Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production of
Speaker 1: the Bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render, where
Speaker 1: we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes
Speaker 1: of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f HF Gear,
Speaker 1: American Maid, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed
Speaker 1: to be as rugged as the place as we explore.
Speaker 1: We've got some big news that Meat Eater. We're going
Speaker 1: on another live tour from April twenty third through May
Speaker 1: the fifth. Me and Steve Vanella and the team are
Speaker 1: going to be all over the country. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: in Mace, Arizona, San Diego, California, Anaheim, California, Sacramento, California,
Speaker 1: Salt Lake City, Utah, Boise, Idaho, Missoula, Spokane, Portland, Tacoma.
Speaker 1: I know we need to come to the South. It's
Speaker 1: gonna happen one day, folks, But right now our live
Speaker 1: tour tickets are on sale. I'll be there, Steve will
Speaker 1: be there, a bunch of the team will be there.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a lot of fun. Get your tickets
Speaker 1: today at the meeteater dot com slash events. The meeteater
Speaker 1: dot com slash Events Live tour tickets. We're hitting the
Speaker 1: American West. How's everybody doing great to see everybody. Hey,
Speaker 1: thank you guys so much for coming out today. This
Speaker 1: is a big deal, big deal for me, big deal
Speaker 1: for everybody that loves Arkansas bear and uh, it just
Speaker 1: means a lot to me that y'all y'all came out today.
Speaker 1: These guys at b h A do a ton of work,
Speaker 1: they really do. I don't do anything. I just show up,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to thank me for anything. But uh,
Speaker 1: these BHA guys that you've seen, James Brandenburg being the
Speaker 1: head of them here in Arkansas, doing a great job.
Speaker 1: Myron means is gonna open us up with a banjo tune. Hey,
Speaker 1: you guys may have been out here just a minute ago.
Speaker 1: This is the world's greatest bear biologist right here. He
Speaker 1: plays a banjo to Mayron, open us up with a
Speaker 1: banjo tune, and then we'll get started.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll do now.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna dance, No, I'm not.
Speaker 2: I don't know which one will train and work work.
Speaker 2: This is uh called cripple Cree. You leave us about
Speaker 2: the first banjo song most banjo players learn, and uh
Speaker 2: it goes kind of like this. Y'all help me out
Speaker 2: keep rhythm.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, excellent.
Speaker 4: I recognize Taylor Swift anywhere.
Speaker 1: That was excellent. Well, welcome to the bears Render Podcast.
Speaker 1: This is our This is our live podcast. So this
Speaker 1: will go out to the world here in a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks. What we so this podcast is the we
Speaker 1: have the bear Grease podcast, which is our documentary style podcast,
Speaker 1: and then this one is where we gather up a
Speaker 1: group of folks and we typically would talk about the
Speaker 1: last documentary style Beargrease podcast. Y'all familiar with the Bargerags podcast.
Speaker 1: Y'all know what I'm talking about. Okay, just check it. It
Speaker 1: wasn't sure, It wasn't sure. So this and this is
Speaker 1: a little bit different because we got all you guys here,
Speaker 1: We got a group of people I can't wait to
Speaker 1: introduce you to. But usually we would spend a little
Speaker 1: more time talking about the Wilderness podcast. Say hi to
Speaker 1: Brent's Instagram following there, but both of them. First of all,
Speaker 1: I gotta get things started off right. If you listen
Speaker 1: to the Bear Grease Render, you know that a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago, I was petitioning the world for a
Speaker 1: banjo player to come to the Render podcast and just
Speaker 1: stand there and wait for like fun one liners. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like a like a side Well,
Speaker 1: I want you to come to I want the Arkansas
Speaker 1: Game and Fish Commission to finance you to come to
Speaker 1: every Render and play your banjo. That's what I want.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna work with your boss on that.
Speaker 2: I think I think Director Booth is here. Maybe Director
Speaker 2: Booth is here.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it's possible that he's here. No, let
Speaker 1: me look. I want to introduce to a few people
Speaker 1: that are in the audience. First of all, my wife, Misty,
Speaker 1: who's on the stage here. But uh, my son Bear
Speaker 1: nukemb is in the back.
Speaker 5: Bear.
Speaker 1: Wave your hand. That's Bear. My daughter River is here.
Speaker 1: Where's the river at River? There's River dukem My mom
Speaker 1: and dad? Uh, Gary the Believer, New and Juju were here.
Speaker 1: Where are they at?
Speaker 5: There?
Speaker 1: They are? There's mom and dad back there. Uh, let's
Speaker 1: see who else was I gonna introduce? Yeah, where's director
Speaker 1: Booth at Austin Booth and his wife are they here?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 1: If they're gone, he's he gone, he gone.
Speaker 6: They were wrangling their entire family, which a lot of
Speaker 6: people here are doing as well.
Speaker 1: So I was glad. I was glad he came for
Speaker 1: the time that he did. Now I'm gonna really embarrass somebody.
Speaker 1: If if you've been listening to barger I hope he's here.
Speaker 1: I think he's here. If you listen to the Bargeras podcast.
Speaker 1: In the last couple episodes you heard are our Donnie
Speaker 1: Baker episode? Do you guys, did you guys listen to
Speaker 1: the Donnie Baker story? Yeah? Yeah, incredible, really was an
Speaker 1: incredible story. Donnie's here, Donnie, Where are you? Where's Donnie
Speaker 1: Baker at? There's Donnie Baker.
Speaker 5: Donnie.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, man. Misty was like, you should tell him
Speaker 1: that you're gonna do that, and I was like, nah,
Speaker 1: but that's Donnie Baker.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 1: Everybody I've been I've traveled quite a bit since that podcast,
Speaker 1: and that's all people want to talk to me about,
Speaker 1: is uh is that story. So it's good to have
Speaker 1: Donnie here. Good to see you man. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: you guys have met. I hope you went by the
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine booth back here.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 1: Colby moorehead owner Bear Hunting Magazine's Colby in here Colby Morehead.
Speaker 1: He may he may still be out of his booth,
Speaker 1: but uh, I don't, I don't. I don't work with
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine anymore. I mean I owned and operated
Speaker 1: the business, and Kolby was working for me, and he
Speaker 1: he he now owns it and runs it and doing
Speaker 1: a great job. And they do a lot help him
Speaker 1: to put all this on too. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: introduce Kolby, but he's not here either is director Booth.
Speaker 1: Where are these people up?
Speaker 2: Who knows?
Speaker 1: Let me introduce you to my guests on the far
Speaker 1: right here. This is Bernie Barringer, came all the way
Speaker 1: from Minnesota, Bernie Bernie. When I back years and years ago,
Speaker 1: when I wasn't even in the outdoor industry. This is
Speaker 1: the embarrassing story I'm gonna tell about, Joe. I applied
Speaker 1: to be the editor of Bear Hunting Magazine, which I
Speaker 1: laughed at the literally when I had the thought, in
Speaker 1: about two thousand and ten, maybe when I was the editor,
Speaker 1: well you weren't yet. Hold on, that's the punchline of
Speaker 1: the joke. Okay, I wasn't even in the outdoor industry,
Speaker 1: and I saw that Bear Hunting Magazine needed an editor.
Speaker 1: I was completely unqualified, and I applied to be the editor,
Speaker 1: and Jeff Folsom called me and interviewed me on the phone,
Speaker 1: and I mean I gave him both barrels full about
Speaker 1: what I would do if I was the editor, and
Speaker 1: I mean was basically compensating for having no experience with
Speaker 1: just just passion. And he also interviewed another guy named
Speaker 1: Bernie Bearinger. Bernie got his John, Bernie got the job,
Speaker 1: and UH and so and then as things went on,
Speaker 1: I ended up owning the magazine.
Speaker 8: And for me, he demoted me as to a columnist
Speaker 8: from the editor when he bought it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now, Bernie is a truly a macro scale bear hunting expert,
Speaker 1: hunted all over the country. UH is an outfitter in
Speaker 1: Minnesota and just a knowledgeable bear guy. He wanted to
Speaker 1: come down today. I wanted to have Bernie on the podcast.
Speaker 1: So thanks for coming. Brent Reeves. Everybody knows Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: this Country Life podcast. Were you last year at this
Speaker 1: time you were doing this right? Yep, you just started. No,
Speaker 1: it was actually fixing to come out Octo or a
Speaker 1: first Okay, so last week couldn't we couldn't even talk
Speaker 1: about it this. Yeah, his podcast hadn't even started. And
Speaker 1: uh man, Brent, y'all know Jerry Klower. We did a
Speaker 1: series on Jerry Clower. Jerry Klower became famous uh in
Speaker 1: night when he was fifty seven years old. Jerry Klower
Speaker 1: was a fertilizer salesman. Brent is kind of like that
Speaker 1: in a way.
Speaker 5: He uh fertilized.
Speaker 1: He he's still an undercover agent, I'm pretty sure, but
Speaker 1: uh no, just Brent does a phenomenal job at what
Speaker 1: he does. There's very few people that are as good
Speaker 1: at their craft as what Brent does with his podcast.
Speaker 1: This is my wife, Misty nukeom who uh who's introduction
Speaker 1: needs no introduction, No man, So much of the any
Speaker 1: any amount of I want to say intellectual power, but
Speaker 1: that word sounds pretty big and fancy. But if there
Speaker 1: is any of that in Bear Grease, a lot of
Speaker 1: it comes from doctor Nukom here, who constantly talk with
Speaker 1: about everything that's going on. So thank you for being here,
Speaker 1: Happy to be here. To my left, Myron means known
Speaker 1: Myron for a long time, and Myron's the large carnivore.
Speaker 2: That's right, how coordinator. We known each other well, we've
Speaker 2: known each other long enough that when you call me
Speaker 2: up at the office one day and you said, hey, Maron,
Speaker 2: I want to do a podcast, And I said, well, what,
Speaker 2: that's how long we've known four people?
Speaker 1: Do what podcasts? Or Yeah, that's right, that's right now.
Speaker 1: Myern's been working for the Game and Fish for a
Speaker 1: long long time and been working specifically with bears for
Speaker 1: fifteen years, seventeen years, and he does an incredible job,
Speaker 1: and so it's great to have you here. We may
Speaker 1: overlap a little bit with some of the things he
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, but we're going to talk a lot
Speaker 1: about Arkansas bears. To his left James Brandenburg, who is
Speaker 1: the head of the Arkansas Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Association
Speaker 1: the chapter YEP, and James is from Northwest Arkansas. YEP
Speaker 1: killed a bear before YEP.
Speaker 3: And previously was you know, uninitiated in that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I kind of went from zero to competent
Speaker 1: in the bear world on public land, Sam I yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well it's good to have you, Maan. And to your
Speaker 1: left it's Patrick Barry, who's the new president and CEO
Speaker 1: of back Country Hunters and Anglers.
Speaker 9: Yeah, thanks for having me on where do you live, Patrick,
Speaker 9: I live in the middle of nowhere in rural Vermont.
Speaker 1: In Vermont, Yes, sir, I'll be daring.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: So, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers is a national organization, And
Speaker 1: so how long have you been president and CEO?
