Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into
Speaker 1: the world of hunting the icon of the North American
Speaker 1: Wilderness Fair. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation. We will
Speaker 1: also bring you into some of the wildest country on
Speaker 1: the planet Chasing Bear. We're back to bears and we've
Speaker 1: got an expert in the global headquarters today. Myron means
Speaker 1: that Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Large Carnivore Biologist, which
Speaker 1: inside of that title fits versus American It's the black Bear.
Speaker 1: Myron means is in the office and we continue to
Speaker 1: dig into the nitty gritty of bears. We talked about
Speaker 1: this year's bear season and have a great conversation. I
Speaker 1: always love talking to biologists. You're gonna enjoy this podcast.
Speaker 1: There are several muzzloader seasons that are still going on
Speaker 1: across the country and you should check out c v
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Speaker 1: And you heard my story last week about falling in
Speaker 1: a creek when I was carrying my Accura Mountain rifle
Speaker 1: across the creek and the gun went underwater. The breech
Speaker 1: plug went underwater for about two seconds. I pulled it out,
Speaker 1: came back to the truck and fired the gun just
Speaker 1: to see if it would fire, and it did. The
Speaker 1: real question you should be asking is why did I
Speaker 1: fall in the creek? Well, I was crossing the creek
Speaker 1: without a light and it was a long story. But
Speaker 1: the real other question you need to be asking yourself
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Speaker 1: your muzzleloading needs. I am very excited about getting into
Speaker 1: coon hunting this winter. My schedule usually is a coon
Speaker 1: hunt a fair bit during the summer and in the
Speaker 1: early fall, and then I take a hiatus while I'm
Speaker 1: deer hunting and bear hunting, and then I come back
Speaker 1: to coon hunting about mid December. And if you don't
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Speaker 1: Bear Foundation. So that that that bear right there is
Speaker 1: that bear and that picture this photograph I took right
Speaker 1: where I killed that bear. Yes, he was. He was
Speaker 1: laying right here. He had his head laid on that
Speaker 1: rock right there, and I was I was up like
Speaker 1: about sixty yards. Oh yeah, he I never saw it then,
Speaker 1: I mean there was he was just sunbathing, but he
Speaker 1: was laid on that rock and there was no there
Speaker 1: was no dens that I could see anywhere, but anyway
Speaker 1: he was, he was just laying I saw him roll over,
Speaker 1: That's what I saw from sixty yards where I saw
Speaker 1: his feet go up in there like this. And then
Speaker 1: I just stalked down and was able to shoot him. Man,
Speaker 1: it was a wild deal. And there was after I,
Speaker 1: you know, kill the bear and was you know, getting
Speaker 1: him out and stuff. We started seeing bear sign all
Speaker 1: over that side of the mountain. I don't think he
Speaker 1: was going much more than a couple hundred yards their direction,
Speaker 1: but there was white oak akerns all over the mountain
Speaker 1: that year, and uh yeah, I'll that that animal right
Speaker 1: there to me. I'll never kill another animal that I'm
Speaker 1: more proud of. I may kill another one that I'm
Speaker 1: as proud of. Well that's a pretty unique experience. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could hunt the rest of your life like a
Speaker 1: banshee during bear season and never be able to replicate
Speaker 1: that experience. Well, and what was cool was I was
Speaker 1: after a bear, and I had been after one for
Speaker 1: a long time. And I've learned something since that time, though,
Speaker 1: and that is they're easier to kill in the mountains
Speaker 1: in the early season. All my reasoning back then was,
Speaker 1: you know, our bear season goes to November. I'm recording
Speaker 1: by the way our our bear season Arkansas goes to November.
Speaker 1: Was that in the late season, the leaves were all
Speaker 1: gone and you could see good. Was kind of what
Speaker 1: I thought, because you know, you start hunting a bear
Speaker 1: in early October and Arkansas is gonna be hot. You
Speaker 1: can't see more than forty fifty yards in the indirection.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, the bears are usually gone by the bears
Speaker 1: are slow moving by then. And what I learned was
Speaker 1: you're way better off with a bow and era in
Speaker 1: the early season than you are. I mean, I I
Speaker 1: ended up having more success right now is it's a
Speaker 1: super tough time to call a bear. But hey, I'm
Speaker 1: We're at the Global Headquarters and I've got uh, I've
Speaker 1: got Myron Means with me. Myron works for the Arkansas
Speaker 1: Game and Fish Commission. He is a large carnivore biologist.
Speaker 1: And you've been on the podcast before. I have uh,
Speaker 1: first time of the Global Headquarters. Of the first time
Speaker 1: to the Global Headquarters. Man, I love it. This is
Speaker 1: a really nice place. Well you, of all people could
Speaker 1: probably appreciate some of these Arkansas bears hanging in here.
Speaker 1: Um and uh now really appreciate you coming up. So
Speaker 1: you um being a large carnivore biologists. You were the
Speaker 1: bear biologists and your name changed. And we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about this at a later time more in depth, but
Speaker 1: large carnival biologists. What else does that entail? Mountain lions?
Speaker 1: Mountain lions. Uh, that's pretty incredible, And we're intentionally not
Speaker 1: talking about that for because we will at some point.
Speaker 1: But black bears, you what what trends did you see?
Speaker 1: I've honestly not paid a ton of attention this year
Speaker 1: to the quotas and different things. Uh, what what's the
Speaker 1: bear season in Arkansas have been? Like? Bear season in
Speaker 1: Arkansas this year is, Uh, without a doubt, it's going
Speaker 1: to be a record harvest year. And that is solely
Speaker 1: attributed to the fact that we raised the bears on
Speaker 1: one quota, which is the Ozarks quota. We raised the
Speaker 1: bears on one quote from two hundred and fifty to
Speaker 1: four hundred or five hundred total, four hundred of archery
Speaker 1: and fifty momsloader fifty modern gun. But it's a cumulative quota.
