Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to
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Speaker 1: for more information on velvet Fest. My name is Clay Nukeleman.
Speaker 1: I'm the host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll
Speaker 1: also be your host into the world of hunting the
Speaker 1: icon of North American wilderness bear. We'll talk about tactics,
Speaker 1: gear conservation, but will also bring you into some of
Speaker 1: the wildest country on the planet. Chasing Bear. On this
Speaker 1: episode of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast, we're down in
Speaker 1: Oklahoma meeting with Jeff Ford of the Oklahoma Department of
Speaker 1: Wildlife and we're talking the nitty gritty of bears. This
Speaker 1: is a cool podcast because Jeff is a he's a biologist,
Speaker 1: and he is a he's a he's pretty much the
Speaker 1: man in Oklahoma when it comes to black bear. And
Speaker 1: there's a fascinating story about Oklahoma black bear. It's a
Speaker 1: fascinating hunting opportunities, but really it's a fascinating conservation story.
Speaker 1: So we have a really interesting converse station where we
Speaker 1: nerd out, absolutely nerd out about black bears. Super fun.
Speaker 1: Jeff Ford has has become a good friend of mine
Speaker 1: over the last several years as I've gotten to know him.
Speaker 1: Because you have to check bears in, you actually have
Speaker 1: to take the bear to the check station, and that's
Speaker 1: how I met Jeff. Was the first year that I
Speaker 1: harvested a bear in Oklahoma, I met Jeff Ford who
Speaker 1: become friends. Since then, Jeff as a tradicial blow hunter
Speaker 1: fun podcast. Hey, I want to bring to your attention
Speaker 1: we just put up a very cool video on our
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. I don't know if you're watching our YouTube
Speaker 1: stuff that you should. We've got a new video called
Speaker 1: Stalking and it's about my hunt in British Columbia's pretty
Speaker 1: incredible video. A lot of really neat stocks stalking a
Speaker 1: bear through a culvert and just it's a it's a
Speaker 1: great video. It's up on the Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: To check it out. Below the videos, you're gonna see
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Speaker 1: wide variety of T shirts, swag stuff, phone covers, whatever,
Speaker 1: all all kinds of stuff the Bear Tech says that
Speaker 1: you can buy from our t Spring stores. To check
Speaker 1: it out. Lastly, we are taking pre orders for the
Speaker 1: Bare Horizon Season five DVD. So all our Bare Horizon
Speaker 1: videos from any given year we make into a DVD
Speaker 1: that you can give away to friends, that you can
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Speaker 1: out the Western Bear Foundation. These guys are fighting the
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Speaker 1: southeast Oklahoma. Welcome to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. We
Speaker 1: are in Hodgen, Oklahoma today with with a good friend
Speaker 1: of mine has become a good friend over the last
Speaker 1: few years through checking bears. But uh, I'm with Jeff
Speaker 1: Ford and I'll introduce him. I've also got the bear
Speaker 1: tech Colby moorehead. Give him a give him a hello.
Speaker 1: Just talking about how Colby doesn't say much. But uh,
Speaker 1: now this is a this is gonna be I've been
Speaker 1: looking forward to this conver station for a wild Jeff.
Speaker 1: But so, Jeff is a You're a biologist with the Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: Oklahoma Department of Game of fish how long. We'll give
Speaker 1: us a little bit of an introduction, Jeff, but my
Speaker 1: initial question would be how long have you been working
Speaker 1: with the department. I started full time with the Oklahoma
Speaker 1: Department of Wildlife in nineteen I'd worked a couple of
Speaker 1: years prior to that, just part time, and uh, opportunity
Speaker 1: came up for a full time position, so I hopped
Speaker 1: right in there as a biologist. As a boy, I
Speaker 1: started as a wildlife technician, and I became a biologist
Speaker 1: about thirteen years ago. Okay, okay, and you you're originally
Speaker 1: from this area, Southeast Oklahoma, Yes, where I grew up
Speaker 1: ten miles from here, spent spent my whole life in
Speaker 1: Southeast Oklahoma. Yea, and a little personal background. You're a
Speaker 1: traditional bow hunter, that's right. That's the to me, that's
Speaker 1: the purest way to hunt. Yeah, and uh, I admit
Speaker 1: I do grab across the bowl late deer season. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I haven't put any meat on the table yet,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I like eating them way better and I
Speaker 1: like missing them. So yeah, Well, we're looking at a
Speaker 1: couple of nice Southeast Oklahoma white tails on the wall
Speaker 1: right there, A couple of nice dere Yeah, I'm really blessed,
Speaker 1: but have some good areas to hunt and and have
Speaker 1: a little time in the fall, usually in December. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to get out and chase them after bear seasons over.
Speaker 1: So you are I want to get into you, but
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the landscape, which I was
Speaker 1: almost gonna jump into, kind of the landscape of where
Speaker 1: we're at and whatnot. But you are. There's not an
Speaker 1: official bear biologist of Oklahoma. Am I correct in saying
Speaker 1: that's correct? But if there was one, it would probably
Speaker 1: be you. Yes, sir, yes, if you can put it that. See,
Speaker 1: in Arkansas we had well now it's a large carnivore
Speaker 1: coordinator because now we have confirmed mountain lion sightings in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: So it was there was a bear biologist quote unquote
Speaker 1: that was over all the bear operations. Now his title
Speaker 1: as large carnivore biologists. But so in Oklahoma, you're the
Speaker 1: You're the bear man, right, I've you know, just living
Speaker 1: in an area where we have most of the bear
Speaker 1: that are in Oklahoma within forty miles of where we
Speaker 1: are right now. And uh so, just I guess it's
Speaker 1: it's fallen on me, you know, take care of the nuisance.
Speaker 1: Bear in the hunting seasons that we have for bear
Speaker 1: now we've had for the last ten years, we've had
Speaker 1: a season. So so I'm responsible for what goes on
Speaker 1: and keeping up with with the records. So to give
Speaker 1: just a general would you, Jeff, give a general history
Speaker 1: of Well, this is such a big box of cards here,
Speaker 1: Where did these bears come from? And how long have
Speaker 1: you guys been hunting them? Can we ask that question? Yeah?
Speaker 1: We the bear that are here, we're the ones that
Speaker 1: were part of relocated into UH southern Missouri and northern
Speaker 1: Arkansas in the sixties, and it's taken them, you know,
Speaker 1: that long to work their way down through the mountains
Speaker 1: in and into here. We've we had our first confirmed
Speaker 1: nuisance bear if we could call it a nuisance most
Speaker 1: call it a problem bear around nineteen nine, and UH
Speaker 1: we've year after year and a lot, depending on the weather,
Speaker 1: you know, the sightings increased and and the problem number
Speaker 1: of problem bears increased, UH usually related with drouth. And
Speaker 1: UH we've had we started a hunting season. We decided
Speaker 1: through research, We've done the research and UH projects and
Speaker 1: we've been doing bear surveys since the early nineties and
Speaker 1: UH we we decided ten years ago that we had
Speaker 1: enough bear in southeast Oklahoma four further southeast counties to
Speaker 1: have a bear season, and we started a bear season
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine with a twenty bear quota, and
Speaker 1: the first year the quota wasn't met. They almost got there.
Speaker 1: This nineteen bear harvested and the second year hunting, everyone
Speaker 1: was allowed to hunt with crossbows. It was legal legalized
Speaker 1: in two thousand ten, and just so half in that
Speaker 1: year was when there was a severe draft started. So
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten bear season lasted one day. We
Speaker 1: still had a quota quota, twenty bear quota, and they
Speaker 1: harvested thirty two bear on the first day, so we
Speaker 1: shut it down. We had a lot of Oklahoma's crossbows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had. Yeah, we we had a lot of hunters
Speaker 1: that were upset because going from the data from the
Speaker 1: previous year, uh, when only nineteen bear were harvested, they
Speaker 1: thought they had plenty of time to hunt. And so
Speaker 1: I mean I had people showing up out here ready
Speaker 1: ring my neck. You know, I haven't even gone hunting
Speaker 1: in it's over. So uh, two thousand and eleven rolled around,
Speaker 1: the draft was still ongoing. Uh, bear season lasted two days.
Speaker 1: Then we still had the twenty bear quota and they
Speaker 1: harvested thirty one bear. And talking with other states, southern
Speaker 1: states that have a black bear season, uh, they were
Speaker 1: telling us that, you know, sometimes quotas work and sometimes
Speaker 1: they don't. Normally, on a on a bad year, you'll
Speaker 1: have a lot of bear harvested, bad weather wise and
Speaker 1: food wise, and then on a good year, when there's
Speaker 1: a lot, big large mass crop in the weather calls
Speaker 1: off early and the bear slowed down in there there
Speaker 1: full it'll go back down. And we've seen that. We
Speaker 1: took the quota off after three years and uh and
Speaker 1: and that year, uh, you know, all the hunters were happy,
Speaker 1: they got to hunt all they wanted and the harvest
Speaker 1: was up, but not where we were concerned. And since
Speaker 1: then we've seen it. We've had a record year in
Speaker 1: with eighty five bear harvested five so it went from
Speaker 1: so you've had over since two thousand nine, and we're
Speaker 1: coming into the tenth year of hunting bears in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: The harvest has been between nineteen and eighty five bears,
Speaker 1: that's right, yeah, yeah, yearly. The fall of was our
Speaker 1: tenth Yeah, and we've had a year in there where
Speaker 1: they only harvested bear after the quota was taken off.