Speaker 9: I just finally learned how to use my computer, so
Speaker 9: I'm making progress. I've only been on for a little
Speaker 9: over two months.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're right right right up, beginning. Great, great to
Speaker 1: have you. We're gonna do two things today. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about Arkansas bears, but we're also going to talk
Speaker 1: about wilderness. We've been the last three episodes, which Brent
Speaker 1: thinks we're extremely boring of bear grease. We're about American wilderness,
Speaker 1: and Brent is dead wrong, man. This is the best
Speaker 1: stuff we've ever done in our lives. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about We're going to talk about wilderness at the
Speaker 1: last part of this, but I want to talk about
Speaker 1: bears at first. Myron, give me a what kind of
Speaker 1: research is going on right now in the state for bears.
Speaker 2: Well, we have a lot of it is like spatial
Speaker 2: habitat use research that we're doing. We have the GPS
Speaker 2: project going on down in South central Arkansas and if
Speaker 2: you're familiar with the bear zones as a Bear Zone
Speaker 2: three and four, and summer of twenty twenty one, we
Speaker 2: started putting GPS callers on those females down there to
Speaker 2: try and get an idea of home range, size, habitat use,
Speaker 2: seasonal habitat use, and everything like that. And that was
Speaker 2: really kind of coming on the heels of finishing a
Speaker 2: population study that we were doing with you of a
Speaker 2: Monticello down there, and it's basically trying to gather all
Speaker 2: the information that we could about the Gulf Coastal Plain
Speaker 2: population because we knew relatively nothing about it, and it
Speaker 2: is a young population. It's a small population. It's a
Speaker 2: young population, probably no more than five hundred bears across
Speaker 2: all of it, but it's a growing population. We also
Speaker 2: have we've had the MAINS research kind of ongoing now
Speaker 2: for five years, looking at collecting samples, working with squid
Speaker 2: US South South Southern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study Group in Georgia,
Speaker 2: and uh, you know, US and a lot of Eastern
Speaker 2: states are trying to find out what the cause of Maine.
Speaker 1: Main's a pretty big deal here.
Speaker 2: It's not a big deal here. But in certain states
Speaker 2: like Pennsylvania and some of the Northeast states, it's a
Speaker 2: very big deal. Well, I mean sconsin up in yeah,
Speaker 2: Wisconsin too. Yeah, Pennsylvania has some areas of the state
Speaker 2: that have as high as a thirty percent prevalence rate.
Speaker 1: Does that mean thirty percent of them are showing the
Speaker 1: signs of heavy main and its sarcoptic mange.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is sarcoptic mange. And so we're looking at that.
Speaker 2: We just started this year on a on a Denning
Speaker 2: chronology study of our what I call our mountain bears.
Speaker 2: Those aren't in the Washstaw bears, and we're replacing the
Speaker 2: old VHF callers with bright shiny GPS callers which come
Speaker 2: with a bright shiny price tag. But we're looking to
Speaker 2: try and determine, you know, the Dennings timing or the
Speaker 2: Denning chronology of those mountain populations to get a better
Speaker 2: understanding of, you know, what's going on in the fall,
Speaker 2: especially with our females. I mean, it doesn't make a
Speaker 2: whole lot of sense to have a bear season when
Speaker 2: a lot of the bears are in the den right,
Speaker 2: So it is relative to the hunting and our harvest
Speaker 2: strategies and everything. The seasons that we set and the
Speaker 2: frameworks and those are really kind of the big ones
Speaker 2: right now. But you know, some of the other kind
Speaker 2: of underlying research that we're doing is the bear hunter
Speaker 2: survey that our social science division is doing and all
Speaker 2: that with, you know, with successful bear hunters looking at
Speaker 2: the social science portion of our of our customer base,
Speaker 2: and what.
Speaker 1: Kind of questions are you asking people. I probably took
Speaker 1: the survey, but.
Speaker 2: You probably did, a lot of the questions are geared around,
Speaker 2: you know, age dynamics. Well, I think the average age
Speaker 2: of bear hunters today's forty eight forty eight, some other
Speaker 2: questions about how did you learn about bear hunting? Did
Speaker 2: you learn about it through podcasts or television or newspaper
Speaker 2: or gaming, Phish employees or whatever. Some of the other
Speaker 2: questions are, you know, what do you use a bear
Speaker 2: for if you have harvested the bear and that.
Speaker 1: Why is that information important to y'all?
Speaker 2: Well, it just kind of falls into the you know,
Speaker 2: just getting to know your customer money, y'all just ask me, well,
Speaker 2: you are a customer base, but you know, I mean
Speaker 2: that's just an area a lot of natural resource agencies
Speaker 2: are kind of using social science to not necessarily drive
Speaker 2: their harvest strategies or hunting seasons, but certainly maybe amplify
Speaker 2: how you may adjust something one way or another. And
Speaker 2: you know, it's a valuable part of knowing what who
Speaker 2: your customer base is and why they're hunting bears, how
Speaker 2: long they've been hunting bears. You know, have you been
Speaker 2: hunting two three years, have you been hunting fifteen years?
Speaker 2: And all that. So it's just getting to know the
Speaker 2: customer better.
Speaker 1: Now, do we know how many bear hunters are in Arkansas?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 1: Is there is there a way? Every state's different in
Speaker 1: the way that they assigned licenses. A lot of states
Speaker 1: you would buy bear tag you in Arkansas, if you're
Speaker 1: an Arkansas resident, you get an Arkansas Sportsman's Combo license,
Speaker 1: you get a bear tag. But this year didn't you
Speaker 1: have to get a free like bear hunter.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: We changed over our entire license system this past year
Speaker 2: and there were some growing pains with it, but we'll
Speaker 2: eventually get all the kinks worked out. And one of
Speaker 2: the unique things about this new license system is if
Speaker 2: you intended to hunt or harvest a bear, you had
Speaker 2: to obtain a quote bear permit. The bear permit was
Speaker 2: free to residents, which means if you had a hunting license,
Speaker 2: all you had to do was go on the on
Speaker 2: the on your profile on your page and just click
Speaker 2: the box that gave you a free bear permit. Non
Speaker 2: residents had to purchase. That was three hundred dollars for
Speaker 2: a non resident bear permit. But for the first time
Speaker 2: in our management history, Game and Fish Eye Bear Program
Speaker 2: Coordinator is able to determine with a reasonable accuracy, how
Speaker 2: many bear hunters will we have in.
Speaker 1: This Do you know that number? Don't say it?
Speaker 2: Do you know that number? Well, I know an approximate.
Speaker 1: Can you? Could you say it if I wanted you to? Okay,
Speaker 1: how many bear hunters do you think are in Arkansas?
Speaker 1: If you go over, you're out.
Speaker 2: It's like the price is right now wait wait wait
Speaker 2: wait wait, okay, there's the caveat Okay, this included the
Speaker 2: number that I got, included resident bear permit holders and
Speaker 2: non resident everybody that's hunting, everybody else hunting, baron ard.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you go over, you're out. Closest closest the.
Speaker 8: Number, the price is right, twenty eight hundred.
Speaker 1: Okay, good bear or bear brand whatever. It's like my
Speaker 1: son Waite outer end. Well, we don't know, we don't
Speaker 1: know the number. Twenty eight hundred. Just remember you number?
Speaker 1: How many bear hunters in Arkansas plus non residents?
Speaker 4: Twenty eight oh one?
Speaker 10: Ooh, price is right, six hundred and thirty eight.
Speaker 1: Okay, remember your number. Okay, I'm I'm going last at
Speaker 1: what's Oh that's not fair, it's not go ahead, you
Speaker 1: could if you're Bob Barker, you get.
Speaker 5: To do what you want, right if you say twenty
Speaker 5: seven ninety nine, I'm.
Speaker 1: You bear hunters in Arkansas?
Speaker 3: Now, this is the state wide d gets their help
Speaker 3: from the crowd. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, what yell out
Speaker 3: your numbers?
Speaker 5: It?
Speaker 1: Oh she says higher higher, higher.
Speaker 6: More than more than five thousand, more than ten thousand.
Speaker 6: I think they're really optimistic. I'm gonna go for ten thousand.
Speaker 5: Ten thousand.
Speaker 1: Oh he's mmmm Patrick.
Speaker 5: Not my my h My question though, Myron is Oh,
Speaker 5: youse a question? Come on, man, I got a question
Speaker 5: now too.
Speaker 9: If this was irid, I'm gonna give you one question.
Speaker 9: Are these folks that aren't saying that they're taking opportunity
Speaker 9: to bear hunt but like this is their thing?
Speaker 5: This is what they do.
Speaker 1: It's just a legal requirement to hunt a bear.
Speaker 2: You if I was going go ahead, ma, if you
Speaker 2: intend to hunt or harvest a bear, either directly bear
Speaker 2: hunt or incidental harvest of a bear.
Speaker 5: That was my question.
Speaker 2: You're deer hunting and the bear walks by, you can
Speaker 2: shoot it if so that counts that you bet?
Speaker 5: All right?
Speaker 9: So before you said that, if this were the price
Speaker 9: is right, I would have said one dollar.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 1: There have been a good move maybe right.
Speaker 9: But since you're going last, I can't do that anyway.
Speaker 9: I would say, Uh, I'd say eighty five hundred eighty five.
Speaker 2: That's fair.
Speaker 3: Good pha. Guys are optimistic down here.
Speaker 9: Yeah, but the incident, the opportunistic part is the part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a tricky one.
Speaker 5: That's a tricky one.
Speaker 1: What was yours? Twenty eight?
Speaker 5: I can't remember, but I think I might. What was
Speaker 5: that twenty eighth?
Speaker 1: Twenty eight? No, I actually think, uh, I'm gonna say
Speaker 1: four thousand? What is the number over?
Speaker 2: Twenty five thousand?
Speaker 1: Whoa, my goodness, wo wow, Okay, should have listened to
Speaker 1: the crowd though, Yeah, oh that they knew that, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's wow. Twenty five thousand people bought bear twenty five thousand. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's that's surprising to me. Man.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Can can we say how many bears we had harvested
Speaker 3: in Arkansas last year?
Speaker 2: Yeah, seven hundred and sixty five record harvest year.
Speaker 1: For our record harvest year in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 2: And is that what third consecutive bear season?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean we're actually getting up there and harvesting the
Speaker 2: number of bears we need to. I mean, that's why
Speaker 2: we've liberalized the season a little bit more the last
Speaker 2: couple of years and brought it earlier, and we do.
Speaker 2: That's about where we need to be. We need to
Speaker 2: be between somewhere between five hundred and fifty and eight
Speaker 2: hundred bears probably.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: But I mean, if we got time to dig into it,
Speaker 2: There's a couple of other things I would like to
Speaker 2: mention about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In the bear world, bear management, you know, sustainable harvest
Speaker 2: rates often falls on the female component of a population.
Speaker 2: You can only harvest so many females in a population
Speaker 2: and those practices be sustainable. Well, if bears the magic
Speaker 2: numbers around forty six percent of the female component of
Speaker 2: a harvest, you start harvesting over forty six percent in
Speaker 2: a you know, in a given year, and if that
Speaker 2: is sustained long term, it's not sustainable.
Speaker 1: In the son it does that, okay. So if the
Speaker 1: harvest is over forty six percent SAL, you're the long
Speaker 1: term trajectory of your population is going to be decreasing.
