The Frontier and the freedom it afforded was the shaping influence of the 19th century American West, but life in the Modern West has been formed just as powerfully by the presence of a public lands system American visionaries established a century ago. This is why they did it.

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Teddy Roosevelt enjoyed a lifestyle and political career that made him the most important president in history for the creation of a West and a country centered on conservation. In the process his obsession with nature finally took the U.S. in a different policy direction than the countries of western Europe we had tried for three centuries to emulate.

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Like no other western animal the coyote has been a central character in the Pleistocene West, the Native West, and the Frontier. One of the epic stories of the Modern West is how coyotes are transferring their own brand of western survivalism to the entire country. Despite a $500 million-dollar war to exterminate them, the coyote is in fact The Dude, and The Dude absolutely abides.

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When the U.S. Census announced in 1890 that the Frontier was over, America was plunged into a period of anxiety. As evidenced by the grand Indian photographs of Edward Sheriff Curtis, western nostalgia became a dominant theme of art, film, and pop culture. Another artist of the age, though, showed that the West endures into the modern age.

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When the long-term market exploitation of wildlife was joined by a form of elite safari hunting known as “field sports,” a massive destruction of western animals threatened to destroy millions of years of North American evolution. Teddy Roosevelt’s and George Grinnell’s Boone & Crockett Club wasn’t perfect, but it helped government usher in a new stage before Wild Wild West anarchy could run its course.

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America’s national mammal possesses a troubling story in western history. For a century writers have presented the fate of the buffalo as brought down by a federal conspiracy that plotted the animal’s demise to undermine Native cultures. With an animal this important to American and western history, understanding the more realistic and accurate version of its 19th and 20th century story seems a critical step as we figure out how to go forward in returning America’s most iconic mammal to the modern West.

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Present on the continent for nearly half-a-million years, the American bison’s numbers and near perfect adaptation to the Great Plains made it one of the evolutionary marvels of Earth. For more than 10,000 years, Native people in the West had intertwined their lives with bison herds to create the longest sustained economies and religious traditions in American history. Then over two centuries of whirlwind change in Native America, the bison was suddenly and mysteriously gone from the wild.

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Grizzly bears emerged in North America nearly two-hundred thousand years ago and became the Lord Beast of the American West. Native people regarded them as formidable animal gods. Europeans and Americans thought of them as wildlands monsters that needed to be eliminated. Saved before they disappeared, today grizzly bears are surviving, spreading, and distinguish the Mountain West from all other regions in the Lower 48.

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As a native family of American animals, for more than five million years wolves of various kinds have been keystone predators of western ecologies. Before humans arrived they shaped the West more than any other mammal species. Numerous, nearly tame, and admired by Native people, wolves continued this role until the arrival of people from the Old World initiated a continent-wide war against wolves. While wolf pelts became a target of the western market hunt, into the early 20th century most wolves were destroyed by bounty hunters and “wolfers,” who trapped and poisoned hundreds of thousands of wolves at the behest of livestock associations and state governments.

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Blood Trails is a new investigative podcast from MeatEater, hosted by writer and journalist Jordan Sillars. Each episode digs into true crime stories from the world of hunting and fishing—cases where the woods and the water became the backdrop for violence and mystery. From missing hunters deep in public land to poachers turned killers and fishing trips gone fatally wrong, Blood Trails uncovers the moments when outdoor life collides with the darkness of the human heart. But this isn't repackaged Wikipedia. Each story features original reporting you won't hear anywhere else, expert insight from detectives and hunters, and first-hand accounts from the people who were actually there. For true crime listeners looking for something new—and outdoorsmen who know the thrill and risk of time afield—Blood Trails exposes the stories left behind in the tracks. If you’re a fan of Dateline, Criminal, or Bear Grease but want your true crime set in the wild places you know, this podcast is for you.

Follow now for Episode 1, dropping on Thursday, October 30th.  

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