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Speaker 1: The official podcast of Federal Ammunition. Name is Clay Nukeleman.
Speaker 1: I'm the host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll
Speaker 1: also be your host into the world of hunting, the
Speaker 1: icon and the North American Wilderness Prepare. We'll talk about tactics,
Speaker 1: gear conservation. We will also bring you into some of
Speaker 1: the wildest country on the planet, chasing fair. I want
Speaker 1: to describe what this podcast is about and kind of
Speaker 1: the style that we used on this podcast. If you've
Speaker 1: listened to us very long, you know that we have
Speaker 1: a lot of long form, conversational style podcast that don't
Speaker 1: necessarily have a specific topic. Maybe we're interviewing and old
Speaker 1: hunter or houndsman or a deer hunter or whatever. Sometimes
Speaker 1: we have podcasts that are very technical and tactical, and
Speaker 1: we try to just get down to business and really
Speaker 1: educate people. That's what this is. So this podcast, I
Speaker 1: have gathered up the best black bear hunters that I
Speaker 1: know in where I live, Heath Martin, Ryan Greb, and
Speaker 1: these guys have taken baiting bears to a whole another
Speaker 1: level of expertise, and so we nerd out for an
Speaker 1: hour and a half about all things pertaining to baiting
Speaker 1: black bears. And I think you can use this information
Speaker 1: anywhere in the country that's legal debate. I think this
Speaker 1: information would be valuable for spring hunters and fall hunters,
Speaker 1: but most of what we're talking about is specifically fall hunting.
Speaker 1: We talked about how to set up a bait, what
Speaker 1: bait to use, how long do you bait, how do
Speaker 1: you target big bears, what's the root baiting routine that
Speaker 1: you use, and how do you utilize strategic routine on
Speaker 1: the day that you hunt to target these big bears.
Speaker 1: I'll also think that even if you're not interested in
Speaker 1: baiting bears, you could learn about fair behavior. I have
Speaker 1: learned more about bair behavior from watching how they interact
Speaker 1: with food source on an unnatural bait than I have
Speaker 1: any other way because the sheer exposure that you get
Speaker 1: to animal behavior bare behavior is exponential. If I only
Speaker 1: gathered information from watching bears on natural food, I would
Speaker 1: have very limited understanding what bears do because it's just
Speaker 1: so hard to find them doing what they do, especially
Speaker 1: in the East and thick cover. So watching bears over bait,
Speaker 1: understanding what they do, how they utilize that, it's the
Speaker 1: same way that they utilize natural food sources out in
Speaker 1: wild places. So this is a great podcast. It it'll
Speaker 1: go in the archives, and when somebody direct messages me
Speaker 1: and say hey, Clay, I'm starting to bait and you
Speaker 1: give any tips, I'm gonna send them this podcast. You
Speaker 1: listen from this to start to fit ish, and you
Speaker 1: will learn a decade worth of three guys who pretty
Speaker 1: much dedicated themselves to hunting big bears over bait in
Speaker 1: a pretty pressured area. When this podcast was done, I
Speaker 1: turned to Heath and I said, Man, if somebody would
Speaker 1: just listen to that and really heat the advice that
Speaker 1: was given, they would learn what it took us ten
Speaker 1: years to learn. The last thing that I want to
Speaker 1: say as a preface to a podcast about baiting bears
Speaker 1: is that a lot of people don't understand baiting. And
Speaker 1: I think if you listen to this podcast, you'll see
Speaker 1: how much work it is, how much strategy goes into it,
Speaker 1: how much thought goes into it, and you'll have an
Speaker 1: appreciation for that. I want to say that wherever that
Speaker 1: we're baiting bears, the management agencies are using this as
Speaker 1: a management tool to harvest the number of bears that
Speaker 1: we need out of that habitat. And that's just it.
Speaker 1: It's a It is a management tool and high effective
Speaker 1: management tool. And you know what if you if a
Speaker 1: thousand years from now, anthropologists are going through a fossil
Speaker 1: record which would include us, and they perceived fair baiting
Speaker 1: activity and they were like, Wow, these ancient hunters put
Speaker 1: out bait for bears. What that would indicate to them
Speaker 1: is high bear populations that needed to be managed. Are
Speaker 1: you with me? Are you tracking me? Basically, baiting bears
Speaker 1: is a management tool that actually indicates success of a
Speaker 1: species that needs to be managed. So this whole premise
Speaker 1: that baiting is, you know, somehow not fair, chase, not difficult,
Speaker 1: that's an old world mentality that is no longer relevant.
Speaker 1: It's a management tool, and bear baiting allows a hunter
Speaker 1: to be selective. The least selective hunting that Clay Nukeom
Speaker 1: does is a spot and stock hunt, because I usually
Speaker 1: shoot the first bear I see. I pass incredible amounts
Speaker 1: of bear when I'm hunting over bait, waiting for an older,
Speaker 1: mature mail, which is the perfect animal to take out
Speaker 1: of the population. And so in terms of ethics as well,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about shop placement, you know exactly where
Speaker 1: that bear is gonna be, strategically set up your stand
Speaker 1: and debait in such a way that the animals turned
Speaker 1: in the right direction. You have all these factors that
Speaker 1: you can control, and I think that's highly important inside
Speaker 1: of a of a time when really we're inside of
Speaker 1: a uh a culture war in a sense where people
Speaker 1: don't understand our way of life. They don't understand our
Speaker 1: methodology for harvesting game, utilizing the meat, just our lifestyle
Speaker 1: of hunting. And so being educated on why we do
Speaker 1: what we do is incredibly important in to blind important
Speaker 1: and you've heard us say it because we've got a
Speaker 1: guard the gate. Hunting bears and large predators is often
Speaker 1: the place that the anti hunting community finds fault with
Speaker 1: North American hunting, and I don't think we've done a
Speaker 1: great job of even understanding why we do what we do,
Speaker 1: and so we've got to guard the gate, build a
Speaker 1: strong understanding of why we do what we do, and
Speaker 1: I think that will help preserve the whole of North
Speaker 1: American hunting. You're gonna enjoy this podcast about the secrets
Speaker 1: to baiting black bears. Yep, I love baiting and black bears.
Speaker 1: We are in Heath Martin's office. We're looking at a
Speaker 1: bunch of big, nice white tails, a big British Columbian moose,
Speaker 1: big five four pound Arkansas black bear over here on
Speaker 1: the rocks. Um. Yeah, so I've got Heath Martin heat.
Speaker 1: This is your first time on the podcast. You you're
Speaker 1: You've been due for a long time for bear hunting
Speaker 1: magazine podcasts. I think we tried to We talked about
Speaker 1: doing a bear related podcast probably last year. Because you're well,
Speaker 1: I'll get to the introduction of you after I talked
Speaker 1: about Ryan Grab, Ryan Flint Flay scrab You've been on
Speaker 1: the podcast several times, Ryan, Yeah, a few times. Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me back. Yeah. Man, Well, hey, you two
Speaker 1: are like, to me, this is like the uh It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know if there are any sports that just
Speaker 1: have three players, but you guys are like the dream
Speaker 1: team of at least Arkansas black bear hunting. And I've
Speaker 1: said this before about Ryan, and I'll say it again
Speaker 1: because unless somebody disputes me and Heath, maybe you can.
Speaker 1: And if you can, you can. I think per volume
Speaker 1: of bears killed in the state of Arkansas, I think
Speaker 1: if you just added the weight of every bear you've
Speaker 1: ever killed, I think Ryan's killed the most beared by
Speaker 1: volume of any person I've met. There may be people
Speaker 1: I have not met, but this guy has killed a
Speaker 1: three hundred plus pound bear every year, just about for
Speaker 1: the last twenty years. I've been a couple of years interspersed.
Speaker 1: You've killed good ones, I mean, is that true? But
Speaker 1: have you been lying to me, Y'll take half the
Speaker 1: y'all rotate every other year, so you'll probably stay up
Speaker 1: with me if you stay after himself. I don't. Did
Speaker 1: you hunt last year the last couple of years? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: And then Heath, he has killed He's the only person
Speaker 1: in the state of Arkansas that's killed two boon and
Speaker 1: crocket bears, monsters, monsters five d plus pounds are there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I mean that's and you've killed a many
Speaker 1: many big bears. But you know, every everybody kind of
Speaker 1: does things different, like, uh, I haven't. I've killed just
Speaker 1: a handful of bears personally over bait in the state
Speaker 1: of Arkansas. I don't think a lot of people realize
Speaker 1: that you've catered. But every year for the last twenty years,
Speaker 1: I've baited extensively, you know, and um, and I've usually
Speaker 1: tried to So I mean, you know it just in Heath,
Speaker 1: you have baited extensively for periods of time. And then
Speaker 1: you know you've been going on some of these big
Speaker 1: game hunts at prime time, and that's a that's a
Speaker 1: big deal. When you're baiting bears and you've gotta be here.
Speaker 1: It's a ton of work for about a month before season,
Speaker 1: and so if you're gone during that time period, it
Speaker 1: doesn't even make sense to even try. And so the
Speaker 1: last couple of years you've been galivanting across the planet, uh,
Speaker 1: killing big game and all these crazy places. That's correct.
Speaker 1: Leaving next week for Pinizza, Alaska, Pinesza moose hunts this year,
Speaker 1: but there most September. So yeah, Well, the thing most
Speaker 1: I respect about both of you guys is that you
Speaker 1: you just you're good. You've you've you've learned, you've learned
Speaker 1: what it takes to be successful, not just with bears,
Speaker 1: but with big bears. And uh, and you guys know
Speaker 1: as well as anybody that you gotta do a lot
Speaker 1: of things right to kill big bears consistently really anywhere. Um,
Speaker 1: And so what I want to do today is just
Speaker 1: kind of nerd out about baiting bears. And you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different people that listen to this podcasts.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's guys that listen to podcasts that don't
Speaker 1: even bear hunt. There's guys that listen to this podcasts
Speaker 1: that don't bait bears. But we always have to at
Speaker 1: some point narrowed down the focus to just hone in
Speaker 1: into like this one area, you know, And uh So,
Speaker 1: what I want to do with you all is kind
Speaker 1: of take somebody from start to finish the key components
Speaker 1: of baiting bears, and then we can also talk about
Speaker 1: kind of like the advanced technical side of killing big bears,
Speaker 1: because there's a big difference, wouldn't you say, heath? Just
Speaker 1: from I mean, like if a guy here, a guy
Speaker 1: anywhere that can bait bears, and there's quite a few
Speaker 1: states that you can bait in a lot of the
Speaker 1: Canadian all the Canadian provinces pretty much. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: big difference between just killing a bear and killing a
Speaker 1: big bear. Wouldn't you say heath? Yeah? Absolutely, Well let's
Speaker 1: uh so, I've got to I've kind of got a
Speaker 1: list here. I'll go ahead and read the list of
Speaker 1: what I want to cover, just so if you're listening
Speaker 1: to this, you can kind of track what we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about. We're gonna talk about where to place a
Speaker 1: bait site. So I want to hear about you guys
Speaker 1: experience on actually where to place it. A lot of
Speaker 1: guys who have questions about that, And what I learned
Speaker 1: is that two places in the same county can be
Speaker 1: one can be absolutely a wonderful place to kill a
Speaker 1: big bear, and a mile away you have a you know,
Speaker 1: difficult time even killing a bear. So just because you're
Speaker 1: in a good county, just because you're in a good state,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that your bait site is gonna be in
Speaker 1: the best place. And on a micro scale, there's always
Speaker 1: a best place, no matter if you've got forty acres,
Speaker 1: if you've got five thousand acres, there's one spot that's
Speaker 1: gonna be the best, I feel like. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about where debait, where to place abait, what type
Speaker 1: of feeders to use. That never entered my mind that
Speaker 1: that was a big deal, but people ask me all
Speaker 1: the time about get questions on that. Yeah, like what
Speaker 1: you know, are you using bait barrels, plastic or metal?
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about that. Um let's see
Speaker 1: here my list, Uh, how far in advance to start
Speaker 1: feeding bears. We can talk about timing, what type of bait,
Speaker 1: and how much. There's all kinds of controversy in the
Speaker 1: bear world about how much to feed bears. You know,
Speaker 1: there's the philosophy that you feed him a small amount,
Speaker 1: and there's also a philosophy that you give them as
Speaker 1: much as you can eat. And I think I know
Speaker 1: where you gotta stand on that sent attractants. And then
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how to target big bears. And then
Speaker 1: I want to hear about y'all's routine for opening day.
Speaker 1: I think that is the biggest mistake that people make,
Speaker 1: and I have made it and I've learned stuff from
Speaker 1: you guys, is that you have this routine of abating
Speaker 1: and then on opening day what you do is really
Speaker 1: really important, especially if you're targeting a big bear. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: the last question I have written down in my notes
Speaker 1: here is what is the proper way to celebrate when
Speaker 1: you kill a five hundred round bear? But you guys
Speaker 1: both have know that. Um, go get the tractor. Go
Speaker 1: get I hope you can get the tractor to it.
Speaker 1: That's the reality, because if you can't, the work begins.
Speaker 1: He tell me a little bit about your like when
Speaker 1: you started baiting and and and you know how you
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Speaker 1: probably My first serious dive into bating is and around
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. I think I killed my first bear
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven. Actually, and uh I believe
Speaker 1: if I remember that year, it was just over a
Speaker 1: corn feeder, so it was very dre was dry, It
Speaker 1: wasn't a lot of work. I had never killed a bear.
Speaker 1: First bear to walked by, I shot it and was
Speaker 1: tickled to death, not knowing I'd ever shoot another bear
Speaker 1: because in r l E. In the last ten and
Speaker 1: twelve fourteen years, our population has exploded tremendously. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's something you have a chance to kill every year,
Speaker 1: even in two thousand and seven. It was really the
Speaker 1: first bear I've ever seen that I'd had an opportunity
Speaker 1: to hunt, right, So then that kind of gave me
Speaker 1: the bug, I guess you would say, And so I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's the conversation with you and other people. I
Speaker 1: started figuring out how to bait and just trial and air,
Speaker 1: you know, so I was like, well, dog food and grease,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll so then that the next year I've
Speaker 1: waited a little more and corn and dog food and sweets,
Speaker 1: and you know, getting baite is tough getting sweets. You know.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that. I'm sure about you get a
Speaker 1: question on there, so we can talk about that later.
