Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Rieves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 2: I want you to stay a.
Speaker 1: While as I share my stories and the country skills
Speaker 1: that will help you beat the system. This Country Life
Speaker 1: is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network,
Speaker 1: bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
Speaker 2: The airways have to offer.
Speaker 1: All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop
Speaker 1: that tailgate. I think I got a thing or two
Speaker 1: the teacher Canadian chocolate. I love it when a plan
Speaker 1: comes together. It's even better when it comes together early.
Speaker 1: We're leaving the pressure and allowing the opportunity to relax
Speaker 1: and just enjoy the time allotted with new friends. We're
Speaker 1: in the land of bears, perogis and the kindest folks
Speaker 1: you'll ever meet, and I'm going to tell you all
Speaker 1: about them. But first I'm going to tell you a story.
Speaker 1: This story was sent in by Ryan Prochs, who rambles
Speaker 1: around in Nelson County, Virginia. It's about three generations and
Speaker 1: shows how even the youngest hunter in the group can
Speaker 1: sometimes add the most. In Ryan's words, in my voice,
Speaker 1: here we go. On May twenty twenty my dad Fredday,
Speaker 1: and I decided to take my three year old son
Speaker 1: land In Turkey him. Now, we were heading to a
Speaker 1: place I had permission to hunt that was beautiful in
Speaker 1: Nelson County, Virginia. So we pulled up to a little
Speaker 1: meadow just through the gate at the bottom of the property.
Speaker 1: It was such a pretty place, with a nice little cabin,
Speaker 1: a pond, and a couple acre field at the base
Speaker 1: of a steep mountain. Now we ended up getting there
Speaker 1: an hour or so after daylight because my wife says
Speaker 1: it's never good to wake asleep, and Toddler and I
Speaker 1: tend to agree with her. Now Landing at the time
Speaker 1: is completely obsessed with four wheelers, so the first thing
Speaker 1: he does when we get out of the truck is
Speaker 1: run back to the trailer and climb up on the
Speaker 1: back of the ATV. I figured if the turkeys weren't
Speaker 1: doing much, we could always spend a morning in the mouths,
Speaker 1: just riding around, maybe a little fishing or another one
Speaker 1: of his favorite hobbies, which was catching lizards and snakes.
Speaker 1: Now I'd given him a box call that I'd gotten
Speaker 1: from a National Wild Turkey Federation bank with a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks ago prior to the hunt, just to let
Speaker 1: him play with He was actually pretty good with it.
Speaker 1: As soon as we got there, he was sitting on
Speaker 1: that four wheeler messing with that box call and not
Speaker 1: doing bad with it. While me and my dad were
Speaker 1: putting on all our gear. Suddenly, way off in the distance,
Speaker 1: I thought I heard a gobble. I froze, and I
Speaker 1: told Landon do that again. He did, and sure enough,
Speaker 1: several hundred yards away one hammer. I quickly realized we
Speaker 1: were a pickle. We were on the edge of a
Speaker 1: medal with a truck, a trailer, a four wheeler, and
Speaker 1: three people that looked nothing like a flock of hens.
Speaker 1: I knew I had best get to the other edge
Speaker 1: of that field before that turkey did, where he would
Speaker 1: see what was going down. And as I was thinking that,
Speaker 1: my dad said, boy, you better get to the edge
Speaker 1: before he does. And with that I told them to
Speaker 1: stay there and for Landing to keep doing what he
Speaker 1: was doing. I quickly made my way across the field
Speaker 1: while putting my mask and my gloves on. The Whole
Speaker 1: time he was gobbling and getting closer. I was in
Speaker 1: a race. I made it to an old lapidated fence
Speaker 1: row fifteen yards from the edge of the tree line
Speaker 1: and hopped into what I soon found out was a
Speaker 1: big old briar patch.
Speaker 2: I loaded my shotgun, set.
Speaker 1: It up on my knee, and within twenty seconds here
Speaker 1: he came, stretching his neck up.
Speaker 2: Over that ridge.