Speaker 2: That's correct.
Speaker 1: Forty six percent SAL, okay.
Speaker 2: And that's just kind of the rule of thumb, you know, Arkansas.
Speaker 2: It may be a couple of percent here and there otherwise,
Speaker 2: but just across the board, because the reproductive rates are
Speaker 2: pretty general across the board with bears and everything else.
Speaker 2: So with this past year, even though knowing we're going
Speaker 2: to harvest more bears and get up there where we want,
Speaker 2: our female harvest rate was forty eight percent this year, okay.
Speaker 2: And in the past when we've had earlier openers, you
Speaker 2: and I've talked about years and years ago, you know
Speaker 2: that we saw the same thing. So we expected that
Speaker 2: as an agency, we expected to have elevated harvest rates
Speaker 2: of females and not to be one to run around
Speaker 2: and say, chicken, little disguise falling. But you know something,
Speaker 2: forty eight forty nine fifty female harvest rates isn't really sustainable,
Speaker 2: not only in Arkansas's bear population, but any bear.
Speaker 1: Popular you understand, son, I do that, and so you know, part.
Speaker 2: Of part of having a season earlier opener, the earlier
Speaker 2: opener and all that stuff. You know, it does come
Speaker 2: with some some downsides to liberalize in those seasons. And
Speaker 2: one of the downsides we knew we were gonna have
Speaker 2: elevated female harvest rates. So you know, we'll kind of
Speaker 2: see how it ferrets out. You know, I'm sure you know,
Speaker 2: through different podcasts and a rigorous education campaign, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm sure we can kind of convince people that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so we need to be all let.
Speaker 1: Me give a little spiel about so the earlier season
Speaker 1: dates for those of you who hunt bears, whether you're
Speaker 1: hunting the national forest or you're hunting overbait on private land,
Speaker 1: earlier season dates greatly increase your chance, first of all,
Speaker 1: killing the bear. But what I always say number two
Speaker 1: is it increases your chance of killing the target bear.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've baited bears at all, you know
Speaker 1: that in early September, I mean you've got your big
Speaker 1: mails coming in during the daylight, doing stuff that just
Speaker 1: makes you think you're gonna have that bear's gonna be
Speaker 1: standing there on opening day. Closer you get to October,
Speaker 1: every single day, those particularly the big bears, start to
Speaker 1: fall off debates, and a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 1: if we have the later season date means it's just
Speaker 1: more difficult to harvest to bear. So the Game and
Speaker 1: Fish has done us the hunters. The hunter at least
Speaker 1: in the inside of the hunter opportunity side of management.
Speaker 1: They've done us a big solid by moving the season
Speaker 1: back to the third Saturday in October or September.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, well, he's actually calculated the fourth Saturday back
Speaker 2: up ten days.
Speaker 1: Fourth Saturday back up ten days. Okay, so any given
Speaker 1: year that could be from like the thirteenth to the twentieth. Basically,
Speaker 1: the difference between a thirteenth opener and a twentieth opener
Speaker 1: is miles incredible. It's hard to understand, but it's it's miles.
Speaker 1: So here's what I The charge that I want to
Speaker 1: give people that are that are hunting bears in the
Speaker 1: state is that if we can self regulate not shooting soals,
Speaker 1: we win because that that overall cell harvest number goes
Speaker 1: down and we can keep our earlier season date and
Speaker 1: so that the impetus really falls on the hunters to
Speaker 1: self regulate and try to avoid shooting juveniles and females
Speaker 1: and target these older age class males or just males
Speaker 1: in general. And if we can do that, Meyron and
Speaker 1: I were doing the math earlier, the difference between forty
Speaker 1: eight percent and forty three percent is probably less than
Speaker 1: fifty animals. So that's the way I'm talking to Myron
Speaker 1: about it. It's like, hey, if we and he's thinking
Speaker 1: about it too. You know, if if we could have people,
Speaker 1: by their own choice not shoot fifty fifty sALS in
Speaker 1: the state, we get to keep our season opener. But
Speaker 1: if we keep bumping up towards that fifty percent sal harvest,
Speaker 1: they're going to have no choice to protect the resource,
Speaker 1: to bump the season way back, which makes it way harder.
Speaker 1: And it's it's and so anyway, man, I've been preaching
Speaker 1: this for so long, and it's hard not to shoot
Speaker 1: a soal. And there's nothing wrong. I mean, we realize
Speaker 1: sALS are going to be harvested, and that's a component
Speaker 1: of the management, absolutely, But if you're setting in it,
Speaker 1: if you've got six bears coming to your bait, you
Speaker 1: know what these bears are. I mean, you might have
Speaker 1: to eat a tag one year because maybe your males
Speaker 1: for whatever have peeled off and there's that one big
Speaker 1: female that's been coming in. And that's what we're asking
Speaker 1: people to do. It's like, hey, do your best to
Speaker 1: not shoot a soal. And obviously we can't. We can't
Speaker 1: shoot sALS with cubs, which that, yeah, you want to
Speaker 1: talk about.
Speaker 2: That, I mean I can. It's uh, you know, it's
Speaker 2: it's uh one of the big deal about game and Fish.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of people think we just will
Speaker 2: and only throw regulations out there. And you know when
Speaker 2: you start talking about harvesting females or harvesting sALS with cubs,
Speaker 2: you know, present or something like that, I mean, really
Speaker 2: that kind of boils down to ethics rule. It's really
Speaker 2: not enforceable, and it kind of falls more on the
Speaker 2: ethics side of something rather than it does, you know,
Speaker 2: an enforceable legal side of something. And you know, I
Speaker 2: mean gaming fish. I can speak for our director and
Speaker 2: our director and all of our commission. We just we're
Speaker 2: not in the business to regulate ethics. However, I can
Speaker 2: tell you that, you know, something would have to happen
Speaker 2: if we had two or three or four years of
Speaker 2: you know, female harvest rates in the upper fifties one.
Speaker 2: You know, just one of the things that's an easy
Speaker 2: identifier is if you have a soul with cubs coming
Speaker 2: to abate site and even though those cubs have been
Speaker 2: with her all year and the likelihood of them going
Speaker 2: ahead and surviving is probably pretty good at that point,
Speaker 2: but still, I mean, you know, I tell people all
Speaker 2: the time, you know, the reason why those cubs go
Speaker 2: into that den cycle again with the mother when they're
Speaker 2: quote a year old in a month or two from
Speaker 2: marchery season. You know, that's just kind of the way
Speaker 2: Mother Nature designed it. And there's no doubt there's an
Speaker 2: added measure of knowledge and everything else that comes with that.
Speaker 2: So you know, if it if it boils down to hey,
Speaker 2: you know, don't harvest a sow with cubs. If that
Speaker 2: makes one or two or three percent difference over all statewide,
Speaker 2: you know, that's the thing it can help if you
Speaker 2: knowingly have a sow. You know, I mean, it's like
Speaker 2: Clay said, there's nothing wrong with harvesting seals. It's gonna happen,
Speaker 2: and it's fair game, but just kind of keep it
Speaker 2: in the back of your mind that, you know, unless
Speaker 2: the public makes that change, you know, game and fish
Speaker 2: charged with protecting the resource will have to do something
Speaker 2: different some point in the future, whether that means institute
Speaker 2: at regulations like not allowing us south with cubs to
Speaker 2: be harvested, or I'm bumping the season back another week,
Speaker 2: you know, to try and ensure more males are harvested.
Speaker 2: It's just, you know, that's the charge of the resource.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think people can get behind that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think so. Hey, what's a a little
Speaker 1: change is a subject here, but uh, let's talk about
Speaker 1: let's talk about eating bear for a second. Should we
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Can we go from from harvesting bear to eating bear? Bernie,
Speaker 1: what's your favorite way to cook a bear?
Speaker 8: I make a breakfast sausage at all.
Speaker 5: It's a killer breakfast sausage. Yeah.
Speaker 8: And I take the bear meat and grind it with
Speaker 8: twenty five percent bacon ins and pieces, and then I
Speaker 8: put a what.
Speaker 1: Brand bacon ins? You don't get that bar s stuff,
Speaker 1: do you?
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 8: I don't think we have bars Minnesota. We're a little
Speaker 8: bit higher class than yeah.
Speaker 5: Oh well yeah yeah and then yeah right right, they'll
Speaker 5: throw me out of here.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I like chordsas it's yeah pretty country here. Yeah,
Speaker 8: bacon ins and pieces and then a seasoning that's uh,
Speaker 8: it's a Cabella's German breakfast sausage seasoning. And it's it's like,
Speaker 8: I don't know, if you're familiar with Johnsonville sausages, breakfast sausage.
Speaker 5: It's at least that good. There may be better.
Speaker 1: And hey, let me ask you a question. So in
Speaker 1: the in the deer hunting world, elk hunting, any kind
Speaker 1: of ungulate, you know, usually the big males are not
Speaker 1: gonna taste as good as female Like a big buck's
Speaker 1: not gonna taste as good as a dough. Have you
Speaker 1: found that a big, old male bear would taste different
Speaker 1: than a young bear?
Speaker 5: Not really?
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 8: The difference that you will notice in bears is what
Speaker 8: they've been eating. And if you take really good care
Speaker 8: of the meat when you first get it, get it
Speaker 8: cooled off quickly, that's the difference. I've shot five hundred
Speaker 8: pound bears and one hundred and five pound bears and
Speaker 8: there's not much difference.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's what I was going to I hadn't
Speaker 1: talked to him about that. That's been my experience, which
Speaker 1: is not intuitive mine too. I mean, man, you kill
Speaker 1: a five hundred pound bear, it's gonna be in my
Speaker 1: what I've seen, the meat is just as good as
Speaker 1: if you'd kill the young one. You wouldn't think that
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be the same way with hogs, wouldn't be
Speaker 1: the same way with elk or deer. But Brian, what's
Speaker 1: your favorite way to cook a bear?
Speaker 5: Chili? Chili?
Speaker 4: Bear chili? Yeah, my little girl Bailey would rather eat
Speaker 4: bear chili than ice cream.
Speaker 5: Well that maybe not.
Speaker 1: Ice cream, but bear flavored ice cream.
Speaker 4: But that bear chili, that's that's a big thing.
Speaker 1: Very chili, Yeah, anything special, just.
Speaker 4: Yeah, towns and chili season in it. Where's them folks at?
Speaker 4: Where's my man with the towns and spice?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: Big caboy Misty loves cooking bear.
Speaker 10: I do love cooking bear.
Speaker 11: And my favorite way to cook bear is any way
Speaker 11: that you cook it and it can be ready in
Speaker 11: about thirty.
Speaker 1: Minutes and so, and that's kind of really hungry.
Speaker 10: That's kind of hard to do.
Speaker 11: And if we've got a family, We've got four kids
Speaker 11: that have been raised on bear meat, and for us,
Speaker 11: it really we both have always worked and so it
Speaker 11: has to I can give about thirty minutes a day
Speaker 11: to get dinner on the table, and that's kind of
Speaker 11: hard with wild game. So we've figured out a couple
Speaker 11: of ways to do it. One is Carnita's and a
Speaker 11: slow cooker, and that's about so Clay and Bear and
Speaker 11: River when they harvest their bears, they have to cube
Speaker 11: a whole bunch of it for me, and they're very
Speaker 11: good at doing that. And so I'd love to cook it,
Speaker 11: put it in a slow cooker and have it ready
Speaker 11: when I get home if it's a special day like
Speaker 11: a Saturday or a Sunday, and I've got more than
Speaker 11: thirty minutes.