Speaker 1: So that means when muzzload season comes in, you add
Speaker 1: fifty more bears to the four hundred. When modern guns
Speaker 1: season starts, you add another fifty bears, and and so
Speaker 1: the fifty stack on top of the four hundred, stacked
Speaker 1: on top of the four fifty. So it's a cumulative
Speaker 1: total total. And I think a lot of people didn't
Speaker 1: really understand that this year. Will you will you break
Speaker 1: you just did break it down, but will you break
Speaker 1: it down even slower? Like so, archery season starts the
Speaker 1: fourth Saturday in September. Well, I mean for the foreseeable
Speaker 1: future in Arkansas, if you're wondering about when you need
Speaker 1: to take vacation or something like that, just look on
Speaker 1: the calendars for the next few years. Anyway, archery season
Speaker 1: will coincide with dear archery season, which is for the
Speaker 1: foreseeable future probably going to be the fourth Saturday in September. Uh,
Speaker 1: the muzzleoad season will begin the third Saturday in October,
Speaker 1: and the modern gun season will usually start the second
Speaker 1: Saturday in November, and the Saturday prior to that is
Speaker 1: going to be a youth modern gun season. So the
Speaker 1: first Saturday and November is going to be a youth weekend.
Speaker 1: Second Saturday and said November is going to be the
Speaker 1: modern gun deer and bear seasons. Yeah, that's uh, that's
Speaker 1: just kind of the way we've we've set the same
Speaker 1: framework for the foreseeable future to coincide deer season with
Speaker 1: bear season. I mean, if people are going to be
Speaker 1: out there bear hunting, they can deer hunt. If they're
Speaker 1: gonna be deer hunting, they can bear hunts. It really
Speaker 1: is a great opportunity. So tell me how the quota
Speaker 1: works with archery. So archery season starts, and first of all,
Speaker 1: there's there's two main bear zones in Arkansas. Zone one,
Speaker 1: which is Ozark zone that's correct. Zone two, which would
Speaker 1: be the Washtall No no quota in zone two. No,
Speaker 1: you know, we kind of figured out several years ago
Speaker 1: that because of the landownership and the way the wash
Speaker 1: Tall Zone is laid out, bear Zone two is laid out,
Speaker 1: you have a big contiguous block of public land, which
Speaker 1: is the Ozark National Forest. That's kind of the questionall
Speaker 1: excuse me, Washtaw National Forest. Uh, it's kind of the
Speaker 1: core nucleus of that bear population. And uh, there's bear
Speaker 1: outside the Washtaw National Forest, but the National Forest acts
Speaker 1: as a nucleus. And because there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: private land interspersed within that contiguous block, a lot of
Speaker 1: those bears aren't really susceptible to being harvested, say over
Speaker 1: Bay over something like that. So it's really kind of
Speaker 1: a self limiting situation. Regardless of you know, what we
Speaker 1: do in zone one, they're typically gonna harvest kind of
Speaker 1: the same amount of bears about every year. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so zone one has the quota and um so
Speaker 1: the quote, so the archery quota, what is how much?
Speaker 1: Uh it was two hundred and fifty This year, we
Speaker 1: raised it to UH four hundred, and that seems like
Speaker 1: a substantial jump, and it was a substantial jump. But
Speaker 1: because the way we framed our regulation process, we can
Speaker 1: only recommend regulations every other year now. UH. We used
Speaker 1: to be able to recommend every year so we could
Speaker 1: change them, you know, we could take a baby step
Speaker 1: this year and then a baby step the year after.
Speaker 1: But the way it's set up now is we can
Speaker 1: only propose every other year, and last year we weren't
Speaker 1: able to adjust it up. So this year was kind
Speaker 1: of a little bit of a makeup from not being
Speaker 1: able to adjust it last year. And so what that
Speaker 1: would mean would be archery hunters could kill up to
Speaker 1: four hundred bears and before the season closed. So the season,
Speaker 1: you know, in theory, they could kill four hundred bears
Speaker 1: and three days in the season would close and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't open back up again until muzzload season, when you
Speaker 1: added fifty more bears to that quota, and if they shot,
Speaker 1: uh say, if they shot fifty bears during the muzzload
Speaker 1: season uh by Monday, then the bear season would close
Speaker 1: again the following Monday, after the opening weekend of muzzload,
Speaker 1: and it would not open again until the youth weekend
Speaker 1: of modern gun, which would add fifty more bears starting
Speaker 1: at that point. Uh. It kind of confused people a
Speaker 1: little bit this year because it's it's a cumulative quota,
Speaker 1: and uh, they did not made the quota this year
Speaker 1: with archery. Uh. I think when we went into muzzload season.
Speaker 1: I'd have to go back and look at the numbers,
Speaker 1: but I think we were sitting somewhere around three hundred
Speaker 1: eighty bears maybe when muzzleload season started, so we hadn't
Speaker 1: met the quota. But when that opening day of muzzlold
Speaker 1: season hits, those fifty bears were added to the previous
Speaker 1: four hundred quota, So we could have killed seventy bears, right.
Speaker 1: So instead of you know, the quota being hit, or
Speaker 1: instead of saying, well, we got twenty more bears with
Speaker 1: archery we can kill and you can kill fifty with muzzloader,
Speaker 1: that just confuses. That just muddies the water. So the
Speaker 1: easiest thing to do is say, okay, it was four
Speaker 1: hundred bears up until the opening day of muzzload season,
Speaker 1: and then that adds fifty more bears, so now the
Speaker 1: quote is four hundred and fifty and because you know,
Speaker 1: any season in Arkansas you can with a lesser weapon.
Speaker 1: So when muzzload season closed nine days later, the quota
Speaker 1: was still four hundred and fifty bears, but you could
Speaker 1: continue to hunt with archer archer. That makes sense and
Speaker 1: so we uh so basically as a management decision that
Speaker 1: you guys made was, hey, we can take out five
Speaker 1: hundred bears out of Arkansas. And so where do we
Speaker 1: stand right now? Today's November, Yes, November twenty three in
Speaker 1: our zone one total right now stands at four hundred
Speaker 1: forty nine, four forty nine fifty one more bears until
Speaker 1: November three. And I bet, I bet they won't kill them.
Speaker 1: Do you think they will? I don't think they will really,
Speaker 1: since um, I'd have to go back and look at
Speaker 1: the day to day. But I think when when youth
Speaker 1: modern gun season started, I believe we were at four
Speaker 1: hundred and maybe twenty really, so only twenty bears got
Speaker 1: killed eat. Yeah, with the modern gun and the opening
Speaker 1: weekend of deer season, that just tells you a lot
Speaker 1: about bear activity because it was a ton of guys
Speaker 1: hunting National Forest with a bear tag in their pocket.
Speaker 1: In Arkansas, everybody that's got a sportsman's license, which is
Speaker 1: our sportsman's license. I think that's what it's called. You
Speaker 1: get turkey tags, deer tags, you get a bear tag.