Speaker 1: So and we've been seeing the bear. If you just
Speaker 1: averaged our overall bear harvest's gonna be about fifty bear
Speaker 1: year and you said it earlier, but they're current well
Speaker 1: up until this year. And we can talk about the
Speaker 1: regular st changes. But for the last ten years, there
Speaker 1: has been four counties in southeast Oklahoma that were open
Speaker 1: for bear hunting and it was it's legal to hunt
Speaker 1: bear on private land in those counties over bait. So
Speaker 1: that's been the method that's been the primary method of harvest.
Speaker 1: That's the most successful way to harst is that you
Speaker 1: guys wanted archery hunters hunting bear on private land and
Speaker 1: using bait, and that was that was a methodology for
Speaker 1: harvesting them. Yeah, that's we didn't see a problem with
Speaker 1: letting people huntover bait on private On public hunting are
Speaker 1: snow Clona that's managed by the department. There's no baiting
Speaker 1: is allowed for any type of harvest wildlife. Well, and
Speaker 1: we've talked about it so much even on this podcast.
Speaker 1: You couldn't kill if there was no baiting in this
Speaker 1: part of the state. I mean, just a handful of
Speaker 1: bears would be killed every year. I mean, so it's
Speaker 1: a management tool. It's a it's a management tool for
Speaker 1: you guys that have the research, that have the science,
Speaker 1: that have the knowledge of how many bears need to
Speaker 1: be extracted. It's a management tool to be able to
Speaker 1: do that right. And it allows hunters to observe the
Speaker 1: bear before season gets here and they know what's coming in.
Speaker 1: That's a good good thing about it. They can uh,
Speaker 1: you know, our research bear all have ear tags, some
Speaker 1: of them have callers, and we can talk about some
Speaker 1: of the changes that's going on with that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of hunters who are you know,
Speaker 1: are female bears that research bear pink ear tags and
Speaker 1: so they know it's easy to tell that ear tag
Speaker 1: and uh, and so they know it's a female if
Speaker 1: they want to harvest. Some they're legal its harvest if
Speaker 1: they want, but some people just don't want to. But uh,
Speaker 1: even overbait. And you gotta know your bear hunters. Once
Speaker 1: those acorns start falling, it gets really tough. So and
Speaker 1: it's one of the reasons our harvest was up, you
Speaker 1: know this year was you know, it stayed hot the
Speaker 1: bear removing and there the acorns were gone relatively early,
Speaker 1: so the bear kept coming to the bait. The weather
Speaker 1: was right for the hunters. I mean it seems, you know,
Speaker 1: everyone says, well, the animals aren't moving, but when it
Speaker 1: gets cold and wet, the hunters quip for most part,
Speaker 1: quit moving to and and so. But this year it
Speaker 1: stayed warm, the hunters were active and the bears were active,
Speaker 1: and uh had a lot of opportunity. We harvested a
Speaker 1: lot of big boars this year, which was great because
Speaker 1: that's our target animal there animal and so we haven't
Speaker 1: got the ages back on the on on the bear yet, uh,
Speaker 1: but we just from seeing the bear. We saw several
Speaker 1: big boars three hundred fifty four hundred pounds. Then yours
Speaker 1: was huge, and we then we had a I believe
Speaker 1: it's six hundred and eight pound harvested and Pushman Tall County. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's a monster. Monster. People don't realize how big they get.
Speaker 1: So to talk a little bit about so we've established
Speaker 1: that there's been a bear season in Oklahoma for ten years.
Speaker 1: The kind of the broader story of these bears, to me,
Speaker 1: really it's fascinating and it is the it's it's a
Speaker 1: hallmark story of the conservation efforts of hunters and biologists
Speaker 1: really across the country for sure. But you know they
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. They say that the reintroduction of Arkansas black bears,
Speaker 1: which which happened between nineteen fifty four and nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: they brought in two hundred and fifty four bears into Arkansas,
Speaker 1: released them in three different places. The closest, which of
Speaker 1: one of those places would have been Dry Creek over
Speaker 1: in uh Yale and Scott County, I think in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: which from right here would probably be close to fifty
Speaker 1: sixty miles from here in Arkansas. So that would have
Speaker 1: been the closest relocation place to where we're at right now,
Speaker 1: and here fifties sixty years later, those bears are here
Speaker 1: now and and and the reason being is because the
Speaker 1: habitat for bears is excellent right here and and if
Speaker 1: you looked at the topographic map of western Arkansas, you'd
Speaker 1: see southwestern Arkansas. You'd see a block of east west
Speaker 1: running ridges called the Washingtah Mountains spelled O U A
Speaker 1: c H I t A looks like Oha cheetah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Stephen Renella says Oha cheetah uh um uh, but it's
Speaker 1: pronounced Washingta with a W and. And we're the Washington
Speaker 1: Mountains tail into southeast Oklahoma, and we're really in some
Speaker 1: spectacular beautiful mountains under three thousand feet most of them. Um.
Speaker 1: But that's why the bears are here, right, Jeff, I
Speaker 1: mean just a habitat. It's perfect habitat from National Forest.
Speaker 1: And that's where I was gonna go, sitting right here
Speaker 1: in Hodgen that your office here, U Gaming Fish, Department
Speaker 1: of Wildlife land here just about any direction you go
Speaker 1: is gonna be National Forests two hundred and forty thousand
Speaker 1: acres in the Floor County. Wow, isn't that much of
Speaker 1: Washington National Forest? And then around the hundred hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty thousand in McCurtain County. And then you have timber
Speaker 1: company land also and so and those are also a
Speaker 1: couple of w MS we at least land from Warehouser
Speaker 1: and a couple other timber companies. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of country that with without a lot of humans in here,
Speaker 1: which there's lots of private land that's great habitat too.
Speaker 1: So these four counties would have kind of been the hub,
Speaker 1: but they're bear is way outside of these four counties.
Speaker 1: That's correct, now that I don't have a ton of
Speaker 1: insight into I mean, I've hunted. I alluded to it,
Speaker 1: and some people might have known this, But I've hunted
Speaker 1: Oklahoma the last four or five years, and I live
Speaker 1: kind of in Arkansas, on the western edge of Arkansas.
Speaker 1: So I feel like I'm home when I'm here in
Speaker 1: the Washtalls in Oklahoma, But really I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: know this country that well. Further west of here, how
Speaker 1: big is the bear range? Jeff, Well, we've had bear
Speaker 1: show up just south of Oklahoma City, which is two
Speaker 1: hundred miles west of here. Now they're not they're not
Speaker 1: a resident bear in that area. When the draft was
Speaker 1: going real strong, you on, they were following those watershed
Speaker 1: looking for food and staying on water. So uh, But
Speaker 1: we have excellent habitat west of here too. Down just
Speaker 1: say McAllister Calvin area. You can get on a map
Speaker 1: and look at that, and it starts getting in, It
Speaker 1: starts running into cross timbers habitat, which black bear prefer
Speaker 1: more of a heavily cross timber habitat. A cross timbers
Speaker 1: is where you're looking at large tracks hundred sixty two
Speaker 1: hundred acre tracks or more of hamed is cattle pasture
Speaker 1: and then just hardwoods on the creeks in the fence rows.
Speaker 1: And that's man man induced habitat. I mean, like when
Speaker 1: you're talking about hundred six decres that like the blocks
Speaker 1: that people were homestead in the timber off something cutting
Speaker 1: timber using it for cropland or or hay or cattle grazing.
Speaker 1: In some of these areas. You know, the only timber
Speaker 1: is in the ripe arian areas. Now does the cross timber?
Speaker 1: I always thought that had to do with the short
Speaker 1: stubby post oaks that they made cross ties out of.
Speaker 1: Well that also, but it's considered cross timbers habitat, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, you're looking does that does that word cross timbers?
Speaker 1: Is that referring to the type of timber or the
Speaker 1: mishmash of its crop and the habitat? Okay, okay, So anyway,
Speaker 1: that's the bear or are in there, and we know
Speaker 1: they're there, especially with everyone has trail cameras now on
Speaker 1: there whatever their feeders out in the back forty or whatever.
Speaker 1: So we're getting a lot of a lot of so
Speaker 1: the bears would range almost all the way down to
Speaker 1: the Texas border. That's right. Yeah, we've had them down
Speaker 1: right on the Red River. I'll be done. And now
Speaker 1: whether they're staying there year round her or not, but
Speaker 1: some of the research bear you know that we've caught
Speaker 1: right here, ten miles from my house. Once the mating
Speaker 1: season is over, they go seventy miles west and right
Speaker 1: on the edge of the Washingtall Highlands and they'll stay
Speaker 1: there all summer, all fall. They'll don there and then
Speaker 1: come back here during Tell me about that specific bear,
Speaker 1: like just like where you don't have to give specifics
Speaker 1: of the names of the places he was at, but
Speaker 1: just like, because that's fascinating, and you've told me about
Speaker 1: this before. But this bear, yeah, we uh caught this bear.
Speaker 1: He was a problem bear eating cat food. You o,
Speaker 1: lady just kept poor. You know, I don't know who
Speaker 1: would think cat could eat ten pounds of cat food today,
Speaker 1: But she's putting out that more and the typical you know,
Speaker 1: she comes out one day and you know, the bear
Speaker 1: is there, large war and she calls me in this
Speaker 1: this bear was there and and you know we're busy
Speaker 1: with nuisance baroness. But anyway, I it was on June
Speaker 1: was the day that I called him. I remember that
Speaker 1: day because a great friend of mine retired that day.
