Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to
Speaker 1: you by Interstate Batteries. Whether you need a battery for
Speaker 1: your truck, or a battery for your trail camera, or
Speaker 1: a specialized battery for your range finder, or a crazy
Speaker 1: toy that you bought for your kids, Interstate Batteries has
Speaker 1: got you covered. Stop into a local Interstate Battery retail store,
Speaker 1: talk with a specialist, get the battery that you need,
Speaker 1: and go on about your day. Interstate Batteries outrageously dependable.
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into
Speaker 1: the world of hunting the icon of the North American
Speaker 1: wilderness Prepare. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation, but will
Speaker 1: also bring you into some of the wildest country off
Speaker 1: the planet chasing bare. This week we're at bear Camp
Speaker 1: in Arkansas and we have to Bear Hunting Magazine legends
Speaker 1: on the podcast. Well three, make it three. We've got
Speaker 1: my dad, Gary newcom you hear me talk about him
Speaker 1: a lot. We've got James Lawrence, my Arkansas mountain man buddy.
Speaker 1: And then the third legend is Kolby moorehead himself, the
Speaker 1: Bear Tech. We're sitting around literally a camp fire, and
Speaker 1: we're at our Arkansas bear camp. We talked to my
Speaker 1: dad and James about a little bit about their hunting.
Speaker 1: Kolby talks about his bear hunt. I'm not gonna tell
Speaker 1: you what happens. He'll tell you what happens. But this
Speaker 1: is a very fun podcast with a fun crew. I'm
Speaker 1: holding to my hands right now a c V A muzzloader.
Speaker 1: It's an Accura mountain rifle in maxwe Camo. This skun
Speaker 1: is a it's a it's a breakover. I've just broken
Speaker 1: it over. It has a breech plug that you can
Speaker 1: screw out by hand. You don't need any tools, which
Speaker 1: is pretty revolutionary for muzzloaders. All the other muzzloaders had
Speaker 1: you had to use a special tool so you can
Speaker 1: take out this breech plug in the field. I like
Speaker 1: this mountain rifle, Accurate mountain rifle. It's got a twenty
Speaker 1: four and a half inch barrel, it's light, and it
Speaker 1: has a Sarahcoat finish on it. I will be using
Speaker 1: this gun in Arkansas in just a few weeks. I've
Speaker 1: got to put a scope on it, but Hey, check
Speaker 1: out c v A Muzzleloaders. They've got some incredible products,
Speaker 1: a full range of muzzleloaders, and an incredible guarantee on
Speaker 1: all their stuff. We're also getting geared up for some
Speaker 1: hound hunting this winter. We're getting the squirrel dogs ready.
Speaker 1: We're getting the coon dogs ready. And check out W
Speaker 1: Hunting Supply for all your hounder lated needs, whether it
Speaker 1: be garments stuff, whether it be leashes and collars, whether
Speaker 1: it be specialty hound gear for in hound merchandise, hat shirts.
Speaker 1: Our friends at W Hunting Supply Buddy woodberry Man. If
Speaker 1: you're buying anything but as I do with dogs, buy
Speaker 1: it from W and Buddy and his team. Check out
Speaker 1: our friends as well at the Western Bear Foundation. These
Speaker 1: guys are a nonprofit hunting conservation organization filling a very
Speaker 1: special place in the bear world in in our lifestyle
Speaker 1: of guarding the gate. Check out the Western Fair Foundation.
Speaker 1: A vital component of this week's hunt in Arkansas was
Speaker 1: Northwoods bear products. We use Northwoods on all of our
Speaker 1: bear baits. We use some of their gold dust powder.
Speaker 1: We also used their gold rush friar grease additive. If
Speaker 1: you're baton bears, you need to be using commercial sense
Speaker 1: that just doesn't make sense not to, and Northwoods Bear
Speaker 1: Products makes the highest quality, best bear sense around. Check
Speaker 1: them out at Northwoods Bear Products dot Net. Also check
Speaker 1: out their Instagram and all their social media stuff. Right
Speaker 1: now they're posting a bunch of photos of fall bear
Speaker 1: hunts of people using Northwoods. Check it out. You're going
Speaker 1: to enjoy this podcast. Gary Nukam, James Lawrence Kolby, and myself. Man,
Speaker 1: it's starting to feel like fall, would y'all say? Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty incredible weather for the first weekend of Arkansas bear season.
Speaker 1: We're we're sitting around a open fire our outside. We're
Speaker 1: in the Washingtaw Mountains out here in Arkansas, and uh, Kobe,
Speaker 1: this is a pretty legit set up here. Our guests
Speaker 1: super legit because I know he doesn't know it now
Speaker 1: he knows how much his name comes up on the podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got some legendary bear hunting magazine podcasts guests on
Speaker 1: the podcast. Today. I've got I've got my dad, Gary
Speaker 1: newcom I can't hardly do a It seems that your
Speaker 1: name comes up a lot. You know it, don't you? Well?
Speaker 1: I hear it, um, I hear you lying to the public. Yea.