Speaker 10: We love bear meat loaf.
Speaker 1: We love meat.
Speaker 11: You put onions, peppers, jalapenos, all that good stuff in
Speaker 11: a food processor.
Speaker 10: So it's really really fine. Mix it all together really well.
Speaker 1: Hey, tell them about the research you were doing about
Speaker 1: the nutrient content of bear meat.
Speaker 10: Well of meat of wild games.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't just bear, It wasn't just bear.
Speaker 11: And I've just been researching a wild game because you know,
Speaker 11: there's a lot of people out there who are you know,
Speaker 11: there's some anti meat people in this world, and it's
Speaker 11: really an uneducated stance to take because we pretty much
Speaker 11: all of the world's B twelve, which you've got to
Speaker 11: have to have energy and to have you know, to
Speaker 11: be healthy, comes from meat. And so we really need
Speaker 11: to eat meat. And there's no amount you can get
Speaker 11: some of the vitamins that you need from vegetables that
Speaker 11: meat provides, but you would have to eat so many
Speaker 11: of those vegetables to get it, and not all of
Speaker 11: it is immediately available. And so one of the things
Speaker 11: you hear a lot about meat is that it's.
Speaker 10: Bad for your heart.
Speaker 11: That you know, they they's got a you know, it'll
Speaker 11: result in heart disease, and that's only They've done these
Speaker 11: lipid analysis on wild game, and it turns out that
Speaker 11: God made our bodies to consume wild game and there
Speaker 11: is an exactly perfect ratio inside of wild game and
Speaker 11: grass fed meat for your body that it actually does
Speaker 11: not result in heart disease and it does actually help
Speaker 11: you manage there we go.
Speaker 10: All of the cardiovascular disease, arthritis.
Speaker 1: All of these things. Yeah, I mean, I'm preaching to
Speaker 1: the choir. But these are things I think that need
Speaker 1: to be on our tongues and just an under we
Speaker 1: have an understanding of it. I mean, the wild game
Speaker 1: is the most incredible meat on planet Earth. But from
Speaker 1: every from every angle, from the environmental angle to the
Speaker 1: sustainable angle, to human health angle to social the social angle. Incredible. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go around. We'll make it quick. To me,
Speaker 1: there's a big five for for bear meat, burgers, spaghetti,
Speaker 1: taco meat, meat loaf, and what am I missing?
Speaker 5: Ice cream?
Speaker 1: Ice cream? The big five be nachos?
Speaker 10: Is what Clay makes? You've missed chili?
Speaker 1: I missed? What now chili? I'm chili?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Big five? Man bear meat Yeah, bear meats incredible, Mara,
Speaker 1: what's your favorway?
Speaker 2: Cook it bear tips over us? Really no doubt about it. Really?
Speaker 5: How do you do it? Uh?
Speaker 2: Usually just separate out a nice big muscle chunk, put
Speaker 2: it in a crock pot, a couple of cans of
Speaker 2: cream and mushroom soup. Let it, let it cook for
Speaker 2: six seven hours. Put it over rice. That sounds good,
Speaker 2: plenty of plenty of pepper, salt.
Speaker 3: What time is dinner?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I like it?
Speaker 6: Any way, I've had it every single way I've had it.
Speaker 6: I couldn't tell you a favorite.
Speaker 1: I love it all right, Patrick, have you eaten much bear?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah?
Speaker 9: So every for a couple of years, every fall we
Speaker 9: would have the Patrick Killed It Game Feast.
Speaker 5: Oh wow. Yeah it was awesome because I I, you.
Speaker 9: Know, I live in a community even if they don't hunt, like,
Speaker 9: they're all about wild game and so you know, in
Speaker 9: the fall, you know, i'd have you know, a bunch
Speaker 9: of you know, ducks and geese and grouse and woodcock.
Speaker 9: Where I live, we had a fall turkey season, plenty
Speaker 9: of deer meat to go around. But my one of
Speaker 9: my buddies would always get a bear every year. And
Speaker 9: I am such a lazy cook. I would give out
Speaker 9: while the wild game to all my friends that would
Speaker 9: come to the Patrick Killed It Game feast, so that
Speaker 9: I didn't have to worry about cooking that.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 9: My only rule for everybody was, like any wild game
Speaker 9: is I trying to grill everything. As soon as you
Speaker 9: overcook it in general, you're done, right. You've got to
Speaker 9: be able to deal with you know, not overcooking it.
Speaker 9: No matter what you think your preferences, I'll invite you
Speaker 9: to the Patrick killed It game feast.
Speaker 1: I wish I had a clay killed its. Yeah, we don't.
Speaker 2: I think you need to start that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Bernie. So, Bernie's hunted bears all over North Maurya.
Speaker 1: You've never hunted Arkansas, though. We need to choose mad
Speaker 1: at you because you were You got the job over me,
Speaker 1: so I never invited you down here.
Speaker 5: Well, are you still mad at me?
Speaker 1: I want to bring out that and bring that up now.
Speaker 8: I definitely want to hunt Arkansas. I got a long
Speaker 8: list of places I've hunted, and it's this.
Speaker 1: Is a hole in the map.
Speaker 5: Pretty bad that this ain't one of them.
Speaker 8: Well, uh, my question to you though, is I hear
Speaker 8: your son's probably a really good guy bear.
Speaker 5: Will you take me hunting here?
Speaker 1: What do he say? What do he say? Oh? He
Speaker 1: gives the thumbs up. All right, you have to find
Speaker 1: a new spot. Bernie's not setting in my spot. I'm
Speaker 1: teasing Bernie.
Speaker 5: Takes me where you took Colby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where's your favorite place to bear hunt?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: All yeah, I mean Bernie's hunted probably all the Canadian provinces.
Speaker 5: Except for a couple of Eastern ones. Yeah. Wow, you know,
Speaker 5: can I give you like three each.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 8: So my favorite di i Y hunt, where I just
Speaker 8: went and hunted on my own, was in Wyoming and
Speaker 8: really really cool, really fun chocolate. All the bears are brown.
Speaker 8: I got like nine bears on baits. They're all brown,
Speaker 8: no black ones. That was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So you were doing it, you were baiting bears.
Speaker 8: And yeah, I mean yeah on a four wheeler and
Speaker 8: public land in the mountains and beautiful country. It was
Speaker 8: really fun. I killed a really nice bear. I did
Speaker 8: that in Idaho too, which was pretty cool. But man,
Speaker 8: I love Maine. Maine is a fun place to hunt bears.
Speaker 5: Boy, I'll tell you what. Where's Todd? Todd?
Speaker 1: Todd? Yeah, Todd.
Speaker 8: What I'm about to say. If you said you can
Speaker 8: only hunt one place for the rest of your life,
Speaker 8: it would be a spring bear hunt in the Baldy Mountain.
Speaker 5: Baldy Mountain.
Speaker 8: Yeah there, Manitoba, the Duck Mountains, Baldy Mountain Outfitters, he's here.
Speaker 8: I've killed some nice bears with him. But the Duck
Speaker 8: Mountains of Manitoba they got at all. They got big bears,
Speaker 8: they got lots of bears, they got.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all that, and you're not just saying that because
Speaker 1: Todd's our friend. I mean, for real, I've hunted there.
Speaker 1: I mean that part of Manitoba is special. It is,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of other great places in Canada too,
Speaker 1: but that's a cool place to hunt them.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, cool, I'm going there in June.
Speaker 1: Okay, Todd, I owe you a bow and I forgot it.
Speaker 1: Bear forgot it. I told Todd I was going to
Speaker 1: give him a you know, the bow. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you guys saw it, but on the Meat either episode,
Speaker 1: the bow that I used in Alaska on the wake board, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the boogie board.
Speaker 5: Bear.
Speaker 1: Well, Todd, that's your bow. I told Todd's my friend.
Speaker 1: I told him I was going to give him a bow.
Speaker 1: I forgot to bring it, Todd. I guess we're kind
Speaker 1: of having a private conversation here. I'll get it to you.
Speaker 10: He's just a clear Bears name. He had nothing to
Speaker 10: do with that.
Speaker 1: Bears should have known that I needed that bow here.
Speaker 1: I blame Bear new Com for this.
Speaker 3: He drove all the way down here just for that class.
Speaker 1: Just ye, just to get scolded. Brent. Where's your favorite
Speaker 1: place to bear hunt?
Speaker 5: You missed that out loud? No?
Speaker 4: Well, it had to be here. I mean, this is
Speaker 4: you have such a connection with the land here, even
Speaker 4: though I didn't grow up in in western Arkansas, where
Speaker 4: you know where I've killed all three of the bears
Speaker 4: that I've killed is over there. I have such a
Speaker 4: connection with this state and and what's going on here
Speaker 4: and seeing seeing bears now where I grew up. I
Speaker 4: cannot wait to kill a bear legally and where I
Speaker 4: grew up, and the efforts that admiring, and all the
Speaker 4: folks at the Game and Fish are doing down there,
Speaker 4: and they they did those collaring projects last summer, wasn't
Speaker 4: it last summer. It's it's I'm anxious to see where
Speaker 4: it goes. Because the first exposure I ever had with
Speaker 4: a bear, I was about ten years old, so in
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy six in Cleveland County, Arkansas, and I was
Speaker 4: cold hunting with my dad and the dogs had bade
Speaker 4: what we thought was a cold out in the middle
Speaker 4: of this beanfield, and I dad said, we got to
Speaker 4: go out there and get the dogs off and let
Speaker 4: this code he go. And I said, can I go?
Speaker 4: He said, no, it's real muddy. It's kind of thick
Speaker 4: right there, So you just stay here at the truck,
Speaker 4: and he was out there about five minutes and he
Speaker 4: come running.
Speaker 5: Back for another light and I said, can I go
Speaker 5: with you this name? He said, no, it's a bear.
Speaker 4: Stay here. And I'm like, okay, I'll stay here. But
Speaker 4: that was the first introduction I'd had with a bearer
Speaker 4: in that part of the world.
Speaker 2: And then now.
Speaker 4: Forty years later there are people that are seeing them
Speaker 4: there in that same place. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: That's cool, you know when you look at years ago,
Speaker 1: fifteen going on twenty years ago that I turned my
Speaker 1: focus to bears in our really started learning about bears.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I saw a map of
Speaker 1: North America that showed where we had bears. Okay, so
Speaker 1: imagine a map of North America and Canada that had
Speaker 1: colored sections that showed where bears were well, from the
Speaker 1: Appalachian Mountains to the east, from Florida to Maine. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this big swath on the east coast that had
Speaker 1: bears in the west, from the Rocky Mountains west into California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona,
Speaker 1: all the way up into Canada, Washington. You know, all
Speaker 1: this western US and then the swath covers all of
Speaker 1: Canada and all of Alaska. Okay, So if you're following me,
Speaker 1: there's a giant hole with no bears. Hold with me,
Speaker 1: between the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains except for this
Speaker 1: one little spot about that big on a map, about
Speaker 1: that big that was Arkansas.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 1: And I remember fifteen years ago in the literature twenty
Speaker 1: whenever it was. I was when I was at the
Speaker 1: University of Arkansas between two thousand and one and two
Speaker 1: thousand and five. When I was seeing these maps, there
Speaker 1: was this little population of bears that was right here
Speaker 1: where we lived. And at the time, I was like,
Speaker 1: that is incredibly cool that of all this landscape that's
Speaker 1: absent of bears, we have this population and today that
Speaker 1: population of bears that was. You know, we could talk
Speaker 1: this whole time about the reintroduction of bears into Arkansas.