Speaker 1: I settled a beat on his head and hit him
Speaker 1: with some remedy to nitrol number fours, and he hit
Speaker 1: the ground.
Speaker 2: I stood up in a state.
Speaker 1: Of disbelief, not believing what had just happened, and I
Speaker 1: turned around to see my son and my dad walking
Speaker 1: through that field headed my way. What a beautiful sight.
Speaker 1: We all walked up to that old gobbler together, which
Speaker 1: was and still is my biggest to date, a twenty
Speaker 1: five pounds stud and my dad and I were speechless
Speaker 1: and overcome with joy. We were high fiving and hugging
Speaker 1: and telling Landing what a huge deal this was, and
Speaker 1: that he had called him in all by hisself. Neither
Speaker 1: my dad nor I ever touched a call.
Speaker 2: That morning.
Speaker 1: Landing walked up to Turkey, you've been down and he
Speaker 1: studied it for a few seconds, and then he stood
Speaker 1: up and said, can we.
Speaker 2: Ride the four wheeler now? I told him we sure can.
Speaker 1: Buddy, that was the day I'll never forget and one
Speaker 1: I'll always be thankful for.
Speaker 2: What a blessing to share that moment with my son
Speaker 2: and my dad.
Speaker 1: Well, we appreciate you sharing that story with us. And
Speaker 1: according to Ryan, that's just how that happened. If you
Speaker 1: haven't noticed that, I was blessed to bring home a
Speaker 1: big color phace black bear from Canada recently, I applaud
Speaker 1: your ability to stay off your phone and sparse out
Speaker 1: your time on social media. Now, if you did catch
Speaker 1: one of the six million pictures I and others posted
Speaker 1: about it, Here's the story of that hunt and some
Speaker 1: context on that grand adventure I recently participated in. Better yet,
Speaker 1: the grand and benture in which I recently participated thanks
Speaker 1: to missus Mary Cupp, my twelfth grade English teacher. She
Speaker 1: taught both my older brothers too. She was diminutive in stature,
Speaker 1: but an absolute giant in teaching me the correct way
Speaker 1: to write a story. She'd be looking at me over
Speaker 1: her glasses right now by ending a sentence with a preposition.
Speaker 1: I owe her a lot, and I find myself seeking
Speaker 1: her approval even now when I sat down to write
Speaker 1: these stories. Even though she's long passed away. Thanks miss Cupp,
Speaker 1: you're still teaching me. Also, hang on because you know
Speaker 1: I write like I talk, So I hope you're grading
Speaker 1: on the curve up there. Anyway, last week, my buddy
Speaker 1: David McDaniels and my new friend Logan Ingram and yours
Speaker 1: truly let out for the Riding Mountains of Central Manitoba
Speaker 1: to hunt with Craig and Melanie McCarthy at their outfit
Speaker 1: and concern called North Mountains. Twenty one hours of driving later,
Speaker 1: I was introduced to Hayden and Kirsten, the MacArthur youngins,
Speaker 1: both of which were eager to meet and talk to us.
Speaker 1: And now I was impressed with their manners, how they
Speaker 1: conducted themselves and around adults and people they'd only just met.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you more about them in a later episode.
Speaker 1: Suffice it to say these kids were an accurate barometer
Speaker 1: of how the week would play out and how this
Speaker 1: family lives their lives close to the Canadian wilderness. The
Speaker 1: respectful reverend and with humility, and I felt at home immediately.
Speaker 1: I also felt excited because I loved to hunt bears,
Speaker 1: I love to talk about bears. I loved to eat bears.
Speaker 1: I love everything about bears, and these folks are in
Speaker 1: the bear business. And this wasn't my first trip to
Speaker 1: the land of maple leaves and hockey pucks. It was
Speaker 1: my fourth trip north of the border, but my first
Speaker 1: to Manitoba. That place looked like home to me, Saskatchewan
Speaker 1: in British Columbia. They're beautiful in there in their own way.
Speaker 1: But I was drawn to this land with a subtle familiarness.