Speaker 1: But but you know what what I think when I
Speaker 1: hear that is everybody talks about you know, when I
Speaker 1: was in business, people would come in and go, my
Speaker 1: mama told me this, my daddy told me this. I
Speaker 1: mean that stuff counts. So you know, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're a parent, stuff you're saying will resonate for the
Speaker 1: rest of your kid's life. There'll be eighty years old
Speaker 1: and they'll go, my daddy told me something. So I
Speaker 1: don't think of it as me. I think that's the
Speaker 1: way we were made. We're made to think our parents
Speaker 1: no more than they really do. Well, let me ask you,
Speaker 1: did you or were you like? No, I'm not like
Speaker 1: most paryers. I mean I was thinking genius, okay, but no,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm like, I'm just kidding. But no. Anytime
Speaker 1: I do a podcast, especially outside of just our bear
Speaker 1: hunting podcast, your your your name constantly comes up. Man,
Speaker 1: the wind is just picked up. Yep, it'll be all right,
Speaker 1: Will it be all right? We'll figure it out. Well,
Speaker 1: if you hear some wind noise, it's because we're that's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that fall coming. Yeah. Well. Hey. The other name
Speaker 1: that comes up a lot is James Lawrence, how are
Speaker 1: you doing, James? Been good and good? You always doing
Speaker 1: Bear season? Yeah? Man, James, when uh now, you don't
Speaker 1: listen to the podcast so, or at least I don't
Speaker 1: think you do. So I don't think you realize how
Speaker 1: often I end up talking about you. Um. You know
Speaker 1: your name has been mentioned on the Meat Eater podcast,
Speaker 1: which is the biggest podcast in the land, and your
Speaker 1: name was mentioned, not directly, but I talked about my dad.
Speaker 1: But no, so uh no. Everybody that follows what we
Speaker 1: do knows these two guys right here, and of course
Speaker 1: they know Colby moorehead the bar Tech, which Kobe is
Speaker 1: going to be the one of the stars of this conversation.
Speaker 1: Don't tell him why. But now, James, how long have
Speaker 1: we been bear hunting and having kind of a bear
Speaker 1: camp several years now? I don't I don't know when
Speaker 1: we started really, yeah. Um look forward to it every year.
Speaker 1: There's time of year especially yeah for bear season. Deer
Speaker 1: season used to be my Now it's bear I love
Speaker 1: to the way we hunt, the way we do bait. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and get kids involved in particular. Um, that means a
Speaker 1: lot to me. I enjoy it them as much as
Speaker 1: I do hunt myself, I'd rather them, Yeah, but I mean,
Speaker 1: I still enjoy it. But it's just seeing what we
Speaker 1: can come up with, the bating that we do, how
Speaker 1: we do it. You grew up here, so you uh so,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna say exactly where we're at, but we're
Speaker 1: in just a little rural community in the wash Dolls
Speaker 1: and James, you've you've been here your whole life. You're
Speaker 1: seventy two, seventy two. When's your birthday? March seventeenth? When's
Speaker 1: your birthday? Just a little bit older? Yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 1: you're smarter than me. You were about to say that
Speaker 1: that's six months. Six months made a lot of you
Speaker 1: learned a lot of stuff I missed out. Uh Now, James,
Speaker 1: I think we I think the first time we baited
Speaker 1: bears back in here was in two thousand ten. I
Speaker 1: think it's two thousand ten. And you let me and
Speaker 1: Lee Walt hunt your piece of property over there, and
Speaker 1: Dad was helping us bait, and we came in and
Speaker 1: Lee ended up killing the bear over there, and we
Speaker 1: came back and you hadn't even told us that you
Speaker 1: were bear hunting. You didn't you you know, you just
Speaker 1: let us bear hunt over there. And I didn't know
Speaker 1: you that well at that time. Um, And now the
Speaker 1: way I knew you is because I wrote an article
Speaker 1: about you. Uh that was in Arkansas Sportsman. And I
Speaker 1: was gonna write an article about you for North American
Speaker 1: Whitetail and then you nearly died. I had permission from
Speaker 1: from shoot. His name is escaped me, a longtime editor
Speaker 1: of North American Whitetail. Um, what's his name, Collie. I'm
Speaker 1: embarrassing myself anyway, like I had, And I was gonna
Speaker 1: write an article about your shed hornbuck of nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: finding these shed horns and finally killing this deer when
Speaker 1: you were just a boy. While your dad and uncles
Speaker 1: were off hunting without you, you stayed home and still
Speaker 1: hunted this deer and killed it. And uh and then
Speaker 1: you got real sick and uh in that kind of
Speaker 1: we just we just weren't able to do the article.
Speaker 1: But you're back. Can I say something about James. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm a self taught hunter. No one in my family
Speaker 1: deer hunted, so you know, I'd never professed to be
Speaker 1: a great deer hunter. But I love people who knew
Speaker 1: how to deer hunt. I started hearing James Lawrence, Daniel
Speaker 1: Lance legendary figures and I always wanted to meet James,
Speaker 1: but I thought, man, this guy, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: like meeting Daniel Boone. It will never happen. So Clay
Speaker 1: came to me one day and he said, Dad, I
Speaker 1: I want to meet I want to meet the best
Speaker 1: hunter in Polk County. And I knew that James would
Speaker 1: be on the target list, but I had no way
Speaker 1: of connecting Clay to James. So we went through Joe
Speaker 1: Joe Lyles. I said, Joe is a real good hunter,
Speaker 1: and Joe is raised here and he will put you
Speaker 1: on the guy. Well, what I was trying to do,
Speaker 1: and this is a different article, as I was trying
Speaker 1: to write an article about mountain hunters, you know, just
Speaker 1: hunting that National Forest, just hunting in the mountains. And
Speaker 1: that's when I called Joe Lyles and and uh and
Speaker 1: Joe Lyles is a good hunter, but he told me
Speaker 1: about you, and so uh yeah, I just went and
Speaker 1: knocked on James door. And we've been best buddies ever since.
Speaker 1: You know, he he was just an iconic figure. Two
Speaker 1: guys like me, I mean, we just everybody knew the name,
Speaker 1: but you never had the opportunity to meet the guy
Speaker 1: unless you were local. So anyway, it was a pleasure
Speaker 1: to get to know what a humble, gud and wonderful
Speaker 1: person James is. So anyway, yeah, I wouldn't be that humble.