Speaker 1: You know, between nineteen fifty four and nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty four bears were brought in from
Speaker 1: different places, released in three locations in Arkansas and became
Speaker 1: the most successful reintroduction of large carnivores in the world.
Speaker 1: Has spread out and now covers southern Missouri. Missouri now
Speaker 1: has a bear season eastern Oklahoma. Oklahoma now is a
Speaker 1: bear season North Louisiana. They're gonna have their first official
Speaker 1: bear hunt this year, which is major. Brent and I
Speaker 1: two days ago we're in Mississippi on a bear den
Speaker 1: study in southwest Mississippi. And basically that little spot that
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago basically covered the Washtaws and ozarks is
Speaker 1: now spreading out. And I'm telling you, in today's world
Speaker 1: where all we hear about is ecological crisis on every front,
Speaker 1: it's a major deal that black bears are expanding like
Speaker 1: they are. And it all started right here, right here
Speaker 1: in Arcas. This here for us, Yeah, yeah, no, it's incredible,
Speaker 1: and it's incredible, and one day I'm gonna go into more.
Speaker 1: We'll have a whole render up here about this. But
Speaker 1: I mean, the incredible cultural history that Arkansas has with
Speaker 1: bears is unreal. I mean, you know, we were once
Speaker 1: knows the bear state, and when you really dig down
Speaker 1: into that, you see all of wild stuff that happened here.
Speaker 1: But uh, it's such a and that's what this event
Speaker 1: is about, is is really a celebration of a wild beast.
Speaker 1: That wild beast, though, is only here because of wild
Speaker 1: habitat wild lands, and when you the reason that little
Speaker 1: population of bears was here is because this is the
Speaker 1: wildest country in any direction for long ways. By wildest country,
Speaker 1: I mean just most amount of public land, most amounted
Speaker 1: unfragmented sections of timber. And I'm going to use the
Speaker 1: quotes wilderness, not federal wilderness. But I mean what we
Speaker 1: have here is cool. Don't tell anybody.
Speaker 3: Nobody's gonna cut that out.
Speaker 1: Nobody cut that out. But James, this would be a
Speaker 1: great moment for you to Yeah, yeah, tell me what
Speaker 1: you're gonna tell me.
Speaker 6: So, uh is everybody here loves bears, right, we want
Speaker 6: to we want to have some more bears, and we
Speaker 6: want to help get a fish commission do what they're.
Speaker 3: Doing yep with the bears. Yes, okay, all right.
Speaker 6: So as a thank you to you all for being
Speaker 6: here today, the Arkansas Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers
Speaker 6: is going to donate five thousand dollars to the Game
Speaker 6: and Fish Commission today.
Speaker 3: All right, And.
Speaker 2: Myron justish the bear the bear program specifically I was
Speaker 2: getting there.
Speaker 6: So Myron is going to put that to work on
Speaker 6: some of the things that they were talking about and
Speaker 6: he's been talking about with his research studies.
Speaker 3: So, you know, in order to put a collar on
Speaker 3: a bear, what do you got to do?
Speaker 2: First?
Speaker 3: Got to catch that bear.
Speaker 6: So Myron and I were talking and he's he needs
Speaker 6: some equipment to help with that. And because of the
Speaker 6: generosity of the people here, they have bought their tickets
Speaker 6: to be here, they're participating in our raffles. They're just
Speaker 6: they're just here supporting conservation. And what we do as
Speaker 6: an organization, Patrick, is we turn around and do good
Speaker 6: work with the resources that people trust to us, their
Speaker 6: time and their treasure. And so we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 6: trust some of that tomorrown.
Speaker 1: You don't appreciate it. You don't have a big check
Speaker 1: with you don't.
Speaker 3: How much a big check costs. We're giving that to
Speaker 3: the bears.
Speaker 2: That's right. What do you do?
Speaker 1: You know what you're gonna do with that much?
Speaker 9: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you what are you gonna do with that?
Speaker 2: Well, lately, what we the last couple of years, what
Speaker 2: we've been doing is, uh, we've been taking of course,
Speaker 2: we we've got a new mouse trap you know that
Speaker 2: we've kind of developed over the years, and it's a
Speaker 2: pipe snare that we're using. But we also use live
Speaker 2: catch traps. And uh, I'm sure most of you are
Speaker 2: probably familiar with the big culvert traps catch trailer, right,
Speaker 2: that's on a trailer. Well, we also have big basically
Speaker 2: it looks like a great, big giant have a heart trap.
Speaker 2: It's like a four by four by seven. And the
Speaker 2: for so live catch traps, Well, the last couple of
Speaker 2: years we have developed a way to put some of
Speaker 2: the holl guy cameras or some of the live feed
Speaker 2: cameras and put a release selinoid on them to where
Speaker 2: we can close the gate on those traps on target animals.
Speaker 2: He say, well, why is that such a big deal. Well,
Speaker 2: you know, when you put the trap in a place
Speaker 2: where you know there's a female, but all you can
Speaker 2: catch are males. You don't really care about catching males.
Speaker 2: You don't want to catch a female and a year
Speaker 2: line in the trap. You want to catch the whole family.
Speaker 2: And really it's allowed us to do that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I've caught whole family groups in the trap when you're
Speaker 2: watching it, I'm watching and when a female goes in
Speaker 2: there a target female or the target female and one
Speaker 2: or two or three of her cubs or year lines
Speaker 2: that are with her. I know exactly when I can
Speaker 2: drop that door and it's not a miss. And it
Speaker 2: has red evolutionized how we trap bears and uh, I'm
Speaker 2: telling you it's it truly has revolutioniz.
Speaker 1: So you have an app on your phone that has
Speaker 1: a it gives you a notification.
Speaker 2: Yep, when you have it's motion activated camera system and
Speaker 2: we we have a sellinoid that can release the gate.
Speaker 1: Are you the one that has on your app or
Speaker 1: don't you have people that do that?
Speaker 2: Well, we have a network a bill just that PEO
Speaker 2: will help us. Peeps. Do you need people?
Speaker 1: Do you need more people in the middle of the night?
Speaker 1: Is it like and your wife's like, wow, traps?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean we have a network of people and
Speaker 2: usually it involves you know, a text from this person
Speaker 2: that person, that person. Bear Bear Bear Bear, and so
Speaker 2: you're trying to get on there and you're trying to
Speaker 2: watch it, you know, and everything else.
Speaker 1: There's Bear's only coming the traps between nine and five,
Speaker 1: right working hours weekdays.
Speaker 2: That's when they never come into the trap. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean stuff like that. But you know, I mean
Speaker 2: that that technology comes at the price I mean one
Speaker 2: of the those camera systems is about twenty five hundred dollars.
Speaker 2: And even though you know we have money and we
Speaker 2: use it. Hey, anytime we can, you know, get more
Speaker 2: money for stuff like that, it's great. Well, and this
Speaker 2: is a ate appreciate it.
Speaker 6: And this is a chance for people to directly influence
Speaker 6: conservation work right here in Arkansas by supporting things like
Speaker 6: this coming out with their families. And you know, we're
Speaker 6: appreciative that they have chosen to spend time with us,
Speaker 6: and we want to take that and and invest that
Speaker 6: in the things that we love in our wild places.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: Another thing that the Arkansas Bear Program is pioneering is
Speaker 1: this new drug. You want to talk about that for
Speaker 1: a second.
Speaker 2: I can't talk about it for a second. You know,
Speaker 2: we started a couple of years ago. The one drug
Speaker 2: combination that we have been using for the last couple
Speaker 2: of years is called BAM. That's the accuracy and this is.
Speaker 1: What when they do their den studies, so they how
Speaker 1: many bears females do you have a collared right now?
Speaker 2: About sixty?
Speaker 1: This is o sixty females that are collared right now
Speaker 1: that they're have a circuit of going in every year
Speaker 1: and checking for cubs, and they're able to analyze, you know,
Speaker 1: what's going on with reproduction, right, so every one of
Speaker 1: those bears, they've got to tranquilize to be able to
Speaker 1: work the cubs.
Speaker 2: That's right. They don't just give up their cubs willingness,
Speaker 2: like check these guys out. So but you know, we've
Speaker 2: moved to a new drug that basically had a reversal
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago, and it is a great drug,
Speaker 2: four bears, and it's scheduled to use four bears, but
Speaker 2: it has a drawback. During the winter time, when females
Speaker 2: are in a dense cycle, they lower their respiratory rates,
Speaker 2: metabolic rates, and all those physiological processes to the point
Speaker 2: that an average female may in a dense cycle, may
Speaker 2: have four breasts a minute. Well, if you give them
Speaker 2: a drug that suppresses that even further to have two
Speaker 2: breasts a minute, they're not going to be able to
Speaker 2: maintain blood oxygen levels and everything else like that they're
Speaker 2: under anaesthesia. So we kind of started a little pilot
Speaker 2: project a couple of years ago with some beta testers
Speaker 2: for the pharmacy, and they developed a new drug instead
Speaker 2: of BAM butrophenol as prone and medatomidine it's nam or
Speaker 2: now MEDA now beufeen as a perune and metatomidine. It's
Speaker 2: basically the same drugs.
Speaker 1: Remember that.
Speaker 2: BAM NAM before it was BAM, now it's NAM. But
Speaker 2: the great thing about this new drug is that it
Speaker 2: does not suppress respiration rates as much during a dim cycle,
Speaker 2: which is a key feature of why this drug is
Speaker 2: so good, especially uh in the dinning scenario. And you know,
Speaker 2: if we get it approved, we're kind of the tip
Speaker 2: of the spirit.
Speaker 1: We organization using it for bears right now in the country.
Speaker 2: Well, there's other organizations using it for bears, but I
Speaker 2: mean they're kind of doing it under the cloak of
Speaker 2: darkness so to speak. I'm not going to throw any
Speaker 2: of them under the bus. But if we do get
Speaker 2: it to prove four bears for on label use, then
Speaker 2: you know, all the bear researchers in the country will
Speaker 2: be able to use this drug, which is a much
Speaker 2: better drug in a dim cycle.
Speaker 1: That's good. So like it, like Bear steff, tip of
Speaker 1: the spear, tip of the spirit, tip of the spirit.
Speaker 2: You know, I was gonna mention something also, you know
Speaker 2: you mentioned twenty years ago when you were looking at maps,
Speaker 2: and I'm going to make this real quick looking back
Speaker 2: at bear conservation history in Arkansas. You talked about the
Speaker 2: reintroduction effort. Let's say nineteen sixty, Fast forward twenty years
Speaker 2: from that, nineteen eighty. What was the significance of that
Speaker 2: first bear seasons, first modern day bear season in Arkansas?