Speaker 1: So in Arkansas you don't have to go buy no
Speaker 1: specific bear tag. Everybody's got a bear tag. And I
Speaker 1: would I bet of Arkansas deer hunters would shot a
Speaker 1: bear if they saw it. You think, so, I mean
Speaker 1: there's probably add there's an odd guy that might be like,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna especially if they knew, you know, the
Speaker 1: season was still open and everything. So yeah, but you
Speaker 1: know they're probably not going to meet the quota. Uh.
Speaker 1: Today was today. This year was a really lean year
Speaker 1: for mass availability. There was not a lot of masts
Speaker 1: on the ground. Uh and uh, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the bears started turning in, especially the pregnant females,
Speaker 1: probably the salves. They probably were starting to uh enter
Speaker 1: the dance as early as late October, I think, so
Speaker 1: I'll do. And you know, you can tell by the
Speaker 1: way it trickled in through the youth gun season uh
Speaker 1: and the opening of the deer gun season the adults season.
Speaker 1: You can just tell. I mean one or one bear
Speaker 1: checked every day, or one or two bears checked every day.
Speaker 1: You can tell when it's like that they're just not
Speaker 1: out on the landscape. Well, that's what's so interesting, always
Speaker 1: has been to me, and a lot of people don't understand,
Speaker 1: is that, you know, our our winters are relatively mild
Speaker 1: compared to especially north of us. But these bears are
Speaker 1: dinning based upon food availability. And then the females are
Speaker 1: obligate dinners, which means, and these are all words I've
Speaker 1: probably learned from you, myron Um, obligate dinners meaning they're
Speaker 1: the only bear that actually has to den because there
Speaker 1: they have their cubs and their reproductive cycle takes place
Speaker 1: when they're in the den. But if there was a
Speaker 1: bunch of mass crop on the ground, the bears would
Speaker 1: be more active, they would be they'd be staying out,
Speaker 1: and it's there. It's really kind of an issue of
Speaker 1: energy dynamics with bears. I tell people all the time,
Speaker 1: bears don't den in response to cold weather, because they
Speaker 1: certainly don't. We've we've tracked females in February, uh, doing
Speaker 1: den checks on them when they're laying on top of
Speaker 1: the ground with four inches of snow covering them and
Speaker 1: two cubs sitting under their belly. I mean, the cold
Speaker 1: is not a factor with bears. It's food availability. So
Speaker 1: you know, if they fed up, had a good late
Speaker 1: summer and early fall, and they're really fat, the pregnant
Speaker 1: females are going to enter the den cycle and they're
Speaker 1: gonna stay. Um. If there's enough food on the landscape,
Speaker 1: it may push their entrance into that den cycle a
Speaker 1: little later. Instead of being laid October, it maybe mid November. Uh.
Speaker 1: Females with year leans or cubs of that year, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll stay out later. If they're not going
Speaker 1: to be in an energy deficit finding food walking around
Speaker 1: all day, then they'll stay out like that. That's a
Speaker 1: good way to say it. That's a good biological term.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put my repertoire and energy deficit. So they're
Speaker 1: going out there, they're burning calories, pounding the mountain trying
Speaker 1: to find food. If they're not getting as many calories
Speaker 1: as they're expending, they're going to sleep. Is that right?
Speaker 1: That's right? If it's not worth If if they end
Speaker 1: up at an energy deficit, then there's no point. I
Speaker 1: was calculated that way. I would stay home and play golf, man,
Speaker 1: I am had a massive energy I have. I have
Speaker 1: had a massive energy deficit this year because I have
Speaker 1: expended a lot of calories. I need to be at
Speaker 1: an energy deficit because I put on a little too
Speaker 1: much weight. But it, uh you know, and it it
Speaker 1: progressively gets less I guess, um less specific or less important.
Speaker 1: When you move to males. You know, males, uh you know,
Speaker 1: they're not hard dinners like females, and uh you know,
Speaker 1: in any given warm day, uh, a male is likely
Speaker 1: to emerge from a den, walk around, sniff around a
Speaker 1: little bit. And because they're not locked into den really
Speaker 1: for a specific amount of time with either year leans
Speaker 1: or cubs that are being born, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of times males will emerge from the den,
Speaker 1: usually by late January early February. If it's really really cold,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll just tuck in and sleep it off.
Speaker 1: But if they're all acorns on the landscape in December,
Speaker 1: sure a lot of males will get out and forward
Speaker 1: even in December. You know, this is really telling to me.
Speaker 1: I've bear hunted in East Tennessee with some houndsman, and
Speaker 1: they've got the super late bear seasons that go into
Speaker 1: I think the Tennessee bear season and it may be
Speaker 1: structured different, but for the region we were in, their
Speaker 1: season went to December, and those guys find bear tracks
Speaker 1: every day, and it's of time males. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: gonna say it's probably set that way to specifically target males.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they still have a quote a fairly
Speaker 1: young population or you know, they're still trying to grow
Speaker 1: their population, yeah, they're gonna do things to target males. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it blows my line because you know, over in
Speaker 1: the Appalachians there, I mean they're at some hot, pretty
Speaker 1: fairly high elevations, at least compared to here. I mean,
Speaker 1: they got mountains six thousand foot tall, and it's cold
Speaker 1: in late November and December, I mean like single digits sometimes,
Speaker 1: and these guys load up their hounds and rig bears
Speaker 1: and strike a track and uh run bears and and
Speaker 1: do real well. I mean and it's and it's they'll
Speaker 1: tell you. I mean they're paying attention to the nuances
Speaker 1: between the different years. I've only been over there once
Speaker 1: with them during that time period, and I mean we
Speaker 1: ran bears every day. I mean you wouldn't have you
Speaker 1: would have just thought bears were just up on their
Speaker 1: feet like crazy, all males and uh but uh, I
Speaker 1: think they would say there's years when it's not that good.