Speaker 1: But I caught this bear on the six of June
Speaker 1: and put her tags in him, you know, done the
Speaker 1: whole thing, and and released him and him took him
Speaker 1: miles away. Yeah, I took him down close to Broken
Speaker 1: Bow Lake to the war from here you're looking at
Speaker 1: probably forty five miles. Took him away and released him
Speaker 1: and released team. You know, even though you know a
Speaker 1: lot of bear all, they come back normally, but once
Speaker 1: we handle him and everything, you know, then they're they're
Speaker 1: pretty intelligent animal. You know, they'll they'll stay away from us.
Speaker 1: So we released this bear and nine days later our
Speaker 1: research team caught him in Daisy, Oklahoma. And you can
Speaker 1: get on the map and look, that's probably sixty miles west.
Speaker 1: As a crow flies he I mean, he from where
Speaker 1: you dropped him off, from where I dropped him off.
Speaker 1: He just hit got the mountains and went home and
Speaker 1: stayed the rest of the summer there, Denned There we
Speaker 1: went and worked in the den and the next spring
Speaker 1: he came back and uh, we had a malfunction on
Speaker 1: his collar. Last known location of him was a corn
Speaker 1: Arkansas down near a Mina. Wow. So he went from
Speaker 1: Daisy to Mina correct, Which how far is that sixty miles?
Speaker 1: Would you say as a profes something. So in the
Speaker 1: in the research that I've done with bears in Arkansas
Speaker 1: are the research I've read in different things. You know,
Speaker 1: they say there was a bear that was captured and
Speaker 1: tagged in the central Ozarks, that was killed on the
Speaker 1: interstate in Salasaw, Oklahoma, back in the nineties. I mean
Speaker 1: it's back when that original research was being done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I still have that. We had that bear amounted. Now
Speaker 1: he's in Yeah, he's in rough shape, but yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we took that bear. This is in the early
Speaker 1: days of doing our bear programs. Some schools go education,
Speaker 1: you know, how do what to do to keep bears
Speaker 1: from staying in your yard there. They don't come there
Speaker 1: because they like being around humans. They like what we
Speaker 1: put out for them to eat. So this bear we
Speaker 1: had he mounted life year was that Jeff. That was
Speaker 1: probably ninety two or ninety three. That bear was a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty six miles away from where they captured him.
Speaker 1: That's what I remember from the research. And so he was.
Speaker 1: So we had him mounted life size and we had it.
Speaker 1: We had it the taxidermist. We said, ask him if
Speaker 1: he could build us something for this bear that we
Speaker 1: could bolting too, so we could haul him around the schools.
Speaker 1: And he builds this huge platform four him with handles
Speaker 1: on it, and so we'd throw him in the back
Speaker 1: of the truck and just take off down the road
Speaker 1: and boy, we'd get the looks three anything. No, we
Speaker 1: we never uh. He was just the bear, just the
Speaker 1: just the bear. Yeah, we we may have come up
Speaker 1: with the nickname back then, but I'd rather not say
Speaker 1: I don't. But but yeah, we used that bear in
Speaker 1: a lot of schools and he just finally wore out.
Speaker 1: We started his hide, you know, from riding in back.
Speaker 1: The truck got dried and cracked and pieces come off,
Speaker 1: and we'd go down and buy some like black throw
Speaker 1: rugs and glue to the bald spots. But we got
Speaker 1: we got a lot of mileage and a lot of
Speaker 1: good education. Now that bear. Well, it's pretty amazing how
Speaker 1: big these bear home ranges can be. And those would
Speaker 1: probably be exceptions, but there it happens. Often what would
Speaker 1: you say, average bear home range would be here in
Speaker 1: the in the mountains there in Oklahoma. Do you have
Speaker 1: any idea well on on the research that we've done
Speaker 1: and with the collar the bear, you know, the a
Speaker 1: boar may he may be ten miles in other direction
Speaker 1: any time move around and during the mating season goal more. Uh.
Speaker 1: Females normally stay pretty close within ter three miles of
Speaker 1: where they're born, but a big boar, they get older,
Speaker 1: will will range out. You told me one time that
Speaker 1: you guys for us for some period of time you
Speaker 1: were doing tissue samples from all the bears harvested or
Speaker 1: from a lot of bears harvested, and they were doing
Speaker 1: DNA sampling, and you would see that these females, they
Speaker 1: were like family groups of females that were stretched out
Speaker 1: in different areas of the mountains. That was pretty consistent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's correct. And they would one just one family group
Speaker 1: on one mountain five miles south of there, totally different
Speaker 1: DNA string mitochondrial DNA just no relation at all. Is
Speaker 1: far wow, you know, and and sometimes even even closer
Speaker 1: than that. So these so what that is indicating was
Speaker 1: that the females were staying close to their home range
Speaker 1: of their mother and the males were just dispersing like crazy.
Speaker 1: Is that that's correct. That's the natural way for for
Speaker 1: a bear to do. The females stay close, even though
Speaker 1: they won't tolerate each other, you know, unless they're both
Speaker 1: on the same food source. But but even then, you know,
Speaker 1: they wait their turn. But but then the males disperse,
Speaker 1: and you know, the younger they are and the weaker
Speaker 1: they are whatever, uh, you know, they just keep getting
Speaker 1: kicked farther and farther away until they end up. You
Speaker 1: suppose it probably what this big boar that was going
Speaker 1: to Daisy every summer and spending all year. You know,
Speaker 1: he was probably dispersed away from when he was a
Speaker 1: young guy. And then even though he was large four
Speaker 1: hundred pound bear, um, you know, he had come back
Speaker 1: here during the mating season and go back home. How
Speaker 1: long did you have that collar on him? He did
Speaker 1: that more than once, in I correct, a couple of years. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure we said that earlier, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: just a one time deal. You caught him over here,
Speaker 1: and then he went to say he did that multiple years.
Speaker 1: And then the collar malfunctioned over in Arkansas and he's
Speaker 1: probably still alive over that. Now, that was a big bear.
Speaker 1: That was a large large How big do you think
Speaker 1: he was when you caught him? Well, we weighed him
Speaker 1: and he was four hundred and twenty six pounds in
Speaker 1: un man. That's a five hundred plus pound bear in October. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's easily we've caught now this year we have it
Speaker 1: on on our research lines. But we catch bear every
Speaker 1: year this time of year, been or over five hundred
Speaker 1: pounds and recapture this hang bear. Almost one bear we've
Speaker 1: caught four years running. Just just a big guy and
Speaker 1: uh and he lads lads of the hunters, you know,
Speaker 1: and the big ones are smart. Man. Yeah, since we're
Speaker 1: talking about bear weight, talk to me about the weights
Speaker 1: of some of these big boars over here and and
Speaker 1: even sALS like what give me a range of what
Speaker 1: you're seeing with bear weights. Well, I'll start out with
Speaker 1: the heaviest weights, since that's what everyone's here. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: heaviest bear that I've handled was a problem bear that
Speaker 1: I caught near Tallahina and he uh, he weighed seven
Speaker 1: hundred pounds. Even now, you know what what we were
Speaker 1: doing then and we can still do this is the
Speaker 1: feed meal and heavener. We knew how much our trapped wade,
Speaker 1: so we would catch a bear if it we thought
Speaker 1: was more than five pounds or scales only went to five,
Speaker 1: so we would run up there and get on their
Speaker 1: truck scales and the yeah, unhooked from the trap, you'renna
Speaker 1: pull our pickups off. We knew our trap was twelve
Speaker 1: hundred pounds, just a big old heavy thing, but ye know,
Speaker 1: so nineteen hundred pounds him and that trap filled that
Speaker 1: culvert trap up. He did. He was laying on his
Speaker 1: back when I pulled up. I'd never seen one do that,
Speaker 1: and it was just because he was so big. He couldn't.
Speaker 1: You know, they'll lay on their belly and put their
Speaker 1: heads on their chins. He couldn't do that. He was
Speaker 1: too big. Oh boy, now you're gonna get me to guessing.
Speaker 1: But that was probably five years ago, and I caught
Speaker 1: him on Labor Day. Okay, so he's potentially still around.
Speaker 1: Yeah he could, yeah, because he was a young bear.
Speaker 1: He was actually when I washed the trap out, and
Speaker 1: I didn't find it at first, uh in there, but
Speaker 1: I found the ear tag where i'd caught that bear
Speaker 1: three years earlier. Yeah, and I when the research started
Speaker 1: going on, they were they were putting him in in
Speaker 1: the right and the left ear. So I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I with the nuise and sparre, I'll just put one
Speaker 1: ear tag in in the right ears. And this was
Speaker 1: your decision. You were the nobody. You were the only one.
Speaker 1: I mean, you and maybe a couple of other biologists
Speaker 1: around here, we're the ones trapping. We were, you know,
Speaker 1: we were all doing that. So but anyway, when I
Speaker 1: caught this bear and worked him up, have video of it,
Speaker 1: actually of the release, and just because he was so huge.
Speaker 1: And anyway, when I got back home and was watching
Speaker 1: the trap out, I found the ear tag from where
Speaker 1: i'd put one any where I'd caught him three years earlier.
Speaker 1: Had some beehives over here on Poto Mountain. I'll be down.
Speaker 1: And so this this bear was a five six year
Speaker 1: old bear. Yea. And these these bears can live up
Speaker 1: to years. Do you have much history on the I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you've only been doing bear research for about
Speaker 1: ten years. Do you have any super old bears? I
Speaker 1: know in Arkansas the research says that the oldest documented
Speaker 1: bear at the time, and in the research in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: it's kind of spotty, like there's not been this continual
Speaker 1: research project. It's like they do research projects for sections
Speaker 1: of time. But the oldest bear that they had ever
Speaker 1: recorded was like twenty three or twenty five year old.