Speaker 1: But I got lucky and killed that bear, I believe
Speaker 1: in No, I think I killed him in over night,
Speaker 1: And actually so I don't think I killed a bear. No.
Speaker 1: Eight and uh, but got some barre pictures, learned some
Speaker 1: stuff baiting, you know, trial and error, and then up
Speaker 1: my game a little bit. It was a little more
Speaker 1: serious about it and killed my first boon and Crockett
Speaker 1: bear with my second bear ever, so I mean a
Speaker 1: little luck involved, but still was able to harvest him
Speaker 1: once I got him coming to bait, you know. And
Speaker 1: then yeah, from there, I just it was pretty serious
Speaker 1: about it and learned from trial and air and figured
Speaker 1: stuff out, you know, and try to get better at
Speaker 1: getting better quality food to feed him and figure out
Speaker 1: what worked good. And you know a lot of it's
Speaker 1: based on where we hunt. Not other places in the
Speaker 1: country maybe, but tremendously on mast. Yeah, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a theme anywhere they're bad. It may not be hard, yeah,
Speaker 1: but are And it's all the seasons too, you know.
Speaker 1: So our season always opens as or after the hard
Speaker 1: mast is falling, right, So that's just and it depends
Speaker 1: on what opening day is, you know. It's whole conversation. Um,
Speaker 1: so you got to figure out how to keep bears
Speaker 1: big bears. You guys know, we'll leave a barrel of
Speaker 1: donuts overnight for a white okayre just just the insane.
Speaker 1: I know it's crazy, So you know, I had to
Speaker 1: kind of start learning how to keep bears as good
Speaker 1: as I can. And just because you do some of
Speaker 1: this stuff don't mean you're gonna keep that bear. A
Speaker 1: quick question, do you have much competition over around where
Speaker 1: you hunt? Human competition? Yeah, I think there's probably some,
Speaker 1: you know there for a while, when I get real
Speaker 1: serious about it, I had three bait locations over about
Speaker 1: a twelve square mile area basically four miles and four
Speaker 1: miles and four miles kind of a trying spaced out
Speaker 1: to where I wasn't fighting myself, right, but in our reality,
Speaker 1: there was a time or two when I would get
Speaker 1: the same big bear on two of those bats four
Speaker 1: miles and four miles apart. And I bet you had
Speaker 1: a lot more competition than you realized. I think there is, right, absolutely, um,
Speaker 1: But a couple of the plot, the couple of my
Speaker 1: most successful spots were harder to get into, and the
Speaker 1: competition would be I think a little further way because
Speaker 1: of the way the block of national forest adjoining our property,
Speaker 1: so we can only bait on we can private land,
Speaker 1: but the land I would bait on borders some national
Speaker 1: forest blocks, and so if they're big enough and remote enough,
Speaker 1: you don't have people right on you baiting. So you're
Speaker 1: tracking bears out of that large block of national forest
Speaker 1: into your private property, you know, where you can legally
Speaker 1: bait at that point, So you can you can pretty
Speaker 1: safely assume that unless somebody's doing something illegal, if you've
Speaker 1: got this giant block and national forest, that nobody's baiting bears,
Speaker 1: and they can hunt bears there, but they can't beta bear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and around here, you know, there's only even in giant
Speaker 1: blocks national force, there's some private back there somewhere, so
Speaker 1: somebody could be but there's a couple of blocks. There's
Speaker 1: a mile a mile and a half blocks that nobody's in,
Speaker 1: which is not that big for a bear in reality.
Speaker 1: But if you get one sometimes it's likes to stay
Speaker 1: there and hold tight. And you really got what he
Speaker 1: likes to eat, you can keep him on a pretty
Speaker 1: good pattern. Now, you tell me about your competition, Ryan,
Speaker 1: where you're at um. I did have some guys you know,
Speaker 1: a mile and a half two miles from me, and
Speaker 1: they took big bears. I mean, you know we were
Speaker 1: talking about and uh, I know he does because he
Speaker 1: actually just sold the property just a year or two ago. Uh,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that was it didn't seem to be a
Speaker 1: really a factor because we both understood that we were
Speaker 1: chasing big bears, not average bears, and we communicated back
Speaker 1: and forth, but we were really remote, didn't have any
Speaker 1: really four wheeler traffic or people and out even deer
Speaker 1: hunting them. So it was it was almost like a
Speaker 1: a buddy was baiting because you kind of knew what
Speaker 1: was going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it man just
Speaker 1: happened to be luck Out and it's just a place
Speaker 1: that holds big bears and always always did and uh
Speaker 1: still does to this day. Well let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: where to put a bear. But I think that's key too,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure we'll get to that later. But I mean,
Speaker 1: just because you go put a bait in the woods,
Speaker 1: don't mean you're gonna kill him with your bear. Not
Speaker 1: all created equal, and I can attest that to all
Speaker 1: my baits. That's we can talk about that. Well, that's
Speaker 1: that's why, that's what I want to talk about. There's
Speaker 1: two two things that I want to analyze. So if
Speaker 1: you're taking this really serious, like we all have at
Speaker 1: different times, like there was one time when I was
Speaker 1: baiting eleven different spots in a good county in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and every year I would end up having two to
Speaker 1: three spots that I was willing to put somebody on
Speaker 1: the hunt when it came down the season. And finally
Speaker 1: I just got to where I didn't bait the other
Speaker 1: eight places because they just didn't produce. Now, could I
Speaker 1: get bears to come in there, yes, but by the season,
Speaker 1: by the time season arrived, the big bears would be gone,
Speaker 1: or all the bears would be gone, or we're big
Speaker 1: bears even coming to it right, And and most of
Speaker 1: them I've abandoned sites for that reason too. We was
Speaker 1: I talked, we had three when we were really heavy.
Speaker 1: Three main sits too always produced giant bears. Now they
Speaker 1: might not be there come season, but there was always
Speaker 1: giant bears in the area. A third one we probably
Speaker 1: baited four years and there was always quite a few
Speaker 1: bears there, and there would actually be bears there come season.
Speaker 1: That one year I killed that big double tag old
Speaker 1: sal a couple of times. She came off of that pace.
Speaker 1: She's probably the biggest bear that in four years that
Speaker 1: ever came to that base. Three pounds south. She's a
Speaker 1: big sal But the point of that was there was
Speaker 1: never I mean, i'm not gonna say a two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty pounds sou didn't or a board didn't walk
Speaker 1: by that bait occasionally, but there was never a sure
Speaker 1: enough mature boar ever in four years come to that base.
Speaker 1: And that's a fantastic point because some places produced big
Speaker 1: bears and some don't. And when we say big bears,
Speaker 1: we're not talking about a two hundred fifty pound mile.
Speaker 1: We're talking about a four hundred plus pound trophy ultra
Speaker 1: mature big bear. And this we finally abandoned this site
Speaker 1: because it was really remote and theory it had everything
Speaker 1: what I thought should have to grow hold and be
Speaker 1: able to bat mature bears. It took a long time
Speaker 1: to get there. It's hard to bat, which is some
Speaker 1: of the keys. But after four years it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've never had a mature board come here. Why am
Speaker 1: I still baiting here? So we kind of abandoned that site,
Speaker 1: you know, in our reality, and killed just some meat
Speaker 1: bears off the two that we had, and I had
Speaker 1: to put as much work or bait somewhere that we
Speaker 1: weren't really ever hunting. I mean, I did kill the
Speaker 1: one bear there, but of all those years, that's the
Speaker 1: only time we ever even hunted there, which one day
Speaker 1: I hunted this one day four years and it was
Speaker 1: the only bear. What are the characteristics of the good
Speaker 1: sites that tend to draw big bears? Man, thickness? It's
Speaker 1: just quietness, no intrusion. Quietness, you mean, like not a
Speaker 1: county road half mile away. Bears like bed a lot
Speaker 1: of times in low areas with lots of shade, preferably
Speaker 1: maybe some damp, you know areas. But you know, each
Speaker 1: piece of land has a story to tell, and it
Speaker 1: may take you a couple of years to totally understand
Speaker 1: how the animals move on this piece of ground. So
Speaker 1: and in our reality, my opinion that too sometimes is
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a right answer to your question.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think sometimes there's a spot almost like
Speaker 1: a deer or fish, which there's usually a reason the
Speaker 1: fish likes to be here versus even a big deer.
Speaker 1: And that's all of our first love was dear, But
Speaker 1: I don't know why there was never a big boar
Speaker 1: in this one spot. To me, it was perfect right,
Speaker 1: But there never was. And but then there's these two
Speaker 1: other spots. It's like, I mean, every time a bear
Speaker 1: comes in, not every bear, but there's always big boards.
Speaker 1: And to me, they're all fairly similar in characteristics, you know,
Speaker 1: so why I did the one never produced, but the
Speaker 1: other two always had a mature and and and usually
Speaker 1: the other two had multiple mature bears coming from you know,
Speaker 1: maybe not by season, but throughout the bating time frame,
Speaker 1: and you can kill one or two of them and
Speaker 1: then another one next year. Next year, they'll be back here.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, it is one of the deals. Were
Speaker 1: there all. We did a we did a last week.
Speaker 1: We had a biologist on the podcast, and she was
Speaker 1: talking about how the female bears, they're the ones that
Speaker 1: they're mainly tracking in understanding what they're doing. And these
Speaker 1: female bears will select to live in areas that are
Speaker 1: is remote from human intrusion as possible, Like they don't
Speaker 1: like roads, they don't like human houses, like if a
Speaker 1: bear is not stressed, and obviously people have bears coming
Speaker 1: to their houses and eating their trash cans and stuff
Speaker 1: in the in the summertime and periods of stress, but
Speaker 1: those bears want to be an unfragmented wilderness. And we'll
Speaker 1: use the term wilderness, not as in capital wilderness like
Speaker 1: capital w wilderness like federal land. That's but wilderness in
Speaker 1: terms of wherever you live the most remote. If it's
Speaker 1: in Michigan, it's gonna be the deepest, darkest swamp that
Speaker 1: has the least human intrusion. If it's in Arkansas, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be that rugged drainage that you know, has big
Speaker 1: national forest on every side and it's just hard to
Speaker 1: get to. And that's where theo that those are typically
Speaker 1: the places that we're gonna be able to draw big bears.
Speaker 1: And that's one reason the baiting in Arkansas when we
Speaker 1: talk about sometimes they're not there come season, is that
Speaker 1: way we can only bait on that private land. And
Speaker 1: I think that's key because even though we find remote
Speaker 1: land that we can bait on privately on, it's not
Speaker 1: as remote as maybe in the summer or before the
Speaker 1: acrons start falling, they're coming to that bait, but we
Speaker 1: all know as soon as acren is falling, they're gone.
Speaker 1: They're way back somewhere else in a more remote area.
Speaker 1: I don't think the acrons really even have to fall
Speaker 1: off there's somewhat mature, and the trees are loaded. You
Speaker 1: know they're going to climb to the climbing trees. I
Speaker 1: bet fifty of the bears in the state of Arkansas
Speaker 1: right now don't have their feet on the ground right
Speaker 1: there in a tree right now evening. So that's what
Speaker 1: makes it harder sometimes to keep these bears. When we
Speaker 1: say on a bait, it's because it's not where. If
Speaker 1: we could put it wherever we wanted to, they'd probably be.
Speaker 1: If we get in Idaho, you bait on National Forest
Speaker 1: and and we could put a bait out right where
Speaker 1: they're gonna want to be and have a better chance.
Speaker 1: So we're limited and where we can bait them, so
Speaker 1: we have a hard time holding them once the natural
Speaker 1: mask becomes available. And we'll talk about some tricks that
Speaker 1: we've all used to try to hold them. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: talk about so we've established like and it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of a no brainer. But for some people that are
Speaker 1: just getting used to understanding bears, it's probably helpful to
Speaker 1: hear us say the most remote place you can get.
Speaker 1: If we could boil it down to something that's simple.
Speaker 1: But okay, here's the next scenario. You got forty acres
Speaker 1: that you can bait, okay, and you drive into that
Speaker 1: forty acres down on a low creek and there's one
Speaker 1: high knob on this place that's maybe connected to a
Speaker 1: string of mountains. Um, my philosophy is that on that
Speaker 1: forty acres, even where you put that bait is important,
Speaker 1: Like you can't choose anywhere outside that forty acres. But
Speaker 1: I have always been of the persuasion that higher it's
Speaker 1: better than lower because of wind like more consistent winds.
Speaker 1: And any time I've tried to bait down low the
Speaker 1: evening time, thermals make it really hard. Have you guys
Speaker 1: had different experience than that your baited and super high?
Speaker 1: I agree with you Hucent to some degree, do you, well,
Speaker 1: then you don't agree with the U I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I do it probably a little different. And what and
Speaker 1: the reason I did is if we want to dive
Speaker 1: into that, like where you place your bait is my
Speaker 1: most successful places I've learned. And I'm not talking to
Speaker 1: hunt a bear. We're talking to kill the mature bear.
Speaker 1: Because you have to out smartest notes just what you're
Speaker 1: talking about, the thurtles and stuff. So the best way
Speaker 1: I found to do it in where we hunt, the
Speaker 1: way the ridges and stuff lay out is I always
Speaker 1: and this forty acres may not have the perfect spot,
Speaker 1: but if I had the perfect spot, here's how it
Speaker 1: is for me. And the two that are most successful
Speaker 1: for me are not exactly identical. The one of our
Speaker 1: farm you've been to is not exactly perfect, but it's close.
