm. 

[00:57:40] George Bumann: That, that agenda, that hike to the top of the mountain mo marks you as a predator in essence.

So with the wander, I'm getting alarmed at the way a coyote does when it's just walking. It's not hunting. It's just traveling, not [00:58:00] hurting anybody. It's still of concern, but it's not screaming. Bloody murder a threat. Right. 

[00:58:09] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[00:58:09] George Bumann: So there are times, actually one time with our dogs that preceded Hobbes and I were walking back through this area that we often encounter the chickadees.

We hear chick,

I'm like, holy. I'm like, something's going on. What? What is going on here? I am not like packing heat, trying to mow down chickadees. Like, what the hell is this? The dog's right next to me. He's not like wrestling, chickadees and chewing up their kids and like, and outta the corner of my eye, I catch in the far Aspen grove, a blue bit of movement, blue gray streak of a Cooper's Hawk, 

huh?

Going through the area. That's what they were talking [00:59:00] about. So that was true. Code red, you know, or very, very, very. Um, concerning development in the area. They have a very high pitched, I can't even hear it with my hearing damage anymore. High pitched kind of call. 

Mm-hmm. 

That's what those caterpillars do.

'cause that means is right on top of me and it has a ventricular quality to the, a lot of high frequency sounds are hard to pinpoint, and that's part of the physics of sound is that some of these things are designed that way. They use them because, as opposed to a low pitch sound, like the, you know, it's hard to pinpoint high, high frequencies defract and break down really quickly over distance and they're hard to pinpoint.

Hmm. So all these layers, these gorgeous layers are, are, are moving in and out and around you every time you go outside. And even before you go outside, like, we had a Raven study going on here, and I was helping [01:00:00] out, we were trying to capture ravens, which is one of the hardest damn jobs you can ever imagine.

Yes, 

yes. Because they're so smart. 

Mm-hmm. 

And we put this dead squirrel in the, this was in Yellowstone. So we put the dead squirrel in the pull out behind the car we're in, and we set the trap up and cover it with newspaper. Like it's just a big pile of garbage. Right. And we sit there and this raven like flies by you.

A lot of birds just, they'll, they'll fly by. 

[01:00:25] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:00:26] George Bumann: The, the Ravens were looking not at the car, but in it. 

[01:00:31] Travis Bader: Mm. 

[01:00:31] George Bumann: They're like, 

[01:00:32] Travis Bader: who's in it? 

[01:00:33] George Bumann: Why are you just sitting there? Mm-hmm. I'm totally anthropomorphizing, but you know, sure. In many ways we have that in us because it does help us make the leap, you know, to not anthropomorphize.

We we're actually probably missing things. And so what it seemed like was this bird was like. Dude, you're acting shifty. 

[01:00:56] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:00:57] George Bumann: You guys should have gone out of the vehicle long ago and [01:01:00] been hiking somewhere around here. I'm just gonna go over, and it did, went about 200 meters on a low hill, sat on top of a rock and just watched.

[01:01:08] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:01:10] George Bumann: We didn't catch any ravens. 

[01:01:12] Travis Bader: It's spotting the absence of normal. It is established a baseline. People usually get outta their vehicles. That's not normal, 

[01:01:20] George Bumann: you know? Exactly. Now, if we were having lunch, we got out and we were having lunch and you know, chips were flying and, you know, baloney sandwiches, like it would've been all in.

It would've been right there with us right 

[01:01:31] Travis Bader: now. Now the, uh, to be like the oracle from the Matrix where she says, what's really gonna bake your noodle is would, you've knocked over that glass if we didn't. So if you got out and you had a sandwich and had your lunch and got out like you're normally doing.

Would there be non-verbal sort of vibes that you still give off because you're trying to get that raven despite acting it? I don't know. 

[01:01:56] George Bumann: They've seemed to feel like they've documented that [01:02:00] Dogs know when we I are insincere. 

Hmm. 

You know, we, we use the same words, but they seem to know we're BSing them, you know?

And, and how do they know? Is it, is there a tone? Uh, is it eye contact? Is there amount of eye contact or a, a stilted way we move or stand? It's hard to say, but the one thing is you dive into this world of understanding wildlife and even our own pets. They're a great place to start learning a lot of this stuff.

Um, how many people have noticed your dog has a different bark for the UPS guy or the FedEx guy or the regular mailman versus the neighbor versus a family member? 

Mm. 

Like they're deciphering and discerning and talking about these differences all around us. Mm-hmm. And, and as you're paying attention to these things, you start to actually begin to get a picture of how you [01:03:00] are perceived.

Just the o yesterday was a great example. My wife and I, I was, I was in a funk. I was working in the studio. Whatever was going through my head, I was just not in the right place. I'm like, yeah, we need to go for a walk. You know, we do this for each other, you know? 

[01:03:19] Travis Bader: Yep. 

[01:03:20] George Bumann: She drags me out. 

[01:03:22] Travis Bader: Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:03:23] George Bumann: And within half an hour, I'm, I'm good again.

But when you're in that funk, things don't wanna be around you. 

[01:03:34] Travis Bader: Yes. 

[01:03:35] George Bumann: They just, they're just like, there's nothing there. I. Yeah. Or if you do run into something, they're like, yeah, let, lemme just go over there, go over here. You, you figure out your crap, whatever that is. 

[01:03:47] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[01:03:48] George Bumann: You know, and I, the way back people'll figure that 

[01:03:49] Travis Bader: out.

[01:03:49] George Bumann: We go hiking on the way back, we run into a group of seven mule deer, get to sit down. They're pretty much all around us feeding, grazing two young bucks and [01:04:00] one older and one younger. We go back right before we get to the car, there's a red fox sitting on the hill right there and just walks across in front of us.