Speaker 2: Teen eighty, fast forward twenty years from that, what do
Speaker 2: you have?
Speaker 1: First legalized bear baiting on private land?
Speaker 2: That's right, fast forward twenty years from that, what do
Speaker 2: you have?
Speaker 1: We moved the season back so we can kill big boars.
Speaker 2: I think statewide, Gulf coastal, playing coast.
Speaker 1: Sorry guys, I was thinking big bear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically we you know, we reopened the bear season
Speaker 2: and basically four fifths of the bear state. So if
Speaker 2: you look at the conservation, you know, it's kind of
Speaker 2: twenty year milestones into conservation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's that's really interesting.
Speaker 4: You've been here since the beginning nineteen sixty you were working, right, what's.
Speaker 8: Going to happen is eighty seven, twenty years from now,
Speaker 8: what's the next day?
Speaker 1: Yeah, good question, Bernie, that is a good question.
Speaker 2: Hopefully robust healthy bear populations.
Speaker 1: Do we do you think the bear population is going
Speaker 1: to expand into I mean, so the bears are in
Speaker 1: the Gulf coastal plane right now five hundred. We know
Speaker 1: the ozarks and Washtalls are maybe not saturated, but close
Speaker 1: to the carrying capacity of the land. Yeah, what's Are
Speaker 1: there going to be as many bears down the Gulf
Speaker 1: Coastal Plain as there are in the Washtalls or what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen.
Speaker 2: I don't know if those densities will ever mirror the
Speaker 2: mountain densities, you know, but I certainly think there is
Speaker 2: a lot of room for bears for that population to grow. Now,
Speaker 2: whether or not they're gonna, you know, disperse from the
Speaker 2: Washtalls into the Gulf Coastal Plain, from Felson Thaw area
Speaker 2: up into the northwest portion of the Gulf Coastal Plain
Speaker 2: where they're gonna come from. I mean, it's probably a
Speaker 2: mixed bag of everything. But I have no doubt that
Speaker 2: population will to continue to grow with good conservation strategies. Uh.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think you hit it right. I
Speaker 2: think our mountain populations are probably at our peak densities.
Speaker 2: Certainly what we can carry statewide sociological carrying capacity, which
Speaker 2: is a lot different than the ecological carrying capacity.
Speaker 1: You know what that means, son, No, explain it? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: social carrying capacity is what the people of a certain
Speaker 1: region are willing to tolerate many how many times a year?
Speaker 1: They willing to have a bear come up and eat
Speaker 1: their bird feeders and mess with their That's exactly trash
Speaker 1: cans versus what the land could hold. And almost always
Speaker 1: the social carrying capacity is less than the lands carrying capacity.
Speaker 1: And that's where management organizations come in and they manage
Speaker 1: bears typically for social carrying capacity. That's right, because they've
Speaker 1: got to manage this resource based upon the best good
Speaker 1: of the animals but also people.
Speaker 2: That's right, and it's up to it's up to game
Speaker 2: and fish and d nrs to really find that balance
Speaker 2: in between. I mean, certainly Arkansas could sustain a whole
Speaker 2: lot more bears than we have now. But you know
Speaker 2: when you when when mother nature doesn't provide and all
Speaker 2: those bears go to bird feeders and dog food and
Speaker 2: cat food on someone's porch, that's when the public really
Speaker 2: become so excited about having bears everywhere. And so you know,
Speaker 2: that's been the charge of game and fish for the
Speaker 2: sixty year conservation story is to find that balance.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Interesting, so interesting. We've been going an hour for the
Speaker 1: integrity of this institution of bear grease. We have to
Speaker 1: talk about wilderness. We always do this if you listen
Speaker 1: to the render, you know this, right, We like talk
Speaker 1: about something for a while and then we stop, and
Speaker 1: then we talk about what we've been talking about. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm the only person in the world that's interested in
Speaker 1: the wilderness. That's not true.
Speaker 3: It is not true.
Speaker 1: No, we did a three part We did a three
Speaker 1: part series. I kind of joke that it was boring.
Speaker 7: It was.
Speaker 1: My buddy Steve Vernella told me that, which, yeah, kind
Speaker 1: of kind of stuck me hard. It was more or
Speaker 1: less more or less the future Gift.
Speaker 5: He was on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like, well, it's your fault. No, we
Speaker 1: did a three part series on American wilderness, and if
Speaker 1: you listen to it, you're gonna be up to speed.
Speaker 1: If you're not, if you didn't, you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: you have to catch up. But basically, man in modern
Speaker 1: times and the time we live in, wilderness is an
Speaker 1: incredible it's an incredible word, but it's an incredible concept.
Speaker 1: That's going to become more and more important. And basically
Speaker 1: we talked about how there's two things when you say
Speaker 1: the wilderness. There's the idea of wilderness, and then there's
Speaker 1: the reality of wilderness, which is actually federally regulated wilderness
Speaker 1: with a capital W, which is the most regulated land
Speaker 1: designation from our federal government. The idea of wilderness would
Speaker 1: be that that you could you could have a feeling
Speaker 1: of wilderness anywhere. You could go down here to the creek,
Speaker 1: across the highway here and be in a wooded setting
Speaker 1: and have a wilderness feeling, you know, being in a
Speaker 1: landscape that's dominated by natural systems without the marks of
Speaker 1: man on it. Right, So that could happen anywhere. That
Speaker 1: could happen on national forests, that could happen on your
Speaker 1: private land, that could happen anywhere. Federally regulated wilderness is.
Speaker 1: There are one hundred and eleven million acres of federal
Speaker 1: wilderness in America. Roughly seventeen percent of America is federally
Speaker 1: regulated wilderness, which is a huge chunk of land. What
Speaker 1: did I say that, say seventeen percent, not say five percent,
Speaker 1: not seventeen percent?
Speaker 3: Where come from?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Five percent excuse me, pardon me, five
Speaker 1: percent of America is federally regulated public land with a
Speaker 1: capital W. And in this last episode we talked about
Speaker 1: two things. I talked with Steve Vernella about the personal
Speaker 1: impacts of being in wild places, like all of us
Speaker 1: have inherited this really a cultural inheritance of a particular
Speaker 1: way that we view wild places. Like if you went
Speaker 1: to anywhere in Asia or anywhere in Africa or even Europe,
Speaker 1: and you set people down and you talk to them
Speaker 1: about wild spaces unaltered by man, a person would have
Speaker 1: a sense in a way they would handle it, a
Speaker 1: way that they would intellectually think about it, the way
Speaker 1: that they would value it. That would be a product
Speaker 1: of them being in a culture here in America. And
Speaker 1: the whole series talked about this, but so much of
Speaker 1: our national heritage came from this idea of this place
Speaker 1: being forged out of a wilderness. And we talked about
Speaker 1: all the pitfalls of that. Oh, it's an incredible series
Speaker 1: for real, boring as it may be to some people,
Speaker 1: rent but we dove into some really wild stuff. So
Speaker 1: the great I'm given like a summary is this okay,
Speaker 1: little summary inspiration? Okay, Yeah, if you if you get
Speaker 1: hired on to come play, this is when you start
Speaker 1: playing when you hear me kind of get going. No,
Speaker 1: So the the early American wilderness prophets, all these guys
Speaker 1: mirror Throw, all these all these guys. They believed that
Speaker 1: wilderness impacted the the the the deep fiber of a man.
Speaker 1: Like Threau said that that wild places where the nourishment,
Speaker 1: the intellectual nourishment of civilized men, which is an interesting thought,
Speaker 1: Like what think about about for yourself? You guys are hunters,
Speaker 1: ladies or hunters, Like what happens to you when you're
Speaker 1: in a wild place? Like why do you go there?
Speaker 1: Why do you sacrifice to be there when you could
Speaker 1: be in the comfort of your own home you could
Speaker 1: be having all this, uh, the things we live in
Speaker 1: most of the time. What really happens when you're in
Speaker 1: a wild place. That's something to think about. Throw believe
Speaker 1: that it that it impacted him far beyond. I'm not
Speaker 1: a fan of Throw necessarily. Neither is Steve or Noa.
Speaker 1: If you heard our little spat about it, but we
Speaker 1: talked about that. I'm not necessarily interested in that as much.
Speaker 1: The second part that we talked about on this last
Speaker 1: episode was the criticisms of Federal Wilderness, which was interesting.
Speaker 1: There's an idea that federal wilderness is an elitist idea
Speaker 1: because Federal Wilderness can't drive a four wheeler, can't drive
Speaker 1: a willed vehicle. It's ridiculous. You can't take a hang glider.
Speaker 1: I always thought it was a hand glider. It's not
Speaker 1: a hand gliter, it's a hang glider. Can't take one
Speaker 1: of those in the wilderness. It says on the sign
Speaker 1: our government spent that much money on the on the signs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I always thought that was funny. But it's the most
Speaker 1: restricted amount of land and all you can do is
Speaker 1: walk in there, ride horses and mules essentially. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the only options. And so there's a some people
Speaker 1: would say that that land is then only for the
Speaker 1: people who can physically go in there, which is true,
Speaker 1: and they would say, well, that's not making it accessible
Speaker 1: to everybody else, which we talked about that. We also
Speaker 1: talked about primarily the management strategies. I had a good
Speaker 1: friend of mine named Adam Keith, real sharp guy. He
Speaker 1: I thought he gave it a really compelling argument. He's
Speaker 1: a land manager, and he he said Clay. When I
Speaker 1: hear somebody say federal wilderness, he said, I think of
Speaker 1: unmanaged land. He said, I'm all for wilderness, wild places,
Speaker 1: places that are untouched by man. But those federal wildernesses
Speaker 1: that don't get fire, that don't get any kind of
Speaker 1: management at all. He's like, they're wastelands like for by
Speaker 1: for flora and fauna, both invasives are taken over these wildernesses.
Speaker 1: And so there's this kind of irony that wildernesses often
Speaker 1: have a much more heavy invasive load than and this
Speaker 1: isn't across the board, but in a lot of our
Speaker 1: eastern wildernesses, they have more invasive loads in the wilderness
Speaker 1: than than places that are managed like national forest. So, James,
Speaker 1: what do you think, Well, it was a quick review.
Speaker 1: That was a quick review better with banjo music in
Speaker 1: the back.
Speaker 6: You know, There's there's a couple of things that really
Speaker 6: stood out to me. And and so when I look
Speaker 6: out here and see all these folks, and I wish,
Speaker 6: I wish that the people who are listening to this
Speaker 6: on their phones or whatever could see the cross section
Speaker 6: that we have out here.
Speaker 3: But I see a lot of people who like wild
Speaker 3: places and and for me.
Speaker 6: The thing that stood out was right at the end
Speaker 6: when you when Howe was talking about, you know, trusting
Speaker 6: the federal government or not, and and he made this
Speaker 6: point and and it was in order for us to
Speaker 6: have those if we want those places managed differently, we're
Speaker 6: going to have to ask the federal government to do
Speaker 6: that or trust them to do that or whatever. And
Speaker 6: so the thing that struck me and I went back
Speaker 6: to the to Roderi Nash's book and I looked this up.