Speaker 1: The one that I killed this bear on is the
Speaker 1: best spot I've ever been on. So I get on
Speaker 1: the downhill side, not the bottom of the hill, but
Speaker 1: I like to be on a secondary point that comes
Speaker 1: off a main ridge, a short secondary point thirty or
Speaker 1: forty yards. It just juts off and then it dives
Speaker 1: off right and it's got deep drains on both sides
Speaker 1: of this secondary point. And then it's always on the
Speaker 1: north side of the mountain because we have south southwest
Speaker 1: early fall early fall. But also the bigger thing, like
Speaker 1: you talked about, was the thermals. So I always set
Speaker 1: my baits up on the very end of this secondary
Speaker 1: and not I'm sorry, not my bait, my stand. I
Speaker 1: put the bait up on this secondary point, but I
Speaker 1: set my stand on the slightly downhill side on the
Speaker 1: very end of the secondary point where it's steep. And
Speaker 1: I'm not saying the bears can't come in below or
Speaker 1: behind you, but it didn't there or their path, they're
Speaker 1: most likely they're likely going to come down the main ridge,
Speaker 1: go right around the head of the draw this way
Speaker 1: or this way, come right onto this finger, and they're
Speaker 1: always on the south side of you. And as soon
Speaker 1: as the sun starts sitting behind the trees, the thermal
Speaker 1: starts sucking your scent off that point down those two
Speaker 1: draws down in the valley below. And if that's why
Speaker 1: we hired him the brains man, So that's a good,
Speaker 1: really good description. Typically the and the way you would
Speaker 1: do that is because we're baiting on private property that's
Speaker 1: really close to national forest. I mean usually the fence
Speaker 1: ain't far, you know, fifty sixty yards, but we're on
Speaker 1: private property. You're baiting here, you're the bears typically aren't
Speaker 1: gonna be behind you in that situation anyway, because your
Speaker 1: private properties down there, they're coming from this bigger block
Speaker 1: of national forest, right and so they're coming from that direction.
Speaker 1: So you get your uh south wind, then you get
Speaker 1: your thermal shift and it sucks your sent off down
Speaker 1: behind you, and I mean you rarely ever. I mean
Speaker 1: as long as your winds right and your thermals are good,
Speaker 1: you rarely ever gets winded. And that that's how I've
Speaker 1: tried to set up all the two and in the
Speaker 1: one of our farming exactly like that. We are on
Speaker 1: the downhill that you've been to of a secondary point.
Speaker 1: It's not as steep as I would want it, but
Speaker 1: I don't have anywhere else to put it so because
Speaker 1: we've run out of private property. Right. The theme of
Speaker 1: what you're saying is is that you need to think
Speaker 1: about where you're putting it back. You need to think
Speaker 1: about I'm not down in the bottom bottom. I'm up high,
Speaker 1: but I'm not on the tip of the ridge. I
Speaker 1: get on the kind of the bottom into that secondary
Speaker 1: point and have the thermal stuck my sin away and
Speaker 1: down the drains behind me, and try to keep the
Speaker 1: bears above me right. And then also you can be
Speaker 1: twenty of you know, twenty foot in a tree and
Speaker 1: your baits over here at eighteen yards. Well it's up
Speaker 1: a little bit anyway, so it's just it ain't straight.
Speaker 1: But I think it's worth saying that we're all hunting
Speaker 1: in the evenings. Yeah, and bow during that time of
Speaker 1: your tall bow. That's right, you know, if we've got
Speaker 1: to be close and we are primarily hunting in the
Speaker 1: evening time, I mean, like almost nine even do you
Speaker 1: all your hunts in the evening. I've called you on
Speaker 1: open morning to bear season and you were drinking coffee.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the way I have to open a
Speaker 1: day a bear season. I sleep in, we hunt him
Speaker 1: in evening, and we do that on purpose because these
Speaker 1: big bears are feeding overnight. And if you try to
Speaker 1: slip it this this is a little bit off topic
Speaker 1: from where to place a bait, but I wanna say,
Speaker 1: because it's not in my notes. People all the time
Speaker 1: ask me, well, maybe we would get into wind hunt.
Speaker 1: If you're hunting a big bear, don't even risk hunting
Speaker 1: him in the morning. Now, you might kill him in
Speaker 1: the morning, but there's a better chance that you're gonna
Speaker 1: spook him off the bait, or you're gonna spook bears.
Speaker 1: And so all the big bears we've killed have been
Speaker 1: in the evening time, and we choose not to hunt
Speaker 1: in the morning because those bears are in there all night.
Speaker 1: So if you're trying to slip in there with a
Speaker 1: flashlight before daylight. They're still debate. There's still at debate.
Speaker 1: May not be the one you want to kill, but
Speaker 1: there's a bear debate. You're gonna bump off there. It's
Speaker 1: gonna make a noise and racket and going in there
Speaker 1: and the dark, the flashlight the most unnatural thing you
Speaker 1: could do, right And and even if you don't bump
Speaker 1: the target bear, he that I'm pointing at a five
Speaker 1: pound bear amounted over here. He got that big because
Speaker 1: he took cues social cues from that bear is bedded
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty yards away. He hears a bear
Speaker 1: wolf and run off and you know he goes down
Speaker 1: when a check and he's like, yep, that fools into
Speaker 1: tree stand. You know, we're talking about mature bears. But
Speaker 1: certain people might just have access to flat ground, might
Speaker 1: just be a pine timber stand and there's no kind
Speaker 1: of features and you know, only maybe we'll drive right
Speaker 1: to the side of the road and have to backpack
Speaker 1: something in and not saying don't go try it, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, if that's all you got, you gotta do,
Speaker 1: but maybe understand the lay of the forest that's leading
Speaker 1: in to this property to give you an idea where
Speaker 1: you want to maybe put some bait and you know,
Speaker 1: hanger stand. But yeah, not everybody's gonna have prime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm just talking from experience on the property I hunt.
Speaker 1: If you put me on a flat forty acres, I
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't know where to put the ba that's where,
Speaker 1: And that's where these guys that like baite up in
Speaker 1: Michigan and different places, Like they're using terrain features of
Speaker 1: the swamp, like you know, they're backing up against a
Speaker 1: big swamp that you know, the bears aren't gonna come
Speaker 1: from that direction. And so the point of hearing the
Speaker 1: Heath dissect how he sets up his bait sites is
Speaker 1: that you can do the same thing on your land
Speaker 1: for whatever it is, Like you just gotta think about it.
Speaker 1: You can't. You don't set a bear if you want
Speaker 1: to kill big bears, you don't set a bear bait
Speaker 1: based upon ease of access for you. That's the biggest thing.
Speaker 1: Like when I've helped people, it's like, man, we gotta
Speaker 1: find a place I can drive the truck and it's easy.
Speaker 1: And now granted that's nice, and most of the places
Speaker 1: I can drive a truck where I go. But like
Speaker 1: the point of it is not for you. The point
Speaker 1: is where is that bear comfortable in the daytime? Because
Speaker 1: you're asking that bear to do a lot a big bear.
Speaker 1: You're asking him to come into a feeding area in
Speaker 1: the broad daylight, in a place that he knows there's
Speaker 1: a human involved. That's the thing that's so different about
Speaker 1: this than deer hunting. A deer hunting situation, you know
Speaker 1: that deer doesn't know there's a human around. Ultra ninja
Speaker 1: stealth is what you're trying to do, especially if you're
Speaker 1: not hunting over feet or something. But with this bear,
Speaker 1: that big five pound bear knows there is a human involved.
Speaker 1: You can't really hide that, at least around here when
Speaker 1: it's so hot, and their nose is better than a
Speaker 1: deer's nose, right, I mean, we've had this. This is
Speaker 1: a whole another story. But you know, I know you
Speaker 1: killed the big bear finally on the Red Knicks sent Typeline.
Speaker 1: You know, for a few years, we had that conversation
Speaker 1: for years. I'm like, Clay, the best way to kill
Speaker 1: bears in a blind, But I'm not find a blind
Speaker 1: just to go bear hunt, because you gotta full their nose.
Speaker 1: So that's why I kind of did what I started
Speaker 1: doing on the end of them points and ridges, was
Speaker 1: just using the thermals as much as I could to
Speaker 1: try to help my sin. But yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: gotta full their nose. And I mean these beards, I
Speaker 1: mean they sit out there and listen. You know, this
Speaker 1: bear here came up and just happened. I could see him,
Speaker 1: you know, probably not thirty minutes but twenty minutes before dark,
Speaker 1: and he just sat there like a dog just listen,
Speaker 1: you know, sixties seven out there, way out there, yeah,
Speaker 1: a hundred yards probably a hundred and twenty. And then
Speaker 1: it just had to be kind of an opening through
Speaker 1: the woods that I catched him, you know. And then
Speaker 1: he'd get up and I'm like, oh, here it comes.
Speaker 1: He'd take like two steps, he'd sit back down, listen
Speaker 1: and sniff around and listen, and you know, well, by
Speaker 1: the time he came to a hundred yards is almost
Speaker 1: a dark I couldn't see him, right, Well, I saw that,
Speaker 1: But had I not seen that, I wouldn't have know.
Speaker 1: You know, you wouldn't know. And they're just they're different
Speaker 1: than a little two pounder that just comes walking in
Speaker 1: because he wants see a donut the whole there personality.
Speaker 1: So and he may I mean, and you know, he
Speaker 1: may have been bedded just a hundred fifty yards all day.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but he could have been the whole time.
Speaker 1: That is my my persuasion on what they're doing when
Speaker 1: they're pounding a bear bait, going far far meant. So
Speaker 1: last year we tracked a bear that we tracked a
Speaker 1: bear that we didn't recover um and we we went
Speaker 1: off of this bear bait and hit a bear trail
Speaker 1: and this bear just went straight off the side of
Speaker 1: the mountain. And I mean it was like following a
Speaker 1: cattle trail and we're seeing this little specks of blood
Speaker 1: and we pretty much knew this bear wasn't that hurt.
Speaker 1: It was a it was a different hunter I was helping.
Speaker 1: And that bear went right to a place that looked
Speaker 1: like the bear holiday in Really it was down in
Speaker 1: a super steep draw paw paw patch with boulders and
Speaker 1: is the nastiest place on the side of that mountain.
Speaker 1: And he had a spot war out on the ground,
Speaker 1: I mean as big as you know, we're I don't know,
Speaker 1: he spent a lot of time right there. It was
Speaker 1: his bedroom two and fifty yards from the bait side,
Speaker 1: and he just woke up, went to the bait, went
Speaker 1: laid back down. He had no reason to go anywhere.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I'm sure this bear is doing the same.
Speaker 1: I didn't follow Australia, but he wasn't go on a
Speaker 1: couple hundred yards, you know. And that's why this is
Speaker 1: another topic. But being consistent on later your question. On
Speaker 1: the opening day of season, they hear you when you
Speaker 1: go bait them bat, I mean when you go bat
Speaker 1: and stuff, and so if you're at a routine, they
Speaker 1: can figure that out, you know, and it may just
Speaker 1: cause them to come in thirty minutes later because they're
Speaker 1: being extra cautious or something, you know. So I mean
Speaker 1: I might when I go bait. Well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: that baiting routine. That's a great that's a key key
Speaker 1: point for killing big bears. Go ahead, Well, most debates
Speaker 1: I set up are steeping rugged my two most cessed ones.
Speaker 1: But I do have them set up because let me
Speaker 1: kind of back up a little bit. The population has
Speaker 1: gotten so large where we hunt most people I don't
Speaker 1: think would believe us. But the last time I truly
Speaker 1: baited hard. I had forty different bears hitting three bait sets.
Speaker 1: So the sheer volume of bait. We have to put
Speaker 1: out two feed forty bears for two weeks or thirty
Speaker 1: days or whatever you decide to bait to try to
Speaker 1: have one there come opening day. You can't carry all
Speaker 1: that in. So I can't drive a truck to any well,
Speaker 1: I can't drive a truck to anyone, but I can
Speaker 1: drive a side by sat so and they get used
Speaker 1: to that. You know, you go in there, you drive
Speaker 1: the subpside. At my bait sets, I put two fifty
Speaker 1: five gallon barrels of bait plumbfoil. You're stacking it on top.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying every year is exactly like that,
Speaker 1: But on a good baiting year, they're eating all that
Speaker 1: in a couple of days. And you're saying good baiting year,
Speaker 1: you mean not much mass baits really hard to absolutely
Speaker 1: when there's a lot of activity at a bait you
Speaker 1: know some years is gonna be less for the very reason.
Speaker 1: But when you do hit it perfect and all the
Speaker 1: bears are hitting your bait, man that year, I was
Speaker 1: filling up that much bait every other day or it
Speaker 1: was bones dry empty, not because I wanted to, It
Speaker 1: was we had to put out that much bait to
Speaker 1: keep bears coming. So I drive the sube beside and
Speaker 1: there you beat and bang around you. I use metal
Speaker 1: barrels just because I can chain them to the tree,
Speaker 1: and they got the lid on bolt the ring down,
Speaker 1: so they don't you know, right, And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it's the best. That's just what I do. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do that on opening day. I'm not gonna have
Speaker 1: Opening Day be a day I miss right. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get up, I'm wanna drink coffee whatever. At mid day,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go check the but cameras to see if
Speaker 1: my bears still coming. Was he there last night before dark?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna refresh debait and make noise, just through my
Speaker 1: normal routine, because just like we said, he's probably laying
Speaker 1: out there if you're still there and hadn't left for
Speaker 1: the mask crot yet, he's not far. I guarantee he
Speaker 1: can hear that a TV. And you're banging on that
Speaker 1: barrel when you are making putting that bait you're at.
Speaker 1: So I don't really try to be quiet when I'm
Speaker 1: putting that bait, don't I mean, I don't may not
Speaker 1: trying to hide your sin. I don't try to maybe
Speaker 1: make too much extra noise. But I bang around and
Speaker 1: do my stuff and clink the barrel and hit it
Speaker 1: with a stick sometimes. And I got a funny story
Speaker 1: about that in canadaate. Uh So that's what I do.
Speaker 1: Then we leave and then just try to slip in there,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of hours before dark or whatever
Speaker 1: time we want to go in that day. Then where's
Speaker 1: stealth about getting in there at that time? You know?