And I'm like, you know, once or twice this happens, you're like, eh, what a coincidence. But over enough time of paying attention to this sort of thing, you, you're like, I bet whatever I was putting out there at the start of this was pushing things away. And on the way back. Mellowed out. And, you know, it can easily be blown off, but I encourage listeners to, to play with it.

Even, even role play. 

[01:04:41] Travis Bader: You 

[01:04:41] George Bumann: know, be Dr. Jekyll versus Mr. Hyde and just see how your yardbirds behave around you. You know, we know that they behave different towards our dog versus the neighbor dog. We know that the mag pies respond differently to our neighbor's grandson than they do the other kid in the [01:05:00] neighborhood.

'cause the grandson shoots at him. 

[01:05:03] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:05:03] George Bumann: It's like, you can hear it. It's like, oh, Brian must be around. 

[01:05:08] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[01:05:09] George Bumann: You know, but that's, that's a very, um, kind of obvious example, but I think as you start observing, you start seeing these subtler layers of it manifest. And to, into, to be honest, some pretty mysterious.

Stuff. You know, anybody that spent a lot of time around hunting big old bucks or bulls, you're like, it just disappeared. Or it somehow knew I was in the stand. You know, I built that ground blind months ago and it's been there. The wind was right. 

Mm-hmm. 

And it just disappeared. Like, what the hell is that?

That's you not being aware of the fact that there's this entire community talking about the status quo in that very [01:06:00] spot, in that moment. And you are one of the topics of conversation crows count five guys go to into a blind three come out. They know that there's still somebody in there. 

[01:06:12] Travis Bader: They count. Wow.

[01:06:14] George Bumann: Yeah. They know days of the week. You know, the, the Fri I wrote about a friend, she worked as a, a playground mom, you know, at this neighborhood school across from her house. And they'd have popcorn every Friday for the kids. The PTA would bring in popcorn, everybody. Popcorn for the teachers, popcorn for the kids.

And every morning on Friday, the crows would line up on the wires, on the school roof, on the playground, just waiting for recess. They know when the kids got their popcorn and were of course spilling it everywhere, and they got popcorn. 

[01:06:48] Travis Bader: They 

[01:06:49] George Bumann: know, and she said one day it was a holiday, but still a Friday.

Nobody was at school, but the crows all showed up. 

[01:06:57] Travis Bader: Mm. 

[01:06:59] George Bumann: So [01:07:00] they don't have watches. They don't have calendars, but yet they're still keeping tabs in ways that help 'em survive. 

[01:07:07] Travis Bader: Well, you've talked about, I think it was Marmite language, and not just that they're talking. But there's specificity to what they're saying, that there's not just, there's a person, there's a man, there's a man with a hat, there's a man with a green hat.

[01:07:23] George Bumann: Yeah. Is that, I think most of that, that's much more like cons. Boko work on prairie dogs, our yellow belly Marmite around here. Definitely. I think if I leaned into those more, I would see more and hear more than them. Okay. But most of that work that you're referring to is done, done by a prairie dogs, an academic in Arizona.

Okay. 

And it's astonishing the level of detail that they talk about us in. Do the chickies do that? Do the sparrows? Do the robins? At some level, yeah, they do. At what level? I don't exactly know, but it's going [01:08:00] on. It would be foolish to not allow them that capability.

[01:08:06] Travis Bader: You've, uh, so you, you talked about your hearing damage and you wrote about it as well and how oftentimes people will look at things there. I'm gonna do air brackets here, there disabilities Yeah. As, uh, as limiting factors, but you've kind of went and gone and reframed that a little bit. Do you wanna talk about that?

[01:08:27] George Bumann: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, uh, a great way to kind of tee that up is to say what a, a crow tribal elder said to me once he was speaking. I was at an in attendance when he was speaking for a group of young autistic folks, and he said, in our culture, among our people, there is no disabled. There is only alternately abled.

And I think that's the beautiful way to view what so many of us. Tell ourselves the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Mm-hmm. [01:09:00] You know, I can't sit around very long. I gotta get up and move around. I got a DHD, my mom said, you know this, that I gotta 

mm-hmm. 

Have this. I, I, I've got bad hearing. I can't, I, I, I'm blind in this eye.

I, I pick your, pick your compromised sense or ability by age or accident or illness. Like we all have them. 

Mm-hmm. 

The beauty though is those are at the same time are, are gifts. They are are gateways into seeing the world in ways that other people don't. And I think as a community, which we've lost community as human beings Yes.

In this modern age, so we. Categorize people and fit people into roles rather than capabilities and contributions. 

Mm. 

And I have from guns and power tools, I have a right-handed shooter, left ear, I can't hear much above 8,000 hertz. 

Mm. 

You know, [01:10:00] you can test this, go on YouTube and do a hearing test there.

And when I was writing the book, I did that, my right ear, I can get up to maybe like 12 or 14,000. Most bird language though is like 8,000 and less. You know, it's actually, and there's one proposal. This is kind of interesting that why is the human hearing attenuated to the frequencies it is. 

Hmm. 

Versus what we actually speak, which is actually far lower in that range of, I, I'm gonna mess up the numbers right now 'cause I don't have 'em in front of me.

But let's say it's 2000 hertz, 2,500. Sure. Um. Yet we can hear, we functionally use up to 8,000 a lot and even above. And one proposal is because that's the range that where most bird language takes place. 

Hmm. 

So maybe we are engineered by these communal conversations beyond our own species. But, but getting back to the, the topic at hand [01:11:00] is, I've had so many times, like, I know you've had things with, with a DH, ADHD and Right.

Being medicated for it in the past. And it's like, yeah, I've had students, you know, come to classes and a and a mother be like, you know, kind of pulls me to the side like, Johnny can't, you know, sit still very long because he's got a DHD and you know, you're probably gonna have to like, you know, figure out something else for him to do while the rest of the group.