Speaker 1: Do you have any info on that? We the oldest
Speaker 1: bear that we've had harvested was eighteen years old now
Speaker 1: wed and that's from tooth tooth aging by annually cross
Speaker 1: section of the two sent off to a lab. They
Speaker 1: count the rings on that tooth like a tree basically.
Speaker 1: And we had in two thousand, two thousand one or
Speaker 1: first research project, Um, we'd tagged some bear and then
Speaker 1: we've recaptured a female bear several times. Actually that's still
Speaker 1: alive from that original research project, and she's twenty one
Speaker 1: years old and she's still having cops having I guess
Speaker 1: it would make sense inside of a new region where
Speaker 1: the bears were repatriating like that, it wouldn't necessarily be
Speaker 1: a super old age structure. But now they've been here
Speaker 1: so long, it's starting to be an old age structure,
Speaker 1: am I right? Yeah? And they're and they're healthy, and
Speaker 1: they're like domestic animals similar as far as having babies
Speaker 1: or reproducing, they all do it until they're till last
Speaker 1: year or two of their life, and once they get
Speaker 1: to where they can't produce young, they're so they're so
Speaker 1: far gone usually by the end that they die pretty
Speaker 1: que natural causes. So let's do some math on our
Speaker 1: feet here. If that how old do you think that
Speaker 1: bear was when y'all caught her? She's probably three or
Speaker 1: four years three or four year old, Okay, So in
Speaker 1: two thousand one she was three years old and she
Speaker 1: started having cubs. She pretty much had cubs every other
Speaker 1: year until in twenty nineteen, say eighteen years cubs every
Speaker 1: other year. That's nine litters. Yeah, and you know some
Speaker 1: bear don't have bear every other year, even though they
Speaker 1: can somen't go three four years sometimes they don't know
Speaker 1: for what reason, but some some bears. Do you recall
Speaker 1: that do you believe this bear? And I don't know
Speaker 1: if you kept that much track on her. Did she
Speaker 1: have well during those years in between two thousand one
Speaker 1: and two, I was in thirteen. We didn't have research
Speaker 1: project going. We don't know how many years she's had cups,
Speaker 1: but since then, you know, every two years and this
Speaker 1: did she ever have Do you recall if she ever
Speaker 1: had as many as three cups. Three cups. Really she's
Speaker 1: a good mama. So let's just say we could speculate
Speaker 1: and say she had nine nine litters um and they
Speaker 1: were as many as two or three cubs each, So
Speaker 1: she could have had seven cubs, could have could probably maximum, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she could have and and don't cut mortalities about thirty Okay,
Speaker 1: about like whatitetail dere or you know, well white tailer
Speaker 1: actually higher than that as far as fun mortality, but
Speaker 1: they have a lot more predators after them. So but yeah,
Speaker 1: so what what they say about bears is that you know,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about when you're compared and the other
Speaker 1: big game animals that that we hunt and use, you know,
Speaker 1: white tail, a white tail doe can get pregnant her
Speaker 1: first year of life and immediately begin to reproduce. These
Speaker 1: bears are not reaching sexual maturity till they're three years
Speaker 1: old at least. And we're some of our harvest status shown.
Speaker 1: These three year old female that are harvested have not
Speaker 1: had a litter, and you know, so some of them maybe,
Speaker 1: and again that is something that research hasn't figured out
Speaker 1: why some go a little longer than others before typically
Speaker 1: it might even be four years old before that. So
Speaker 1: when you when you look at that from a a
Speaker 1: recruitment standpoint of how much how many new bears are
Speaker 1: on the landscape every year. If a female is born
Speaker 1: and it's four years before she reproduces in the animal world,
Speaker 1: that's that's a slow reproducing animal. But I heard, uh,
Speaker 1: the Bara biologists in Arkansas, Myron Means, say this recently
Speaker 1: that they've really been amazed at the last ten years
Speaker 1: in Arkansas how much Well there's there's sALS reproducing that
Speaker 1: are young. I mean, like I think it's pretty common
Speaker 1: for him to be three years old when they start
Speaker 1: having large litters. And just how fast they actually can reproduce. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when when there's plenty of food for them and uh
Speaker 1: weather conditions are right, Yeah, they really really produce. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's yeah, there's plenty of room out there. You
Speaker 1: are bear uh populations even with the hunting seasons going on,
Speaker 1: our our population still increasing that about six percent a
Speaker 1: year in this in this area where the hunting seasons
Speaker 1: are going on. Really, Now, that's that's I want to
Speaker 1: dig into that right there, Jeff. Populations of the natural
Speaker 1: natural population of hunt bears would increase by about ten
Speaker 1: percent per year. Yeah, it showed around eleven percent here,
Speaker 1: but you're talking about excellent habitat. Yeah, you know, in
Speaker 1: in eight months of the year at least with a
Speaker 1: good food source. So even with us taking out ten
Speaker 1: percent of the bears were still reproducing, reproducing at six percent.
Speaker 1: So does that mean that the reproduction rate would have
Speaker 1: been about seventu You may not follow my math there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't, so, yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're still doing really so we're still increasing by six
Speaker 1: percent despite us taking out all these bears. Is that
Speaker 1: what you're saying? Yea, Our population isn't isn't being It's
Speaker 1: still growing. It's still growing. It despite us taking out
Speaker 1: and you know, the world heard could be healthier, you
Speaker 1: know when whenever you know, we're not overpopulated with bear
Speaker 1: are Our studies show that there's still a lot of
Speaker 1: room for expansion in this area for bear. There's food
Speaker 1: sources unreal. So but anyway, still we're still our population
Speaker 1: is increasing even with so really, even right here at
Speaker 1: the probably the hub of some of the best bear habitat,
Speaker 1: the population is not saturated the habitat. That's correct. That.
Speaker 1: That's that's surprising to me. Yeah, we're still in really
Speaker 1: good shape. That's a good sign because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of bears right here. Jeff Wynn told you this. We
Speaker 1: saw a bear today. We did well to Kolby. This
Speaker 1: is Kolby's first time you've driven through Southeast Oklahoma, but
Speaker 1: this is the first time we We came over here
Speaker 1: a few hours early and went to one of our
Speaker 1: places where we bear hunt, and a few hours away
Speaker 1: long ways from there. Don't get too far until this
Speaker 1: until this year. You know, we're driving down the highway
Speaker 1: and uh over there by the dumpsters, there was a
Speaker 1: bear there at twelve was at twelve noon, it was
Speaker 1: around there, you, I mean, it's hot. And I was
Speaker 1: telling Cobe when we were pulling up close to there's
Speaker 1: a there's a place where there's some trash barrels sometimes
Speaker 1: a tract to bears, and uh, I said, I said,
Speaker 1: this is a place where you can see a bear sometimes.
Speaker 1: And I was gonna show him. Well, anyway, there was
Speaker 1: a We pulled up and there was a bear standing
Speaker 1: there were in the hot on the highway. Anyway, I said, man,
Speaker 1: it's a good day in Southeast Oklahoma. And you see
Speaker 1: a bear and I call it a shooter. It was
Speaker 1: a nice bear too. But you know, you can you
Speaker 1: could drive around in this country for weeks and never
Speaker 1: see a bear. That's what's amazing to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is densely forested. Most places in these mountains. If
Speaker 1: you just got out of your truck or walked out
Speaker 1: in the woods, you couldn't see more than forty yards
Speaker 1: like yeah, that's yeah during the summer. During the summer,
Speaker 1: that's stretching it even. Yeah. So the first twenty years
Speaker 1: i worked for the Department of Wildlife, and I'd kept
Speaker 1: up with the amount of bear I'd seen this hidden
Speaker 1: caught counting our problem bears are the ones that was harvested.
Speaker 1: But I'd seen nineteen bear in the wild just crossing
Speaker 1: the roads, crossing the road. That's it. And I'm spending,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of times forty hours a week
Speaker 1: in the woods and live here. So and I have
Speaker 1: until year before last, had never seen any bear in
Speaker 1: the woods while I was hunting, and and jumped one
Speaker 1: a mile from here. Yeah, you know, so that's that's
Speaker 1: I want to stop right there, Jeff, that's crazy. What
Speaker 1: what I mean, Jeff, is a is bow hunting a
Speaker 1: lot around you, and some of your hunting this out
Speaker 1: of probably the less sir, not in the heart of
Speaker 1: the bear areas. But I mean, you just said you
Speaker 1: hunted all these years and never saw a bear while
Speaker 1: you were out actually hunting in the woods. It just
Speaker 1: shows you how elusive they are because there's no shortage
Speaker 1: of bears here. I mean a good bear density and
Speaker 1: and we could I want to ask you a question
Speaker 1: about bear density and total population of bears. But as
Speaker 1: much time as you've spent in the woods, you've not
Speaker 1: seen And I would say the same thing about my
Speaker 1: hunting growing up in the washed All mountains, you know,
Speaker 1: not far from here. Um, you can hunt your whole
Speaker 1: life and never see a bear. Hunting in November October, November,
Speaker 1: which is is the time when these bears are starting
Speaker 1: to slow down their home, their ranges are starting to
Speaker 1: to narrow down in preparation for dinning. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you're in the deer, if you're just going rifle
Speaker 1: deer hunting in Arkansas or Oklahoma, yeah, you're you're probably
Speaker 1: not gonna see a bear. You could, but you're you know,
Speaker 1: like right now through October is probably peak bear movement.