Speaker 1: I would be telling you how good of a great
Speaker 1: hunter I was. Everybody, I mean, monkey with me. I'm
Speaker 1: too good man. Hey, okay, this is the James segment.
Speaker 1: Yesterday we were in James's garage and he's got He's
Speaker 1: had the He's had to expand his white tail wall
Speaker 1: because he filled the whole wall up in his garage.
Speaker 1: So now he's hanging him out on the porch. But
Speaker 1: the old set of deer from when he was even
Speaker 1: a kid through the seventies and eighties is all in
Speaker 1: his garage. And these are things that I wouldn't really notice,
Speaker 1: because I would expect James to remember a lot about
Speaker 1: those deer. But Misty took note. My wife was standing
Speaker 1: there and and I just randomly went over and touched
Speaker 1: a couple of deer horns. If you remember, there's one
Speaker 1: that big old brow times and these are just skull
Speaker 1: plates screwed on the wall and I touched the big
Speaker 1: old buck and James said, he told us right where
Speaker 1: he killed it. He said, you know, I killed that
Speaker 1: back there, and it was told us the date. And
Speaker 1: then I just I didn't think you think about it,
Speaker 1: and I just went to the next one. Said, man,
Speaker 1: that one right there is a cool deer, and and
Speaker 1: James would say, man, that was eight four and we
Speaker 1: Gene and I had packed back in on the horse
Speaker 1: and died, and I and Misty came back and she
Speaker 1: said he remembered every one of those deer. M h
Speaker 1: But I thought that's pretty cool. I hope I don't
Speaker 1: lose that. Yeah, I do, and I'm say a hundred percent,
Speaker 1: but I know there's a story behind all of them.
Speaker 1: M m hmm. If I can remember, I'm so far
Speaker 1: I can. Yeah. Well, that that one he was talking
Speaker 1: about was a special one. Anyway, that that is the
Speaker 1: time was the biggest deer I've ever seen. And they
Speaker 1: had that unusual set of horns. The high guards are
Speaker 1: brow times whatever you call it was extreme. Yeah. Different
Speaker 1: people looked at it and they said, that's g two.
Speaker 1: You don't have brow times drye guards. What do you think? Oh,
Speaker 1: I'd say, those are as a Buona crocket score, those
Speaker 1: would be g one brown times. They're probably nine inches long,
Speaker 1: a pair of brow times that they curve up just
Speaker 1: kind of match each other in symmetry. On just a
Speaker 1: big old eight point, big gnarly eight point he killed
Speaker 1: out here. Yeah, well, you know, we don't. Back then,
Speaker 1: we didn't have a lot of deer. It's like everywhere.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not saying that you were handicapped, but
Speaker 1: you didn't have a lot of deer in the seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties, and I'm sure before that. And uh so
Speaker 1: every area has their tradition of what a trophy buck is.
Speaker 1: And James was killing the big bucks. Now if you
Speaker 1: compare it to an our guy just like just like you,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no comparison to even Missouri. Uh but
Speaker 1: even South Arkansas as far as that, you know, the
Speaker 1: farm land down there, really nice big bucks. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: these mountain bucks. There's an exception once in a while,
Speaker 1: but that's that's a good average. You know, County has
Speaker 1: killed a few Boone and Crockett and you over the years,
Speaker 1: about every ten years there will be a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty inch buck to Oild. In fact, when you were
Speaker 1: a kid. I was on I forget the name name
Speaker 1: of the guy, but it was a hundred sixty seven
Speaker 1: inch buck on uh a particular road that goes through
Speaker 1: the mountains, and I actually hunted that deer. But you know,
Speaker 1: I just can't stand to hunt big bucks for some reason. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean, it just seems I just didn't. I just
Speaker 1: I said on a bucket one something more kidding, he'd
Speaker 1: better go sit where he sees a bunch of deer.
Speaker 1: You know, I just I don't have patience. I don't
Speaker 1: you know, so many things go against me for killing
Speaker 1: big bucks, even though I've had plenty of chances. But
Speaker 1: this buck had huge rubs. I mean, I was just
Speaker 1: like going nuts. And I could follow this buck for
Speaker 1: over a hundred yards on a trail that you knew
Speaker 1: it was this buck um and for around here that's
Speaker 1: pretty rare, and you know where it was, I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: I mean, uh, you know, I mean it was just crazy.
Speaker 1: I'm going like, I've never seen this obvious of a sign.
Speaker 1: And two weeks later, sin as gun season opened or whatever,
Speaker 1: the guy killed it. I never, seriously, I never even
Speaker 1: put a stand up. I said on a bucket one
Speaker 1: morning before church in a honeysuckle patch and that, you know,
Speaker 1: I just thought, so, you know, I'm not a great hunter,
Speaker 1: but I've killed a lot of deer, you know, I've
Speaker 1: killed a whole lot of deer, a lot more deer
Speaker 1: and a lot of people, but nothing that you wanted.
Speaker 1: You just eat it and you're really good at uh killing.
Speaker 1: There there the way you wanted to kill him with
Speaker 1: a bow on public land, and we're doing it back
Speaker 1: before many people were doing it. Well back before, yeah,
Speaker 1: many people were doing it. You were doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. My buddies would be raised up gun hunters.
Speaker 1: Their whole family gun hunted. My family didn't gun hunt.
Speaker 1: They couldn't kill a deer with a bow, and I
Speaker 1: could it. And it was weird. It was really weird
Speaker 1: because I didn't know much, but I just knew where
Speaker 1: you could go killed thoh and bucks would come in
Speaker 1: and you know, but anyway, it was kind of funny
Speaker 1: back in the seventies how the guys that should have
Speaker 1: been good hunters could not kill deer with a bow.