I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. 

[01:11:28] Travis Bader: I'm with you on this. 

[01:11:29] George Bumann: He is a superhero. When you put a kid like that into nature. Boom. It's like you see what that capability is actually for. 

Mm-hmm. 

He's no, he no notices. Every bird, he knows the chipmunk that ran through the whole group that everybody else lost. He's paying attention to the cloud forms over there and the direction they're moving.

Mm-hmm. 

Like 

on and on and on, be that limitation [01:12:00] is like so many things. It's the flip side of it is our superpowers. 

[01:12:04] Travis Bader: Right. 

[01:12:04] George Bumann: And so for me, I can't hear out of this ear very well. Um, and I would say this on the, on the whole for everyone listening. Yeah. I can't listen. I can't hear those birds the way you're talking about.

And I can't get around very much to see what that alarm call was for. It's like, that's okay. You know, eel Wilson the great. You know, biologists from Harvard, he probably would've studied birds or butterflies, but he got poked in the eye and blinded, and that actually paved the way for him to be one of the, the greatest of the greats in the world of ant research.

But things like island bio, geography, you know, central tenets to what a lot of our understanding of ecologies based on probably would've happened if he was perfect. And none of us are perfect. 

Mm-hmm. 

Right. So for me, I learned to listen to the patterns I could hear. [01:13:00] And, and this is the same for all of you listening.

It's not what you can hear. It's not what you can see. It's not what you can smell. It's what you do with what you can see, what you can hear. Mm-hmm. And what you can smell. And because of your own unique chemistry and, and. How you're put together, you are gonna see it different. Yeah. And that's the real benefit to all of us is we learn way more much faster when we do these things as a group.

So if you can, you know, make it easy, this stuff really isn't that hard to start learning. And it amounts to like leaving a window open 

mm-hmm. 

For getting to that time of year in the Northern Hemisphere. It's like you're eating breakfast, but open the window. 

Mm. 

Ask your kids, man. Kids show you stuff you miss all the time.

Right? 

Sure. 

I'm like, oh my gosh, I bought this property 20 years ago and I never noticed that shrub or that rock and [01:14:00] good job, son. 

[01:14:01] Travis Bader: Yes. 

[01:14:02] George Bumann: Right. 

[01:14:03] Travis Bader: There you go. 

[01:14:04] George Bumann: But you know, it was really clearly outlined to me when I, I finally, um. I wrote a small grant proposal and got funded to go visit. My friend was now my friend John Young, I hadn't met him.

I'd only read his books and heard a few of his tapes, and I went for an advanced bird language class of his in California. Totally new area. I didn't know the birds, you know, so I had to study up before I went. But he, what he did was ingenious, like how there was like 70 people there, and I've been doing most of this stuff myself.

I'm like, I don't know how this is gonna work. Like 70 people trying to sneak up on a bird or something. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. What he did, and again, it's just genius, is everybody was broken up into, I don't know, groups of like six to eight, and we're all assigned a certain spot on this ground that covered multiple acres, we'll say 10 acres, and everybody went to [01:15:00] their spot and we sat for an hour.

No longer, no, no less an hour. Yeah. And then we got together and like people, like my closest group mates were like, I'm not kidding Travis. They were like 12 feet away. 

Mm-hmm. 

20 feet away, 30 feet away. And I'm like, uh, we're, we're just gonna see the same stuff. Uh, uh, not at all. We got together after that to debrief what we found.

I didn't see any of the stuff they saw. Wow. They didn't see what I saw or heard. It was like astonishing. I'm like, holy crap. Like she was 12 feet away. 

[01:15:38] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:15:38] George Bumann: How did I not see that? You, you think you're, you're aware of more than you are and you're not 

[01:15:46] Travis Bader: interesting. 

[01:15:46] George Bumann: And so what then blew my mind was all 70, all of those other groups came together.

So for instance, like I'd heard what I thought on the edge of my hearing was the bird [01:16:00] just going nuts behind me. You know, I even like turned and like. I couldn't see anything. It was kind of a wall of green, but I, I was hearing something I, I told the group and Yeah, I think I heard that too. Said one of the other people, but no conclusion.

Hmm. 

When all those groups came together, the group that was just to the north of us were like, holy crap. This sharpen hawk came in and just narrowly missed this toy, and everybody went bananas. And then it was dead silence. And then the sharpen hawk, I then realized, flew just east of me behind me, causing those alarms and on a down the line.

And this other group was like, holy cow. Yeah. We saw it right after it went through there, it came by us and it chased this j and, and this whole picture emerged that I had this tiny little fragment of that would mm-hmm. You could see any of us would be like, ah, blow that off. 

Mm-hmm. 

Like, oh, it's squawked.

Yeah. That's [01:17:00] different, but. What it reminds me to do then is like, no, that Robin is chirping. So the one was doing this morning at dawn, and the tree's right near the house, it wasn't singing and nobody else was talking. Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, go. I don't know, I didn't go out to look, but I know there was something out.

There Could have been the neighbor fox, the one that comes through the neighborhood could have been a weasel. Mm-hmm. Could have been a hawk. But you, you can't not then give the possibility into this space that there's more to it than you realize. 

[01:17:41] Travis Bader: So you bring something pretty interesting up and you talk about.

The picture that is painted when you get 70 people together with their observations. We live in the modern day with artificial intelligence, just making leaps and strides where we've now got the ability to correlate massive amounts of [01:18:00] information and start making sense out of it. 

[01:18:02] George Bumann: Mm-hmm. 

[01:18:02] Travis Bader: What role is AI playing into deciphering what the animals are saying?