Speaker 1: I mean, bears are you know, we just saw one
Speaker 1: at twelve noon and eighty five degrees outside. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I just think that's remarkable. It's remarkable how elusive they are. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know what, I turkey hunt saw him in
Speaker 1: the woods in the spring in the spring too, and
Speaker 1: you know, squirrel hunt not as much as I used to.
Speaker 1: But you know, you just a lot of people are amazed.
Speaker 1: And I tell them, you know, even though you haven't
Speaker 1: saw a bear, there's chance if you've been in the woods,
Speaker 1: bears saw you. And I mean lud before you ever knew.
Speaker 1: He was around a lot of people in the woods
Speaker 1: in the fall. And you know, it's we just people
Speaker 1: just don't report seeing them that often, you know, unless
Speaker 1: the hunters. I've never seen a bear while a turkey
Speaker 1: hunting in the in good Bear country in Arkansas. Uh
Speaker 1: and even turkey down in Oklahoma last year or some
Speaker 1: never seen a bear. Watch again. Yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: you would, wouldn't it. Yeah, they're because, yeah, it seems
Speaker 1: like you would, because there's not a lot of food
Speaker 1: then and they're definitely out first April there, most of
Speaker 1: them by the end, so it's just let's go back
Speaker 1: to what I've said before. Do you guys have a
Speaker 1: number that is you believe is a good estimation of
Speaker 1: how many bears are in Oklahoma. With what we've done
Speaker 1: with the research and then our capture release recapture, we're
Speaker 1: looking at around eleven in southeast Oklahoma, Okay, And so that's, uh,
Speaker 1: that's good math. There a good math lesson on bears
Speaker 1: because if you want to stay but this is something
Speaker 1: that bear managers talk about, if you want to stabilize
Speaker 1: the bear population, you take out ten percent of the
Speaker 1: bears per year because they increase by ten percent, and
Speaker 1: so ten perent of eleven would be a hundred and
Speaker 1: ten bears. So in theory, you could harvest hundred ten
Speaker 1: bears and wouldn't affect the population. But we're harvesting a
Speaker 1: lot less than that, correct. So that's why the I mean,
Speaker 1: the population is still still growing. And it's not only
Speaker 1: it's not only growing, it's expanding. I mean it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a pouring water into a vast open space.
Speaker 1: I mean it hits and spreads out. I mean it's
Speaker 1: like there's a I mean, that's the way bear bear
Speaker 1: distribution happens, right, Jeff, Like like bear pop bear begin
Speaker 1: to get get pretty dense and good habitat and then
Speaker 1: they begin to just fold out. Males begin to disperse
Speaker 1: and gradually females begin to disperse. Secondly, is that correct?
Speaker 1: We're in our far western areas that we tramp for
Speaker 1: the research bear. It was several years before we caught
Speaker 1: a female in some of these areas we'd catch and
Speaker 1: you know, and there's not a lot of bear in
Speaker 1: the far west areas of where are bear where we
Speaker 1: figure we have a bear population that stays are year round.
Speaker 1: So we were catching seven or eight males and and
Speaker 1: no females. And just the last couple of years we've
Speaker 1: gone to catching a few females in those areas and
Speaker 1: had a female dn UH in one of the areas
Speaker 1: and had cubs this year. Well, and that's a that's
Speaker 1: a powerful sign of that the habitat is good. Would
Speaker 1: you say? I mean it. It just means that it's working.
Speaker 1: Mayors are spreading. They're starting to you know, when you
Speaker 1: start seeing females show up in in Uh in the
Speaker 1: Gulf coastal plaine of Arkansas, um like kind of where
Speaker 1: the washing tolls stop the southern edge of the Washingtalls
Speaker 1: and the you know, the net geographic feature they called
Speaker 1: the Gulf Gulf coastal plane, which is kind of flat timberland.
Speaker 1: I've got some buddies that have deer leases in the
Speaker 1: northern part of that area, which just happens to be
Speaker 1: the very southern edge of the bears. On week in
Speaker 1: bait bears on private land. I've been keeping track of
Speaker 1: this buddy mine and and for years they would put
Speaker 1: out bait and they would get boars. That's all they
Speaker 1: would get. They would never see a sole with a cub,
Speaker 1: and just twenty miles north you would get sALS with
Speaker 1: cubs all the time. Last year it was the first
Speaker 1: year that he texted me and he said, finally got
Speaker 1: a sow and and and to me, that showed what
Speaker 1: was happening. That's kind of on the edge of the
Speaker 1: bear range and uh and and finally they're starting to
Speaker 1: be they're starting to be resident, soals that must be
Speaker 1: close rear and young. Yeah, she was. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just like a dominoes fallen or whatever ever what you want,
Speaker 1: stair steps, you know, just finally they'll get in an
Speaker 1: area and then those souths if they if they have
Speaker 1: three cubs, you know, there's pretty good chance to him
Speaker 1: maybe females during that and uh, you know, because that's
Speaker 1: just how God made him. Yea, if are he doesn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of bears, you can have female cubs
Speaker 1: and uh you know they'll then those cubs in three
Speaker 1: years will have cubs and you know, it just goes
Speaker 1: goes from there and then you know, usually if there's
Speaker 1: one female in there, there's some more that you're just
Speaker 1: not seeing. But but it does take several years, you know,
Speaker 1: the from what we've seen, it takes about eight years
Speaker 1: for the females to catch up with the males. That
Speaker 1: would that would almost line up perfectly with what my
Speaker 1: buddy saw with his just and obviously he wasn't doing
Speaker 1: any research. He just was putting out he just putting
Speaker 1: out a trail camera. But that's pretty amazing that what
Speaker 1: what about bear density's Jeff right around here? Do you
Speaker 1: have idea on like square mile that's kind of that's
Speaker 1: a good figure that kind of somebody can understand like
Speaker 1: how many bears per square mile? I would it would
Speaker 1: be a good guess for me to that maybe something, yes, Sarah,
Speaker 1: because those density numbers are you know, cause areas really trap.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to get a really accurate density number
Speaker 1: in there because there's so many houses, yeah, in there,
Speaker 1: So you probably need to talk with her about that. Well,
Speaker 1: I can relay the information that I know from research
Speaker 1: done in Arkansas years ago. I mean it's old info,
Speaker 1: but basically, you know, a bear per square mile in
Speaker 1: the good areas was what it ended up being. But
Speaker 1: that really isn't a real strong functional figure of how
Speaker 1: many bears there really would be there, because that's like
Speaker 1: taking this massive geographic section and you know, barrel bear
Speaker 1: home ranges are overlapping, and at any given time in
Speaker 1: a square mile there might be four or five bears.
Speaker 1: But when you when you statistically run that out, you know,
Speaker 1: for the good bear habitat in Arkansas, they were saying,
Speaker 1: basically a good bear density would be one bear per
Speaker 1: square mile. You compare that to you know, guys, you
Speaker 1: know we're white tail hunters too, you know, good white
Speaker 1: tail density. What's that gonna be here in Oklahoma? Well,
Speaker 1: on the national force, you're talking about maybe eight dear
Speaker 1: per square mile. It didn't real hie, that's about to
Speaker 1: encouraging yeah, so, uh, but on on other areas, you know,
Speaker 1: you're looking at fifteen sixteen dear per square MILECA, so
Speaker 1: it's a lot more or it's just yeah, are we
Speaker 1: have such a mature forest under the floor county portion
Speaker 1: that even though it's beautiful to look at, you know,
Speaker 1: big trees open, you can see and that's why a
Speaker 1: lot of people look for But we're at the sunlight
Speaker 1: isn't hitting the ground. That's not going to support a
Speaker 1: lot of animals. Yeah, so you and do you think
Speaker 1: these bears do better in the timberland like areas that
Speaker 1: are being clear cut south of here? And that's that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons about your bear per square mile.
Speaker 1: When we're doing our research, it's during the best time
Speaker 1: of the year for bear to be up and moving,
Speaker 1: and so they're congregating on food sources, whether it's uh,
Speaker 1: someone who has feeders out year around. You know, some
Speaker 1: of these people bring in just tons of food and
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of bear in that areas.
Speaker 1: And then you go to a clear cut area where
Speaker 1: there's just poke berryes, some blackberries and and everything. So
Speaker 1: the bear numbers really, the bear really get concentrated on
Speaker 1: these so yeah, so I couldn't. That's why, you know,
Speaker 1: as far as the bear for square mile thing, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of its arbitrary number. And yeah. So
Speaker 1: so something you did say that surprised me. I've heard
Speaker 1: you say before was was that some of the more
Speaker 1: denser areas are in the private timberland. Is that correct? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's public hunting, but no no abating allowed in there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just unreal the number of bear that
Speaker 1: stay in those clear cuts all all spring, in all summer.
Speaker 1: There's if just like all animals, if bear had to
Speaker 1: depend on acorns to live, there wouldn't be any It
Speaker 1: wouldn't be any bear, there wouldn't be any deer if
Speaker 1: that's all they had to have. And that's just a
Speaker 1: short window they're in the fall when that food sources
Speaker 1: available to bonus get acorn. Most oak trees average four
Speaker 1: years with acorns out of every decade, so four out
Speaker 1: of ten years they'll have acorns six years they won't.