Speaker 1: But the middlen't want them to know. But the middle
Speaker 1: of the day, I want him to thank just another day. Man,
Speaker 1: he's come beating and banging. Barrels are full of donuts.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go eat tonight. You have a lot of
Speaker 1: your mature bears come in that evening the day you
Speaker 1: Bathe see that's let me uh so, let me go
Speaker 1: back to baiting routine and then then we can jump
Speaker 1: right into the day. But I think when you're baiting
Speaker 1: a bear, so you're you're trying to create this safe
Speaker 1: zone where this bear feels comfortable coming into your bait.
Speaker 1: And so the more consistent you can be the better,
Speaker 1: like even in terms of timing, because what people run
Speaker 1: into is that they have jobs and they can't bait
Speaker 1: until like evening time. Um, you know, And I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna describe best case scenario, and people can craft this
Speaker 1: to fit their life. But I think this is pretty
Speaker 1: best case scenario type stuff. Is that I only bait
Speaker 1: my really good spots between about eleven and two during
Speaker 1: the day. And I would rather miss a day of
Speaker 1: baiting than to go in there at seven o'clock in
Speaker 1: the evening and blow that bear out. I won't do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so it's like the more the more it's the
Speaker 1: more predictable that you are, the more predictable your big
Speaker 1: bears you're going to be there because if you if
Speaker 1: he's in there strutting around at six thirty in the
Speaker 1: afternoon thinking about what a great life he has and
Speaker 1: all this bait, and for the last ten days you've
Speaker 1: only been in there at mid day, and he's like, man,
Speaker 1: that guy coming back to the bar, and then you
Speaker 1: roll up on the side by side day after tomorrow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you roll up and blow him out of there. Man,
Speaker 1: you've spooked that now the tuner pound bear, that he's
Speaker 1: gonna sit out there and watch. He doesn't care. That
Speaker 1: guy right there pointing to the big bear over there,
Speaker 1: he cares. He's probably consistency. He's either going nocturnal or
Speaker 1: he's not coming back that time here. Now, you might
Speaker 1: get away with that thirty days before season. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: the closer we get the season and you get a
Speaker 1: photo period coming into play, another stuff, he's gone. They
Speaker 1: get touch here. That's a great point. They get touchy
Speaker 1: at least here. Man. Like, right now, you could and
Speaker 1: we could legally bait bears right now in Arkansas because
Speaker 1: we're under thirty days out. You could go out right
Speaker 1: now and make bear baiting look easy. That's right. You
Speaker 1: can put out acrons aren't falling it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: bears would just speak two weeks earlier and coming in
Speaker 1: the daytime. And then the closer you get to that
Speaker 1: end of September, more mass becomes available. These bears have
Speaker 1: this in eight draw to want to get back into
Speaker 1: their natural fall ranges. And boy, you mess up just
Speaker 1: a little bit. You can screw the thing up with
Speaker 1: the big bears. Absolutely, But so the timing stuff or
Speaker 1: the consistency stuff, that's kind of my best ideas on
Speaker 1: it is just be as consistent as possible. And if
Speaker 1: you can only bait in the evening times, if you
Speaker 1: work and you can only do it, just do it
Speaker 1: the same every time, just don't you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: just be consistent with whatever you do. You don't want
Speaker 1: to surprise that bear. But that's my thoughts on it.
Speaker 1: The last couple hours of daylight is their time, and
Speaker 1: the last thing you want to do is have him
Speaker 1: nervous or on his toes, you know, trying to win
Speaker 1: constantly or yeah you don't. You don't want to ruin
Speaker 1: that that time in the evening. Well we're it a
Speaker 1: little bit out of order, but that's fine. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about Heath brought up like the day of the hunt,
Speaker 1: what do you and that was great. So you're gonna
Speaker 1: go in and bait like normal, check cameras, bait, do
Speaker 1: the normal stuff, because yeah, I just think being consistent
Speaker 1: like that, because like I said on those I'm not
Speaker 1: bating every day, I'm bating the least every other day,
Speaker 1: you know. But and I usually try to time it
Speaker 1: out where I don't bait the day before and I
Speaker 1: do bait the day of season. So it's stays routine.
Speaker 1: We're not saying that every year just depends on work
Speaker 1: and stuff too, but um, yeah, I just think being
Speaker 1: routine like that it's just key. Yeah. What about you, Ryan?
Speaker 1: What do you do? I usually bait the day before
Speaker 1: season rules in bait real heavy, uh for me and
Speaker 1: where I'm hunting. It seems like the mature bears don't
Speaker 1: want to come in as early. I mean some years
Speaker 1: they do, but I've always done the day before season
Speaker 1: bait real heavy the day of which you know, we
Speaker 1: probably all got cell cameras out nowadays and not me.
Speaker 1: I'm a traditionalist. Yeah, I don't I understand, but you
Speaker 1: know I usually go in here. What I said, I
Speaker 1: just threw you under the bus. I said. You probably
Speaker 1: use a crossbowt too, don't you know. I ain't that
Speaker 1: old yet, but now usually, you know, slip in mid
Speaker 1: day and I maybe a little stealthier than other people.
Speaker 1: I will usually try to find a water puddle or
Speaker 1: if not, I'll grind my boots even though what I
Speaker 1: think they're clean. I will grind them in a cedar
Speaker 1: limb or a pine limb, just a little natural cover
Speaker 1: scent when I'm walking in which I have bears that
Speaker 1: will come down my baiting path to the bait, you know,
Speaker 1: depending on which way the wind is. But I won't
Speaker 1: touch any saplings, won't touch any foliage. My hands don't
Speaker 1: touch anything but what I'm carrying. And I will ease
Speaker 1: up at tree, just climb tree, stand without your hands. No, no,
Speaker 1: I just feed only, feed only. But you know, elevator
Speaker 1: No like a like a punch of button. And I
Speaker 1: wish I don't own one of them rednext stands like
Speaker 1: you like those rich guys. But now I slip in
Speaker 1: just as quiet as a mouse, and you go ninja
Speaker 1: on him on it. I do don't always work, but
Speaker 1: that's just, you know, makes me feel better about time.
Speaker 1: So what I have a trend I've seen Heath with
Speaker 1: my bears is that I feel like the big bears,
Speaker 1: like he's saying, we'll hit it hard. As the day
Speaker 1: after I bait. I find a lot of times the
Speaker 1: big ones on the day I'm there are more nervous
Speaker 1: to come in. But the second day it's like plenty
Speaker 1: of bait because they probably came in that night and
Speaker 1: they know the barrels are full. So the next day
Speaker 1: they're hammering it, you know, and so I usually I
Speaker 1: usually like debait the day before full throttle, just make noise,
Speaker 1: leave scent, and then slip in like a ninjut about
Speaker 1: two o'clock, you know. And I usually that's why I
Speaker 1: usually do like shooting light around that time of year.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it seems like it's getting dark about seven,
Speaker 1: seven fifteen, and so I'll try to get in way
Speaker 1: before peak movement. You know. It seems like I always
Speaker 1: end up trying to get in there about two, well,
Speaker 1: about three o'clock, and said, the last four hours, and
Speaker 1: you know, the last hour is really when you're gonna
Speaker 1: kill one. But you don't want to get in there
Speaker 1: too late or you'll bump bears. Uh, quick question, do
Speaker 1: y'all ever like have these rogue bears that just sometimes
Speaker 1: they'll roll in at noon or one o'clock and big ones, Yeah,
Speaker 1: big whoppers. You know, the booner I killed in two
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen, two thousand sixteen, I never hardly got any
Speaker 1: nighttime pictures of that bear. Daylight every hour of the
Speaker 1: day he was guarding that bait site. I studied my
Speaker 1: pictures for a long time, and from one o'clock to
Speaker 1: two o'clock I never hardly get any pictures of him,
Speaker 1: So I thought that opening day, I'm sneaking in right
Speaker 1: at one o'clock and I want to ease in there
Speaker 1: without bumping him off. He come in as I was
Speaker 1: walking into the bait. Yeah, so I remember that you
Speaker 1: shot him off the ground. Yeah. I was able to
Speaker 1: took my boots off and socked feet and snuck up
Speaker 1: there with the like nine yards and got airly in. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know everything that's unusual though, I'd say that's
Speaker 1: highly unusual for a bit, especially at Boon. Every three
Speaker 1: or four years, I always have this one mature bear
Speaker 1: that just does something opposite of what it know what
Speaker 1: that is really what we're trying to capitalize on. It's like,
Speaker 1: you can bait for ten years. In three of those years,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a bear that just really cooperates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there rest time. It's just they're all like humans. They
Speaker 1: all have their own personality and the way they want
Speaker 1: to do things. You know, they're all different and they
Speaker 1: all and I think a lot of it depends on
Speaker 1: what people may not think about, is their previous experience
Speaker 1: at a baits that somewhere else exactly now our baits
Speaker 1: that probably if he's that old, that bear was nine,
Speaker 1: but on that bear was way older. They've been debates
Speaker 1: that somewhere before. You know, how many human encounters have
Speaker 1: they had on bait? Have they been shot at before
Speaker 1: and missed or run off to or three times with
Speaker 1: a n a TV or you know who knows? So
Speaker 1: in their mind, we don't know what they're thinking because
Speaker 1: we don't have a clue what first off, how old
Speaker 1: they even are, and how many years of experience they've
Speaker 1: had at somebody else's bait who don't know maybe what
Speaker 1: they're doing or is not as careful or whatever. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you just don't know. Yeah, Well, what we
Speaker 1: do know is that they they program, they understand your patterns,
Speaker 1: probably better than you understand your own. Well, that's why
Speaker 1: I talked about the consistency. Yeah, baiting on time, making
Speaker 1: the noise, and it makes them comfortable slide you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, absolutely, I agree. I mean I killed
Speaker 1: a bear and alberta one year. One day we weren't
Speaker 1: seeing anything, and uh, I climbed out of the tree
Speaker 1: and got a stick and banged on the barrel and
Speaker 1: climb back and standing before I got to stand bear
Speaker 1: come walking in. You know, there wasn't no bait in it,
Speaker 1: but I banged on the barrel with the stick, and
Speaker 1: they were conditioned to that noise that somebody'd been there
Speaker 1: to bait. Yeah. Yeah, I'm like, I'm about to go
Speaker 1: bang on the sparrel. I'm talking not seeing nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it worked then it wouldn't you know. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's gonna work every time you do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool. You know, everybody's bears are gonna respond
Speaker 1: different tube based upon where they're at. I mean, like
Speaker 1: those Canadian bears are like, especially the willerscious right, they're
Speaker 1: no's cautious. These bears down here are gonna be pretty cautious.
Speaker 1: A lot of places in the US where people are baiting, Maine, Michigan, Idaho.
Speaker 1: I mean you almost had to hunt these bear like deer,
Speaker 1: you know. But when Canada, boy, you can just about
Speaker 1: anything goes and if you're hunting younger. But you know,
Speaker 1: I remember one time we called in a bear in
Speaker 1: Arkansas by called in. I got my air quotes up here,
Speaker 1: Me and a buddy, we're hunting, uh Lee Walt, my buddy,
Speaker 1: Lee Walt. We're hunting, and we hunted the morning that
Speaker 1: years when I first he just could only hunt one
Speaker 1: day or something. We hunt. We did hunt the morning.
Speaker 1: He just wanted a bear and we didn't have a
Speaker 1: big bear at this bait. We just had average bears.
Speaker 1: We went in there in the morning, it's out there
Speaker 1: for an hour and a half, didn't see any bears,
Speaker 1: and I said, stay here. I climbed out of the tree,
Speaker 1: went and got the truck, drove the truck in there,
Speaker 1: slammed the door, drove the truck back out, walked back in,
Speaker 1: and in twenty minutes eat shot a bear. Bear came in.
Speaker 1: I mean, he thought, you know, it's your routine. He thought,
Speaker 1: you just made it the barrel just like hogs on
Speaker 1: a feeder. You know, when it spins here they come.
Speaker 1: So that wouldn't have worked on five pound bears though
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have worked at all. Hey, this is this
Speaker 1: is all good stuff. Let's march down our list. So
Speaker 1: how far in advance you gutts start feeding bears. Some
Speaker 1: states have regulations that you can only you know, you'll
Speaker 1: need to check your rags on the states like here
Speaker 1: in Arkansas can bait thirty days before season in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: There's no regulation on season. In Idaho. I believe some
Speaker 1: of those places out there you can only bait like
Speaker 1: seven days before season. But what's your thoughts a new bait?
Speaker 1: Probably as soon as possible. Okay, we'll see check inventory
Speaker 1: established baits. It's been there for years and years. You know,
Speaker 1: bears are already there. You know, two weeks, three weeks,
Speaker 1: that's should be ample, because it seems like like the
Speaker 1: rational thought would be, well, I'm gonna bait him as
Speaker 1: long as possible. If if you can start baiting in June,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start baiting in June. But there's a law
Speaker 1: of limited return, you know on a deal like this,
Speaker 1: Like there's a sweet spot because I found y'all tell
Speaker 1: me if you've we've all had these conversations together over
Speaker 1: the years, but it's all kind of blurred together. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's hard to keep a single big bear
Speaker 1: for much more than about ten to fourteen days. I've
Speaker 1: never had a five hundred pound bear that just stayed
Speaker 1: on my bait for thirty straight days. They'll burn out,
Speaker 1: just like you. I mean, you don't want to eat
Speaker 1: steak every single that of the week. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know most people don't, you know, I mean, you can
Speaker 1: only eat Chinese buffet so many nights, weak, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, So yeah, I agree, I think they
Speaker 1: do get burnt out. I think there's a little more
Speaker 1: technical set of that question. For me. Is is based
Speaker 1: on wind, season is and when the mask falls. To me,
Speaker 1: you have to start baiting long enough in advance to
Speaker 1: get the bears on there before the mast falls first
Speaker 1: rat So then if the mast is falling or where
Speaker 1: we are acorns when I say mass, that's our mask,
Speaker 1: you know. But if I don't get him there before,
Speaker 1: then I'm probably not getting him there right. So you know,
Speaker 1: we've had seasons varying and opening dates throughout history. So
Speaker 1: my process that's kind of changed based on that. So
Speaker 1: now the way the season structure is, I would probably
Speaker 1: try to bait a little longer than previously, just because
Speaker 1: I know I gotta I gotta get them there before
Speaker 1: they can fall, and then I got to try to
Speaker 1: hold them all the way to season. Right. If not,
Speaker 1: if the season was a little earlier and I knew
Speaker 1: I only had some I mean I knew I had
Speaker 1: then X amount of days before season, I would do
Speaker 1: it as short, you know, two weeks. Really, like he said,
Speaker 1: established baits if they can ain't falling, you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. I mean, really, thirty days is just
Speaker 1: too much time. You had a scenario one year. I
Speaker 1: remember when we were both trying to do these shorter
Speaker 1: baits when you didn't have bears, so you we you
Speaker 1: kind of got burned. But I remember that year because
Speaker 1: we were talking about it. We're like, man, we're just
Speaker 1: gonna bait ten days now. I don't think I ever
Speaker 1: had a bear command, and so the bears that already
Speaker 1: they may have heath, they may have even moved off
Speaker 1: to other baits. True, somebody started bating before you, or
Speaker 1: you know, even an established bait. That may be because
Speaker 1: of season changed the year or two before. We had
Speaker 1: started bating at x date. And then now we're well,
Speaker 1: I'm only ten days before season, but the season was
Speaker 1: two weeks later. You're saying, we've season that roll two
Speaker 1: week period. So the bears may have came by before
Speaker 1: we started baiting. They're nothing here. I'm going down to
Speaker 1: the southern bait, right. So I think it depends. Actually
Speaker 1: answered your question, I don't want to have to bait
Speaker 1: any bear thirty days because with the volume bears we have,
Speaker 1: they just take too much bait to keep them there.