[01:18:07] George Bumann: I think it's huge. I think it's, it's gonna be really helpful if like any tool, it's used, right? It's just a tool. It is a tool to extend our senses, if we wanna put it that way. But it still requires this actual intelligence and the background with the environment to ask the right questions, help with the interpretations, guide the AI into the spaces that we need more information like, so for instance, we in our yard have a.

I guess we're going on three years of continuous, 24 by seven day and night. Every year. Every day, every year. Recordings for our place. Okay. And that is also correlated with [01:19:00] at around two dozen recorders that are also in Yellowstone, which are initially, um, set up to do the world's first really intensive look at wolf language on scale in the wild.

Hmm. 

But it's recording everything. Everything. 

Mm-hmm. 

So what's really neat is, you know, someone will say, George, like, I, I kind of hear what you're saying about the Eagle. You know, the Ravens telling you there's an eagle coming. Like, I can kind of hear that, that sounds a little different, but I think you're full of crap.

Like, oh, and you've heard this like, you know. X number of times over the last decade. Like, uh, show me the data. Mm-hmm. And this is actually allowing us to have the data. Mm-hmm. So I have a spreadsheet on my phone. So every time an eagle gets chased by ravens over our house in the recorder, I can just make a short entry, like the behavior, the distance, the raven was from the eagle, the be, you [01:20:00] know, the behavior of the eagle, the behavior of the raven.

There is a difference I've found when a raven is below a golden eagle, um, in what it says versus when it's on its tail, chasing it outta the territory. There's a difference when the eagle has eaten and it's full, you can tell by the full crop, huh? It says something different. So there's nuances within this that we start, will start to be able to tease apart, because I don't have to mess with a stupid device.

Like classic, right? Something's happening. You can try to get your camera up and it's over, and A, you didn't capture it and b, you didn't really watch it either. 

[01:20:36] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. Totally. 

[01:20:37] George Bumann: And it's gone now. 

[01:20:38] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[01:20:39] George Bumann: You're screwed. Yeah. But in this case, because it's recording all the time, unless it's really windy, I have now the ability to start putting some of these pieces together.

And, uh, a friend of mine's kind of at the center of this Bioacoustics project and he has the tech smarts to be able to, um, train these models [01:21:00] to go into a year's worth of recordings from multiple devices, which normally would require years to listen to each one. 

[01:21:10] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[01:21:10] George Bumann: Right. He can, we developed a, a data set of known wolf hows and garbage trucks and airplanes and coyotes and other things that could be confused with wolves.

Train the model, then go through the entire year's recordings and pull out all the wolf Hals. 

[01:21:27] Travis Bader: Wow. 

[01:21:28] George Bumann: You could go in and do the same thing for magpie calls, bison, vocalizations, elk, bugles, you name it. And so those are all great data. Mining is really helpful, but you have to still have the man on the or, the woman on the ground.

[01:21:45] Travis Bader: Sure. 

[01:21:45] George Bumann: Who's paying attention to this stuff to know the contextual basis for which you're asking the questions. 

[01:21:52] Travis Bader: Yeah, it'll only be as good as the data that you provide it. You know, we've got this massive industry [01:22:00] in game calls, animal calls. Everyone says that theirs is the best and it's gonna produce the best results and calls in animals.

And, uh, they've got, I don't know what metrics are really basing this all off of, but it reminds me of a story that, uh, um, friend past podcast guest Hank Shaw told, and he's in the California area. He is written a few books on, on, uh, recipe books. And anyways, uh, he, he was really into duck hunting and he's in this one blind in an area and he is talking about how.

Uh, it was kind of restricted access because there are so many people who want to come in and duck hunt, and so everyone's got their own little areas and he hears this guy and he's just letting the worst duck call over and over, and he is like, oh my God, he's getting so frustrated. He's sitting in his blind, and finally he stands up and he is like, will you quit it already?

You're scaring 'em all away and what flies away, but the duck that was making the calls and [01:23:00] 

[01:23:00] George Bumann: the classic 

[01:23:01] Travis Bader: Totally right. 

[01:23:03] George Bumann: Yeah. I've had that with turkeys. Like, that was gonna be my life. There's a period where I thought I was gonna spend my career making, building, selling Turkey calls. 

[01:23:12] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:23:12] George Bumann: Competing. I I actually only competed in one contest because I realized thereafter it was like, this is nuts.

Really, this is, you know, it's kind 

of 

nuts. Anybody that does these contests, because it, they're highly trained, they're highly practiced, they're amazing and incredibly proficient. Artists of animal sounds. Yes. Like that was, I was gonna do that, but I came away from that first contest and I, I got second in the state, in the amateur open.

I got like fourth in the natural voice only because I, if you do additional se, uh, species sounds 

[01:23:48] Travis Bader: Mm. 

[01:23:49] George Bumann: It only counts against your score. So like, 

[01:23:51] Travis Bader: oh, come on. 

[01:23:52] George Bumann: Before doing the gobble. 

[01:23:54] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[01:23:54] George Bumann: I did the entire dawn sequence with everything from owls to geese and [01:24:00] robins. And I did, you know, the whole sequence 

[01:24:02] Travis Bader: penalized for being an overachiever.

[01:24:04] George Bumann: Totally. And I got the only applause. You weren't supposed to applaud the audience, so, 

[01:24:09] Travis Bader: excellent. 

[01:24:10] George Bumann: But the bottom line was like, I realized there's not a Turkey behind the curtain with the scorecard. There is not a Turkey in front of the, the curtain performing. Yeah. And if there was, they probably wouldn't win.

[01:24:23] Travis Bader: Yep. 

[01:24:23] George Bumann: For the same exact reasons. Right. And, you know, I'd always been so fascinated, and that was really the, the entry point for a lot of this for me was I, I was drawn to animals I could have a conversation with, even on that very basic level, whether it was learning to call ducks, geese, turkeys, deer, I've figured out how to call beavers.