Speaker 1: Just drought or too much rain in August. That's what
Speaker 1: was the problem last year. Are trees were really loaded
Speaker 1: and we had twelve inches rain in August and acorns
Speaker 1: swoll up in the caps and quit raining and they
Speaker 1: shrunk and fell out, so all the acorns were gone
Speaker 1: by basically by the first second week in October. So
Speaker 1: what's some food sources that these bears are using throughout
Speaker 1: the year? Here, well, it in the spring and somewhere
Speaker 1: they're on just forbes, everything greening green up early in
Speaker 1: the year. And right now they're on berries. They've been
Speaker 1: on berries, all sorts of berries since the first of May.
Speaker 1: They'll stay there usually by fourth of July, middle of July,
Speaker 1: all the blackberries are gone. Then they just then they
Speaker 1: go to what I call scavenging. They're just ripping up rotten.
Speaker 1: So the last berries are gonna be the uh gonna
Speaker 1: be the BlackBerry blackberries. When did the blueberries come out? Jeff?
Speaker 1: Like rackleberries there's right now they're doing really good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the wild raspberries, you know, the black blackberries. I've
Speaker 1: always heard and believe that the uh service or service
Speaker 1: bearris was the first berry ripe in the spring. Is
Speaker 1: that that's what? Yeah, Everyone the bears eat those, they
Speaker 1: do go through those. And right now there's also plums,
Speaker 1: you know, the chicken saw plums. There are those native
Speaker 1: trees really oh, those are those little thorny, small bushes,
Speaker 1: little plum trees. Let me ask you something. You you
Speaker 1: probably would know this the first native flowering tree in
Speaker 1: this part of the country, it's going to be the
Speaker 1: service berries. Is that the serviceberry in dogwood or the
Speaker 1: two earliest flowering trees? Okay? Now is the service berry
Speaker 1: not the ones that you see flowering when the leaves
Speaker 1: aren't even out? Okay, Okay, that's what I've always heard,
Speaker 1: the easy to pick up. Yeah. Yeah, Now there's a
Speaker 1: lot of non native flowering pear trees around here that
Speaker 1: you see in agricul along the roadways and stuff. And
Speaker 1: because I tell the kids, hey, the first flowers that
Speaker 1: you see are gonna be service berries. And but then
Speaker 1: that's not always true because there's all these flowering pear
Speaker 1: trees along the road to which aren't native. But yeah,
Speaker 1: in the mountains you're gonna see those. And then there's
Speaker 1: there's a So there's service berries, huckleberries or blueberries, blackberries,
Speaker 1: wild raspberries, uh pawpaws which would come in the fall,
Speaker 1: which is a big fruit. What other kind of berries
Speaker 1: are there? Jeff, Well, there's uh gon dewberries. Now what's
Speaker 1: to do? But I actually don't. Dow berry is actually
Speaker 1: through what most people they call them blackberries, but actually
Speaker 1: they're they get thorny bush. It's like a black like
Speaker 1: a BlackBerry, and they'll be right around the first of June.
Speaker 1: They're big, they're not very many seeds, okay in them.
Speaker 1: And then there's uh, huckleberries like you mentioned, yeah and
Speaker 1: uh and that's a that's a low bush around here.
Speaker 1: We have the some type of using air quotes low
Speaker 1: bush blueberry that's like eighteen to yeah, am I right?
Speaker 1: And they do really good in areas that do get
Speaker 1: a lot of sunlight, like on the south side of hills.
Speaker 1: You'll notice if some fine big pine trees style, those
Speaker 1: areas will just cover up with those real quick in
Speaker 1: the bear really all wildlife go go in there in
Speaker 1: there for those and uh, but there's just a ton
Speaker 1: of different kind of little berries growing out there. But
Speaker 1: they'll they'll stay on the blackberries. They'll have those for
Speaker 1: two months long and then they'll in towards the end
Speaker 1: of July is when the poke berries will start getting ripe,
Speaker 1: and they really poke berries would typically be in regeneration
Speaker 1: areas like clear cut sides of roads right or the
Speaker 1: edges of mad is, you know, and everything you'll see
Speaker 1: them growing, and they really go after those and red yeah.
Speaker 1: And after after that you'll start in the middle of August,
Speaker 1: you'll start seeing some wild grapes, especially a high That's
Speaker 1: why Talamina Drive is such a good place to drive
Speaker 1: in the evenings or early morning if you want to
Speaker 1: see a bear, because all the grapes. They're usually the
Speaker 1: everything low in there is covered with grapes. On a
Speaker 1: year that they make, they'll speak barrels and barrels of them.
Speaker 1: And then what time of year did you say, early August?
Speaker 1: The middle of August when we're doing our bear surveys
Speaker 1: is when we go to finding there grapes, so they're
Speaker 1: they're really on them. Then they'll start on you know.
Speaker 1: Shortly after that, some of the acorns will start casting
Speaker 1: off and they'll climb trees. They'll climb trees and get them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So but usually you're you don't red oaks will go
Speaker 1: losing a few acorns, especially they'll be big and loaded,
Speaker 1: and they'll go to dropping a few in September. Then
Speaker 1: then the white oaks, which is the preferred food source
Speaker 1: of fall wildlife out there in the fall and then
Speaker 1: then they'll have acorns through December usually so uh, you know,
Speaker 1: so you'll see our bear. The big boars or usually
Speaker 1: stay active until around Thanksgiving, and you know, the more
Speaker 1: calories they burn looking for food. If they're not finding
Speaker 1: nfl going to den. Usually they go to den earlier
Speaker 1: than the females. Females usually around New Year's before they're
Speaker 1: going to Dan big boars to see. I would have
Speaker 1: heard different. I would have heard that the boars would
Speaker 1: have stayed out later. A four hundred pound bear needs
Speaker 1: a lot more food than in one hundred pounds. That
Speaker 1: makes sense, so um and our bears den based upon
Speaker 1: food availability, correct, So if there's if food is scarce,
Speaker 1: they go to bed earlier. Food is abundant, they stay
Speaker 1: up and eat if the party. If the party's still gone,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of chips and sauce that they just stay up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: areas people I know who keep game feeders up here
Speaker 1: around Now all bear slow down, you know, but every
Speaker 1: week or two they'll they'll have a bear come to
Speaker 1: their feet. Are that then close bear they don't like,
Speaker 1: even though they'll spend all summer right behind your house.
Speaker 1: When it comes to din and usually they like to
Speaker 1: get out away from people, you know, where they're feeling
Speaker 1: a little safer if they know, you know, they don't
Speaker 1: all have a d n so just lay on the ground. Yeah. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's something I'd like to talk to to the where
Speaker 1: did these uh well, okay, there's a debate, and I've
Speaker 1: heard it's not a debate, it's just a different way
Speaker 1: of categorizing what bears do. The typical like a kindergartener,
Speaker 1: You say, does a bear hibernate? And they go, yeah,
Speaker 1: bear hibernates, It goes to sleep in the winter. But
Speaker 1: a bear doesn't really hibernate, It's correct. Tell me what
Speaker 1: it does. Torpor. It called state of torpor. And there
Speaker 1: they sleep, but they don't hibernate. Their body temperature stays sane,
Speaker 1: their heart eight stays. That's the definition of hibernations that
Speaker 1: the body temperature dramatically decreases in their heart rate. Like
Speaker 1: and I've heard it said like a wood, like a
Speaker 1: gopher that would go down in the ground. I mean
Speaker 1: if you dug him out in the winter, I mean
Speaker 1: he would just be dang there. I mean you couldn't
Speaker 1: hardly wake him up. They're barely alive. Yes, they have
Speaker 1: to do that to survive, to keep from starving to death. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know. And and a bears is awake every time
Speaker 1: we go to a DN, you know, they they know
Speaker 1: we're coming way before we get there, you know. And
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, so they're they're just they're they're
Speaker 1: not active, you know. So they're trying to maintain keep
Speaker 1: as many calories as they can during during that time
Speaker 1: because they're gonna stay inactive until it starts screening up,
Speaker 1: whether that's the middle of March or the middle of April. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that is the most sinating thing about bears, and
Speaker 1: I always default to it on this podcast talking about uh,
Speaker 1: bear reproduction and bear denning. But it's such an amazing
Speaker 1: biological strategy. I mean, just fascinating that they they you know,
Speaker 1: they eat groceries for eight to nine months a year
Speaker 1: here all right, from let's just say they go to
Speaker 1: den around Thanksgiving first of December, and they're in the
Speaker 1: den till April. That's four months. So they get eight
Speaker 1: months worth of groceries or a year's worth of groceries
Speaker 1: in eight months. And and that's they're eating. They're they're
Speaker 1: they're storing up that fat. We uh hey, this is
Speaker 1: this is a good place to uh. We brought you
Speaker 1: some bear fat Jeff, Oklahoma, bear fat from the bear
Speaker 1: that I that I killed last year. We that big
Speaker 1: bear we rendered down. Uh yeah, I get it out
Speaker 1: your magazine. Yeah yeah, yeah, this is from that batch.
Speaker 1: But now you can to set this on the window
Speaker 1: seal of the uh of the office there, Jeff, and
Speaker 1: forecast the weather or fry some fish in it. We
Speaker 1: fried uh flathead catfish. Jeff. It that's incredible stuff right there.