Speaker 1: Here's the answer, the least amount of time you can, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: but I mean you don't. But you have to do
Speaker 1: it early enough to get your bears on your bats right.
Speaker 1: So that's the key at all. We're all working inside
Speaker 1: of a real world where none of us just have
Speaker 1: it's not our full time job debate bears. So it's
Speaker 1: like you have a limited amount of bait. There's only
Speaker 1: so much bait you've got, there's only so much time
Speaker 1: you've got. There's only you know. So it's like finding
Speaker 1: that sweet spot in some of the places Ryan's got.
Speaker 1: I think he could probably go in five days before
Speaker 1: season and put out a bait better spots and staying
Speaker 1: baits that have been a state of sever many years. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: as long as the akrons aren't following. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of guys, especially some of these guys that's just
Speaker 1: getting into it, they want to look at pictures and
Speaker 1: the baiting process that's part of the fun, that's part
Speaker 1: of it, and they want to see bear pictures as
Speaker 1: soon as possible. And you can't and you know that yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean everybody wants to do that. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: if if it's somewhere you know there's gonna be bears,
Speaker 1: and say you've already been in there and done your
Speaker 1: tree standing work, trimmed out some lanes or something. You're
Speaker 1: already seeing padded doubt trails and stuff, so you know
Speaker 1: there's to me, there's no reason to go ahead and
Speaker 1: start baiting thirty days, four seasons. But if a guy
Speaker 1: who just wants to kill a bear, then by all
Speaker 1: means do it. But when we're talking about four five sick,
Speaker 1: hundred pound bears, here's the here's the best case scenario.
Speaker 1: If I go to some one of my baits and
Speaker 1: I put out a bait on August twenty nine and
Speaker 1: I see my target bear show up there the day
Speaker 1: I put out bait, I kind of cringe a little bit.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna be there, and I'm just like, what
Speaker 1: are the chances I want to hold him for a month.
Speaker 1: Best case scenario, and this has happened many times, is
Speaker 1: my target bear shows up about a week before season,
Speaker 1: after I've been baiting for about ten days or two weeks,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, I told him for a week.
Speaker 1: You know that's ideal. Um, So I had got even
Speaker 1: more ideal is two or three days before. This was
Speaker 1: a long story. Back when I very first started, I
Speaker 1: shot and didn't recover a big bear several years ago,
Speaker 1: one the only times I've ever had this happen, and
Speaker 1: he showed up. And I can go through pictures and
Speaker 1: show you this too, but at least for me, I
Speaker 1: don't know what you guess. See, but if a big
Speaker 1: bear comes to my bait whenever the first time he
Speaker 1: comes to the bait that year, I guarantee you he'll
Speaker 1: be there in daylight the next day. Every time I
Speaker 1: had the big bear I shot show up. We'd baited
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks and there wasn't really any big
Speaker 1: bears that you're kind of odd. A big bear showed
Speaker 1: up the night before season and he and the only
Speaker 1: reason I knew that was I went in the first
Speaker 1: day season when ahead and baited midday, checked cameras, pulled
Speaker 1: the card on my Holy cal there's a big bear.
Speaker 1: He came in right after dark. I don't ever may
Speaker 1: have been the middle of the night, but he came
Speaker 1: in that night first time and been there. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: that bear be here in daylight today, I guarantee you.
Speaker 1: So we were planning on hunting somewhere else. Totally switched
Speaker 1: a game plan and I did shoot the bear, but
Speaker 1: it was back when I was I was twenty five
Speaker 1: feet in the tree and he was right here, and
Speaker 1: I I hed. Yeah, I wasn't a fatal shot. It
Speaker 1: was a rookie mistake. Young bear hunter still kind of
Speaker 1: learned what to do, you know. And so I he
Speaker 1: was a big He wasn't five hundred, but he was
Speaker 1: probably four d he was. Yeah, I remember he was
Speaker 1: a big bear. So I see that too. So you're right.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you could time it out to where
Speaker 1: season stars just two or three days after them big
Speaker 1: bears get there, I think your chance of killing them.
Speaker 1: That's happened. That seems to happen pretty regularly. Uh, A
Speaker 1: big bear they killed in Oklahoma the first year. That
Speaker 1: was the first year I hunted over there. But uh,
Speaker 1: I called it a no name bear because he showed
Speaker 1: up the day before season. I didn't have a name
Speaker 1: for him. I had, you know, all these other bears
Speaker 1: that I knew, and they were big bears, and uh,
Speaker 1: he was. He came in the Opening Day like nothing.
Speaker 1: You know, I've also had an Opening day bear bite me,
Speaker 1: not literally, but two years ago, No, last year, when
Speaker 1: I was hunting with the river at the mule bait,
Speaker 1: which is a remote bait we used our mules to access.
Speaker 1: We showed up Opening day and that morning at ten o'clock.
Speaker 1: Were there at like one o'clock. We've wrote our mules
Speaker 1: in there and I checked the card and there is
Speaker 1: a monster that showed up that morning at ten o'clock
Speaker 1: and stayed at debait. And I told driver, I said
Speaker 1: that bear will be here. I mean he's he's within
Speaker 1: two or fifty yards. I was right now. The problem
Speaker 1: was is that it was his first time to debate,
Speaker 1: and we hadn't been there in two or three days.
Speaker 1: So he came into that bait and never smelled a human,
Speaker 1: and he came in. We watched him. I saw him.
Speaker 1: He came in at like three thirty and got forty
Speaker 1: yards down the wind of us, smelled us, and never
Speaker 1: came back to the bait again. Now, if he had
Speaker 1: been there and three hours after we had baited three
Speaker 1: days before and he had been like, huh, there's a
Speaker 1: human over here, but look at this good food. Do
Speaker 1: you see the scenario. I mean, like he it was
Speaker 1: a perfect timing for him to nail us out of
Speaker 1: your control or to that. But so you you you
Speaker 1: want them. These big bears have to know. And in
Speaker 1: that particular spot that was so remote, those bears acted
Speaker 1: like Canadian bears almost a big bear that river shot
Speaker 1: and didn't recover, smelled us, looked at us in the
Speaker 1: tree and just shrud it in like nothing. He just
Speaker 1: kind of cautiously came in down wind that color phase
Speaker 1: bear like anyway. That wasn't normal either. He usually would
Speaker 1: have winded us and left. He winded us. It was
Speaker 1: just kind of like very up in the tree. But anyway,
Speaker 1: pretty wild. That's odd though. You're not gonna have that
Speaker 1: happened very often. That's odd. And you kick yourself because
Speaker 1: you're like, man, we should have done something different, but
Speaker 1: you don't know. I mean, I just don't happen very often, right, Okay, man,
Speaker 1: this is a great discussion. Okay, let's talk about what
Speaker 1: type of bait, what type of bait, what do you
Speaker 1: put out? Whatever you can come up with. I will
Speaker 1: say in the fall, you're probably gonna try to do
Speaker 1: more carbo hydrates. Than anything. That's what they're geared forward
Speaker 1: and the falls to put on. You still use beavers
Speaker 1: quite a bit here, not as much. I tell you what.
Speaker 1: When the bait's hot and heavy, you got lots of
Speaker 1: bears coming in, they will just carpet bomb up beaver carcass.
Speaker 1: But if there's not a lot of bears and that
Speaker 1: thing starts doing rancid it, they don't like it. It's
Speaker 1: vice versas in Canada. I mean them guys will use
Speaker 1: rancid meat up bear and the bears are just distroy
Speaker 1: feast on it down here. Once you get some stink
Speaker 1: to it and maggots and you just got a big mess.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. But on the years where there's not a
Speaker 1: lot of masks and they're hammering your baits, if you
Speaker 1: got a beaver carcass, man, it's icing on the cake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see, I would have u Now, I've never I've
Speaker 1: never put a beaver out in Arkhams so, but I've
Speaker 1: heard of guys doing it and bears not hitting it here.
Speaker 1: Now in Canada they'll go crazy. But okay, walk me
Speaker 1: through what you put on your bait. Just just list
Speaker 1: out the stuff. Uh, pastries, mostly pastries, Just like doughnuts.
Speaker 1: You're getting donut bread, bread that you're this, you know,
Speaker 1: bread from a thrift store or something, white bread, wheat bread, bagels,
Speaker 1: peter bread. Like people ask these kind of questions. We
Speaker 1: we know because we've filtered through it all for other
Speaker 1: of you. But any of that stuff they'll eat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to interest you know, corn dog food
Speaker 1: whatever a ga. Okay, now you're the one that taught
Speaker 1: me about a corn barrel. So Ryan will have probably
Speaker 1: two metal barrels, and we'll go ahead and say all
Speaker 1: of us are using metal barrels. I'm cutting the eight
Speaker 1: inch hole above the lowest ring, trying get a barrel
Speaker 1: that's got a top, like he said that you can
Speaker 1: screw together and you were just chaining that to a tree.
Speaker 1: Or you can put eyebolts off the back of this
Speaker 1: barrel and chain it to a tree. That's there's no
Speaker 1: secret to that. Some places you can't use metal barrels.
Speaker 1: You gotta use stumps and stuff like a natural or
Speaker 1: like a natural so you know, check your regulations. Most
Speaker 1: places you can use metal barrels. Plastic barrel is just
Speaker 1: the same, but plastic barrels usually the lid is not
Speaker 1: as good as usually so, or they don't have a
Speaker 1: removable lid. Anyway, we're all using metal barrels. Just cut
Speaker 1: use the saws off and just cut about eight inch
Speaker 1: hole down towards the bottom. But ryan, Um, We'll take
Speaker 1: a fifty five gallon drum, a two inch circular metal saw,
Speaker 1: put two inch holes maybe seven or eight around the
Speaker 1: base of that barrel, eyebolt coming off the back of
Speaker 1: the with some big washers and an eyebolt, chain it
Speaker 1: to a tree. Fill it with three pound as a
Speaker 1: corn and pour about two gallons of grease with Northwood's
Speaker 1: gold rush in it, and you have a a corn
Speaker 1: roller barrel when everything else is gone, that's still gonna
Speaker 1: be there, just to keep them interesting, because they'll they'll
Speaker 1: they'll they'll high grade debate, they'll go, they'll hit and
Speaker 1: different bears are different. But you know they're probably gonna
Speaker 1: eat the doughnuts and the bread and the sardines or
Speaker 1: whatever you put out first. And then if they just
Speaker 1: pound it, you still got this grease barrel that they'll
Speaker 1: come in and roll around. And last year it takes
Speaker 1: it takes more time to Yeah, they get a roll
Speaker 1: it around a little bit falls out. Yep, yep. And
Speaker 1: you know, certain years it's better than others. Like I said,
Speaker 1: when there's not much natural food, they will pound the corn.
Speaker 1: But some years they don't want to touch it as much.
Speaker 1: You know, it varies from year to year. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so bread, grease, dog food, dog food, old sweets. I've
Speaker 1: used gum worms, skittles. Uh, yeah, you name it. I mean, heath,
Speaker 1: what do you use the same thing? I mean, I
Speaker 1: you know, there for a few years we were going
Speaker 1: in and buying semi truckload up sweech. You know, so
Speaker 1: it changed a little bit. The best I've ever found
Speaker 1: was donuts. They loved donuts, but you can't get an
Speaker 1: unlimited supply. One year, the year I killed that bear
Speaker 1: right there. A matter of fact, they had put in
Speaker 1: a new Dunkin Donuts where I lived at the time,
Speaker 1: brand new, and they did not know how many donuts
Speaker 1: a day they needed to make, And they were literally
Speaker 1: throwing away half a truckload trash bag full of donuts
Speaker 1: every night because they were cooking too many donuts. You
Speaker 1: could just go buy and get them out of dumpster.
Speaker 1: So one year I had like for a short time,
Speaker 1: it didn't last long because they figured it out. But
Speaker 1: I had like this unlimited supply of every kind of donut.
Speaker 1: You can imagine that Duncan Donuts found the bird nest
Speaker 1: on the ground. I mean it was unreal and but yeah,
Speaker 1: the same thing. I mean, I still you know, then
Speaker 1: where were you? And cookies and Oreo cookies with the
Speaker 1: cream filling worked really good, some of the ice cream
Speaker 1: sandwich cookies. Where we are, I don't use corn as much.
Speaker 1: I don't think my bears and I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it's where you are, obviously, and the timing of
Speaker 1: season to you, um so early New Year. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: hitting corn right now. You can just come pour a corn.
Speaker 1: And I mean you can't even get pictures of your
Speaker 1: deer right now because the bears right. But the closer
Speaker 1: we get the season, yeah, I'd do the same thing
Speaker 1: I do, kind of similar to what Rynd does with popcorn.