Um, all kinds of stuff. 

[01:24:45] Travis Bader: How do you call a beaver? You 

[01:24:47] George Bumann: sound like another beaver. 

[01:24:48] Travis Bader: What does that sound like? 

[01:24:49] George Bumann: Actually, the, the, um, like turkeys and moose, you know, you will rake the trees 

[01:24:59] Travis Bader: mm-hmm. 

[01:24:59] George Bumann: You know, [01:25:00] if you're calling moose to help add to the sound appeal. Mm-hmm. Um, with turkeys you can scratch in the duff, you know, they mm-hmm.

That helps settle their nerves and they realize it's another Turkey. Um, with beavers, just even like going to the water's edge and kind of lifting water out and dropping it back down. Slapping your hand kind of in the mud gently. 

Mm. 

But sounding like, uh, one that's chewing is actually a you, I've pulled 'em all the way across a whole marsh before, and if you sound like one chewing, which they'll, if you've ever seen 'em, they'll kind of hold a stick, kinda almost like a corn on the cob.

And they'll go and they roll it. 

[01:25:41] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[01:25:44] George Bumann: I was teaching somebody to do this once and they're going, I'm like, stop, stop. They're not eating a bologna sandwich. They are chewing on a wooden stick. 

[01:25:58] Travis Bader: That is what they sound like too. That's a [01:26:00] good 

[01:26:00] George Bumann: It is. Yep. So even at like, we were out with friends one time we were watching, it was crazy.

We were watching the Northern Lights in Virginia and we're down near this marsh and I could hear one in the distance chewing. I was like, you guys wanna see that beaver? They're like, yeah. They're like, whatever. Like, no, seriously, you, you wanna see it? 

Hmm. 

So I got down by the water and was calling and moving the, moving the mud and things and.

That thing when it finally realized we were not, what it thought it was was probably like eight feet away. You know, that tail sprays water all over everybody and there it is. You know? 

[01:26:40] Travis Bader: What a cool experience. 

[01:26:41] George Bumann: Yeah. Yeah. So the more you sort of give into these things and follow your own childlike curiosity, you know, you, you, you discover a lot more than, than what's in the books that other professionals or even, you know, you don't have to have a [01:27:00] biology degree.

I think that's one thing too, is like, you don't need a degree. In some cases that actually is an inhibitor. You just need to exercise your curiosity muscles and just go with it. You know, what if I try this and I, I'll be honest though, today, I don't call when I'm outdoors. Um, and I do this because for me to really learn what.

Makes these other more than humans tick, is to see what they naturally do on a, you know, unmolested. 

Mm-hmm. 

So the second you how like the wolf or coyote, the entire situation changes and becomes partly, if not entirely focused on you. Mm-hmm. So you see what a coyote does in the presence of a howling human.

I wanna know what the coyotes doing so I can interpret future behaviors more accurately. 

Mm. 

You know, so if I do imitate, and I think imitation is really [01:28:00] key. You know, obviously hunters are not, uh, ashamed to, to pick up a call and try calling and things like that. I think that's important for a lot of people to do, and then for hunters to do of other species that aren't game animals.

Um, because going back to our discussion about conscious versus subconscious sensory abilities mm-hmm. We all learn differently. 

Mm-hmm. 

Some of us have to hear it and some of us need to see it. Some of us need to do it. You know, that lesson of teaching someone and then saying, okay, you're gonna have to teach this next guy to do this.

That changes the way you engage with the information. Mm-hmm. And same when I'm hearing a Robin Sing,

does it always end on that little, you know, or how long does it go? Um, like there's, and in this way it's [01:29:00] like, I use my artwork for sculpting and, and sketching. When you have to reproduce it in whatever way, if you're mathematically inclined, use numbers. If you're a musician, write it on tablature. Mm-hmm.

Whatever is your thing. Use that superpower to just engage with it at the next level because it buries it deeper in you. And it becomes that tool in the toolbox you can pull out later to then solve the next mystery. And, um, it's so helpful. Like as a result, I've learned that Ravens have dialects, they have regional things, accents, if you will.

I, you know, I don't know if they would fit directly into these human constructs in that way, but man, we were just up, we were up on Vancouver Island for spring break last year and they're saying stuff I've never freaking heard a raven around Montana, Wyoming say, 

[01:29:54] Travis Bader: really? 

[01:29:55] George Bumann: They sound different in California.

They sound different in Alaska. They sound different in [01:30:00] Maine. They sound different in Virginia. 

[01:30:02] Travis Bader: Mm. 

[01:30:02] George Bumann: Um, and I know darn well from others who know better. They're saying many of the same thing, or small cluster of the same things, but the way they say those, but especially other stuff sounds different in Austria.

Hmm. 

It's different in Scandinavia. It's different in Russia. And I think one of the beau most beautiful things, any one of you who's listening here, can give the world is to be that expert in your own backyard. Like, there's nobody that knows that place as good as you. And the reason why it's like, well, I, I'm actually really gearing up for that elk hunt.

But no, actually your best homework is done not just in the maps and picking your route and who you're gonna hunt with and what district you're gonna get the permits for. It's spending that time eating lunch, drinking your coffee, doing whatever it is outside of work on the picnic table, studying [01:31:00] that one specific spot.

Mm-hmm. 

So that you start to become part of that greater community of conversation in a way that wires into you much deeper. Because everywhere you go after that. You're gonna see and hear different species and, and you know, certainly you go to Antarctica or something, or Australia, it's like, I don't know any of these creatures.

But what you do know, because of putting that timing is the patterns, 

[01:31:31] Travis Bader: right? 