Speaker 1: Now you guys made bear uh well, you were telling
Speaker 1: me how to make lye soap from fat from fat,
Speaker 1: you know, we were using pork fat, beef and pork fat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've it's uh what we do around here, first couple
Speaker 1: of days of bear season, when you know, there's we're
Speaker 1: busy working. But you know, yeah, we'll make some homemade
Speaker 1: lie soap. It's good. Yeah good. I gotta get in
Speaker 1: on some of that sometime when you are doing that.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to use bear fat, well
Speaker 1: safe safe something it uh you will sell how see
Speaker 1: how it works, you know, because I'm I'm just gotta
Speaker 1: stand there and stirs, you know. So but the other guy,
Speaker 1: uh from over on the Wister Wildlife managementary comes over.
Speaker 1: He has the red spe we'll see. I talked to him.
Speaker 1: You you hooked me up with him, and I tried
Speaker 1: to follow his recipe and I didn't really like we're
Speaker 1: trying to make lye soap, which have been like a
Speaker 1: hard bar of soap. What I made ended up being
Speaker 1: more like shampoo. Like shampoo. It never it never fully solidified,
Speaker 1: so it was just kind of this gooey liquid. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, so anyway, I gotta perfect my recipe or
Speaker 1: I could start, you know, just making bare fat lye shampoo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know we we have that problem. Well okay,
Speaker 1: and then yeah, and when if it doesn't get solid,
Speaker 1: we turned fire back on and and boil it longer,
Speaker 1: you know. And the the longer you you bowl it,
Speaker 1: the darker it gets, you know. But it's it's good.
Speaker 1: We had some out one year and you know, you
Speaker 1: just cut it into squares. We'd put it in a
Speaker 1: sheet pan and then cut up and I'd put money
Speaker 1: into it and just a little cookie tin like you
Speaker 1: get these Danish Christmas cookies in and had it set
Speaker 1: in in the office and we were having a meeting
Speaker 1: around Christmas and one of the guys walked in and
Speaker 1: grabbed a piece of that. I thought it was fudge,
Speaker 1: and yeah, he I don't know if he ever got that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he talked clean the rest of his life, so it
Speaker 1: probably cleaned him out head to toe. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, you don't walk into our office and just
Speaker 1: grab something and think think it's addible anyway, you know.
Speaker 1: But because there's no talent, how long it may be
Speaker 1: laying there, even if it was a piece of fudge.
Speaker 1: I mean, looking at me, there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: food laying around. Oh that's funny. Well, Jeff, what would
Speaker 1: you to me these this population of bears is so special, Like,
Speaker 1: for real, I've been able to hunt all over North America,
Speaker 1: and I love hunting right here as much as anywhere
Speaker 1: on the planet. And and part of that is because
Speaker 1: I feel like this is my home, and it is
Speaker 1: my home turf, I mean really in Arkansas, but you know,
Speaker 1: pretty much an extension over into these mountains, So that
Speaker 1: that's part of it. But the other part of it
Speaker 1: is is, uh, I mean, there's some incredible there's some
Speaker 1: incredible bears over here. There's some incredible opportunity. But to me,
Speaker 1: the foundational coolness of it all is that this is
Speaker 1: an absolute success of modern conservation and hunting working together.
Speaker 1: I mean, there would not be bears here today because
Speaker 1: we didn't say it before, but this is native bear range.
Speaker 1: I mean, these bears came in from Arkansas from the
Speaker 1: nighteen fifties and sixties and that reintroduction. We didn't say
Speaker 1: that before, but I mean the bears were here natively
Speaker 1: long before white Europeans got here, and and and and
Speaker 1: they were extirpated because of landscape level logging and uh
Speaker 1: in in market hunting, which I always make clear has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with modern hunting. I mean it's not
Speaker 1: even we shouldn't even call it hunting what they were doing.
Speaker 1: I mean they were they were farming for wildlife place,
Speaker 1: they were earning, harvesting animals. And so so when we
Speaker 1: come over here and we see a bear driving through
Speaker 1: like we did today, man, that to me, that is
Speaker 1: a point of celebration that we've got these critters here,
Speaker 1: And we wouldn't have those critters here if we didn't
Speaker 1: have the incredible habitat in a million acres of public
Speaker 1: land right and even in these well, just in southeast Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: And I mean that goes back to another thing we
Speaker 1: talked about all the time, is that the pub the
Speaker 1: land that we have available to us as an incredible
Speaker 1: feature of rural American living that most people on the
Speaker 1: planet in the history of humanity have not had access to.
Speaker 1: Is that vast amounts of public land where the wildlife
Speaker 1: there belongs to us, and we have if we can
Speaker 1: follow the rules, we get access to hunt this land.
Speaker 1: I mean, so this is a celebration of modern conservation, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: These the bear have always been special to us who
Speaker 1: have worked with them in Oklahoma. It's uh. Making a
Speaker 1: decision to open a season on him was something that
Speaker 1: you know, we just didn't get up one day and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, let's let's start a season. This was talked
Speaker 1: about for years before, uh, even before the first research
Speaker 1: project in two thousand, two thousand one. And then after
Speaker 1: that research project was over and we knew about where
Speaker 1: our better numbers were in in the core areas or
Speaker 1: of our bear population, it was eight years before we
Speaker 1: decided to open a season. And so it's something we
Speaker 1: care a lot about having the bear here and monitor
Speaker 1: bear health as the summer goes on with our research projects,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's we you know, if if something
Speaker 1: happens with our bear population, you know, we have a
Speaker 1: way that we can stop the hunting if we if
Speaker 1: we have to. But right now that it's a great
Speaker 1: opportunity to be able to hunt this this animal that
Speaker 1: even today that there's a lot of people in Oklahoma
Speaker 1: do who do not even though that after animal in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: It's I'm amazed I don't hunt bear. Uh. It's it's
Speaker 1: mainly because I'm working twenty hours a day during that
Speaker 1: time of the year. But uh, I'm amazed at the
Speaker 1: number of hunters who were die hard deer hunters who
Speaker 1: just don't even think about deer hunting the first five
Speaker 1: or six days of archery season. They're just after after
Speaker 1: they become bear hunters. And I didn't. I didn't until
Speaker 1: we had a season. If you had asked me if
Speaker 1: we'd had people that would rather bear hunting deer hunting,
Speaker 1: I would probably said no, probably not, you know, just
Speaker 1: because everyone who lives here just about lives here because
Speaker 1: they like to deer hunt, because it's such a great opportunity,
Speaker 1: you know, and you can see on some of the
Speaker 1: large leases you know where they're you know, maybe growing
Speaker 1: bigger deer and heavier deer and all. But if you
Speaker 1: want a good hunting experience, everyone wants to come going
Speaker 1: to these mountains and and try to get a white
Speaker 1: tail buck. And now it's turned that way for bear
Speaker 1: where I'm getting calls every year from hunters other other states.
Speaker 1: One hunter from Canada who just you know, he's going, Man,
Speaker 1: I've I've loved come down to fall and and harvest
Speaker 1: to bear down there. So and and he and when
Speaker 1: you think Canada, you think huge bodies and huge weights.
Speaker 1: But he was just having a hard time believing, you know,
Speaker 1: opportunity to harvest three pound four there because they don't
Speaker 1: even have those where he was from. Mainly because you know,
Speaker 1: six or seven months out of the year those a
Speaker 1: bear hyberd nating, That's right, they don't. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: a lot of hunting pressure, a lot of bear harvested,
Speaker 1: so they don't get to get the age either. Maybe,
Speaker 1: so Colbe, do you have any questions for Jeff River.
Speaker 1: I didn't introduce River rivers here with it's my daughter. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: I guess I guess. My thing I was thinking was
Speaker 1: when you're whenever you're talking about moving or relocating, the
Speaker 1: boys like what their range looked like. Whenever you relocate
Speaker 1: a cell, Uh, do you take them out the same distance?
Speaker 1: And if you do, uh, do they stay in that
Speaker 1: area or do they kind of have a range like
Speaker 1: the boys do? We try if if a bear is
Speaker 1: a problem, we I mean, we won't go and set
Speaker 1: a trap and move a bear if it's just say
Speaker 1: walking through your yard. But you know if if if
Speaker 1: this bear is getting on your porch or just hanging
Speaker 1: around your house for four or five days, you know,
Speaker 1: once that bear needs for the bear safety and the
Speaker 1: humans safety, that you don't need a bear of that's
Speaker 1: that's got so used to humans that they feel like
Speaker 1: they can just stay right there. So we will move
Speaker 1: them the same distance. Now they like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: they always come back. And we've moved a bear and
Speaker 1: I know Clay no where Zaffrey is. We moved to
Speaker 1: her female sal uh just right across the river here
Speaker 1: from us, and took her to Zaphra and released her
Speaker 1: on a Monday afternoon. And on Tuesday afternoon and on
Speaker 1: Friday she was right here in this yard. You know,
Speaker 1: So even though her range didn't take her that far.
Speaker 1: They just they know how to get back to where
Speaker 1: they're from. And she had yearly cubs, and you know,
Speaker 1: we had done everything to try to catch the cubs
Speaker 1: but couldn't. But it was on dire situation, you know,
Speaker 1: the same old story someone sees a bear and they
Speaker 1: put food out for it and want to get pictures
Speaker 1: this way for cell phones and everything, and and the
Speaker 1: person you always threatening to shoot to bear if we
Speaker 1: didn't come move it. And we caught her and stated
Speaker 1: at her and left the trapdoor, and so maybe the
Speaker 1: cups would go in there, but they wouldn't, you know,
Speaker 1: so we couldn't release her right there. But we did
Speaker 1: take her and release her, and she came back and
Speaker 1: her cups were they would have survived, but they would
Speaker 1: have typically gone to the den with her one more
Speaker 1: time probably so, but they were definitely with her the end.