Speaker 1: You know. Ye, so, but I've never you know, I
Speaker 1: just don't kill big stuff, you know, it's too hard
Speaker 1: to get him out of the woods. You know, there's
Speaker 1: there's larger factors that play hard to get down of
Speaker 1: the woods. Now, there's larger factors that played to what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. And to give somebody context, you were
Speaker 1: killing any deer with a bow back before people were
Speaker 1: killing deer, and so that became really valued to you,
Speaker 1: just to kill a deer with a bow on public
Speaker 1: land in Arkansas, and our guns seasons start in the rut.
Speaker 1: Our guns seasons are pretty liberal here, and so our
Speaker 1: guns seasons are starting the first week in November. So
Speaker 1: you had basically the month of October to kill there,
Speaker 1: and you were just interested in filling your tags, and
Speaker 1: so it just never became that big of a priority.
Speaker 1: I would put my my archery equipment up November five.
Speaker 1: I mean to never. I mean, you know, every now
Speaker 1: and then I'd go out, but very seldom, maybe once
Speaker 1: ever five years. I might hunt some time in December.
Speaker 1: But and you know, that's where you set your goals.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just a it's a truism. Claise heard
Speaker 1: me say this a lot about life. You set your
Speaker 1: goals low, that's what you're gonna achieve. You know, if
Speaker 1: i'd have said I want to kill big Bucks. I probably,
Speaker 1: even though I've had plenty of opportunities. You know, I
Speaker 1: probably would have killed a bunch of big Bucks instead
Speaker 1: of killing a lot of small deer. I probably would
Speaker 1: have killed a few big Bucks. But I don't want
Speaker 1: to do that. It's too boring to me. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just not geared to be I'm a geared to
Speaker 1: be a scouter. That's it. Sting. Yeah. I always allowed
Speaker 1: patience with the name of the am and older I
Speaker 1: get the less patients. Uh. I gotta go to stand
Speaker 1: in the morning with a light and leave that stand
Speaker 1: at night with a lot. And my granddad always said
Speaker 1: three days and SAMs much of killer deer. So sometimes
Speaker 1: he's right, sometimes he's wrong. But if you sit there
Speaker 1: from daylight the dark, which I can't do anymore. Um,
Speaker 1: that was one of my secrets, was just back to
Speaker 1: three days, find a good scrape line. And back in
Speaker 1: the seventies I killed more deal over scrapes nine o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning. As a rule, i'd go to work ten.
Speaker 1: I'd be there until nine. And now I don't know
Speaker 1: what happened, didn't It doesn't work that way. Anymore. But
Speaker 1: back in the seventies, you find a good scrape, he said,
Speaker 1: on it daylight, the dark, and three days you have me.
Speaker 1: So that way, you just look for the biggest track,
Speaker 1: the biggest cook push. So what do you mean it
Speaker 1: doesn't work? You're being literally I can't scrape anymore. I
Speaker 1: mean I can't do any good scrape hunters. They you
Speaker 1: just don't see the deer. I just don't. I don't
Speaker 1: have any activity. I can sit there. But well, I
Speaker 1: didn't have cameras then. We didn't have cameras. Uh, we
Speaker 1: just went by the sun, you know, in the tracks.
Speaker 1: I've had cameras back then, I wouldn't have been sitting
Speaker 1: there because it wouldn't be getting no pictures. It's always
Speaker 1: not they and they don't run scrapes. Of course, we
Speaker 1: got a lot more deer now than we had dan,
Speaker 1: but back in the seventies, scrape hunting was a way
Speaker 1: to go. You know, I think there's something biological and
Speaker 1: what you've said, because I've heard some really good local hunters.
Speaker 1: Y'all would know who I'm talking about. Tell me the
Speaker 1: same thing as they said. They said, and I can't
Speaker 1: explain it, but they they noted. The trend over a
Speaker 1: long period of time is that the buck sign is
Speaker 1: different than it used to be. And and I mean,
Speaker 1: I wonder if it just it hadn't to do with
Speaker 1: low deer density and then hide deer density, because now
Speaker 1: we have a lot more deer and maybe somehow that's
Speaker 1: affected the way they're using and making sign. I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds crazy, but I've heard too many people say
Speaker 1: what you just said, it was it was so much fun.
Speaker 1: Could you find the scrape a good scrape? I mean
Speaker 1: you don't just you know they make them, But do
Speaker 1: you find a main scrape? But he've been frequent and
Speaker 1: twisted limbs towards scrape, sit there for three days and
Speaker 1: you kill him? You know, I used to have that
Speaker 1: theory that three days, but I I just could never
Speaker 1: set them stand three days. That it worked for me
Speaker 1: back in the seventies. It don't anymore. But in the
Speaker 1: seventies that was a scrape line important to you. I
Speaker 1: try to I always call him a main scrape. If
Speaker 1: you find a scrape, scrape, scrape, you find a main scrape.
Speaker 1: He frequency and it's not just one deer either. You
Speaker 1: sat there for three days, you loveously three or four
Speaker 1: bucks come to the same scrape, which I didn't know that. Uh,
Speaker 1: but I would find what I call the main scrape,
Speaker 1: one big scrape. I think, a little polled place. You
Speaker 1: sit on those you might, but you found the main scrape. Um,
Speaker 1: I can't. Now I've tried it. I don't have the
Speaker 1: patience to set in one spot on the scrape. Now
Speaker 1: now I've got a camera so I can tell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But then I didn't have This may sound crazy that
Speaker 1: I took twine. I found the main scrape didn't have
Speaker 1: any It was over by the cabin and I had
Speaker 1: time that year. I took some twine around the scrape,
Speaker 1: hung it in bushes around the scrape, all complete circle,
Speaker 1: and then I would watch that the next morning I
Speaker 1: had it'd be up when i'd leave at night. The
Speaker 1: next morning. You can see where we come down and
Speaker 1: broke a little twine, opened up the scrape and left.