Speaker 1: Though we were getting the big cherry popcorn or caramel
Speaker 1: popcorn for in a quasi roller barrel that might have
Speaker 1: a bigger hole in it, but i'd like chain it
Speaker 1: to the tree on it just a rubber barrel. I'd
Speaker 1: still have my two main metal drums full of the
Speaker 1: regular stuff, but i'd feel it full of that candy
Speaker 1: popcorn and the same thing. They could roll it around,
Speaker 1: get some the popcorn out, and it's interesting. They're like
Speaker 1: humans to me. The one in year I had a
Speaker 1: low rider, you remember him for a couple well to
Speaker 1: three years, big big, big chocolate bear, biggest tacolate bear
Speaker 1: I ever seen in Arkansas, and another big bear coming.
Speaker 1: One of those bears and I can't remember which now.
Speaker 1: I loved the popcorn. One of them would never eat it.
Speaker 1: He would always eat other big barrels. So it is
Speaker 1: personality to me too. Somebars like some things and some
Speaker 1: beards don't, just like the way we do, you know.
Speaker 1: So a lot of that's just you need to research.
Speaker 1: Check the game cameras and see what he's eating, you know.
Speaker 1: And if this one bear and he's not eating the
Speaker 1: popcorner all the time, and he's the one that you're
Speaker 1: wanting to kill, you need to maybe try to start. Well,
Speaker 1: he likes I mean, I know he likes this more.
Speaker 1: I need to keep more of this because I want
Speaker 1: him to be coming in right. But so, yeah, donnuts
Speaker 1: are my favorite, but you just can't ever get enough
Speaker 1: Don't nuts spread grease, you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: I used one for a few years. I had a
Speaker 1: good connection to you know, you talk about friar all
Speaker 1: and just grease. But I had a friend that had
Speaker 1: a barbecue you restaurant, and he had his big pits
Speaker 1: smoker in the restaurant and he smoked a whole new
Speaker 1: meat every night for the next day's meals. And he
Speaker 1: had a big, huge spicket on the back side of
Speaker 1: this big uh smoker that all the grease and drippings
Speaker 1: would run out into a five gallon bucket and it
Speaker 1: was like, I mean, you'd want to dip a biscuit
Speaker 1: in it, and it was it was barbecue trippings did
Speaker 1: oh it was. It smelled so good you don't have
Speaker 1: to admit it. Yeah, And so for there for a
Speaker 1: few years too, I would have him start by taking
Speaker 1: buckets with leads that he could put on it good
Speaker 1: and start stack, you know, stalking up on that. And
Speaker 1: it had a really good strong odor. And you know,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about grease too, but grease gets on their
Speaker 1: feet and they track it back in the woods, and
Speaker 1: the central component I felt like some sort of grease,
Speaker 1: I mean, and even if it's just greasy but warmarn't.
Speaker 1: You're pouring it on the ground even to get on
Speaker 1: their feet, so they track it off. Another bear is
Speaker 1: gonna smell it and follow that track back in. So
Speaker 1: it helps the other bears in there and find your
Speaker 1: bait a lot quicker in my opinion. Well, not only
Speaker 1: was I doing that, but they loved this grease because
Speaker 1: it was actually dripping set of smoke pit, so you
Speaker 1: can put if I didn't have doughnuts, I had the
Speaker 1: day old bread store stuff. You could fill the bread
Speaker 1: stop it in. This dripping is right out of the
Speaker 1: smoke pit. Holdly cow. They love that. So I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's like anybody else in my experience. Every year, I
Speaker 1: don't always have access to the same thing. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: kind of got because it's hard to get. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: baits hard, it is, and a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: want to. You know. I was getting pastries and stuff
Speaker 1: at a day old bread store one time for quite
Speaker 1: a while. Well, they got to where they didn't want
Speaker 1: to sell them to you because some guy bottom and
Speaker 1: went and sold them to somebody, you know, and they
Speaker 1: didn't want to get sued for somebody eating a bad pastry,
Speaker 1: you know, So then they would stop giving the bear hunters.
Speaker 1: Well we were, I mean, we're having to buy and
Speaker 1: they weren't giving them to this, but they just stopped
Speaker 1: giving them sore like, well, heck, there goes my whole
Speaker 1: supply of pastries. I gotta find some somewhere else. You know,
Speaker 1: I've got a huge undertaking. I've got a tip for
Speaker 1: people trying to get bait from like commercial places, whether
Speaker 1: it's a donut store, where it's a thrift store, because
Speaker 1: people always want to know what you're gonna do with it,
Speaker 1: and you don't don't lie to them. But feed bread.
Speaker 1: That's what I asked for when I call thrift stores,
Speaker 1: like do you'all have feed bread? Because a lot of
Speaker 1: people buy this stuff for livestock, and so you know,
Speaker 1: I don't ever lie, but you know I've been I've
Speaker 1: learned from some good people over the years that you
Speaker 1: want to give as much information away as you need,
Speaker 1: because I have for sure. Early on, I remember buying
Speaker 1: bread and be like, man, we're baiting bears, and I
Speaker 1: mean it's dried up before because of that. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so feed bread. That's a good way to say a
Speaker 1: lot of people feed livestock and pigs and stuff with
Speaker 1: that stuff. Hey, let me tell you what I would do,
Speaker 1: just in real short because to me, this isn't people
Speaker 1: think this is like the magic bullet to killing a
Speaker 1: big bear. Is what kind of bait you use? I don't.
Speaker 1: I think it's a puple of notches down. I think
Speaker 1: it's less important if you have quality bait. Um. Basically,
Speaker 1: you gotta feed him what they'll eat. This is what
Speaker 1: I'll do on the first time that I bait, which
Speaker 1: will probably be in the next ten days, sometimes all
Speaker 1: by fifty pounds of cheap dog food. I'll have five
Speaker 1: gallons of of grease, which, depending on what I can get,
Speaker 1: I may go to Walmart and buy three or four
Speaker 1: gallons of maybe just three or four gallons of canola oil,
Speaker 1: and I will put my Northwoods gold Rush in that
Speaker 1: brand new canola oil. Uh. Then I'll have my feed
Speaker 1: bread from the thrift store, which is just gonna be
Speaker 1: a conglomeration of wheat bread, white bread, whatever I've got,
Speaker 1: and I will pour a fifty got five gallons or
Speaker 1: a fifty pound bag of dog food in that barrel,
Speaker 1: and it'll fill that barrel up almost to the bottom
Speaker 1: of my whole because I've got I cut that whole above,
Speaker 1: you know, about fifteen inches up from the bottom, so
Speaker 1: they'll be dog foot food down there. I'll pour some
Speaker 1: grease on that dog food, maybe half a gallon gallon
Speaker 1: of grease, and then i will literally stuff that barrel
Speaker 1: full of bread, so much so that I'm having one
Speaker 1: of my kids or me jump on the bread to
Speaker 1: compress it down into that bait barrel. And we'll put
Speaker 1: I don't know how many pounds of bread you can
Speaker 1: put in there, but a lot, probably two pounds of bread,
Speaker 1: and then I'll put the lid on that thing, and uh,
Speaker 1: if depend upon if it's a really good bait that
Speaker 1: I anticipate bears pounding, I'll probably do that a second
Speaker 1: time with another barrel, and then I'll fill up my
Speaker 1: corn roller barrel. I'll set my camera in a bare box.
Speaker 1: You gotta have a bare box, and you're gonna you
Speaker 1: might as well get up get a camera you can
Speaker 1: put in a bare box because the bears are they
Speaker 1: may not destroy it, they're just curious. They're gonna knock
Speaker 1: it around and they're gonna turn it sideways. And I'd
Speaker 1: say there's about a forty percent chance they're going to
Speaker 1: destroy it. Yeah. Yeah, I have people that say, man,
Speaker 1: I've never had bears messed with it. It's just a
Speaker 1: matter of time if you do it much special, if
Speaker 1: you've got quality cameras, and if you have good cameras
Speaker 1: they cost a lot of money today. You know you
Speaker 1: want to protect them. So I actually found double A
Speaker 1: batteries and bears scat before I have no kiddens, I'll
Speaker 1: be darn well, that's my that's my baiting typically what
Speaker 1: I'd made. One thing to add kind of on Ryan's point,
Speaker 1: I don't run used to use the beavers, and or
Speaker 1: still do. Sometimes you talked about going rancid, you know,
Speaker 1: I think sometimes we've talked about and or I've done
Speaker 1: sometimes if you want to hold the bear another a
Speaker 1: few more days and try to keep him there, and
Speaker 1: I don't mean a bear, a big bear. You can
Speaker 1: add beef scraps or beef fat or something a little
Speaker 1: different to their diet and they don't get a lot
Speaker 1: of meat here at And I've tried that and I
Speaker 1: do think it works. But I also agree with run.
Speaker 1: You got to be very careful because the moment that
Speaker 1: goes rancid, they stop it. Our bears here do not
Speaker 1: want rancid meat. Bears are all for tunists. You know,
Speaker 1: they're kind of cumbersome. They don't get to eat red
Speaker 1: meat real often. So when there is, but if you
Speaker 1: put too much, here's here's the bad scenario. If you
Speaker 1: go in there and they're hammering it and you put
Speaker 1: a bunch of bait or say a bunch of meat
Speaker 1: scraps on top to bait and just coincidentally the acor
Speaker 1: and start following that night. Yeah, who you gotta miss
Speaker 1: on your hands and then and then it just it's nasty,
Speaker 1: so you gotta be careful. But Clay, you know, pork
Speaker 1: or beefs fat with no meat on it, just the fat.
Speaker 1: But that you were reading my notes, he because that's
Speaker 1: what I was going to talk about. I feel like,
Speaker 1: and we've all had this conversation. Is that a key
Speaker 1: to holding a bear I think can be too strategically
Speaker 1: add something new just before season that intrigues them a
Speaker 1: little bit. And I'll walk you through a scenario I've
Speaker 1: I've had this happen multiple years, baiting a big bear
Speaker 1: and he you know, because you get the season, the
Speaker 1: more nocturnally becomes. Unless he comes to your bait, and
Speaker 1: if you can put something new out there that he's
Speaker 1: not seen, that he likes, you'll have a chance of
Speaker 1: keeping him around a little bit longer. So usually what
Speaker 1: I do is I'll buy. You can go to just
Speaker 1: about any butcher, like custom butcher, and buy fifty pound
Speaker 1: box of pork fat or beef fat frozen to be real, neat,
Speaker 1: nice little box, fifty pounds for five to thirty five dollars.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not expensive, and then strategically put that
Speaker 1: out with your bait like I put it right on
Speaker 1: top of the barrel. I would go in and bait
Speaker 1: just like I described, and then just put it on
Speaker 1: top of the barrel. And I've seen bears come in
Speaker 1: and not eat a doughnut, not eat corn, just carry
Speaker 1: off a big slab of fat. You can do it
Speaker 1: with beef tremans to like you might be able to
Speaker 1: go to butcher and get beef. I one time watched
Speaker 1: a bear come in, walk past donuts, walk past corn,
Speaker 1: and start crunching beef bones. It was just that time
Speaker 1: of year, it was just like two weeks before it
Speaker 1: would have probably ignored that meat and it would have
Speaker 1: ate donuts and corn and dog food. It could have
Speaker 1: caurred less about this point though. We had been eating
Speaker 1: those carbohydrates for a couple of weeks on ten days
Speaker 1: or whatever, and then you've switched to this new source
Speaker 1: of protein or meat and they're like, wow, this is
Speaker 1: this is awesome. Man, that's right. I looked. I'm coming
Speaker 1: back to this Chinese in my face for a couple
Speaker 1: more days. And that's all you need. You're just trying
Speaker 1: to get him to hang on. And so for sure,
Speaker 1: always the time before that I bait. The last time
Speaker 1: I bait before season. Man, I'm putting some good stuff
Speaker 1: out and I'll tell you the l primo bait that
Speaker 1: I have never ever ever witnessed a bear not eat.
Speaker 1: Don't tell it, don't tell him. You're right, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna tell them. They're gonna have to go to our
Speaker 1: pay for a podcasts to get this one. Now. Sardines,
Speaker 1: I have never not seen a bear eat at Cannas Sardines.
Speaker 1: I've seen him walk past corn, doughnuts, dog food, beef meat.
Speaker 1: Any I mean, like you know, blueberry pie. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've never seen one walk over at Cannas Sardines. Maybe
Speaker 1: they have but it's like gold to them. So the
Speaker 1: day before season, I usually put out a lot of sardines,
Speaker 1: and I and I put those out throughout the year,
Speaker 1: me and James Lawrence. James is pretty good at finding
Speaker 1: these like bargain sardine deals. And he'll have he'll have
Speaker 1: fifty cans of sardines, you know, and we'll we'll eat
Speaker 1: some of them are baiting bears. But then we'll we'll say,
Speaker 1: James probably find sardines for itself. Me and James are
Speaker 1: cut from the same cloth. Man, We're like, we we
Speaker 1: both gained a little weight during bear baitings. Um, but
Speaker 1: I think that's a key point for holding a big bear.
Speaker 1: And if we're talking about big bears, you gotta be consistent.
Speaker 1: You gotta be where they are. You're not gonna kill
Speaker 1: a big bear where there's not one. So if your
Speaker 1: bait doesn't have one, you need to find somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Debate and you can. That's the best trick I've got.
Speaker 1: I mean, like people are like, well, can you go
Speaker 1: in and do a honey burn? You know, the day
Speaker 1: that you hunt and draw one in that hadn't been
Speaker 1: there in four days? I don't think so I've never
Speaker 1: seen it where like there's no just like magic bullet.
Speaker 1: You know, how do you make him be not not
Speaker 1: be nocturnal? That's probably the biggest question I got there.
Speaker 1: I don't. I think the way to not keep one,
Speaker 1: or the way to for one to kill one that's
Speaker 1: nocturnal is you may not be able to. There's just
Speaker 1: some bears that are probably unkillable. But you just gotta
Speaker 1: keep stacking everything in your favor. You gotta be in
Speaker 1: a place he's comfortable in the daytime. You gotta give
Speaker 1: him the food he wants. You gotta mix it up
Speaker 1: just a little bit on that opening day you've got
Speaker 1: a we all think he hunt the mornings the evening.