[01:31:32] George Bumann: The patterns and the roles that the Cardinal fulfills in the eastern United States is the same role that the Paraia, you know, is, is filling in Arizona. 

Mm. 

The same role that, that, you know, I had a gal in a class once, she had always wanted to go to Africa, wanted to see wild dogs so bad, and she just, she finally got the, the, the funds together, got the time off [01:32:00] went and they looked for days and days and days and didn't see the wild dogs.

Like, she's like, oh gosh, you know, I really, I really wanna see these wild dogs. And at one point they're riding along and she. Says to the guide who's in that seat on the bumper, you know, looking at tracks, the front bumper, and she's kind of up in the Land Rover in one of those elevated backseats. She says, could they, is it possible the dogs are, are over there?

Mm-hmm. 

And the guy, he like whips around and he is like, what? What do you mean? Like, and he looks and listens and yeah, they are, they are. Let's go. You over there. Like, he's like, how did you know that? She says, I don't know, but like couple of those birds over there were acting the way the birds in my yard behave when the neighbor's dog gets loose.

[01:32:47] Travis Bader: Ah. 

[01:32:49] George Bumann: And I'm like, exactly. 

[01:32:51] Travis Bader: Uhhuh, 

[01:32:52] George Bumann: if you're in Africa, the behaviors the birds do in response to a mongoose is so similar to that of a [01:33:00] weasel or a mink or a martin. 

Mm. 

The behaviors that the, you know, the leopard you doing and how things are responding to it is so much like. What they would be for a mountain lion in North America, or the same species called a puma in South America.

Mm-hmm. 

You know, the way the monkeys react down there is very similar to the way the squirrels behave. And you know, it's like they're all looking down and like some, it's that simple in some cases, like they're, they're elevated to the height where they're safe, but they're chewing out something right there.

And like we had a lion come through this spring. This last spring? No, it was summer. She came through in the middle of the afternoon and the mag pies told us with enough time for my wife to run inside, get her camera, come out and shoot some footage of that cat going through our yard. Otherwise, probably we never would've even seen it despite it walking within 20 yards of us.

[01:33:56] Travis Bader: Hmm. Yeah. 

[01:33:58] George Bumann: And that evening, I could tell [01:34:00] the cat was still in the neighborhood because the mag pies were going nuts, but then they were going nuts a little more to the left. 

[01:34:07] Travis Bader: Mm. 

[01:34:07] George Bumann: And to the left a little more so I could infer, oh, then I heard, Ooh, ooh, the elk bark. 

Mm, 

elk only bark for a couple things, right?

People? 

Mm-hmm. 

Us grizzly bears, wolves, and that's almost it. And lions, no wolves nearby generally don't have many grizzly bears around the house. There's no people up there. And literally like two minutes later, a friend I hadn't talked to in a while is like texting me actually. Then he calls, he's like, Hey, um, I'm sitting in my truck like right next to your mailbox, and a mountain lion just walked out in the road in front of me.

Cool. Like that. That was the trajectory, right? Like the mags were going nuts. I'm like, whatever that is, is leaving. This Aspen patch and it's going toward the road. 

[01:35:00] Mm-hmm. 

And he calls, he is like, it just walked right out the road in front of me. That's the first one I've seen in forever. And then it's just, it's sitting on the hill between your house and the mailbox and all the signs were there.

[01:35:10] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:35:11] George Bumann: I knew it was there. It was fun to have that reinforcement. Um, 

[01:35:15] Travis Bader: yeah. 

[01:35:16] George Bumann: But nature will tell you. 

[01:35:20] Travis Bader: Yeah. I mean, okay. There's, there's, there are a lot of things to unpack, but, uh, like you talk about the, the honeycomb nature of, uh, of the sounds and how that works. Yeah. And, uh, zones of silence and how so much can be transmitted through the lack of, of noise.

[01:35:37] George Bumann: Yeah. 

[01:35:37] Travis Bader: I, I look at, um, so if I walk through the woods and I step on a stick and it alerts everything around me, um, well, I mean, bears do the same thing and a bear is a predator. They'll step on something. How, how come they're not getting alarmed in this same way? I mean, there's, there's a bunch of different, um, yeah.

Uh, points in there that, that I personally find very interesting. [01:36:00] And then, um, well, I don't know if, if you have thoughts on that, otherwise I'll just jump into my next thing here. Do you have thoughts? Anything I said there? 

[01:36:08] George Bumann: Yeah. Okay. Don't walk like a human. 

[01:36:11] Travis Bader: Mm. 

[01:36:13] George Bumann: So elk are famous for crashing through big stuff, right?

[01:36:17] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:36:18] George Bumann: Just like you said, bears will do it. Uh, hawk taking off through the woods will crash branches. Sometimes an owl, uh, pick your animal. They're making quote, unquote noise that you're not supposed to make when you're hunting. 

Mm-hmm. 

But when we do it, it's associated with Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.

Mm-hmm. Of the sound and the cadence of a human footstep moving through the woods. 

Mm-hmm. 

And most of us in this modern world have a certain cadence and speed and gate and, and things that we use. Going back to my early lessons, you know, listen. Truly listen to the [01:37:00] sound of the footsteps of the deer. Get that in your head.

Step. Step. Just that speed. Mm-hmm. Say nothing of the amount of noise, but that speed in the cadence. It has a different signature altogether for any number of different species. So play with this. This is a great one to experiment with. Go in and walk through the woods the best you can, like a squirrel.

[01:37:31] Travis Bader: Okay. 

[01:37:32] George Bumann: To, to, to, to break up your steps into those short squirrel like hops, ch, ch, ch, ch. Or Turkey. Crunch. Crunch, scratch, scratch, scratch. After you break the stick. Scratch, scratch, scratch. 

Hmm. 