Speaker 1: I didn't have a time, but I knew I was
Speaker 1: there from daylight the dark. Um. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many days I'd hunted it, but I give up at
Speaker 1: noon and walked down to my cabin. I wasn't a
Speaker 1: quarter of a mile from my cabin. And I get
Speaker 1: back to my stand and there's the twine broke where
Speaker 1: he'd come off the mountain, opened up the scrape, and
Speaker 1: where he'd went off the side of that ridge that
Speaker 1: I was on. So basically that deer was watching me.
Speaker 1: I believe that that deer was up on the mountain
Speaker 1: above me, either smelt me or saying me, because he
Speaker 1: he opened that scrape up while I was gone for
Speaker 1: thirty minutes for lunch break. I quit. I quit. That
Speaker 1: was the last time, and I really and truly die
Speaker 1: hard set on the scrape. If I'd had cameras, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't take long to figure it out the time element,
Speaker 1: but that's the only way I could figure out where
Speaker 1: he was coming from. When he come off the mountain.
Speaker 1: He broke that little twine and I just had circled. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's done that what I was going to lunch.
Speaker 1: So we whip you know, we we had that happened
Speaker 1: down in southern Arkansas. We've we've found scrapes that were
Speaker 1: like the size of your truck. I mean, I can't remember.
Speaker 1: They were just unbelievable to a young hunter. You're just
Speaker 1: going you got to be kind, man, this is crazy.
Speaker 1: We would leave, maybe finding at ten. This happened one time,
Speaker 1: find it maybe ten o'clock. I'm just making that up.
Speaker 1: Then we go back to camp, mess around, come back
Speaker 1: that afternoon, and the scrapes worked, you know, so that
Speaker 1: to our period worked. And then one day I had
Speaker 1: a I like to hunt acorns, and I'm sitting here
Speaker 1: watching a spike buck eat all my acorns, and finally
Speaker 1: I run him off. And when I run him off,
Speaker 1: I look and there's a huge buck. One of our
Speaker 1: old spots had been sitting up on side that he'll
Speaker 1: watching the spike eat all those acorns, probably about ready
Speaker 1: to come down. And I mean he he was one
Speaker 1: of the he was one of the really big bucks
Speaker 1: in that area. Had some big rubs around in different places.
Speaker 1: And uh, anyway, that's just hunting. That's how they get big.
Speaker 1: They let their little ones go in first. But if
Speaker 1: you can find a doe in heat early, just one,
Speaker 1: I mean, it just goes crazy. The woods goes crazy.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've only had it happen in forty
Speaker 1: years of bow hunting. I've only had it happen a
Speaker 1: couple of times where a doe would come in around
Speaker 1: the twenty October of October, and I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: you just remember Clay was off in college and he
Speaker 1: came home. I said, Clay, you gotta get out here,
Speaker 1: you gotta hunt this buck. And uh, you know I
Speaker 1: had a shot thirty two steps and you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I just shot under it. It was huge, twelve point
Speaker 1: one of those beautiful twelve points, you know, bam bam bam.
Speaker 1: In Uh October, dog comes in next Saturday. I mean
Speaker 1: I waited a full week to hunt it. The next Saturday,
Speaker 1: the buck comes in again. I had a ten point
Speaker 1: eight point a six point one Sunday morning before before church,
Speaker 1: and uh, I mean it was just crazy. That's particular
Speaker 1: spot and this buck would come up and click. I
Speaker 1: might have told this I think, you know, the clicking buck.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just I learned more in that
Speaker 1: one setting. I guessing I've ever learned in my life
Speaker 1: about deer hunting. You know, I wonder, I wonder how
Speaker 1: much our knowledge of deer hunting is anecdotal. And the
Speaker 1: word anecdotal meaning based upon experience, not necessarily based upon science,
Speaker 1: or based upon perceived experience, like you know, because like
Speaker 1: we have all these experiences in the woods and we
Speaker 1: come to a conclusion pretty quickly. Like predators humans in general,
Speaker 1: we perceive data, you know, like you perceive something that's
Speaker 1: going on, and then you come to a conclusion of
Speaker 1: what happens, and then you build a strategy around that
Speaker 1: conclusion and if that, if it works, then your your
Speaker 1: your conclusion is validated. But I think sometimes we even
Speaker 1: have we perceived data what's happening, we come to a
Speaker 1: conclusion that may not be right, but we use that
Speaker 1: and we're successful and build kind of ideologies that maybe
Speaker 1: aren't even fully true, but they kind of work for
Speaker 1: us a lot of the time. Does that mean I
Speaker 1: think I think hunters do that a lot because we're
Speaker 1: dealing We're not dealing in hard science. We're dealing in
Speaker 1: perceived perceived. I mean, it's not like we're log and
Speaker 1: entries and we're actually conducting research. When we're out there,
Speaker 1: it's all anecdotal. We're sitting in a stand and we
Speaker 1: think this happened, but really maybe something else happened. But regardless,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter because guys like you and Dad figure
Speaker 1: out how to make it work, you know. And um,
Speaker 1: so I find that the people and what I've learned
Speaker 1: from both of you guys, is that get a strategy
Speaker 1: and stick to it and become highly proficient at whatever
Speaker 1: method you have that works, and you'll be a successful
Speaker 1: hunter like Dad hunting like white oak acorns on public land.