Speaker 1: Maybe the year I was there was exceptionally good. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I mean, you know, if there's a
Speaker 1: lot of masks, you know, I would say it's probably
Speaker 1: going to determine a lot how the late summer and
Speaker 1: fall was going into the season. You know, if the
Speaker 1: bears are really really fat, have a lot of fat
Speaker 1: on and then it just turns off really cold. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that. I don't know, but that might be
Speaker 1: a badge year I said. They're just like, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just wonder how they like we gauge are energy
Speaker 1: levels day to day. I feel like based upon whether
Speaker 1: we're full or not, Like literally like if we've eaten
Speaker 1: in our stomachs feel full. These bears are gauging their
Speaker 1: understanding of their health and long term you know, ability
Speaker 1: to survive based upon fat reserves. Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: anybody talk about that? I would never have, But just
Speaker 1: do you see what I'm saying? Because they're their belly
Speaker 1: is not gonna be full of food, what's telling their brain?
Speaker 1: What's Yeah? Yeah, it's it's almost like there's got to
Speaker 1: be a different receptor that's like, hey, boys, we've got
Speaker 1: plenty of fat. We're just gonna burn this today. Don't
Speaker 1: worry about getting up and eating. Would say that those
Speaker 1: are probably you know, physiological clues that they've evolved to
Speaker 1: because it doesn't work that way with you even, does it.
Speaker 1: It certainly doesn't work that way with me. But then again,
Speaker 1: my life doesn't depend on finding an acorn for food.
Speaker 1: So but yeah, it's kind of a fascinating deal. The
Speaker 1: whole dynamics of you know, their physiology and the processes
Speaker 1: they go through, you know, for den cycles is uh,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely remarkable. And I mean you can tell it's
Speaker 1: not something they just evolved into over a few generations.
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking about millennia of evolution that is,
Speaker 1: you know, and they have they have refined it to
Speaker 1: the point of no other. Yeah, man, if if that's
Speaker 1: what's so interesting at looking at these animals from a
Speaker 1: biological level and trying to understand even just the kind
Speaker 1: of the small level of understanding that we probably really have,
Speaker 1: it's incredible and and um, well, you know, for years
Speaker 1: years in the scientific community, you know, bears, bears, weren't
Speaker 1: category categorized as true hibernators. They were estivators, you know,
Speaker 1: because they can arouse spontaneously, whereas true hibernators like groundhogs
Speaker 1: would chocks, they can't. But because bears can arouse spontaneously,
Speaker 1: they said, well, you know, they just don't exhibit some
Speaker 1: of the traits of true hibernators, and um they've sent
Speaker 1: The scientific community has since turned around and said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, they are true hibernators in a sense, but
Speaker 1: technically they're probably some of the most efficient hibernators in
Speaker 1: the animal world because of the way they can They
Speaker 1: can basically turn on and off, you know, their body
Speaker 1: processes that allow them to go into this torpor and everything,
Speaker 1: whereas a true hibernator can't. You know, they what So
Speaker 1: you're you don't realize what you just said and how
Speaker 1: it affected me because I have made a living myron
Speaker 1: off correcting people. Every people that have listened to this
Speaker 1: podcast have heard me harp on when people say it
Speaker 1: bear hybridates, I go, no, no, no, no, they don't hybridate.
Speaker 1: Bears hybrid So you're telling me this is wrong, Well,
Speaker 1: technically in a true sense of the definition, you know,
Speaker 1: of the word bears are not true hibernators, but they
Speaker 1: certainly exhibit body processes that the true hubernators use. The
Speaker 1: thing that makes them quote not a true hibernator in
Speaker 1: the historic sense of the word, is the fact that
Speaker 1: they can turn on and off those body processes that
Speaker 1: define a true hibernator. Uh, they wake up, but son
Speaker 1: of them. Yeah, basically means they can wake up right instantly.
Speaker 1: They can arouse instantly, which they always do when we're
Speaker 1: doing our den work. They always wake up. They always
Speaker 1: know you're there. Uh, their motor their muscles aren't at
Speaker 1: a their body temperature never does fall at a low
Speaker 1: rate like a true hibernator does. But their heart rate
Speaker 1: at things like that will lower to a great degree
Speaker 1: what it is, but their body temperature doesn't lower that much.
Speaker 1: So there's some things that could categorize hyperation in short periods. Maybe, Okay,
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying, but the world he is
Speaker 1: not wrapped. I think I still got some credibility. It's
Speaker 1: pretty it's pretty fascinating, you know, reading in the literature
Speaker 1: when they talk about well, you know, bears aren't true hibernators,
Speaker 1: but they're probably the most efficient hibernators, efficient in the
Speaker 1: animal world because they're able to just turn it on
Speaker 1: and turn it off almost at will. Well, so it's
Speaker 1: pretty remarkable. But when you think about what's happened ecologically
Speaker 1: across North America and you see how successful bears are
Speaker 1: being right now, it's pretty incredible. I mean they're they're
Speaker 1: opportunistic omnivorees that just have survival built down into this
Speaker 1: like incredible efficiency, like you really do. And really, you know,
Speaker 1: we've I guess we've kind of found out all across um,
Speaker 1: you know, North America that really all bears really need
Speaker 1: is pretty good habitat and uh, you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: gonna they're gonna thrive. I mean, you know, they're not
Speaker 1: gonna just boom like some other animals will on lands
Speaker 1: and yeah, like a white tailer or even kyo. They're
Speaker 1: not going to adapt to urban environments only. But we
Speaker 1: have found out that, you know, because bears are opportunistic omnivorees, man,
Speaker 1: just give them a little bit of good habitat and
Speaker 1: they'll do fine. Um, I want to I guess this
Speaker 1: is a good this is a good place to tell
Speaker 1: you this story. So I saw a bear because we're
Speaker 1: talking about like this is a difficult time to hunt bears,
Speaker 1: sea bears. It's bear season in Arkansas, and uh I
Speaker 1: I saw a bear two days ago in National Forest. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When you told me that, I said, man, that was
Speaker 1: your pretty fortunate. What was while is it broke all
Speaker 1: the rules. It broke all the rules of my of
Speaker 1: what I mean, it was the I was deer hunting, man.
Speaker 1: I mean, I it was the last thing I expected
Speaker 1: to see. I knew I was in good bear country.
Speaker 1: I mean any other time of the year, I would
Speaker 1: have thought, yeah, there's a chance I could see a bear.
Speaker 1: But there was no bear sign. I mean, like I'd
Speaker 1: been over that country pretty good and uh no bear sign,
Speaker 1: didn't have any bear pictures. I had a few cameras
Speaker 1: out and uh man, I did an all day hunt.