Speaker 6: So the first Wilderness with the Capitol w bill was
Speaker 6: introduced in nineteen thirty nine, and it took until nineteen
Speaker 6: sixty four for that to finally get passed. Now that's
Speaker 6: twenty five years. There's a lot of people in this
Speaker 6: room who are not twenty five years old yet. And
Speaker 6: what we backcountry hunters and anglers, you know, we try
Speaker 6: to inspire people to get involved in the outdoors and
Speaker 6: get involved in how we think about the outdoors and
Speaker 6: how we how we engage with the outdoors and some
Speaker 6: of that. Frankly, it kind of it's not fun, but
Speaker 6: it's asking the federal government to do stuff for us
Speaker 6: on our public lands.
Speaker 3: And so the takeaway for me and then I'll quit talking.
Speaker 3: Is if we want something done differently, we the people
Speaker 3: here have to do it. We have to ask for it.
Speaker 6: And we've been involved in things here in Arkansas where
Speaker 6: we asked for things to be done U as our
Speaker 6: as our particular BHA chapter, and we were able to
Speaker 6: be successful with that. For people to think that their
Speaker 6: voice doesn't matter, I promise you it matters. It might
Speaker 6: take a lot of us, but it matters. So that's
Speaker 6: the that's what I took away from it.
Speaker 1: I was standing up problems with it. Then then it's
Speaker 1: then it's our problem. The system could work, Yes we did. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense.
Speaker 3: That's that's my that's my I loved it.
Speaker 1: I was telling you that because we're here in front
Speaker 1: of a thousand people.
Speaker 6: I love wild places and I fell in love with
Speaker 6: Arkansas when I started go into the wild places. So
Speaker 6: and I bet you for any any people in here
Speaker 6: who are from Arkansas, I would probably say the same thing,
Speaker 6: like our wild places are unique and we need to
Speaker 6: keep those wild places wild.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Patrick, Well, I do.
Speaker 9: Want to underscore what you're saying about the series, because
Speaker 9: if you thought you had an idea of what wilderness
Speaker 9: is or isn't. It will be very clear after they
Speaker 9: listen to it, and it'll it'll just enlighten all of us.
Speaker 9: I think in a lot of ways about what it
Speaker 9: is what it is, and I mean, you know, I
Speaker 9: know on a personal level, like, for example, I have
Speaker 9: a rule that I don't know if anybody else has it,
Speaker 9: but like if I can see turkeys anywhere from a road,
Speaker 9: I am not hunting there because that means everybody else
Speaker 9: can see them and I want to get as far
Speaker 9: away as possible and have my own experience. And by extension,
Speaker 9: that's kind of everything that I love to do would
Speaker 9: sort of be in those wild places, just as James said,
Speaker 9: is a magical thing, right. I think what's important with
Speaker 9: the discussion is the distinction between that feeling of being
Speaker 9: in a wild place in wilderness, because you don't have
Speaker 9: to live next to a big w federally designated wilderness
Speaker 9: ere have that experience. There could be a town forest
Speaker 9: or a state wildlife management area or some other place
Speaker 9: where you're in the middle of it and you feel
Speaker 9: like you are a million miles away from civilization. And
Speaker 9: what was really well explained in that third episode to
Speaker 9: me was how we kind of miss the mark on
Speaker 9: the wilderness designation in parts of the country, especially in
Speaker 9: the Midwest in the East, because the whole forests have changed.
Speaker 9: There aren't the same critters on the landscape, how they
Speaker 9: interact with one another. There aren't even the same things
Speaker 9: that grow on the landscape anymore. It's not just invasives,
Speaker 9: it's just how the trees and plants have changed over time.
Speaker 9: And to have this idea that we can just shut
Speaker 9: them off from everything and it'll go back to what
Speaker 9: it was like post ice age is it's just it's
Speaker 9: a fantasy. It would be like going into your cell
Speaker 9: phone store and where they have the latest gadgets of
Speaker 9: like iPhones and Samsung whatever's and saying I would like
Speaker 9: a rotary phone, right, that's which analogy right, which it's
Speaker 9: you know, I don't even know if those things work
Speaker 9: anymore through modern phone lines.
Speaker 5: But it's just not reletive. I know.
Speaker 9: Actually I called them on it, right, It's just it's
Speaker 9: just some of our ideas are coming from a good,
Speaker 9: well meaning place, but they've just missed the mark on
Speaker 9: how practical they are for certain places in the country
Speaker 9: that we will never be able to go back to
Speaker 9: what it was before, and that's one of the arguments
Speaker 9: of designating an area in wilderness. And I can tell
Speaker 9: you quickly from personal experience that one of my favorite
Speaker 9: places to go grousing would cock hunting. Up in the
Speaker 9: mountains was an area that had been managed over time.
Speaker 9: I mean, it was up in the mountains, and what
Speaker 9: I loved about it is that I got it. I
Speaker 9: got away from everybody and everything. It has since been
Speaker 9: designated as a wilderness area, which would be fine if,
Speaker 9: like your third episode.
Speaker 1: They don't have management there anymore and it's.
Speaker 9: Not the same place anymore. And I've gone back there
Speaker 9: years later and it's it's done. Wow, there's there's no
Speaker 9: the the limiting factor on the biodiversity or the number
Speaker 9: and type of critters that are still on the landscape.
Speaker 9: It's just not the same and it never will be
Speaker 9: because we can't go back to where we were.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: So if you listen to the whole series, you would
Speaker 1: hear that I'm very pro wilderness. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the wilderness designation and we all I think we all
Speaker 1: are on here. We're just trying to be open about
Speaker 1: the criticisms to it. The whole series. I mean the
Speaker 1: way America has handled wilderness has been has been monumental
Speaker 1: globally for how other countries have done it. We were
Speaker 1: the first place to have federally designated wilderness. I mean,
Speaker 1: so it's a an ingenious plan, an ingenious idea that
Speaker 1: I'm that we're four and I know Patrick is four too,
Speaker 1: but we're talking to I don't want anybody to get
Speaker 1: the wrong idea that we're saying wilderness is bad. No,
Speaker 1: we're just saying the wilderness model has been don't touch it.
Speaker 1: And I you know, I hear what you said is
Speaker 1: such a great example. I don't know that I trust
Speaker 1: what I said on the last part of the podcast
Speaker 1: was I said, yeah, these wildernesses would do better if
Speaker 1: they had management. But I don't know that I trust
Speaker 1: the people opening the gate necessarily, well, not the people.
Speaker 1: Just you know, if you if you open up the
Speaker 1: ability for that to be changed, will it go too far?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And that's that's the problem, just with any any institution,
Speaker 1: is like, would it be better to just keep it
Speaker 1: as is and it be a sacrifice?
Speaker 6: Well, Clay, the thing is with that, if we don't
Speaker 6: get involved in it and ask for it, it might
Speaker 6: just get changed without our input. That's why we you
Speaker 6: had I mean, I heard you saying this on a
Speaker 6: different podcast here recently. If we don't tell our story,
Speaker 6: somebody else going to tell it the way they want
Speaker 6: to tell it. And if we don't ask for management
Speaker 6: the way we'd like to see it, somebody else is
Speaker 6: going to ask for it, and it might be like
Speaker 6: you can't even go in there. Not only can you
Speaker 6: not ride a bike in there, but you can't walk,
Speaker 6: you know. So that's why we have to be involved,
Speaker 6: you know it. It doesn't take every single person here
Speaker 6: to be involved. It would be great if every person
Speaker 6: was involved, but it takes it takes dedicated groups who
Speaker 6: do want that kind of stuff, conservation organizations like ours
Speaker 6: and other good ones that do that work to be involved,
Speaker 6: and then people have to pay attention when it's time,
Speaker 6: and that's what we need.
Speaker 3: That's my that's my stump speech, yeap, just to you.
Speaker 5: Know, add to that too.
Speaker 9: I mean, and I really appreciate you making the point that, look,
Speaker 9: we all care about wild places, right and you know,
Speaker 9: I know Aldo Leopold gets over quoted, but like this
Speaker 9: is really stuck with me. You know, he said, wilderness
Speaker 9: is the raw artifact out of which mankind has hammered civilization.
Speaker 9: There's not a whole lot of raw artifact that's left
Speaker 9: in a lot of places in the country, and so
Speaker 9: it's incredibly appropriate to cherish wilderness and wild places and
Speaker 9: even wilderness designations where you still have that raw artifact
Speaker 9: or that opportunity where it can be what it once was.
Speaker 9: And so this is where pragmatic people have to have
Speaker 9: a conversation about where it's appropriate and where it's not,
Speaker 9: and that this you can't just plunk down some management prescription,
Speaker 9: which could be zero management, because it sounds like the
Speaker 9: right thing to do, and you love the concept of it,
Speaker 9: even though like that's probably not the best place for it,
Speaker 9: even if it's very appropriate over here in these stays
Speaker 9: of this region of the country.
Speaker 1: But at Adam's point, it was so well taken. As
Speaker 1: you can't manage these big, giant wilderness areas. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's wilderness areas that are millions of acres in the
Speaker 1: West compared to some of these smaller wildernesses that we
Speaker 1: have in the East. It's just're just not managed the same. Misty,
Speaker 1: what did you think.
Speaker 11: I thought it was really good and very very exciting.
Speaker 11: I couldn't I couldn't disagree with Steve Vanilla Moore.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 11: I thought it was I thought it was a very
Speaker 11: very interesting and I think it's important to just realize
Speaker 11: kind of what James was saying. It takes like twenty
Speaker 11: five years to make change happen and to sustain change,
Speaker 11: and it's really important to me when you think about wilderness.
Speaker 11: And what I kept thinking as I was listening to
Speaker 11: that podcast was how important it is to get our
Speaker 11: kids out in the wild places. You can't outsource your values.
Speaker 11: You can't just assume that they're going to get this,
Speaker 11: that they're gonna they're gonna appreciate the wilderness areas just
Speaker 11: because you do. You have to get them out there,
Speaker 11: and you have to talk to them about the value
Speaker 11: of this so that twenty five years from now they
Speaker 11: can fight the battles that need to be fought when.
Speaker 10: Maybe we're too well too. Yeah, we probably won't be
Speaker 10: too well to in twenty five years.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: There's there's never been, you know, the revolution in the
Speaker 1: world that came with social media, which expanded the networks
Speaker 1: of people to be able to communicate at an exponential
Speaker 1: level that has never happened before in human history, Like
Speaker 1: this is what we're doing right now, is like this
Speaker 1: total experiment with people being able to connect and communicate
Speaker 1: the way that they do. And there's never been I
Speaker 1: believe this was all my heart. There's never been a
Speaker 1: more powerful time for sportsmen and women, conservation minded people
Speaker 1: to stand up and tell the narrative of our culture
Speaker 1: are the way we do things and and and that's
Speaker 1: what I hear a lot of these guys saying, whether
Speaker 1: it's being involved politically in different ways or or just
Speaker 1: even inside of your own your own groups, uh, just
Speaker 1: of influence in your life, just being uh, telling our story.
Speaker 1: It's powerful, and I mean that's what that's what we try.