Speaker 1: It's like he had that down to a science. You
Speaker 1: have down to a science slip hunting the national forest
Speaker 1: and uh and moving through timber and and monitoring buck
Speaker 1: sign and I mean, you just can't hardly keep James
Speaker 1: from killing a buck. James doesn't know this, but every
Speaker 1: year he says the same thing every year for the
Speaker 1: last ten years. This time of year he says, Man,
Speaker 1: I can't find a buck. There's no bucks around here.
Speaker 1: And then by the end of the season he's got
Speaker 1: two big racks hanging on the porch that he killed. Now.
Speaker 1: I've wrote something about James the other day in the magazine.
Speaker 1: I said he has an uncanny ability to uh just
Speaker 1: draw out game in places where other people can't. So James,
Speaker 1: you can keep telling me there's no big bucks around.
Speaker 1: He's a liar, man. Maybe that's what it is you're
Speaker 1: holding back. Man, give me a break. Uh. Hey, I
Speaker 1: gave him some intel yesterday where a big buck was
Speaker 1: because we saw one across the road National Forest, a
Speaker 1: good buck. But he says there's a lot of people
Speaker 1: hunting over there. So now, um, yeah, well, hey we're
Speaker 1: here to talk about bear camp. But all this to me,
Speaker 1: this is this is good, good context to talk about
Speaker 1: bear camp because our our bear hunting here in Arkansas
Speaker 1: is supplementary to our deer hunting. That's just the truth. Like,
Speaker 1: we don't bear hunt like this for the whole season,
Speaker 1: you know, we bear hunt like this for a few
Speaker 1: days or maybe a week because these bears leave our
Speaker 1: baits and it's so time consuming, so energy consuming to
Speaker 1: keep these baits going. It's like we have this flurry
Speaker 1: of activity that leads up to this one weekend where
Speaker 1: we can all get here where the kids can be
Speaker 1: here and we have this uh fun weekend. This week
Speaker 1: we this this year, we stayed at a real nice
Speaker 1: uh cabin out here that James built. This cabin. Uh
Speaker 1: it runs off solar James carpenter, James as a carpenter
Speaker 1: and and more than that, and he and his son
Speaker 1: hooked up all the solar and this is a super
Speaker 1: cool place. But um, what do you why is this
Speaker 1: weekend special? James? Like, why do you like this so much.
Speaker 1: What's the That's a hard question. But I I look
Speaker 1: forward to it from one year to the next. When
Speaker 1: we're slowing down from this, you know, three or four days.
Speaker 1: I hate to see that go, But I think about
Speaker 1: the next year, there's three or four days here where
Speaker 1: we maybe that we put a lot of effort into it,
Speaker 1: and it's worth every bit that we put into it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I enjoy kids experience and what I did when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. A lot of people don't get to
Speaker 1: do that now days. Yeah, but a few days of
Speaker 1: bare suasan just see the smile on people's face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like to rent. Last night he couldn't wipe that.
Speaker 1: Grin office say uh uh yeah, well we've got uh.
Speaker 1: I think we're working with between David's, we're working with
Speaker 1: let me hold that we've got it. The problem with
Speaker 1: having these old guys on the podcast is a get
Speaker 1: up move around. It's getting this coffee. Um. I think
Speaker 1: we've got five baits sites out here, and we can
Speaker 1: only bait on private land in Arkansas. Everybody knows that,
Speaker 1: and um we it's funny that everybody has heard us
Speaker 1: talk about these baits. Some baits are just prone to
Speaker 1: have big bears and some aren't. Our baits out here
Speaker 1: kind of hit and miss with big real big bears,
Speaker 1: but we always have bears. And uh, let's just start.
Speaker 1: So I was in uh everybody heard the last couple
Speaker 1: of podcasts, and I, me and Kobe were in Montana
Speaker 1: elk hunting, and so James was doing all the work
Speaker 1: for us, and we kind of, you know, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of in charge of gathering bait and I bring it
Speaker 1: down here. And then James is kind of in charge
Speaker 1: of keeping the baits going because he's living you know,
Speaker 1: he lives pretty close to these places. And so before
Speaker 1: I went to Montana, I went and uh got got
Speaker 1: some bait. James also got some bait because I couldn't
Speaker 1: locate any bread up where I'm from, so James had
Speaker 1: to drive. But I've been baiting these bears for about
Speaker 1: three weeks coming up to this, I think, And um,
Speaker 1: so I brought three kids down here, Bear River and Shepherd,
Speaker 1: and uh now Bear Newcom has made a commitment to
Speaker 1: not kill a bear over bait. He's sticking to it,
Speaker 1: and to try to kill a bear the National Forest.
Speaker 1: Yeah for his first bear. Yeah, yeah, he I talked
Speaker 1: to him about three years ago because I knew we
Speaker 1: could put him on a bear bait and get him
Speaker 1: to kill a bear. And uh, there are several factors
Speaker 1: that went into it, but with bear in particular, I
Speaker 1: felt like that he had enough internal drive and I
Speaker 1: just you know, every kid is different, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to give him a goal that he could move towards.
Speaker 1: And he had hunted with me quite a bit out
Speaker 1: in the mountains and he he loved it, like he
Speaker 1: man as as a parent, and you built this inside
Speaker 1: of me, Dad, is that you shape the value system
Speaker 1: of your kids. You show them what has value and
Speaker 1: and hunting bear of verbait has incredible value. But with
Speaker 1: bear in particular, we've hunted National Forest for deer and bear,
Speaker 1: and I really emphasized that to him that hey, this
Speaker 1: is a tough way to hunt him. This is a
Speaker 1: difficult way. You gotta be a woodsman to do this.
