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Essay | The Bear Boys Of Yellowstone And Marlin Perkins Of Wild Kingdom

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Bear study at Yellowstone National Park in 1966/Lee Dalton

Olin Bray was studying the habits of black bears in Yellowstone in 1966/Lee Dalton

I don’t know about you, but I’m so disgusted by the slimy sleazy sludge oozing out of Washington and the White House these days that I hardly bother to read accounts of it even in Traveler because there’s no way to escape the latest political twists, turns and tweets trying to distract us all from what’s really happening behind the curtain.  I’m feeling a lot like one of my daughters probably felt a long time ago when, after a day that didn’t go well, she climbed onto my lap, snuggled in and asked, “Will you tell me a happy story?”

Maybe what we all need right now are some happy stories that will help us remember that America, despite all her challenges was, and still could be, a happy place full of optimism.  So I’d like to try to get things rolling with a happy Arrowhead story from Yellowstone, circa 1966.  

Back in those prehistoric days, black bears panhandling beside roads and raiding picnic tables throughout the park were so common that no one could leave the park without a roll of film full of bear pics. Trouble was that so many people were leaving for home with bear caused bandages that some savvy lawyers recognized a great way to make some money. Tort claims for injuries were becoming more and more frequent and courts were beginning to find in favor of plaintiffs who had discovered that bears have trouble telling where the candy bar ends and fingers begin.

And so it was that in 1965 and 1966 two young graduate students from, I believe, Colorado State were invited to do a black bear study in the park. Vic Barnes and Olin Bray began trapping bears throughout the park using government bear traps made of culvert pipe on wheels. They dragged the portable traps around the park with a beat-up green government station wagon known as the Bear Mobile.  When they caught a bear, they’d dose it with Succinylcholine Chloride.  The muscle relaxant paralyzed the bear so they could weigh it, measure it, and attach colored ribbons to its ears.  Then they’d turn it loose. Everyone else who worked in the park was given a pocketful of index cards on which we’d record ribbon colors, locations, time, and what the bears we spotted were doing.  

Tagging a Yellowstone black bear in 1966/Lee Dalton

Tagging a Yellowstone black bear in 1966/Lee Dalton

That information allowed Vic and Ollie to determine there were two distinct groups of black bears in the park: Roadside Bears and Backcountry Bears. That allowed the National Park Service to make some vital decisions for future management of black bears. It was their work that led to the - uh - relocation of nearly 200 black bears in the fall and spring of 1969 and 1970.

Grim, but it had to be done. 

The Bear Boys were based out of the housing area just east of Norris Junction. Those of us who were stationed at Norris spent a lot of time watching them at work. We had a front row seat the day Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler came with a camera crew to film the boys in action for Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom TV show.

That day turned out to be even more entertaining than the show.

The boys had caught a young male bear, and while Mr. Perkins narrated and his crew filmed, Vic and Ollie went about their work. They hit the very grouchy bear with a hypodermic dose of Succinyl administered though the feeding door of the bear trap and waited for it to lie still. Then they dragged the bear from the trap onto a large scale to weigh and measure it. They usually tried to work quickly, but this time Perkins, Fowler, and the show’s camera team kept calling for them to stop so they could change camera angles or get better sound. Meanwhile, the still conscious but immobile bear was becoming more and more ticked off.   

By the time the boys were ready to clip ribbons on the critter’s ears, it was moving around quite a bit and snapping its angry teeth at their arms while they worked. Then, just as the last set of ribbons was in place, the bear suddenly lurched to its feet and began clumsily seeking revenge.

All the people watching, the camera crew, Perkins and Fowler, the sound man and the Bear Boys scrambled to get out of its way. When the bear nearly knocked one of the big cameras and its tripod to the ground, Marlin grabbed the camera and then sought refuge on the equipment platform atop the Bear Mobile. He was really very agile, and even with the heavy camera in his arms he managed to get topside in just a second or two as the bear’s teeth snapped at his back pockets.  The bear, not to be outdone, stood up on his hind legs and began trying to swat Perkins’ feet out from under him.  

Marlin Perkins was apparently quite a talented dancer and managed to avoid being snagged by performing something between a square dance and rumba.

Now, if you are old enough to have watched Wild Kingdom on Sunday nights, you’ll surely recall how Marlin Perkins led into nearly every commercial with something like: “And so, as the mother bear protects her cubs, you need to be sure to protect your cubs with insurance from Mutual of Omaha!

I guess I can understand how it may not have amused Mr. Perkins when Vic, instead of rushing to the rescue, hollered, “And when your bear comes out of the tranquilizer too soon, you need to be sure you have insurance from Mutual of Omaha!

Keeping time after tranquilizing a black bear in Yellowstone back in 1966/Lee Dalton

Meanwhile, Ollie quickly prepared a light dose of Succinyl and managed to dodge in close enough to hit the bear’s hind hip with it. The bear was still moving quite a bit and its teeth were still snapping as the boys and some of the watchers tugged the bear back into the trap and dropped the door into place. 

I just wish I’d had my camera with me at the time. I’d gone over to watch the fun while on my lunch break and had to get back to the basin to lead my next guided walk. I never did see that show on the air, either. There was no TV in Yellowstone back then. Gonna have to see if I can find it on YouTube or somewhere . . . I hope they included Marlin’s dance.

I hope that others out there who once wore the Arrowhead on their sleeves will refresh their memories, pull out some old photos, and share some of their happy stories of our parks with younger Traveler readers.  

We sure need them these days . . . 

Comments

Thanks, Lee! 

My prior knowledge of bear folks in Yellowstone was limited to the Craigheads work on grizzly bears.  I can't picture them starring in a Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom episode.


Fun story! Thanks!


Search on YouTube for Bears of the High Country by the Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdon channel. This is the episode you are talking about. 


Thank you, Tom.  I hadn't had time to go browsing through YouTube.  You saved me a lot of work.

I'm pretty sure I recognized that "Favorite Feeding Ground."  It looked suspiciously like the Tower Garbage Dump where a lot of us used to go to get some good bear pics -- as long as our camera angle didn't include all the unburied garbage.  It was, I believe, the last dump to remain operating in the park.  

Those definitely were Vic Barnes and Olin Bray.  Hard to believe that 53 years have stampeded past since then.

But that wasn't the segment shot at Norris.  I wonder it they ever used it . . . 

I heard later that Vic and Ollie went on to play a large part in an international polar bear study and wound up traveling back and forth between Alaska, Northern Canada, Norway, the Russian Arctic and Siberia.  It was one of the first times American scientists had been allowed to work in close cooperation with what was then the Soviet Union. 


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