Speaker 1: It was big country that was for the most part
Speaker 1: flat as a flitter and broken up by wooded streams,
Speaker 1: rivers and roe crop farms. It reminded me of the
Speaker 1: Arkansas delta dirt that looked like PLoud dark chocolate, and
Speaker 1: you just knew it would be cool to the touch,
Speaker 1: even on the hottest days. Cattail ringed potholes dotted the landscape,
Speaker 1: and mallard ducks and Canada geese, blue winged teal sand
Speaker 1: hill cranes were a daily attraction as we made our
Speaker 1: way to and from Camp. Kyots, turkeys, coons, big coons
Speaker 1: like forty plus pound coons lived there. How I'd love
Speaker 1: to cut old waving and loosen them bottles and see
Speaker 1: how quick he could put one of those fat rascals
Speaker 1: up a tree. They've got swamps too, big beaver ponds,
Speaker 1: and absolute trappers paradise. More on that in a later
Speaker 1: episode two. Right now, my focus was bears. Might as
Speaker 1: well get this part over with. There'll be some folks
Speaker 1: who don't like a baited bear hunt, and that's one
Speaker 1: hundred percent fine with me, But I have no interest
Speaker 1: in hearing these opinions. Send them to somebody else. Baiting
Speaker 1: bears is a tool that allows the hunter to confirm
Speaker 1: the maturity and sex of the bears, so the young
Speaker 1: ones or the sows with cubs aren't targeted. There are
Speaker 1: a million more folks more articulate than I am that
Speaker 1: have presented that argument from day one. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to repeat it here. It's legal, it's ethical, and it's
Speaker 1: nowhere near automatic. Also, my primary reason for hunting a
Speaker 1: bear is to kill him and take him home to
Speaker 1: eat and render his fat for cooking healthier organic meals
Speaker 1: than I provide for my family. Any advantage I can
Speaker 1: give myself an accomplishing that task as well.
Speaker 2: Now it's enough of that.
Speaker 1: Bears hit baits around the clock, but the best time
Speaker 1: to get set up for them is in the early afternoon.
Speaker 1: Time is most dependent on where you are as far
Speaker 1: as the latitude goes on the spinning orb of ores
Speaker 1: and three thirty PM seem to work for me for
Speaker 1: leaving the cabin, I'd be sitting and ready to roll
Speaker 1: with a fresh dose of beaver meat and grain at
Speaker 1: the bait by four fifteen on the first afternoon shooting
Speaker 1: light would be over a little after ten pm. That
Speaker 1: still makes for quite a long sit. Six hours in
Speaker 1: a tree is a pretty good pull. And if you're
Speaker 1: hunting bears, the big ones normally don't get there to
Speaker 1: the last fifteen or twenty minutes of light. They're like
Speaker 1: big bucks and a gold nocturnal. The reason the last
Speaker 1: hour of daylight hunting is usually known as the golden ire.
Speaker 1: Now when you're bear hunting, you could narrow it down
Speaker 1: even further to the golden twenty minutes or less. The
Speaker 1: name Riding Mountain is believed to be derived from a
Speaker 1: Cree Indian name meaning hill of the buffalo chase. How
Speaker 1: cool is that? I love learning about the history of
Speaker 1: any place I'm fortunate enough to be able to hunt.
Speaker 1: My mind wanders to earlier times and I try to
Speaker 1: imagine what it must have looked like to those folks
Speaker 1: who called this place home and how important hunting and
Speaker 1: trapping was to their survival. Connection to the land is
Speaker 1: important to me, and I don't take any place for granted.
Speaker 1: We owe it to those who roam there first to
Speaker 1: keep their memories alive by being good stewards of the land,
Speaker 1: especially when we're only visiting. Like my friend Doug Darren says,
Speaker 1: it's not ours, it's just our turn.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The bears started in early that evening six point fifteen,
Speaker 1: two hours after I'd settled in. I was looking at
Speaker 1: some prime examples of Ursus americ common. They were in
Speaker 1: just about every direction, and I look sitting on the
Speaker 1: bait is also a great way to observe bear behavior.
Speaker 2: And how they interact to each other.