Speaker 1: You gotta have persistence. You can't think about this in
Speaker 1: terms of a single season. You gotta think about this
Speaker 1: in terms of multiple seasons. And uh. And he I
Speaker 1: could see he was matching onto this, and I said,
Speaker 1: I tell you what, how about what it? And I
Speaker 1: let him make the decision. But I said, what if
Speaker 1: you didn't kill a bear over bait? And that's a
Speaker 1: tough decision for a he made that he made he
Speaker 1: pretty much he made that commitment when he was twelve.
Speaker 1: He's fourteen. Now, that's a tough decision for a twelve
Speaker 1: year old to not take his bow and go out
Speaker 1: here and sit on a not a for sure deal
Speaker 1: because it's not but a pretty for sure deal while
Speaker 1: his brothers and sisters are killing bears and getting validated
Speaker 1: by people and getting pictures put up on Facebook by
Speaker 1: their mama. You know what I'm saying in the bear
Speaker 1: just every year, just like Nope, I'm gonna kill one
Speaker 1: out in the mountains, gonna kill one out in the
Speaker 1: mountains and uh so, um he'll, he'll. That's that's the
Speaker 1: decision that he's made. So we got a tough road
Speaker 1: to hold to get him on a bear out there,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna try. Um but River and Shepherd hunted
Speaker 1: this weekend, And but who got the hot seat was
Speaker 1: Mr Kolby, the bever Tech morehead. Um Kolby, So this
Speaker 1: is your first time to come here. Yeah, I tell
Speaker 1: you that you're in a coveted chair here. Brother. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: what's what's been like for you? Oh it's been great.
Speaker 1: I think the thing I was looking most forward to
Speaker 1: was meeting James here. His names so much around the
Speaker 1: office and this is like Scott, is he for real?
Speaker 1: Now we find out it's been lying to us where
Speaker 1: they were all the time? Yeah? No, No, Meeting James
Speaker 1: has definitely been a highlight of the weekend. And uh,
Speaker 1: just the kind of guy is like not I mean,
Speaker 1: not even knowing him, like all the history about all
Speaker 1: the bucks he's killing everything. Just like meetings, we meet
Speaker 1: somebody's quality. It's just like that makes it makes a
Speaker 1: trip worth it, you know. And so I think for
Speaker 1: me that's been a highlighting. And I mean, yeah, getting
Speaker 1: to hunt with Shepard was awesome too. You know we
Speaker 1: sat describe describe your hunt then. Yeah, so my hunt.
Speaker 1: We we had a bait that we decided to hunt
Speaker 1: in the morning, but we had to watch and make
Speaker 1: sure there weren't any bears up there, so we stayed
Speaker 1: and stayed back. Probably the wind is howling, the kids
Speaker 1: are falling, leaves are blowing. Yeah, so we probably got
Speaker 1: within like two hundred yards of the bait and glass
Speaker 1: for a little while and saw that there was a
Speaker 1: bear there, so we had to wait for for for
Speaker 1: to clear out. And with this particular bait, we were
Speaker 1: thinking maybe maybe if we got one early enough, we'd
Speaker 1: have an opportunity to another one. So we thought that
Speaker 1: we could maybe killed two bears. Maybe. Yeah, we had
Speaker 1: a stand in this particular spot. It was a big
Speaker 1: platform stand where I'm private land. Yeah, you guys are
Speaker 1: hunting with him walking this since where we're staying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's pretty unique. And they're literally walking up the
Speaker 1: hill hundred yards to a bear bait. Yeah. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: hadn't been bad at a matter of fact, you guys
Speaker 1: had it really easy. We had it really easy, and
Speaker 1: we had a lot of space. The hardest thing was
Speaker 1: we didn't know we needed to take chairs, so we
Speaker 1: had to. We had to deal with the hard plywood.
Speaker 1: I I know, I mean I thought we were gonna
Speaker 1: be dealing with strict luxury and we just I didn't
Speaker 1: talk about it. I didn't think about it either. I
Speaker 1: just the big platform. Yeah, I didn't know you we endured. No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't it wasn't bad at all. No, it was
Speaker 1: just fun hang out with Shep out there, and just
Speaker 1: not often that I hunt with other someone else inside
Speaker 1: the stand. Shep and I have been, you know, playing
Speaker 1: basketball together and stuff. So it was just fun to
Speaker 1: do something different. And uh yeah, so you hunted the
Speaker 1: morning opening morning, you you saw a bear from about
Speaker 1: a hundred hundred and something yards away. Yeah, the hunt.
Speaker 1: The hunt was on before we even got in the stand.
Speaker 1: And hey, that's exactly what I tell people to do, Kolbe,
Speaker 1: is that if you're hunting bears in the mornings, you
Speaker 1: gotta be careful because the bear is gonna be there
Speaker 1: all night. And if you all have walked in there
Speaker 1: before daylight with flashlights, you would have spooked that bear,
Speaker 1: oh for sure. So you waited until daylight, and sure
Speaker 1: enough there was a bear there, and you let it
Speaker 1: walk off, and then he went to the stand, and
Speaker 1: then you hunted the whole morning. It never came back
Speaker 1: and never came back, and then uh we we I
Speaker 1: think we probably could have stalked the bear, but we
Speaker 1: didn't want to blow it out. We didn't know what
Speaker 1: the wind would do, so we just tuned the morning
Speaker 1: until about ten thirty and then just came out and
Speaker 1: went back that that afternoon round four, and uh, I
Speaker 1: just sat there and that bear came out eventually. It
Speaker 1: was real light and nervy, um, and then it left
Speaker 1: and then it came back. I'm just like you. I mean,
Speaker 1: just like it had done this a million times, like
Speaker 1: I had this whole thing, like it was smelling the
Speaker 1: wind and just like real nervy. And so it finally
Speaker 1: came in and we were able to get a shot
Speaker 1: off on it. And uh, anyways, it looked like a
Speaker 1: great shot, you know, twenty yards, yeah, twenty exactly, how
Speaker 1: you know, I'll give the abbreviated version the bear. Probably
Speaker 1: an hour and a half before dark, they saw the
Speaker 1: bear pacing up on the ridge, which is real typical.