Speaker 1: That's what I try to do on Bear Greece is
Speaker 1: just like tell tell our story, interpret our our way
Speaker 1: of thinking to the world and goly Man. Time is
Speaker 1: such a deceptive thing because like we wake up and
Speaker 1: we just we're born and we come into consciousness and
Speaker 1: become adults, and we think this is just the way
Speaker 1: it's always been. But we live in unprecedented times when
Speaker 1: it comes to so many things. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: expansion of human population in the earth, the urban sprawl, like,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about landscape level stuff, and holy cow,
Speaker 1: is our wild places wild places will be the most
Speaker 1: scarce resource on the earth. I mean, in a way
Speaker 1: it already is. But I mean, I mean, and the
Speaker 1: way the system works right now, it's such a unique
Speaker 1: thing in the world. But the but the hunters are
Speaker 1: the ones who have a lot of say right now
Speaker 1: in wild lands and how they're managed. That's the way
Speaker 1: it's been and and and we can't take that for granted.
Speaker 1: And anyway, I'm just kind of amazed the more I
Speaker 1: learn about how unique this American hunting culture that we
Speaker 1: all grew up in that just seems like it's normal.
Speaker 1: It's not normal. This is not normal. This is this
Speaker 1: is this is wild. We can't take it for granted.
Speaker 1: That's that's why I'm so passionate about knowledge and history.
Speaker 1: Like you, you have no you have no right to
Speaker 1: have an opinion about what something's gonna how something's gonna
Speaker 1: turn out. If you don't know history of what happened before.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't really have an intelligent position to
Speaker 1: have a really strong opinion. I mean, that's why I
Speaker 1: that's why the stories that I like to learn and
Speaker 1: most of the stuff we do on bear grees. I'm learning,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a process of learning. But we're talking
Speaker 1: about history, we're and we're we're talking about we're learning
Speaker 1: about wild landscapes and animals, but we're also dealing a
Speaker 1: lot with the social aspects of life, I mean, which
Speaker 1: are equally as important. Like, if you want to be
Speaker 1: in control of wild lands, you also got to know
Speaker 1: how to deal with people, you know, And is that true?
Speaker 1: I mean, Myron, Myron will tell you that probably the
Speaker 1: biggest part of your job is dealing with people, not bears.
Speaker 2: It's not wildlife managements. People management.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean so as a as a and
Speaker 1: I like to use this word. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's politically correct or not, but I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the hunters in America are a people group. Let's go
Speaker 1: do it, Let's go people. I mean, we're like, we're
Speaker 1: like a We're like a people group, We're like a tribe.
Speaker 1: And honey doesn't totally define us. Like I'm not totally
Speaker 1: defined by hunting. I mean, it's a part of my
Speaker 1: life that's visible. There are other things that define me
Speaker 1: much more than this. But at a pretty high level,
Speaker 1: as a hunter, that that that's my identity, something I
Speaker 1: grab on to. Not the most important thing, but most
Speaker 1: most important thing would be my faith in my family,
Speaker 1: which I put action behind making that be true. But
Speaker 1: down there ways on external kind of earthly stuff, being
Speaker 1: a hunter is is, it's like it is part of
Speaker 1: my identity. And uh and every generation, I mean, we're
Speaker 1: being swamped by the world really trying to squeeze us
Speaker 1: out of this culture. And what what what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do. What's so many of us in this in
Speaker 1: this room trying to do. What we're trying to do
Speaker 1: with meat eater I feel like, is we're trying to
Speaker 1: carve out a cultural space. I like to I like
Speaker 1: to say, we're we're asking America for a cultural tenure.
Speaker 1: Like a tenure means that you're granted this place in
Speaker 1: the culture that never goes away. Way for the American backwoodsman,
Speaker 1: the hunter, to be able to to be able to hunt,
Speaker 1: to be able to have some jurisdiction over wild lands,
Speaker 1: to be able to go and harvest wild game, for
Speaker 1: our families, to be able to take our children into
Speaker 1: wild places. And man, that that means the world to me.
Speaker 1: And I want that my sons and daughters have already
Speaker 1: had that opportunity and will continue. But their kids and
Speaker 1: their kids kids, you know what's going to happen twenty
Speaker 1: years from now, forty years from now, sixty years from now,
Speaker 1: and we just can't take it for granted. Do you
Speaker 1: guys agree with that? We got to be We've got
Speaker 1: to be educated. And that's part of what education of
Speaker 1: even just learning about bears, learning the cultural significance if
Speaker 1: you got bears in your yard, if you ever killed
Speaker 1: a bear in Arkansas, man, that's a pretty major thing.
Speaker 1: And to not take that for granted. I think that's
Speaker 1: the That's the thing I'm most passionate about is just
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for what we for we have in so
Speaker 1: many ways.
Speaker 6: And so what we do here at Black Bear Bonanza celebrate,
Speaker 6: celebrate the black bears. You know, I've heard you say
Speaker 6: the icon of North American wilderness, and you know, we're
Speaker 6: thankful to have all of y'all here to celebrate it
Speaker 6: with us, all of y'all out here in the crowd,
Speaker 6: to celebrate with us.
Speaker 3: Patrick here. This is incredibly.
Speaker 6: Meaningful, not just for us personally, but it's meaningful for
Speaker 6: conservation to see to see all of you all come
Speaker 6: here and support it and bring We've got a little
Speaker 6: guy asleep here in the front row.
Speaker 3: You know, we've got the little ones down here.
Speaker 6: We have people in wheelchairs who you know, made an
Speaker 6: extra effort to get here.
Speaker 3: We have men and women.
Speaker 6: It's it's amazing to see all this and see y'all's
Speaker 6: commitment to helping us celebrate bears, celebrate wild places. And
Speaker 6: I think, what did you say on the podcast that
Speaker 6: or somebody said it that wilderness made Americans right, right,
Speaker 6: and so that's that's what we're celebrating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, it's fantastic.
Speaker 5: That's great.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you guys so much. Hey, we're gonna clue Andrew. Andrew,
Speaker 1: come on up, all right, we're gonna we're gonna close
Speaker 1: out the Bear Grey Shrender. This is my buddy Andrew Wills.
Speaker 1: He's gonna sing a song that, uh, that he wrote.
Speaker 1: I had a little bit to do with it.
Speaker 10: Andrew's also known as Hawking Horse.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh, he came all the way from Nashville, Tennessee. You guys,
Speaker 1: Andrew's been on the podcast before, and uh he he
Speaker 1: sent me this song the other day and I was like, dude,
Speaker 1: you gotta come to Arkansas and sing it. So, I
Speaker 1: guess never sang publicly before, is that right? Yeah? This
Speaker 1: is hawking horse all right, buddy, Well you need me
Speaker 1: to dance up here, probably that'd be good. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little little dancing.
Speaker 3: Don't get too don't get too far away from your
Speaker 3: stuff back here, you'll.
Speaker 1: Jerky right out of there. Andrew Andrew is a professional
Speaker 1: songwriter in uh Nashville, Tennessee, a little town called Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: And he's a big bear grease man, literally, a big
Speaker 1: bear grease man.
Speaker 5: Could I say something?
Speaker 1: Yeah, go ahead, just yeah, keep talking while Andrew's getting
Speaker 1: set up.
Speaker 4: Patrick the turkeys is next to the road.
Speaker 5: Can you tell me where that's at?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Brent likes those close to the road.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you what. I'll call you up on your
Speaker 5: rotary phone and we'll talk about it. Here.
Speaker 3: You go drop him a rotary.
Speaker 1: He'll send you the GPS coordinates.
Speaker 5: I'll send you the GPS cordinates.
Speaker 4: Just just holler at Sarah say give me Brent's.
Speaker 1: Andrew give us a little background on this song.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So, so this is a song.
Speaker 12: Clay texted me one day and he says, I have
Speaker 12: a song idea, and I was like, what is it?
Speaker 12: And when he told me idea, my instant thought was,
Speaker 12: that is the most Clay Newkem song idea I've ever heard.
Speaker 12: And uh, he gives me a little too much credit.
Speaker 12: He had quite a few lines that he forgot. He
Speaker 12: even wrote, so, uh, we're pretty fifty to fifty on
Speaker 12: this one. But I don't know if there's anything else
Speaker 12: you want to mention about it.
Speaker 5: I mean, we just wrote it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty new, it's it's it's a lighthearted. So I
Speaker 1: told Andrew, I said, anytime I hear a song that
Speaker 1: has Arkansas in it, I just am like, yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean like Tennessee Stud. You remember song Tennessee Stud when
Speaker 1: he came through Arkansas. You know he had to fight
Speaker 1: this girl's dad from Arkansas.
Speaker 4: Then woo heard nor her Paul, I promise.
Speaker 1: You yeah, yeah, or her bro any song other than
Speaker 1: some there's yeah. Anyway, he wrote a song that has
Speaker 1: the word Arkansas in it and the word.
Speaker 2: Mule in it.
Speaker 1: Arkansas Mule, that's the name of the song.
Speaker 12: I said, that's pretty Clay Newcome sounding, and it's kind
Speaker 12: of a cowboy song, right, I mean yeah, I'm not
Speaker 12: a cowboy, but I like cowboys anyway. This is called
Speaker 12: Arkansas Mule, and I've got the lyrics because we just
Speaker 12: wrote this so and it goes like this.
Speaker 3: They said he killed a man in West Fork.
Speaker 7: He had no choice but to run. They'd hanging in
Speaker 7: the gallows for the seiding of the evening sun. He
Speaker 7: wasn't innocent man, but he got framed out of the truth.
Speaker 7: So he threw his saddle bag on the back of
Speaker 7: that Arkansas buckskin mule.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 7: She was tall and strong, lean, long, sturdy, has an iron.
Speaker 5: Two.
Speaker 7: They're inn't a horse alive. They would draw his eye
Speaker 7: from that Arkansas buckskin us.
Speaker 1: Right, go ahead, you playing man Joe on.
Speaker 7: In the heat of nos Ark night, they forded the
Speaker 7: river white Man, and the flowing steered deep under the
Speaker 7: glow of the moon light. Headed east into the bluffs
Speaker 7: where the bear suck gold. They're young. Made her walk
Speaker 7: backwards on the track and then looked it south. She
Speaker 7: was tall and strong, lean along, flashy. Yes, she was cool.
Speaker 7: They'rein't a horse alive that you could draw his eye
Speaker 7: from that Arkansas buckskin mule.
Speaker 5: Right, This would be a great place.
Speaker 8: God Andrew solo.
Speaker 1: That's good, sounds good, y'all like the song.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 7: In the month of May, they were cutting hay on
Speaker 7: the banks of the Fouish to Faith, and they waved
Speaker 7: him down for a bite of chow and to sit
Speaker 7: around flame. And that's when he heard the welcome word
Speaker 7: that his name had been cleared.
Speaker 1: He didn't kill him.
Speaker 7: And then he turned and grinned at his old friend
Speaker 7: and gave her a scratch behind the ear. And she's
Speaker 7: tom Strong leaned along faith to the last of rule.
Speaker 7: They read a horse alive, if I could draw his
Speaker 7: eye from down, Arkansas buckskin, horse alive, that he trade
Speaker 7: or by for that Arkansas bucks can and music all
Speaker 7: ride right.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you, Andrew Hawking Horse. Thanks buddy. That
Speaker 1: was awesome, awesome, awesome, Thank you guys so much.