Speaker 1: You know, I got in after daylight just because I
Speaker 1: walked back in there. But setting a tree for nine
Speaker 1: hours in the middle of the day, I don't know
Speaker 1: if that had anything to do with it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it was the warmest part of the day,
Speaker 1: but it was at eleven fifty two. I looked down
Speaker 1: in uh salt bear, a good sized bear bar and
Speaker 1: I can't. I won't say it was a big one,
Speaker 1: but considering that it was still up and it was alone,
Speaker 1: I mean, I would assume it was a male. I mean,
Speaker 1: probably a pretty good chance it was a male. And uh,
Speaker 1: it just looked to me. It looked like a two
Speaker 1: fifty pound bear, you know, I could tell it had
Speaker 1: a thick, nice coat. And uh, it was across a
Speaker 1: boundary line that I could not There was a property
Speaker 1: line there. I was on public land, but it was
Speaker 1: anyway I couldn't. I couldn't shoot the bear, which was
Speaker 1: crazy because that it was I wasn't there because of
Speaker 1: the property change. But anyway, it was in a place
Speaker 1: that I couldn't shoot the bear. But it was man.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll take that memory and like chalk it
Speaker 1: down as almost the equivalent of a of taking an animal.
Speaker 1: I mean, because I can count on well, I'm starting
Speaker 1: to have a few more encounters these days, but very
Speaker 1: very few times do I actually see a bear on
Speaker 1: public land. Like you know, I've killed some that way.
Speaker 1: But it's tough, man, and it's a it's a great man.
Speaker 1: Was kind of built especially on years like this year,
Speaker 1: you know, when mass availability was very lean, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and and that kind of it's I said, you were
Speaker 1: fortunate because I've been watching the harvest, you know, updating
Speaker 1: the harvest totals every day, and I could tell by
Speaker 1: the end of muzzload season, which was twenty something of October,
Speaker 1: I could tell by then that, you know, harvest rates
Speaker 1: for I mean down to just a can't if you
Speaker 1: one or two bears a day maybe something like that.
Speaker 1: And you're talking about, you know, all the hunters across
Speaker 1: the landscape, you know, it's uh, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: deer hunters out there. And when you're only harvesting one
Speaker 1: maybe two bears across all zone one, you know, that's
Speaker 1: just your translates to me, the bears just aren't out
Speaker 1: So I knew it was getting pretty lean, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: going into the modern gun season and everything else. In
Speaker 1: the course of harvest reports show evidence of that. It's
Speaker 1: just bears just aren't out there. Man, when the food
Speaker 1: is not there, they just rather turn in that. I
Speaker 1: must have been pretty close to that bears den I figure, so,
Speaker 1: you know, and a lot of times in the Wash Toalls.
Speaker 1: What we've seen in the Wash Toalls is probably thirty
Speaker 1: or forty percent of the bears that din just make
Speaker 1: day nests or make a nest on top of the ground,
Speaker 1: And that's different than those arcs. Yeah. Do you think
Speaker 1: it's because of the rock cavity availability. I think so.
Speaker 1: I'm still formations are a lot more prevalent in the
Speaker 1: ozarks than they are in the wash of dolls. And
Speaker 1: as I said before, you know, bears don't really they
Speaker 1: don't really need, you know, to be out of the element,
Speaker 1: so to speak. That makes zero sense to me. I
Speaker 1: mean a bear cut big a hole, he can. I
Speaker 1: mean there's not as many rock cliffs and the wash dolls,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's very much less. But it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: hard for a bear to find up crevice and a rock,
Speaker 1: or a dugout under a tree, a tree that's fallen
Speaker 1: over and just dig out under it, which is what
Speaker 1: most of the cavities are in the wash dolls are dugouts.
Speaker 1: And then but you know, you have a fair piece
Speaker 1: of bears that just scratch up a bunch of leaves
Speaker 1: and grass and sit right on top of the ground.
Speaker 1: Now they're they're gonna be chances are there going to
Speaker 1: be in the middle of a thicket or something some
Speaker 1: really really thick area and they'll just scratch it out,
Speaker 1: making big birden extraight on top the ground. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: So I figured you were probably pretty close to this
Speaker 1: bears den. I mean, you know, they may limit their
Speaker 1: activity to maybe an hour or two a day, you know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, well it was a I've made it like
Speaker 1: a like a holiday if I see a bear in
Speaker 1: national forest. I mean really, I I was just thrilled
Speaker 1: to see that bear, and it was cool because I
Speaker 1: wasn't expecting the last thing I was expecting. So that's
Speaker 1: always a good That's a good day in the mountains
Speaker 1: when you see a bear. Uh. Um. So if you
Speaker 1: guys up the quota, that must mean that our bears
Speaker 1: are doing good. You know, they really are. They're doing great. Uh,
Speaker 1: They're doing great in the Washtawls. They're doing great in
Speaker 1: the Ozarks. I mean, you know, we still have bears
Speaker 1: moving into northeast Oklahoma. We still have bears moving in
Speaker 1: the south central Missouri, you know, presumably expanding out from
Speaker 1: our Ozark population. And uh, you know, we've known for
Speaker 1: a few years that we needed to start throttling up
Speaker 1: on our harvest to kind of maybe stabilize those populations,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, we we were probably behind a
Speaker 1: little bit on you know, the increases that we've made,
Speaker 1: so we made a little bit bigger jump. We think
Speaker 1: the population can certainly was stand it. Uh. So you know,
Speaker 1: we'll see how it rocks along at five hundred bears
Speaker 1: for a couple of years and kind of see how
Speaker 1: the population responds. And you know, we may at some
Speaker 1: point in the future have to back it off a
Speaker 1: little bit, but I would be willing to bet we're
Speaker 1: probably gonna be fine. Yeah. Man, it feels like we
Speaker 1: kill a lot of bears in Arkansas at five hundred bears.
Speaker 1: But what it puts into perspective for me, like a
Speaker 1: lot of these uh, like the Great Lakes States, Wisconsin, Michigan.
Speaker 1: I mean I think Michigan kills three thousand bears a year. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think Pennsylvania, I think they killed nine thousand. Incredible
Speaker 1: nine thousand something like that typically I saw. But I
Speaker 1: mean they harvest more bears than we probably have in
Speaker 1: our entire state. So you know, but I mean this
Speaker 1: year so far today we're up to six hundred forty eight,
Speaker 1: which surpasses our previous record harvest year. Of five hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty three. Now how could we Okay, then I
Speaker 1: don't understand the quota. We've killed six hundred bears this year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's bears on one bear zone, two bears on
Speaker 1: five bears one five bears. You. So, how many bears
Speaker 1: are they killed in the wash tows this year? Hundred
Speaker 1: ninety four, which is going to be a record year
Speaker 1: for the wash tolls as well. Hundred and ninety four.