Chunk, chunk. Scratch, scratch, scratch. I called in, like, one of the last Turkey I ever harvested in Virginia was on a public wildlife management area, [01:38:00] and I think I made three calls over the span of three hours and the rest was just playing with the leaves.

Mm. 

And that bird, when I, when I skinned him and, and, uh, plucked him, had, I think it was three number four shot and like two or three number six shot in his right wing. It could have been a mixed load. Right. But 

[01:38:30] Travis Bader: sure. 

[01:38:30] George Bumann: He was shot at least once 

[01:38:33] Travis Bader: mm, 

[01:38:33] George Bumann: if not twice in the right wing, and he roosted right next to the main road on this public wildlife management area.

Probably knew every single call on the market. 

Mm-hmm. 

Every manufacturer. 

Mm-hmm. 

But it was stepping back from our all-knowing human technology and, and leaning into what it meant to be Turkey. What did tur really listen [01:39:00] to? How that deer vocalizes at, if at all, what is the cadence like in the leaves when they do rack up a tree?

Move your hand. Imitate that sound to help sift that in deeper.

You know, can I identify the racking of a tree to a specific species of bison versus elk versus moose versus a big old white tail? I think you can, I don't know those answers, but you can teach me. Right. That's, that's the benefit of this stuff is we're all in different places finding different things.

It's, we get a tip of the iceberg because we all have these recording devices in our pockets now. 

Mm-hmm. 

Where people are posting stuff that they don't even realize how important to someone like me. That one recording is, that's exactly the sound the coyote makes when there's a lion around. And it sounds [01:40:00] so similar to that recording somebody got from California and that one in Jasper Park.

It sounds so similar to what they recorded in Idaho, you know, and that's, that's really cool. So, and the use of technology is great to both extend our, extend our senses, but also to share what we're we're learning. 

[01:40:24] Travis Bader: You know, I've got, uh, there's the Silvercore Club and we've got members all across the world and there's a weekly podcast.

There's a private members podcast that comes out and. I'll share thoughts on things, answer club member questions, and um, after reading your book, I shared with the club members your book and, um, my thoughts on it. One of the prevailing thoughts that I had was that. What you were talking about earlier about how you don't tend to call anymore.

And I'd see, it strikes me that that same sort of [01:41:00] attitude can really do somebody well in the bush as well as in the city. We are so stuck on transmit, it seems everyone's who's louder, who's doing the thing? Look at me, look at me. Did you hear me? Do you understand what I'm saying? As opposed to being on receive and trying really hard to understand what the other person is saying or what the animal is saying.

And I thought that was, it seemed to me anyways, to be an underlying thread throughout your entire book was the, uh, the concept of, uh, being present, um, listening, being open to receive even if you don't understand. And it, it seems to have a bit of a duality between both the animal and the human. And that, of course, is an arrogant thing to say, to say that we're any different from the animals.

[01:41:51] George Bumann: Yeah. Yeah. What we hold is actually, that's unique, I should say is, is pretty minimal. We're, we're, [01:42:00] we're not that special. 

Hmm. 

But at the same time, we're incredible. Just like everything else is incredible. And I think we've long overdone our efforts to establish ourselves as superior in so many ways that we've actually really ignored a lot of important things.

It certainly has taken us outta context. Like we talk about going to nature. No, you are nature. 

[01:42:24] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:42:25] George Bumann: I'm sorry. Like, let's go for a hike. No, I don't even like the word going for a hike. Let's just go for a walk. 

[01:42:32] Travis Bader: Right. 

[01:42:33] George Bumann: We're just going for a walk. You know? Yeah. It's in rougher ground or you know, it's like making it something special.

Like we're going out to nature. When it's right at our fingertips, it's there teaching us all the time. Our best teachers are not you. It's not me. It's not a scientist. It's the sparrow, it's the cardinal, it's the jaguarundi. It's like, it's [01:43:00] whatever is in your neighborhood. The most common ones like, oh, it's damn starlings.

Like, no, no, no, no. You need to stop right there, 

[01:43:10] Travis Bader: Uhhuh. 

[01:43:10] George Bumann: You need to stop right there. Because in nature, they don't care if you're native or non-native to the continent. 

[01:43:16] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:43:17] George Bumann: All they care about is what news are you spreading and in what way? So starlings. Mag pies, magpie, black build mag pies and birder friend refers to 'em as trash in a tux.

Mm. Mm-hmm. 

They have shown us so many things. They have taught us so many things. I've had a chance to watch magpie funerals like that flips your lid. Like what is their inner world really like? There's so much that we stand to gain by listening more than we speak. And this, you know, you hear this a ton, but we truly don't as individuals have that much to, to [01:44:00] give.

[01:44:00] Travis Bader: Sure. 

[01:44:01] George Bumann: But we have by contrast that completely eclipsed by what we stand to learn. By just being quiet and receptive. It makes us better. I would argue better parents, better spouses, better school board members, better neighbors to our people. 

Mm-hmm. 

By practicing listening. Not just, you know, and, and you become sensitized to things that sort of surprise you at times, but you discover are, are often right on.

They, they help you navigate in ways that the human mind and the human body was intended for. That's really only been a few centuries that we've been this out of touch. 

[01:44:47] Travis Bader: I had a question from a member. This is from, uh, Marcus. You know, you've, I, I think anyone listening to this and up to this point will be able to deduce, but, uh, I'm gonna ask a question anyways.

What is the single most important [01:45:00] thing I can start doing right now to begin understanding the language of the animals around me? 

[01:45:06] George Bumann: The most important thing you can do to understand the languages of animals around you is being quiet, sitting still, and listening. That's it. It's pretty simple. 

[01:45:20] Travis Bader: I love it.