Speaker 1: What you're talking about too, though, And here's the thing
Speaker 1: about that. I mean, it's just like if the wind
Speaker 1: is totally wrong opening day, you're not gonna kill the
Speaker 1: bear if you go in there, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: we all want to go hunt, but if all of
Speaker 1: a sudden we get a rainfront came in and we
Speaker 1: got that north wind, you might as well not go,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're after a big one. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just like deer, Yeah, I mean, they're they smell you
Speaker 1: know their ability to smell is better than deer. So
Speaker 1: I mean you gotta be a smart hunter too. You know,
Speaker 1: on top of everything we're talking about um sent attractance,
Speaker 1: commercial cent attracts. We've talked a little bit about gold rush.
Speaker 1: What you've been your experience with it. I think it works,
Speaker 1: you know, the I think i've last time or two
Speaker 1: I baited pretty hard. I use some of that cherry
Speaker 1: bomb spray your cherry one of the cherry flavors from there,
Speaker 1: and we sprayed up in the trees where smell better
Speaker 1: and carry, and then I put some of the stuff
Speaker 1: in the grease or whatever because I I didn't use
Speaker 1: it when I had that connection to get the barbecue
Speaker 1: drippings because it had its own smell, right, So I
Speaker 1: didn't need it. But yeah, if you're just using regular
Speaker 1: fra all you should use it. I mean it's inexpensive
Speaker 1: for as much as it smells and attracting. It gives
Speaker 1: the grease in your bait set. In my opinion, I
Speaker 1: think it adds. It would be hard to put a
Speaker 1: percentage on it really scientifically to say how much more
Speaker 1: scent to power your bait would have, but I would
Speaker 1: say it would be it would double at least. I mean,
Speaker 1: like natural natural bait only has so much scent, and
Speaker 1: this stuff is chemically designed to like be loud, as
Speaker 1: Ryan says, you know, to just have a loud smell,
Speaker 1: and so it's just gonna carry better. It's gonna carry further,
Speaker 1: it's gonna stick on stuff better and scents everything. That's
Speaker 1: the way you're gonna that's the way you're gonna attract
Speaker 1: bears exactly. Adding to the bears getting the grease on
Speaker 1: their paws and walking down the trails, if they got
Speaker 1: that smelly grease on there, there gonna smell it way
Speaker 1: back in there as well. So it's gonna last longer
Speaker 1: that old based chemicals gonna last longer on the plants
Speaker 1: when they're rubbing going down the trail and stuff. So
Speaker 1: I mean that's the key really with the grease and
Speaker 1: the attracting is to get as many bears as quickly
Speaker 1: as you can to know the bats there, especially if
Speaker 1: you're you know, I mean maybe not for thirty days,
Speaker 1: but for me, it's always I got a bait to
Speaker 1: get the bears here before acorns, and then I got
Speaker 1: to hold them till season here at So the key
Speaker 1: is I gotta get all the bears in there. You
Speaker 1: know there's a bait here. Well, that grease is a
Speaker 1: huge factor. And you know, I also think it's important
Speaker 1: to uh continue to use the sense throughout the season
Speaker 1: because just like I said earlier, you might be attracting
Speaker 1: a bear two days before season opener and he may
Speaker 1: be the one you kill. Like a lot of guys,
Speaker 1: I've heard people saying, and I maybe even said that
Speaker 1: that I like to use commercial sense when I'm opening
Speaker 1: a bait live now kind of drifted my full spez.
Speaker 1: I like to use commercial since the whole time, because
Speaker 1: two days before season you made draw in a bear
Speaker 1: from four miles away, that is the one you want
Speaker 1: to kill. Where if you if you just used at
Speaker 1: the beginning to get some bears coming in, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you wouldn't have got I mean, if if we're
Speaker 1: talking about best case scenario to kill big bears, I
Speaker 1: keep using it, especially with the gold rush stuff. Yeah. Hey,
Speaker 1: one thing we didn't say when we were talking about
Speaker 1: bait site placement is that I feel like your bait
Speaker 1: has to be on the up wind. Well, the bait
Speaker 1: scent needs to be blowing into areas that hold the bears.
Speaker 1: And I've got two stories. And I've told this before,
Speaker 1: so if you've listened to these kind of podcasts, you've
Speaker 1: probably heard both these stories. One time I had a
Speaker 1: bait that was on the rim of this big block
Speaker 1: national forest. I mean, everything was beautiful about this bait,
Speaker 1: except it was on the north side of a big,
Speaker 1: giant block of National four Rest, and north of the
Speaker 1: bait was just civilization, I mean just farms and cattle
Speaker 1: pastures and places bears didn't want to be. Well, a
Speaker 1: south wind that whole time in September, which usually, you know,
Speaker 1: most of our winds are out of the south in September,
Speaker 1: most of them. Well, it just so happened the three
Speaker 1: weeks that abated, we never got a north wind. So
Speaker 1: the wind was constantly coming out of the good bear
Speaker 1: country blowing into all the farm country. I could never
Speaker 1: attract a bear there. You know, if we'd had a
Speaker 1: north wind, it would have blown that bait sent down
Speaker 1: into that wilderness and the bears would have been like, oh, dang,
Speaker 1: there it is. So I believe that if I had
Speaker 1: had the same bait that was on the south side,
Speaker 1: you know, you could follow my wind direction. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that's important. Another another time, I had a
Speaker 1: killer bait site in terms of area, rugged, remote, big country,
Speaker 1: and the wind was always blowing up this canyon which
Speaker 1: is where all the city where I came from, and
Speaker 1: really the bears were down, you know, kind of downstream
Speaker 1: into this big national forest. Well, I put out a
Speaker 1: bait and uh, for a week didn't get a bear.
Speaker 1: This is over in Oklahoma, and uh it just shocked me.
Speaker 1: No bears. How could this spot not produce a bear? Well,
Speaker 1: I took I took a I I did a little
Speaker 1: scent trail run with a drag. I did a little
Speaker 1: drag down on the property and got just around the
Speaker 1: point of these two big ridges. Basically I had to
Speaker 1: be low and there were two big ridges and I
Speaker 1: was between them. I drugged that scent just out beyond
Speaker 1: where those ridges came down, and it was a whole
Speaker 1: new draft of wind, I felt like, and within twenty
Speaker 1: four hours I had a bear. I just did a
Speaker 1: drag sent drag that just got my bait sent into
Speaker 1: a little bit different current. And so that's important. And
Speaker 1: if you can't and here's the flip side of that,
Speaker 1: that bait is going to be better for you to
Speaker 1: hunt if you have a big bear coming, because he's
Speaker 1: trying to smell you, So setting him up like that
Speaker 1: and then doing a drag to get the bears there,
Speaker 1: then having the grease there for the bears to disperse
Speaker 1: the scent for you actually makes it a better spot
Speaker 1: to hunt. It's just harder to get the bears to
Speaker 1: come to it. Get a little more work you gotta
Speaker 1: do for that. Yeah, so as good. I've done that before,
Speaker 1: done a drag and not probably as far as you did,
Speaker 1: but just over the ridge down just to kind of
Speaker 1: drag back out. And yeah, I mean it don't take
Speaker 1: no time. Family fall that trail right in and then
Speaker 1: the bears are leaving their scent and they're creating trails everywhere,
Speaker 1: so you don't have to all you got has one
Speaker 1: bear coming. If you get one bear coming, tell all
Speaker 1: the rest all the rest of them are gonna figure
Speaker 1: it out. But you gotta get the one bear to
Speaker 1: come in first. What would you guys say, We've we've
Speaker 1: covered everything we said we're going to cover. Um, what
Speaker 1: do you think people would have questions about, like, you know,
Speaker 1: like how to set up trail cameras? I almost want
Speaker 1: to talk about how where to shoot a bear, like
Speaker 1: how to set up your stands and stuff. That important
Speaker 1: subject is basically getting your stands set up, everything done
Speaker 1: before you even bait. I have everything like say, turn
Speaker 1: key and not being there tinkering around even when you're baiting.
Speaker 1: Just go away, get out that way the bear first
Speaker 1: time he comes in. The stands already there. You don't
Speaker 1: want to be in a climb and stand opening day
Speaker 1: and clanking up. Get all and bear, get all your
Speaker 1: homework done right off the bat for even bait and
Speaker 1: it's ready to go. Come open it down? How high
Speaker 1: do you put your stands? Honestly? For bear? Base now?
Speaker 1: And I've got to where I put ladder stands? Eighteen seat? Maybe?
Speaker 1: How far is the bait away from your stand? Twenty yards?
Speaker 1: Are less? You get up hired in that though, don't you? Uh?
Speaker 1: I think it depends on your terrain a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're too far downhill and some of the snails,
Speaker 1: then I might need to be a little bit first. Well,
Speaker 1: where I'm going to is shot angle, shot angle. I
Speaker 1: used to think I needed to be up in a tree,
Speaker 1: and that burnt me big time. It's man and it's
Speaker 1: a hard angle for dear any critter to be shooting
Speaker 1: at a super steep angle, but I feel like a
Speaker 1: big bear or any bear, it's pretty dang unfriendly too.
Speaker 1: I have now, I have permanent ladder stands that just
Speaker 1: stay there. I mean, I never moved them changes straps.
Speaker 1: One of them probably a fifteen footer and one of
Speaker 1: them is an eighteen footer, but it's more steep off
Speaker 1: the end of the point, So in r L it's
Speaker 1: probably only fifteen ft above kind of the ground level.
Speaker 1: Always kind of the sweet spot that I've found. And
Speaker 1: Bernie Barringer has kind of helped me or he has
Speaker 1: some pretty good philosophies on this too. But b sixteen
Speaker 1: the nineteen feet high and have the bait barrel eighteen
Speaker 1: yards away, you getta you're you're you're up high enough
Speaker 1: that you're wind is a little bit better, but you're
Speaker 1: not up so high that your angle is super steep.
Speaker 1: Eighteen yards is just far enough that a bear is
Speaker 1: in our reality. Both of my good spots are probably
Speaker 1: seventeen to eighteen yards from the bait. You don't want
Speaker 1: to be twenty five. I've I've I've been to some
Speaker 1: Canadian hunts where they got a bait barrel twenty five
Speaker 1: yards out there, and I'm like, that's too far. I mean,
Speaker 1: I could shoot at twenty five yards, but why, I
Speaker 1: just don't think it's necessary. But you don't want to
Speaker 1: be ten yards from either, you know, that's kind of
Speaker 1: a sweet spot. You know, really fifteen to twenty ft
Speaker 1: eighteen is yards you don't want to be right on
Speaker 1: top of and that angle is super crazy. Now, just
Speaker 1: because we're getting close to opening a let's real quickly
Speaker 1: go through shot placement stuff. And this is a whole podcast.
Speaker 1: I think me and you did a whole podcast on
Speaker 1: shot placement. We did, and that podcast is still up
Speaker 1: and I'll refer people to that. It's called Dummies Guide
Speaker 1: the Shop Placement on Bear and we nerd out for
Speaker 1: an hour or longer just about shot placement. But the
Speaker 1: biggest thing that I would say is a bear is
Speaker 1: not as big as he looks. He's got three inches
Speaker 1: of hair all the way around his body. He's got
Speaker 1: fat and so the biggest thing that I've seen people
Speaker 1: mess up on and shoot him too low. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: do not shoot him like a white tail. You don't
Speaker 1: want to try to hart shoot a bear because they
Speaker 1: don't duck like a white tail. For that's right. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the whole key. That's another podcast. But you know,
Speaker 1: dear duck bears don't. That's right. That's exactly the reason
Speaker 1: we aim low and tight on a white tail is
Speaker 1: because that animal is gonna move at the sound of
Speaker 1: the string. He's gonna drop and then lunge to get away.
Speaker 1: You're always gonna hit him a little higher than you're aiming.
Speaker 1: A bear is not that case. I mean, you should
Speaker 1: be able to pick out a tick on the bear
Speaker 1: and hit the tick heat moving. Yeah, at eighteen yards,
Speaker 1: maybe at thirty or something. So that's the biggest thing.
Speaker 1: Don't shoot him too low. And listen to this. This
Speaker 1: is my new philosophy on where the vitals of a
Speaker 1: bear are at. And we could go look at your
Speaker 1: bear over here. We've we've said for years, and I've
Speaker 1: said for years that a bear's vitals are slightly further
Speaker 1: back than a white tail. Functionally that is true, but
Speaker 1: in reality, his shoulders are further up on his body.
Speaker 1: You'll see what I'm saying. Like a white tail, you
Speaker 1: can see his briskets stick out on the north side
Speaker 1: of his shoulders and then his neck starts and then
Speaker 1: and so their their anatomy is actually really similar in
Speaker 1: terms of of organs. And if we're getting super technical,
Speaker 1: but bear, a bear doesn't have a brisk it that
Speaker 1: hangs out in front of his shoulders. If we look
Speaker 1: at that bear amount over there, his shoulders come up
Speaker 1: and his neck immediately starts, and so his shoulders and
Speaker 1: legs are more forward than a deer. So what that
Speaker 1: translates into is that you have more space for vitals
Speaker 1: further what seems to be further back on a bear.
Speaker 1: And so you know, people say there's a phrase a
Speaker 1: lot of Canadian outfitters used the middle of the middle,
Speaker 1: and they literally mean aim at the dead nuts excuse
Speaker 1: my French, middle of a black bear and shoot it.
Speaker 1: Which if you did that with a white tail, you
Speaker 1: would be hitting him in the liver. Well with a bear,
Speaker 1: you're you're gonna be hitting him kind of in the
Speaker 1: back of the lungs. I don't like to go middle
Speaker 1: of the middle. I like to go the middle of
Speaker 1: the middle and then back towards the shoulder about four inches.
Speaker 1: But the point is you can hit him further back.