Speaker 1: I'll be doron okay, that is yeah, I think so
Speaker 1: we're a hundred and one. Uh, we're a hundred and
Speaker 1: above our previous harvest record statewide. Yeah, today we'll probably
Speaker 1: have I don't know we'll break six d and fifty
Speaker 1: but maybe people killed. Yeah, well that's that's awesome. Now, Mayer,
Speaker 1: and you're a bear hunter. You do some bear hunter? Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell me about y'all y'all season. Well, I'm a little
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know if I want to
Speaker 1: tell to me. I hunt, I hunt there. Uh, I
Speaker 1: hunt on private land. We have a lease, and I
Speaker 1: have some really good friendships that I've developed from people
Speaker 1: in Texas and people in Nebraska, and we share hunts
Speaker 1: back and forth and uh, we're in the least together
Speaker 1: and uh uh I usually because our lease, you know,
Speaker 1: is about forty minutes from my house. Uh, I usually
Speaker 1: kind of take care of most of debating. And we
Speaker 1: have some really really great landowners to have some nice
Speaker 1: lodging facilities on the least for us, and we're able
Speaker 1: to just kind of have the run of the place speak.
Speaker 1: And uh so we had we ended up having seven
Speaker 1: hunters this year because one of the one of my friends,
Speaker 1: instead of him hunting, he brought his eleven year old
Speaker 1: son and his eighteen year old daughter and he wanted
Speaker 1: to put them on the stand ins tod him hunting.
Speaker 1: And so out of seven hunters we were, we harvested
Speaker 1: five bears out of our camp this year. And uh
Speaker 1: one of the guys that chose not to harvest bears,
Speaker 1: he actually had several opportunities and some younger bears. Uh
Speaker 1: he had a golden opportunity to a collared female and uh,
Speaker 1: we can't know, we can't harvest the collared bear, but
Speaker 1: he got some really good pictures over it was a
Speaker 1: great expd you know what bear it was? I do
Speaker 1: know which bear it was. Unfortunately, Uh, this particular bears
Speaker 1: collar has quit work and we lost her last year
Speaker 1: and uh, there was no reason because it was a
Speaker 1: brand new collar, but it was some type of malfunction
Speaker 1: and it has to be that bear. But she doesn't
Speaker 1: have a working collar. But I know she was den
Speaker 1: probably pretty close in that area, So I plan on
Speaker 1: catching her this spring. She'll have cubs with her, I suspect,
Speaker 1: so she's gonna be pretty close and I'll catch her
Speaker 1: this spring when she comes out. You have one of
Speaker 1: those orange collars, bright orange collars. Yeah, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: that's the bear. It had to be. And I went
Speaker 1: in with my telemetery gear when we were baiting, and uh,
Speaker 1: she was pretty consistent at a couple of the different barrels,
Speaker 1: and I knew she had to be right there, and
Speaker 1: I ran through all my frequencies and didn't have them
Speaker 1: because of the proximity of where she's at. It could
Speaker 1: really only be one of them, one bear that I
Speaker 1: called ago. So yeah, but yeah, so really, I mean,
Speaker 1: when you break it down, I'm the only person that
Speaker 1: didn't have a chance or harvest the bear out of
Speaker 1: our camp was the bear bottle? Isn't that the way
Speaker 1: it always works? The short end? But you know, it
Speaker 1: was a great year. I didn't have too much heartburn
Speaker 1: about it. I never do. I mean, anytime you can
Speaker 1: you can feel five tags out of a bear camp,
Speaker 1: it was a really good year. So yeah, I was
Speaker 1: really happy with that. So that's good. But it was
Speaker 1: it was a good year. I mean, it was really
Speaker 1: it was a perfect year to set up for, you know,
Speaker 1: for baiting on private land. And really, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you had the right circumstances, it was really a perfect
Speaker 1: year for someone to hunt public land too. And you
Speaker 1: know that's something that you and I have talked about
Speaker 1: in the past about public land bear hunting, you know,
Speaker 1: hunting bear specifically on public land. And I have people
Speaker 1: tell me all the time, they said, man, you know
Speaker 1: it's well, you know you have bear hunt on private land,
Speaker 1: you've got a good lease. It's easy. Well, it's not
Speaker 1: really easy. It's never a sure thing. It is a
Speaker 1: lot of hard work. And I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't believe me when I tell them this, But
Speaker 1: you know, given the right circumstances in the year with
Speaker 1: sparse mass availability, you know, really, if you can find
Speaker 1: that one white oak flat or that one white oak
Speaker 1: on a flat, that's really throwing good mass that year.
Speaker 1: You know that can be as effective, by far and
Speaker 1: away as effective as a bait site. It can actually
Speaker 1: be more effective because if you've baited for any length
Speaker 1: of time, you know that when the white oaks get ripe,
Speaker 1: all the bears leave the bait sites and go eat
Speaker 1: the white oaks. So uh and uh really, you know,
Speaker 1: I just I tell people, if you can hit, if
Speaker 1: the mass of ailability is right, when it's kind of
Speaker 1: lean or sparse. Uh uh. And you go out and
Speaker 1: you find those natural bait sites, those white oaks, those
Speaker 1: white oak flats that you see all the sign app
Speaker 1: that you would at abit barrel, they can be just
Speaker 1: as effective, if not more effective than the bait barrel.
Speaker 1: And you tell them what you told me about time
Speaker 1: theory on you know, spend my theory on time spend.