Speaker 1: The sounds emitted by them are incredible, varied, and somewhat
Speaker 1: intimidating at times. Now. I didn't witness any show enough
Speaker 1: knockdown dragouts, but the boys did get a little grumpy
Speaker 1: about sharing at times, and contrary to what you might think,
Speaker 1: the biggest bear ain't always in charge. All through the
Speaker 1: afternoon and evening, I watched one particular color faced bear,
Speaker 1: chocolate colored bear run others away from the barrel with
Speaker 1: bluff charges, popping his jaws and woofing. That reminded me
Speaker 1: of the fellow with a Napoleon complex. He was making
Speaker 1: up for his lack of size by being the toughest kid.
Speaker 2: On the block and work most of the time.
Speaker 1: Occasionally, a larger bear would stroll in and the class
Speaker 1: bully would retreat without making a sound or offering any resistance.
Speaker 1: This let me know that they'd already established who was
Speaker 1: a boss between the two of them, long before they
Speaker 1: met in front of me that evening. I've witnessed barfights before,
Speaker 1: real ones. They escalate quickly and are extremely violent. Those
Speaker 1: played out in front of me and another part of
Speaker 1: Canada on multiple occasions, and I was sitting on the
Speaker 1: ground with them as it happened, hoping they just ignored
Speaker 1: me when it was all over. You know how it is,
Speaker 1: the guy that loses is embarrassed and mad and looks
Speaker 1: around at the gauking crowd yelling what are you looking at?
Speaker 1: At the first guy he knows he can walk. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be that guy he picked out and challenged.
Speaker 1: Admittedly the crowd. I was sitting in watching the pugilistic
Speaker 1: endeavor was pretty thin, consistent only of me and Clay
Speaker 1: Ichi the turkey calling contest nukem. But then as abruptly
Speaker 1: as they start, they're usually over. They know who won,
Speaker 1: and each goes about their business as if nothing really happened,
Speaker 1: kind of like a Major League base ball when a
Speaker 1: good hitter hits homer off a good picture, the hitter
Speaker 1: runs the bases, goes back to the dug out without
Speaker 1: show bolting, or he can rest assured if he does.
Speaker 1: Next time he steps in the box, the posing picture
Speaker 1: is going to put a heater in his ear. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you. I
Speaker 1: can't remember where I heard that, but it was probably
Speaker 1: at a bear bait said by bear, probably the same
Speaker 1: bear that said if attacked by a bear, you should
Speaker 1: lay down and play dead. That's just so you'll have
Speaker 1: some practice when it happens for real a few minutes later.
Speaker 1: But from where I sat, the bait was less than
Speaker 1: twenty yards away in an opening no bigger than a
Speaker 1: fifteen by fifteen room. The aspen and maple trees, along
Speaker 1: with the bushes that grow there, thick and lush with
Speaker 1: new spring leaves. It's pretty close quarters, and for good reason.
Speaker 1: Big bears feel more secure in tight spaces. They have
Speaker 1: avenues of escape and they can slip in undetected by
Speaker 1: other bears that may be bigger than them. There's always
Speaker 1: someone bigger and batter. The big ones know this, and
Speaker 1: they get to be old bears because of it. Bears
Speaker 1: don't like to fight, and they only do it when threatening,
Speaker 1: when it's absolutely necessary. They know that injury is weakness,
Speaker 1: and weakness is hunger and death in nature. If they
Speaker 1: can posture well enough to get their bluff in on
Speaker 1: whatever is causing the problem, they'll they'll let it go
Speaker 1: with that. The trails coming into the bait were virtually
Speaker 1: indistinguishable from the rest of the woods. They were more
Speaker 1: like open top tunnels and passageways with only opening to
Speaker 1: fully see in size of the bears being at the
Speaker 1: barrel itself. Now you could get glimpses of them through
Speaker 1: holes in the bushes as they approached, but take them
Speaker 1: a shot anywhere other than at the bait was out
Speaker 1: of the question. With the boat, and that's what I
Speaker 1: like to hunt with. I'd already determined that none of
Speaker 1: the bears that were hitting. The bait were bigger than
Speaker 1: the bears I had at home. They were all getting
Speaker 1: to pass. On opening day, I pictured in my mind
Speaker 1: having a slingshot and drilling that chocolate in his ham
Speaker 1: with a rock, just to let some of the others
Speaker 1: have a bite. When through an opening up the hill,
Speaker 1: I saw two bears. First, I thought they were fighting.