Speaker 1: So River got a question for Mr Jeff No question
Speaker 1: from River newkem Okay, it's good, wasn't it? River? That
Speaker 1: was really fun? Yeah, Jeff, anything that you would like
Speaker 1: to say, I mean, just any or anything we didn't cover.
Speaker 1: I mean we I really just wanted to cover the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of bare biology. You know, it's it's
Speaker 1: rare that I get to sit with a professional that
Speaker 1: like you. That is uh. I mean you obviously you're
Speaker 1: doing more than just bear, but that's a big part
Speaker 1: of what you do and have done. And I know
Speaker 1: you really value the bear and and uh and and
Speaker 1: and that you're a hunter too, so you you understand
Speaker 1: not just wild life biology, but you under stand kind
Speaker 1: of the hunter's perspective. Um. But any other general comments
Speaker 1: about the bear here in southeast Oklahoma, Well, one thing
Speaker 1: I'd like to touch on is that we've expanded open
Speaker 1: areas for bear hunting opportunities this fall. We're gonna basically
Speaker 1: everything If you looked on a map and you come
Speaker 1: out of Fort Smith, Arkansas and Interstate forty, once you
Speaker 1: get into Oklahoma and go west to where Highwi sixty
Speaker 1: nine meets Interstate forty, then everything south of there is
Speaker 1: going to be open for archery and muzzload season. We
Speaker 1: still have a twenty bear quota on our muzzleload season. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's never been met during muzzload season. The most bear
Speaker 1: we've have harvested during a muzzload season was seven. So
Speaker 1: they're tough to get over bait by late October, and
Speaker 1: there they're really smart, you know. And by the end
Speaker 1: they're out in the mountains or they're out in the
Speaker 1: clear cuts. There. Hunters have been in the woods pretty steadily,
Speaker 1: you know. For our muzzloed season opens the fourth Saturday
Speaker 1: in October. So by the end, the bear of pretty
Speaker 1: much gone nocturnal, you know. And we did, like I said,
Speaker 1: we have a few harvested every year with the muzzleloader,
Speaker 1: but those, uh, those are just chancing counters most of them,
Speaker 1: you know, they're most of the people aren't setting over
Speaker 1: there bait on privately and forbear during those times. So
Speaker 1: that's that's a big deal. So the bear range now
Speaker 1: is no longer the four counties. How many counties does
Speaker 1: it entail now? Probably you're catching a bunch. There is
Speaker 1: several counties. I mean, you double tripled the size of
Speaker 1: the bear, more than doubled more than size. That's awesome,
Speaker 1: you know. So it and in some of those areas
Speaker 1: there may not be very many bear, but we've had
Speaker 1: a lot of truill camera photos. Were not doing researching
Speaker 1: in these areas, but our surveys, you know, we're we're
Speaker 1: getting some bear hits in there, and we just you know,
Speaker 1: want to offer the opportunity to people who live in
Speaker 1: those areas. You know. I think when when people start
Speaker 1: hunting bears in a new region like Oklahoma, like all
Speaker 1: of a sudden there's a bear season and there wasn't before.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that people are beginning
Speaker 1: to understand here and is that how good bear taste? Jeff,
Speaker 1: I mean, we had a bear chili at my house
Speaker 1: last night. My wife didn't I didn't tell her what
Speaker 1: it was, just, uh, we just had it. And she's
Speaker 1: totally cool of eating bear meat, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's probably not her preference most of the time. And
Speaker 1: my wife would be the finnickyst eater of anyone in
Speaker 1: our family. River houses the bear chili. No one knew
Speaker 1: that it wasn't. I mean, there's any way that you
Speaker 1: can cook beef, you can cook bear. Sure, if it's
Speaker 1: handled well, it's good. I had bear Ausabuco when I
Speaker 1: was in British Columbia. Assabuco is a I don't want
Speaker 1: to I don't know then, I don't know where exactly.
Speaker 1: Shanks it's the shanks, but it's like a French dish
Speaker 1: or something that you they not French, Italian, Italian, but
Speaker 1: it's where they slice the the shank up. They use
Speaker 1: it for ox tails, use ausbuco. They'll they'll take an
Speaker 1: ox tail and cut it. But I promise you you
Speaker 1: could have set that in front of a king and
Speaker 1: given it to him and told him it was beef
Speaker 1: and he would have loved it. I mean, like, there's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of great ways to eat bear meat.
Speaker 1: I like to smoke it, uh, you know, use it
Speaker 1: in chili. Uh. We grilled some on the grill last week.
Speaker 1: We were grilling some chicken and I've thought out some
Speaker 1: bear steaks and seasoned it up good. I like to
Speaker 1: season it up good. And I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 1: good meat. Yeah, it's I was surprised. I've never eaten
Speaker 1: any bear until we had a season and hunters asking me,
Speaker 1: you know the best way to prepare it, and I'm
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, and uh, a friend of mine,
Speaker 1: who unfortunately has passed away since then, had harvested a
Speaker 1: young bear. He gave me a like two steaks off
Speaker 1: of it. And we'd had fried hamburgers for lunch and
Speaker 1: just frying pan on the stove and and so I
Speaker 1: just cut that berry into little medallions sized pieces and
Speaker 1: through and there after we'd cooked the burgers and ate it,
Speaker 1: just mainly because so I could tell hunters, hey, here's
Speaker 1: what I've done, and I've ate it. And I was surprised.
Speaker 1: I expected it to taste like venison, but it was
Speaker 1: nothing like venison. Was more like beef what I was
Speaker 1: thinking around steak and tasted more and uh, my grandchildren
Speaker 1: needed I eat it. But my wife, she she's from California.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say a lot more about that, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but she she eats deer and everything. But still that's
Speaker 1: kind of like my wife. She's even she's from Arkansas
Speaker 1: and she's still she she will eat bear meat, but
Speaker 1: it's not you know, there's something boy, you know when Yeah.
Speaker 1: So but yeah, I was surprised how great a table
Speaker 1: fair it was. Yeah, And it's such to me. It's
Speaker 1: such a historical food and people don't realize it. But
Speaker 1: there's literature from Arkansas, um that that says if you
Speaker 1: ate meat on an Arkansas table in the Ozark or
Speaker 1: Washtall Mountains in the in the eighteen hundreds, there was
Speaker 1: a high probability that it was bear meat. I read
Speaker 1: I read that somewhere from a historian that I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's great meat. But and then this fat, Now
Speaker 1: this is something we're really exploring a lot right now.
Speaker 1: And I've been rendering fat for a long time, but uh,
Speaker 1: we're we're finding new ways to use it. And uh,
Speaker 1: it's good stuff, Kobe, it's solid, it's on the bottom,
Speaker 1: it's yes. Well okay, Jeff, oh man, you've opened up.
Speaker 1: Can we got a major research project going on right
Speaker 1: now about how to render pure liquid oil. Firstus this
Speaker 1: this thick pasty lard because we've done it, we've we've
Speaker 1: were trying some different ways to render it. And uh, anyway,
Speaker 1: that was a solid lard when we first did it.
Speaker 1: I mean you could have like scooped it out almost
Speaker 1: with a knife. And now it's starting to solidify. But
Speaker 1: all that oil is good. Like if you were to
Speaker 1: be cook with that or something, I mean you just
Speaker 1: stirred up and put it in a frying pan, and
Speaker 1: oh man, it would it would be perfect. But well, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna close down. We've we've gone a little ways here. Jeff,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for it's Yeah, I hope I
Speaker 1: see you. Well, I know i'll see you again. This
Speaker 1: is en route to where I hunt, so I stopped
Speaker 1: by and talked to Jeff. But I hope I see
Speaker 1: you this year with a big bear in the back
Speaker 1: of my truck. Yeah, that that's would be great. Last
Speaker 1: year was it was good getting to check your bear
Speaker 1: and yeah, and I know you were awful happy about that.
Speaker 1: And so we have three or four guys that we've
Speaker 1: come to know since the bear season that we're rooting
Speaker 1: for every year and hoping to see on opening day.
Speaker 1: And I think you had the largest one this year.
Speaker 1: So well, so that the largest one checked here yest here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, well that that six eight pound bear down south,
Speaker 1: I guess was the biggest one in the state, the
Speaker 1: the biggest one I heard. And so I had another
Speaker 1: pretty good size bore four pounders. So you checked in
Speaker 1: archery kill. And but to finish up on as far
Speaker 1: as wait, we got off there just while ago, I
Speaker 1: wanted to say that we have checked in a three
Speaker 1: hundred and forty pound female bear. So that was the
Speaker 1: second one I've seen that was three hundred or monstress. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be hard to tell a big dry a sow
Speaker 1: without cubs. I mean, you kill a shoot at three
Speaker 1: and forty pound bear, you assume you're shooting at a male.
Speaker 1: She was huge, and I've asked those people to bring
Speaker 1: it back. I wanted to score, yeah, and they have it.
Speaker 1: I told Colby on the way down here, I should
Speaker 1: have brought my bear, sculled Jeff from that big bear.
Speaker 1: Next time I come, I'm gonna bring it. Jeff's an
Speaker 1: official Boone Crocket scores, so he can officially score bears.
Speaker 1: But I don't think it's gonna make twenty. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that was kind of surprising to me. That's for another podcast, Hey, Jeff,
Speaker 1: that's what we say on all that pod. Guess at
Speaker 1: the end to say keep the wild plaice as wild,
Speaker 1: because that's where I thank Okay, thank you