Speaker 1: I tell people, I said, you know, they said, well
Speaker 1: baiting is easy, Well it's not. I mean, if if
Speaker 1: it's done right, if it's done the way, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do it every year. And you count all the time,
Speaker 1: all the hours you spend going to your lease or
Speaker 1: your land, clearing, shooting lanes preseason, maybe moving stands preseason, gathering,
Speaker 1: gathering Oh my gosh, if I could tell you the
Speaker 1: amount of hours that I spent opening bread packages and
Speaker 1: everything else going to get debait. I mean, and if
Speaker 1: you're baiting on a you know, a real regimented bait
Speaker 1: sched jewel once every two or three or four days,
Speaker 1: and you know it's it is a lot of time.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're gonna spend hours and hours and hours
Speaker 1: and hours doing it, right, And uh so, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, if you spent the equivalent amount of time
Speaker 1: serveying a public area that you knew pretty well and
Speaker 1: really fine tuned, you know your knowledge of that area,
Speaker 1: I have no doubt in my mind that you could
Speaker 1: successfully hunt bear on natural bait sites just as effectively
Speaker 1: as you can on uh man made basis. I think
Speaker 1: that's a good a good perspective and a good way
Speaker 1: to look at it, is that. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: you're right. I think if you if you really spent
Speaker 1: that much time, here's the problem. Here's the mental challenge
Speaker 1: with doing that is when you're baiting bears, you're seeing them,
Speaker 1: you're getting pictures of them. And let's say you've got
Speaker 1: thirty hours, Like if you did the math, you know,
Speaker 1: you're like two hours here, two hours, so you got
Speaker 1: thirty Well you're gonna go put thirty hours you know,
Speaker 1: in the stand or on the ground hunting. And for
Speaker 1: those thirty hours, you're probably not gonna see very many bears,
Speaker 1: but you might kill one. That's what I always say
Speaker 1: about public land hunting is that you can't be validated
Speaker 1: emotionally by seeing game. I mean really like as hunters,
Speaker 1: like we come back from a hunt and they're like,
Speaker 1: did you see anything? And if you're like, no, I
Speaker 1: didn't see anything. I mean, it just takes the energy
Speaker 1: and dry. You know, you think you're doing something wrong. Man,
Speaker 1: with these public land bears, you've got to And this, honestly,
Speaker 1: this is what I love about it, Myron's I think
Speaker 1: it makes you a better hunter all across your hunting
Speaker 1: is you can't be validated by seeing game, because I'll
Speaker 1: the times I've been successful in public land hunting for
Speaker 1: long periods of time without seeing anything, but then it happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, just you know, so you're not gonna see
Speaker 1: ten bears, you're gonna see you you might see one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh so it really makes you. I think it
Speaker 1: makes you a better hunter. I think it does It
Speaker 1: certainly makes you a more patient hunter. I think it
Speaker 1: allowed It makes you trust your instincts better when you're
Speaker 1: seeing the sign there but not seeing the critter. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you have a tendency to kind of doubt,
Speaker 1: well maybe it's moved on or whatever. But classic example, Uh,
Speaker 1: we went in I think it was a weekend before
Speaker 1: the season started. We went in, Uh, some of the
Speaker 1: guys and myself went in and moved stand. One of
Speaker 1: the stands, it was a ladder stand, was in a
Speaker 1: big white oak. And when we got there to move
Speaker 1: the stand, there were white oak liums, fresh white oak
Speaker 1: liums busted all over, laying all over the ground, acorn
Speaker 1: shrap and I'll just lay in everywhere, you know. And
Speaker 1: we got to look in and looking up in this
Speaker 1: big white oak and yeah there were white there were
Speaker 1: green limbs bent over and broke up in it, claw
Speaker 1: marks all up and down the tree. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: that is a classic. That's a bait site right there.
Speaker 1: I guarantee if a guy you know, found that on
Speaker 1: public land and it was right before the season, he
Speaker 1: could come and hunt that specific tree. And it's not
Speaker 1: like they're just gonna be nocturnal. You know, bears aren't
Speaker 1: nocturnal that time of year. They're feeding every available hour
Speaker 1: they can. So yeah, that specific tree. If I would
Speaker 1: have found that tree on September, yeah, you can bet
Speaker 1: I would have been hunting that specific tree. You know,
Speaker 1: I've seen a black gum like that on multiplicasions. Black
Speaker 1: gum is a really big one, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't realize that that black gums throw these little
Speaker 1: grape looking berries and uh man, I tell you what,
Speaker 1: before the acorn to get right, they will blister black gums. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean just blister them. Yeah, they love them. It's amazing. Uh.
Speaker 1: I would have never paid much attention to black gum
Speaker 1: until I had just found a couple that looked like
Speaker 1: it looked like a tornado dropped out of the sky
Speaker 1: directly above this black gum. I mean I saw one
Speaker 1: one time that I bet the bear had tore out
Speaker 1: of the limbs out of that tree. I mean it
Speaker 1: had to have affected the life cycle of that tree.
Speaker 1: And uh, I mean it was like a it looked
Speaker 1: like a telephone pole that somebody had just I mean
Speaker 1: just had wore it out. And there were eight piles
Speaker 1: of bear scout underneath that black gum, and probably every
Speaker 1: inch of the tree was at claw marks and there
Speaker 1: was still black gun berries all in that tree. That
Speaker 1: was on October the third, Uh, not this year is
Speaker 1: several years ago, but October the three. They were climbing
Speaker 1: that tree like crazy. And those black gums produce a
Speaker 1: lot more asked than I thought they would. I mean
Speaker 1: they produce a lot. I mean if you were just
Speaker 1: to collect the amount of berries that some of them
Speaker 1: can produce, I think we'd be pretty surprised. And the
Speaker 1: cool thing about black gum too is that you know,
Speaker 1: you might get on a white oak flat and there
Speaker 1: might be a hundred and fifty white oaks within a
Speaker 1: hundred yards of you. I don't know. Black gum are
Speaker 1: are not gonna necessarily grow in groves like that, you like,
Speaker 1: they'll just be like and I'm not saying they won't
Speaker 1: be three or four together, but there don't seem to
Speaker 1: be as concentrated. So if you find one that's really good,
Speaker 1: they can be good. Yeah. I inadvertently, on a piece
Speaker 1: of property that I hunted several years ago, I had
Speaker 1: inadvertently put a bait barrel right next to a big,
Speaker 1: mature black gum. And while I was baiting, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks prior to the season. This was
Speaker 1: back when it opened October one. Excuse me, I noticed that, Man,
Speaker 1: they're just tearing up this tree. And then it just
Speaker 1: dawned on me to look up. Oh it's a big
Speaker 1: black oh there. And yeah, through berries that year, and
Speaker 1: I think they were eating more out of the tree
Speaker 1: than they were out of the barrels. It's uh. And
Speaker 1: for those of you who don't know what we're talking
Speaker 1: about black gums species, if you look across the landscape
Speaker 1: in the late summer, real early fall, just prior to
Speaker 1: you know, when late off or well, i'd say early
Speaker 1: to mid September, look across the landscape, and some of
Speaker 1: those very first trees you see that are starting to
Speaker 1: turn red are black gums gum trees. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you they turned a little earlier, they turned a
Speaker 1: little earlier than hold their berries something else. Yeah, they'll
Speaker 1: hold their berries after their leaves are gone, because sometimes
Speaker 1: I'll stay on there for a good while if the
Speaker 1: bears don't strip them all up. So you know, if
Speaker 1: you're scouting public land or something like that, and it's
Speaker 1: mid September, you know, and you start to see a
Speaker 1: few trees kind of start turning. Take notice of the
Speaker 1: ones they're starting starting to turn red or orange. Could
Speaker 1: be huge trees talking about you know, diameter on a
Speaker 1: lot of these big mature gum trees. One time, Myron,
Speaker 1: I've never done it. It's what I've wanted to do it,
Speaker 1: but to shoot a bear out of a tree. And
Speaker 1: one time I've actually only seen with my eyes one
Speaker 1: time in Arkansas a bear climb a white oak. But
Speaker 1: it was it was and uh, I was sitting kind
Speaker 1: of on this kind of on the top of this ridge,
Speaker 1: and so you know, the ridge dropped off pretty quickly
Speaker 1: on both sides of me, and so I was you know,
Speaker 1: if you were just looking out straight, you were seeing
Speaker 1: the tops of oak trees about fifty sixty yards away.