Speaker 1: Turns out that fighting was the last thing they had
Speaker 1: on their mind. That couples out on the date, which
Speaker 1: coincides with this time of year when sal's come in heat.
Speaker 1: The receptive sal can be better than bait any day.
Speaker 1: The dominant bore in the area will check her out
Speaker 1: if he's close. And I had two things going for me.
Speaker 1: There salth coming in season and the bear bait of
Speaker 1: six or seven different bears that had been using it
Speaker 1: on and off all evening. I started calling the color
Speaker 1: bear Choco Taco. Now, I'm not a wild animal namer.
Speaker 1: I've never given a bucket name that I was after.
Speaker 1: I think it's dumb. I think deers should be called
Speaker 1: deer because that's that's what they are. I only care
Speaker 1: about knowing the name of someone if I'm going to
Speaker 1: hold a conversation with him. Or avoid here's an example.
Speaker 1: I'd like to meet Frank. He seems like someone i'd
Speaker 1: like to know. Or Oh Lord, here comes Frank, let's
Speaker 1: get out here. He is not someone i'd like to know.
Speaker 1: But this bear was a regular at the bait and
Speaker 1: comical in his defense of what he thought was his.
Speaker 1: He'd been there all evening. He was the first in
Speaker 1: and would grab a chunk of frozen beaver and walk
Speaker 1: out in the woods to gnaw on it. Or, as
Speaker 1: Miss Coope would say, out into the woods he'd walk
Speaker 1: with a frozen beaver on which to naw. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I wish I could hear her say that I love you,
Speaker 1: Miss Cope. Chako Taco had ventured out from the bait
Speaker 1: for the upteenth time and had been replaced by a
Speaker 1: bigger bear who fancied himself a snackerl of beaver and
Speaker 1: a dip of grease soaked oats. Still not what I
Speaker 1: was after, though. My eyes drifted back up the hill
Speaker 1: toward where I had last seen the happy couple. It
Speaker 1: was getting darker now and was actually prime time for
Speaker 1: the big boys to show up. Then the barrier the
Speaker 1: bait got up and left like he'd been caught with
Speaker 1: his hand in the cookie jar. Movement straight out in
Speaker 1: front of me had me looking over the top and
Speaker 1: past the bait barrel to a trail that Barris had
Speaker 1: been using earlier in the day. My good friend and
Speaker 1: cameraman David McDaniels was positioned behind me filming the hunt.
Speaker 1: In the video, you can see me motion to David
Speaker 1: that I'd seen something there, and I picked up my
Speaker 1: bow and attached my release to the stream. I was
Speaker 1: training to see through the woods forty yards away, and
Speaker 1: I was alerted to the presence of a different barrier
Speaker 1: the bait when I heard David whisper, that's a big
Speaker 1: chocolate bear right in front of you.
Speaker 2: Grin Now.
Speaker 1: I didn't have to do anything other than the lower
Speaker 1: my gaze, and magically, there he was. How in the
Speaker 1: world did that joker get there with that eat, seeing
Speaker 1: or hearing it? I don't know how they move across
Speaker 1: the landscape and sidly as they do, but they move
Speaker 1: like poetry and perfect rhythm with the environment, and float
Speaker 1: through the woods like dust dances in the rays of
Speaker 1: sunshine through a window. I waited, and I watched for
Speaker 1: what seemed like forever, and then he took the final
Speaker 1: step I needed him to take to.
Speaker 2: Stand clear in the open.
Speaker 1: I could only see two thirds of him, but it
Speaker 1: was the part that held his vitals. And I leaned
Speaker 1: over just a little bit, and I picked out a
Speaker 1: small spot and was surprised when the air jumped off
Speaker 1: my strain. I followed the air's path and saw it
Speaker 1: disappear right where I was aiming. One months later, I
Speaker 1: heard him crash. Shortly after that, I heard his death moon.