[01:45:21] George Bumann: Yep. And what you get in return for that investment, like truly, like our most important investments are not money. Money is a silly currency. 

[01:45:31] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:45:32] George Bumann: It's so fleeting, it's so flighty. It's so persnickety. But what we really invest in the things that matter most is our time. 

[01:45:41] Travis Bader: Yes. 

[01:45:43] George Bumann: Whether that's with our kids, whether that's with our aging parents or grandparents or community member.

Like we invest in them because they're important. We invest that time. And as you invest that time and, um, exemplify that, [01:46:00] that value on Yes. The starlings, yes. Those urban gray squirrels. Yes. Those pesky whitetails that are eating your petunias. You start to see how much they're showing you of a place you thought you knew.

Mm-hmm. But in reality, you realize how you barely scratch the surface. 

[01:46:22] Travis Bader: Now, when you were talking earlier, uh, you brought up a reference of being like St. Francis, and in your book you used a measurement of approximately the size of a sacrament wafer. If I take these couple little things, I may be able to deduce that faith plays a role in your life.

[01:46:46] George Bumann: I think anybody living, honestly, it does. How it manifests is, is uh, as diverse as the people who, who do it. Um, as a kid, I [01:47:00] saw how church and faith was used to steer people into doing things for other people. 

Mm-hmm. 

And not finding the higher order. Um, goals that we all pursue spirituality for. 

[01:47:21] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:47:21] George Bumann: So my mom, despite my, her parents being well placed in the church and so on, said, we're going canoeing on Sundays now.

[01:47:32] Travis Bader: Good mom. 

[01:47:33] George Bumann: And I think a lot of, I like that US will say with great conviction that our church is, is out there. 

Hmm. 

Jesus himself didn't have a church, he didn't go to a place he was in the world. And I think you cannot come away with without, of course, reverence and appreciation for what the creator has made, what God has laid before us, [01:48:00] but, um, feels some kinship and, and desire to steward that.

Yeah. And, um, for me personally, I know paying attention to these animal conversations with that literally just being kind of the tip of the iceberg makes me a better neighbor to my more than human neighbors. You know, it's the simple thing as, don't cut that dead tree down. Don't cut it down that, oh gosh, I just realized now because I've been sitting here on the porch drinking my coffee each morning that, that's a Woodpecker nest site.

Mm. 

That particular tree might be as the dead seed in our yard is, it's a focal point. It's a key security system feature. All the birds who are worried about trouble go to the top of that one because their view is unobstructed. And just think of how many things we just mow down because we, the humans don't value them.

[01:49:00] They're not important. They're in the way, they're ugly. Um, mow the lawn regardless of whether the cottontail young have come out of their nest. 

Mm, 

you just ex granted if you didn't mow one over and, and chop it to smithereens, you completely laid that nest, exposed to Ravens, foxes and everything else. 

Mm.

So for me, I know a lot of my connections with the here and now and, and those things beyond come down to taking better care. And if and when I do go back to hunt, I'm gonna do it a little different. 

[01:49:40] Travis Bader: Is there anything that we haven't talked about that we should be talking about?

[01:49:46] George Bumann: How much time do we have? I don't know. You know, I think we hit the high points. It's, it's, it's way more than figuring out what an animal's telling you. 

Mm. 

It's way more [01:50:00] than, um, knowing that the, the fox is coming hundreds of yards before it, it's visible. It's way more than those things. It's about belonging again.

Mm. 

So many people feel alienated and on the outside and depressed and angry. And I fall into it. My God. Look at the politics these days like that, that, that burns me. 

[01:50:29] Travis Bader: Yeah. 

[01:50:29] George Bumann: And, and I'm thankful for my wife. She like, you need to go for a walk. 

[01:50:35] Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. 

[01:50:36] George Bumann: I'm like, yes, I do. Right. 

[01:50:40] Travis Bader: Especially we have similar wives 

[01:50:41] George Bumann: and yeah.

It we're grateful and, uh, lucky that way. 'cause um, in nature, even when you're by yourself, you're never alone. 

Hmm. 

And I think that's one of the most beautiful things about this whole dynamic of sifting [01:51:00] back into the natural world is you are seen, you are seen for exactly who you are and nothing more.

Hmm. 

And for a lot of people, that's in incredibly liberating. There's no judgment. There's no assumptions comes from that family. You know how they are. Oh, he does that for work. You know what that means? Animals don't do that. They don't care if you're from here. They don't care how long you've been here.

All they care about is what's happening right now and where do you fit? And that's, that's really special. That's something we miss. You know, just look at how much money and energy and time is spent on therapy and, you know, sessions with, you know. Psychoanalytic 

[01:51:55] Travis Bader: Right. 

[01:51:56] George Bumann: You know, processes. It's just like we are in an epidemic of [01:52:00] loneliness and, and depression.

The pharmaceutical industry is taking advantage of it. And a good friend of mine, uh, author, you know, he moved here and the doctor in Mammoth Hot Springs here in Yellowstone said, no, all those antidepressants out the window. You're not taking that shit anymore. Go out and sit on a hill. And for him it was a close encounter with a grizzly bear, maybe not quite unlike yours.

That was like, pay the hell attention. You're missing stuff. 

Mm-hmm. 

And what you're missing is gonna make you a better person. It's gonna bring you those qualities that you think of and maybe don't even realize will make you the best human being that you can be. So 

[01:52:49] Travis Bader: I like that. Well, George, I really enjoyed getting to know you on this podcast.

I enjoy your perspective. I'm sure I'm gonna be hitting you up for a part two because, [01:53:00] uh, as I mentioned earlier, I've never had so many stars beside all the different questions of things I wanted to go through. But, um, thank you, thank you so much for being on the Silvercore Podcast. 

[01:53:10] George Bumann: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.