Speaker 1: You of things closer you could see the whole trunks. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there and I hear what sounds like a
Speaker 1: two pound gray squirrel scratching on the bark of a tree.
Speaker 1: And I look over there and above the horizon rises
Speaker 1: this bear. And you know, you know how they climb,
Speaker 1: I mean they use their front legs and pushed down
Speaker 1: and they kind of jump and catch the tree. And man,
Speaker 1: he just comes up out of the horizon, going to
Speaker 1: the top of this wide oak. And I had my
Speaker 1: traditional bow, and I knew he was gonna be distracted.
Speaker 1: It's a great opportunity to shoot one. I mean, I
Speaker 1: knew he was distracted up in that tree. I pretty
Speaker 1: much just grabbed my bow and just went straight towards him.
Speaker 1: And Uh, I kind of I didn't chicken I want.
Speaker 1: I wanted to say I chickened out. I didn't chicken out.
Speaker 1: I just I was If I had it to do
Speaker 1: over again, I would have just not even thought and
Speaker 1: just gone. I got about thirty yards from him and
Speaker 1: started a stalk real slow, and he came down the tree,
Speaker 1: but as quick as he went up. Uh. But if
Speaker 1: he had has stayed up that tree, I mean, I
Speaker 1: was just gonna slip right under it. I should have
Speaker 1: not worried about trying to be stealthy though, because he
Speaker 1: was breaking. He was just making a racket in anyway.
Speaker 1: When he hit the ground, I'm about twenty yards from him,
Speaker 1: and uh. This is where bears are funny on public
Speaker 1: land in areas where they're not used to seeing people.
Speaker 1: Is that bear saw me and didn't spook like a
Speaker 1: deer would have. Like he he saw me, but he
Speaker 1: didn't get my wind, and he just started walking kind
Speaker 1: of away from me, but kind of parallel to me.
Speaker 1: And I started walking with him. I was literally walking
Speaker 1: trying to find an opening, and he would kind of
Speaker 1: crane his neck and look at me over his shoulder.
Speaker 1: And I walked with him for probably twenty yards, and
Speaker 1: he just kept getting further away from me, though, but
Speaker 1: he never just bolted. Now, if he had smelled me,
Speaker 1: I think he would have been gone. He just he
Speaker 1: was just like, what is what are you doing here?
Speaker 1: But now that was a unique experience that I've only
Speaker 1: seen it once, but I've I've heard uh. I actually
Speaker 1: heard it from a guy in Georgia. Uh that that's
Speaker 1: a I mean, it was just random. That was a
Speaker 1: guy from Georgia telling me that that's what they There's
Speaker 1: that I know why it is Their season opens early
Speaker 1: in September, and so they have a lot of climbing
Speaker 1: bears because bears only climbing these oaks before they're falling,
Speaker 1: and so our oaks are gonna be falling late September.
Speaker 1: You know, Sometimes even that it's differs every year, but
Speaker 1: especially the white oaks sometimes they'll The year that I
Speaker 1: saw the climbing bear was actually October. I remember it
Speaker 1: was October the one and so that the acrons were
Speaker 1: still holding on enough that even by then they were
Speaker 1: still climbing. I think that's pretty rare. Usually they're falling
Speaker 1: a little bit before second to third week or so
Speaker 1: of Septembers. Typically sometimes it will be the fourth week.
Speaker 1: That's what you hope for. Yeah, those guys in Georgia
Speaker 1: with a September bear season, they are hunting these bears
Speaker 1: like squirrels. Yeah, I mean they make a ton of
Speaker 1: racket when they climb that they do. You can imagine,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know how much racket of gray squirrel
Speaker 1: makes when you're running around in the bushes. Imagine if
Speaker 1: they're up there breaking branches and breaking climbing up your wrists,
Speaker 1: climbing up and down the tree. And uh. A friend
Speaker 1: of mine was on the stand a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: He had had shot a bear on our lease, and
Speaker 1: he just went out bow hunting deer the next morning
Speaker 1: and he said, yeah, I was set there and this
Speaker 1: awful racket back by me, and I looked back by
Speaker 1: me about a hundred yards and it was a young
Speaker 1: bear running up and down the tree. Run up one.
Speaker 1: He'd be up there a while and he'd come down.
Speaker 1: He'd go up the next one. He'd be there while
Speaker 1: and he'd come down. And yeah, so they're incredibly agile,
Speaker 1: and trees incredibly agile, but amazing. Well, Maron, Hey, thanks
Speaker 1: a ton for coming and talking with me. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Always glad to talk bear. Man. I could have this
Speaker 1: conversation with somebody like you all the time. We always
Speaker 1: talked about something different. You know, the last podcast we did,
Speaker 1: we talked about bears. But I think we've covered a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of new stuff that's such biology stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is kind of the behind the sinkings kind of
Speaker 1: bear talks. Yeah, well, I really appreciate it, man, I'm
Speaker 1: glad to be here. Thanks for having to keep the
Speaker 1: wild places wild and that's where the bears live.