Speaker 1: Now I have to tell you, the death mon is
Speaker 1: not something I enjoyed. Here half the bearers I've taken
Speaker 1: to done it to me. It's raw and emotional and
Speaker 1: maybe a little sad. I'm not ashamed to admit that
Speaker 1: the first time I heard it brought tears in my eyes.
Speaker 1: I also think that that's a good thing. Hunting is
Speaker 1: a raw emotional act, and we're driven instinctually to hunt
Speaker 1: and gather for our families. Taking the life of an
Speaker 1: animal that's not taking light and it shouldn't be quite
Speaker 1: quite the opposite that four hundred and forty pounds manitoble
Speaker 1: BlackBerry will feed my family for months good healthy protein.
Speaker 1: The grease rendered from his fat will be cooked with
Speaker 1: for many months as well, and his hide and skull
Speaker 1: were hanging my home with reverence, his memory to live
Speaker 1: within me for as long as I did. The beast
Speaker 1: as dead long lived.
Speaker 2: The beast.
Speaker 1: That would be remiss if not taking the opportunity to
Speaker 1: talk about the outfitters. I'd heard about him ever since
Speaker 1: David came back from his hunt with him last year.
Speaker 1: He went on and on about how gracious they were now,
Speaker 1: just how rock solid of a family they are. David
Speaker 1: brought home a nice bear from there last year, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know, but I thought maybe his judgment was
Speaker 1: biased by his successful trip, that dude wouldn't shut up
Speaker 1: about him. But David was a pretty good judge of
Speaker 1: character if you take me out of the mix. So
Speaker 1: I booked a hunt along with several other folks in
Speaker 1: his circle, and from day one it was like rolling
Speaker 1: into the family hunting camp and seeing folks you only
Speaker 1: see that time of year. I knew from the moment
Speaker 1: I met him that he was right and they were
Speaker 1: good folks. Craig and Mail treated us all like ken.
Speaker 1: I tagged that on the first day and spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time with all the McCarthy's from Craig and
Speaker 1: Mail to their son Hayden and daughter Kirsten, along with
Speaker 1: Derek Lammy and ash Nor Shappoo also known as Ash
Speaker 1: And If that ain't a classic Canadian bush name, I
Speaker 1: don't know what is. They were good, honest, hard working
Speaker 1: folks who are let by faith and are shining examples
Speaker 1: of a family working together for a common gold. It
Speaker 1: could have been raising chickens and farming like I grew
Speaker 1: up doing, or making cabinets in the family shop. It
Speaker 1: could have been anything. The job didn't matter. What mattered
Speaker 1: is that they all did it together and supported one
Speaker 1: another along the way. In this case, it just so
Speaker 1: happened to be bear hunting, and they do it well.
Speaker 1: Now that's something special and something I was proud to
Speaker 1: witness for myself. Check them out at North Mountain Adventures
Speaker 1: in Oaka River, Manitoba, Canada. That hunt will be on
Speaker 1: their YouTube channel next year, but go subscribe to their
Speaker 1: channel now to see some great content that's already up. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna leave you with this. It's the first stanza
Speaker 1: of a poem that reminds me of the McCarthy's, every
Speaker 1: last one of them, including Derek and Ash as I
Speaker 1: watched them going about their chores and require task of guiding, entertaining,
Speaker 1: and caring for hervest game, reminding me of this poem.
Speaker 1: And it was written by Robert W. Servis, and it's
Speaker 1: titled A Busy Man. Here's the first stanza, this crowded
Speaker 1: life of God's good giving, no man has relished more
Speaker 1: than I. I've been so gall darned busy living. I've
Speaker 1: never had the time to die. So busy fishing, hunting,
Speaker 1: roving up on my toes and fighting fit, so busy singing, laughing, loving,
Speaker 1: I've never had the time to quit until next week.
Speaker 1: This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful, AD