Speaker 1: The second point is, I have seen this. You know,
Speaker 1: I've killed quite a few bears, but more than that,
Speaker 1: I've tracked a ton of bears in Canadian bear camps
Speaker 1: over the years and Arkansas bears. I mean, I've tracked
Speaker 1: a lot of bears. You can shoot a bear in
Speaker 1: the absolute guts, but you don't want to do and
Speaker 1: you can find that bear relatively easy. He's gonna die
Speaker 1: within three yards. You're gonna have to put on your
Speaker 1: blood trailing cap and you're gonna have to give him time.
Speaker 1: But so the point of all that is to say,
Speaker 1: in white in the white tailed world, the biggest fear
Speaker 1: you have is hitting one far back, or at least
Speaker 1: that's what we've been told our whole lives. Don't hit
Speaker 1: him far back, man, gut shot that deer. And that's true.
Speaker 1: That is not the worst case scenario with a black
Speaker 1: bear in my opinion. I mean, Colby, there's a great
Speaker 1: video on Bear Honey Magazine YouTube of our buddy Colby
Speaker 1: just absolutely shooting one deep in the guts, and I
Speaker 1: mean it just makes you go, oh, man, we've down
Speaker 1: that bear, and no problem. River Nukem. Last year, Ryan
Speaker 1: helped me track Rivers bear. She tend ring that sucker
Speaker 1: in the guts. I mean we had to blood trail it,
Speaker 1: but we found it relatively easy the next day. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty minute blood trail and you know it
Speaker 1: went three hundred yards probably. But point being, I think
Speaker 1: people are so afraid to shoot them far back. They
Speaker 1: want to shoot them tied up against that shoulder and
Speaker 1: they hit the shoulder, and you were guaranteed if you
Speaker 1: hit that scapula or an actual shoulder bone of that bear,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna kill it. I've done that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you don't want to hit them low because you'll
Speaker 1: shoot I mean I've done that, especially if you're in
Speaker 1: the angle in a tree stand, because they're not gonna duck,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna shoot low hair brisket. I mean you
Speaker 1: might clip a hertery or something there. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I like to shoot them. I still shoot them,
Speaker 1: probably not as middle as most people, but I would
Speaker 1: like I'm probably gonna shoot him a full and say
Speaker 1: hand my hands probably nine inches wide. I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: him a hand with behind the shoulder. That's about what
Speaker 1: I like to do. It gives you more room for
Speaker 1: air here. If you hugged that shoulder just to hit
Speaker 1: this way, and I still got nine or from probably more.
Speaker 1: But you know at eighteen yards as good as we
Speaker 1: practice and shooting now, you should hit right pretty big.
Speaker 1: I'm close to that spot. You know he's not moving. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and see that's the that's the logic. And if we're
Speaker 1: talking about you know, you can kill one bear doing
Speaker 1: something kind of crazy, and statistically you might win the
Speaker 1: statistics war if you shoot ten bears. You want to
Speaker 1: do the best case scenario. And so if you hug
Speaker 1: that shoulder, you've only got room for air to the south.
Speaker 1: By south, I mean back, you know, you you scooch
Speaker 1: it over and then you got room for air towards
Speaker 1: the shoulder. You got room fair behind the shoulder. And
Speaker 1: then the worst thing you can do is hit the
Speaker 1: bear on the fringe, and that would be with white
Speaker 1: tails or anything else. You hit a bear too high,
Speaker 1: you know you're not gonna find him. You hit a
Speaker 1: bear too low, even in the cavity, and you may
Speaker 1: not find that bear. I mean, I think the bear
Speaker 1: you probably shot that you talked about, Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: my blood trailed that bear like he was pouring blood
Speaker 1: out of a bucket. For a quarter of a mile,
Speaker 1: you know, but I no, I just shot riding under
Speaker 1: his hard probably Yeah, and at the angle, I may
Speaker 1: actually not have got the heart, you know what went
Speaker 1: in here and bropo came out right there. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, It's just a rookie mistake. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just pulled up aimed at where I would shooting
Speaker 1: whitetail that I've killed the hunter of and it wasn't
Speaker 1: where I needed to shoot him, you know. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: the the only other thing I would say in terms
Speaker 1: of shot placement, it's best case scenario is gonna be
Speaker 1: a broadside standing bear. Bears do all kind of weird
Speaker 1: stuff when they come into a bay. They can sit
Speaker 1: down on their rump, they can stand up, they can
Speaker 1: lay down, they can cut their body. Yeah. That's the
Speaker 1: biggest thing Ryan, and you've heard me preach about that,
Speaker 1: is a bear has so many contortions of his body
Speaker 1: that he can do that a white tail camp. A
Speaker 1: white tail is almost like this linear like static animal
Speaker 1: for the most part. I mean like they're they're gonna
Speaker 1: be like a bear is like a cat almost like
Speaker 1: he can cut his body. So and bears are black
Speaker 1: which is a color that just soaks up its surroundings.
Speaker 1: And his hair is long, A white tail is short hair.
Speaker 1: You can see every crease in his body, you can
Speaker 1: see his shoulder line, you can see everything. A bear
Speaker 1: is like shooting at an inflated black trash bag. Well
Speaker 1: and thinking about big bears, especially asn't we all know
Speaker 1: this other than you know, Ryan killing one who walks
Speaker 1: up on all the really big bears I've ever killed,
Speaker 1: it's been within three minutes of shooting light, Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are you know five, I mean late, just like that one.
Speaker 1: I mean he may have came up over the ridge
Speaker 1: thirty minutes before dark, but he didn't come in there
Speaker 1: until three minutes before the legal shooting, you know, so
Speaker 1: it's almost dark anyway, and then you're shooting at this
Speaker 1: black blob literally at that time, he's just a black
Speaker 1: blob with all this big hair on him, you know,
Speaker 1: And so I mean I've killed him, you know. Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, I've killed not old big bears earlier
Speaker 1: in the day, but these bears like this don't come
Speaker 1: in often until it's almost last light, at least in
Speaker 1: my experience. So you gotta be real careful where you
Speaker 1: shoot him, and you just wanted to be standing up.
Speaker 1: You don't wanted to be cups towards him, which that
Speaker 1: would mean he would be standing broadside, but his shoulders
Speaker 1: and his hips would be closer to you than the
Speaker 1: offside rib cage, if that makes sense. And so you
Speaker 1: might think I've been in a stand more than once
Speaker 1: watching someone shoot no names being named here where they
Speaker 1: ain't thought they were aiming right behind the shoulder, and
Speaker 1: they actually hit right where they're aiming. But when that
Speaker 1: bear straightened back out, that era was eighteen inches back.
Speaker 1: I mean, and you know, we may have still found
Speaker 1: a bear, but it wasn't It wasn't a tin ring
Speaker 1: double lung shot. There. He's gonna run thirty yards, you know.
Speaker 1: And you can use your bait set up to make
Speaker 1: a bear stand the way you want them to to shoot, too,
Speaker 1: the way your barrels are angled. I know I don't
Speaker 1: do this much, but you know, some guys may lay
Speaker 1: some logs behind the bait, so the bears have to
Speaker 1: come in on this side and turn and face the barrel,
Speaker 1: and they're slightly quartering away maybe just you know, not
Speaker 1: a lot, but slightly fifteen degrees or something that you
Speaker 1: can slap. Every time I've done that, the bears just
Speaker 1: trumpet to the ground. I've done it many times, and
Speaker 1: they always because you're always trying to block it the
Speaker 1: way that they naturally want to just use the barrel openings.
Speaker 1: Especially when they first come in there, they'll kind of
Speaker 1: square up with it in the beginning to look in
Speaker 1: the hole and reaching the whole. Now they're going to
Speaker 1: do all kinds of stuff after that, but when they
Speaker 1: first walk in there, oftentimes it seems like they'll square
Speaker 1: up with that whole, which if you've got two barrels,
Speaker 1: there might be the one. But it's broadside enough that
Speaker 1: an eighteen yards you should make a perfect shot on it, right,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to be usually in any hurry
Speaker 1: on a bear a debate set situation. On the big ones,
Speaker 1: it's always fate lighting, you know, and word in the timber,
Speaker 1: you know, So you walk out the timber up on
Speaker 1: the ridge, it might still be daylight when it gets
Speaker 1: dark in the timber lost sooner. Yeah, yeah. And on
Speaker 1: mine sites, I'm always on the north side of the mountains,
Speaker 1: so it's getting darker there before the south side of mountains,
Speaker 1: so I run out of daylight a lot sooner there
Speaker 1: than you probably would in some other locations. But it's
Speaker 1: the locations that I found that I can successfully get
Speaker 1: them in there in the daylight without being winded and stuff.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, well, man, I think we've really covered
Speaker 1: a lot of good stuff here. I'll throw the only
Speaker 1: secret weapon the only man we're gonna yep, we're shutting
Speaker 1: this day. This is a pay for a part. You
Speaker 1: can go to Bear Hunting magazine. Only people that get
Speaker 1: a subscription to the magazine get this silver bullet. The
Speaker 1: only silver bullet that I've ever found in baiting bears
Speaker 1: is a redneck blind conversation. It was years before you
Speaker 1: got it. Yeah, I mean I told you we had
Speaker 1: talking about winning swirling stuff. I'm like, the only way
Speaker 1: to kill the bear every time and he not know
Speaker 1: you're there is being a scent typeline and you know,
Speaker 1: and not just a redneck, but you know whatever. Whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why we sealed tight. There's and I mean people
Speaker 1: would have if they followed the podcast, they would know this.
Speaker 1: But I hunted a bear. We got access to a
Speaker 1: property in twenty fifteen, I think, and for well, I
Speaker 1: was fourteen for five years. I had pictures of this
Speaker 1: bear I called Batman and never saw the bear totally nocturnal,
Speaker 1: just he just would read your mail like you just
Speaker 1: couldn't kill him. I put up a red neck mine
Speaker 1: have killed him the first day. I put a red
Speaker 1: nickline and I had things in my favorite. It was
Speaker 1: a good mass year, like in terms of there wasn't
Speaker 1: much mass. He was responding to bait, but he came
Speaker 1: in and he had he He was that bear was
Speaker 1: used to me or James Lawrence climbing up in the
Speaker 1: tree on opening day, and I guarantee he just knew
Speaker 1: we were there and he didn't come in, and he
Speaker 1: come in really comfortable. When the day you did shoot him,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was. It was if he can't smail
Speaker 1: you and don't think you're there, he's gonna be like
Speaker 1: just any other day. That's one that works so well.
Speaker 1: Is and that's why I used those drains to try
Speaker 1: to keep the bears from coming in behind me. Is
Speaker 1: those big bears are circling down there sniffing before they're
Speaker 1: coming in. They're not coming in blind. And here's the
Speaker 1: deal too, And the reality is even some of these
Speaker 1: bears that I might have fooled their nose when they
Speaker 1: come in there and they know you're there most of
Speaker 1: the time. This bear walked up to the base of
Speaker 1: my train and looked at me, and he did not
Speaker 1: win to me. He knew I was there. Somehow I
Speaker 1: had to let him turn and walk away from the
Speaker 1: stand to shoot him. Yeah, that's unusual, it did. I mean,
Speaker 1: and but had I been in there, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: the wind wouldn't I don't know. I mean, he just knew,
Speaker 1: you know, bears are just smart. He may have just
Speaker 1: went by and checked that stand every day too. I
Speaker 1: don't know. On that day. I just happened to be
Speaker 1: in it before he came to you know, he would
Speaker 1: like circle down on that secondary point and it may
Speaker 1: just come up to the barrel, you know. Man, I
Speaker 1: tell you what a lot of people that I guess
Speaker 1: a lot of people that bait bears would understand this.
Speaker 1: But what we have like me following you guys bear
Speaker 1: baiting or bear hunting in Arkansas. Man, it it is
Speaker 1: a awesome thing to kill a big ball. They're like
Speaker 1: they're like a ghost, man. I mean, he's video. I
Speaker 1: think it's up on our It was on our DVD.
Speaker 1: Bear Horizon. I think Season one bear. He killed that
Speaker 1: five hundred four pound bear right there. And man, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what, it's fun to kill big white tails,
Speaker 1: and it's fun to kill big elk. I've never done it,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to in three weeks. And those things
Speaker 1: can never be replaced. I mean, like this, it's it's
Speaker 1: like your kids, you know, it's like your kids love
Speaker 1: his white tail. Don't get wrong, you'd probably tell but
Speaker 1: looking into here, but a lot of bear stuff. But
Speaker 1: a bear makes your heart beat in a different way
Speaker 1: than a white tail. It does. And these big you know,
Speaker 1: when when I killed Batman two years ago, and that
Speaker 1: was the biggest bear I ever killed, and maybe the
Speaker 1: biggest bear I ever killed my life, it was it
Speaker 1: was a I felt like it was you know, those
Speaker 1: fleeting moments that you were in the presence of a
Speaker 1: true monarch of the woods are pretty special moments as
Speaker 1: a hunter, and they're quick. I mean like I hunted
Speaker 1: that bear for five years. I watched him with my
Speaker 1: own eyes for about thirty seconds, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a pretty cool thing too to see those bears,
Speaker 1: you know, and people don't realize how big they really are,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean I think it's probably just like
Speaker 1: a mooze or whatever. They're huge, but I mean I've
Speaker 1: killed big bears before. And even you walk up on
Speaker 1: a five pound bear with the head that big land
Speaker 1: on the ground, it's just it's you're all struck. I
Speaker 1: am all struck. I don't not saying everybody would be,
Speaker 1: but and I've done it, and I'm just still like, Holy,
Speaker 1: can look how big this thing is? You know, I
Speaker 1: mean it's just impressive, you know, And there's just it's
Speaker 1: an interesting feeling. You know. We have a great, in
Speaker 1: my opinion of phenomenal resource shre in Arkansas to be
Speaker 1: able to hunt bears like this, you know. Uh, and
Speaker 1: so it's pretty cool I have that opportunity. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. Well, guys, hey, we've uh we've pounded the
Speaker 1: ground pretty hard here, covered a lot of good stuff.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, I really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing
Speaker 1: your wisdom. It's fun hanging to appreciate Shading Hill. Well,
Speaker 1: keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.
Speaker 1: That's your head