Speaker 1: These bears are coming in down wind of these baits
Speaker 1: and staging out there, and so this bear smelled them
Speaker 1: and knew they were there, and uh so it wasn't
Speaker 1: coming in. And then some yard dogs about it's actually
Speaker 1: about a half a mile away, but started barking. We
Speaker 1: can the dogs actually came up there. Oh yeah, ate
Speaker 1: some of the bat and everything. Yeah, dogs, man and
Speaker 1: and so. But the dogs were still over there across
Speaker 1: the road. They started barking, and the bear just left
Speaker 1: out just took off up up the hill. The dogs
Speaker 1: quit barking, and U the bearings that were coming back
Speaker 1: like fifteen minutes later. Yeah, yeah, and so they have
Speaker 1: to get the shot off. And we played it back
Speaker 1: and it looked like I looked like a team tin ring.
Speaker 1: It's like that bear is just laying up there, you know.
Speaker 1: And so but Sheep he he was like, I think
Speaker 1: it might have been a little far back, and we
Speaker 1: think he saw like my fletching or something. So the
Speaker 1: way the bear acted wasn't typical, like it ran up
Speaker 1: the hill a little bit, stood there for a minute
Speaker 1: and then just mosied off like nothing had ever happened.
Speaker 1: And so that didn't make sense to with like what
Speaker 1: I saw or what my shot did. Bro it made
Speaker 1: sense with what Sheep thought he saw. And so I
Speaker 1: was like, acted like it was hit far back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, it's like he felt like it was
Speaker 1: a double lung. Yeah. I thought it was a great
Speaker 1: shot and shut. And so I was like, well, maybe
Speaker 1: I didn't see it right because that bear was kind
Speaker 1: of acting like like that. So we I we had
Speaker 1: filmed it, and so I punched in on it, and
Speaker 1: I mean it looked like a perfect shot, and so
Speaker 1: I'm feeling really good and so we um. Anyways, we
Speaker 1: looked the video a couple of times. That's a great shot.
Speaker 1: That's where you want to put it. We go up
Speaker 1: there to track it, thinking it's gonna be an easy track,
Speaker 1: and uh, we're not finding a whole lot of blood,
Speaker 1: and then we start finding a little bit of blood
Speaker 1: and a little bit more blood, and that barely let's
Speaker 1: let's stop right there. You came back to camp. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't tech the arrow or anything. I just backed out.
Speaker 1: And by the time you got back here, my mom
Speaker 1: and dad were here, James and David. They were probably
Speaker 1: fifteen people here within wide oakakring on the tin roof.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they could hear that. Uh, probably
Speaker 1: fifteen people here. And when we went up there, I
Speaker 1: bet there were eight of us tracking that. Barrett. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it's not an ideal situation, but nobody wanted to stay back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's too easy, It's just let's walk up. Everybody was
Speaker 1: just like, let's go. Yeah. That's if if it had
Speaker 1: been uh, a little bit different situation, I probably would
Speaker 1: have said, hey, let's let's let's just get about three
Speaker 1: of us and go up there, but the kids wanted
Speaker 1: to go and so anyway, so we go up there,
Speaker 1: thinking it's gonna be a fifty yard trail job, and
Speaker 1: we don't find it. Dad, he just tend ring that
Speaker 1: bear tend ringed it and there was no blood and
Speaker 1: the bear didn't hardly act like it was hit. And
Speaker 1: we finally found blood twenty thirty yards, I mean started
Speaker 1: finding good blood, probably thirty yards from where the bear
Speaker 1: was shot. And it was deep red, kind of like
Speaker 1: mustley cavity type blood. And I thought, well, he's hit it,
Speaker 1: yeah and low well and even the arrow didn't look
Speaker 1: the arrow was almost clean. You and we're we're we're
Speaker 1: gonna describe something to you here that's typical of bear,
Speaker 1: which is that that was the cleanest pass. Yeah, the arrow,
Speaker 1: if he had just put it in his quiver, you
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have been able to pick out which era
Speaker 1: had been shot. And damn press you, yes this and
Speaker 1: and so we we finally get on decent blood and
Speaker 1: we trail this bear and we find where he laid on,
Speaker 1: right up against a big pine tree. Um and I said,
Speaker 1: oh man, this bear bedded down. That's not good because
Speaker 1: it wouldn't the bed down wasn't laying there. But we
Speaker 1: saw good blood coming out of the bed. So, you know,
Speaker 1: it's been two and a half three hours, and so
Speaker 1: we're like, well, let's just go a little bit further.
Speaker 1: We got another ten twelve yards and there's another bed
Speaker 1: and we go, oh man, that's not good. But we
Speaker 1: see good blood and the bear starts to turn downhill
Speaker 1: and so and I'm telling the kids to get back.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think probably the most dangerous thing
Speaker 1: we do is bear hunters is trail wounded game, especially
Speaker 1: at night. I mean, that's how you could get chewed up.
Speaker 1: I mean, of all the things we do, aside from
Speaker 1: driving on the highway, getting chewed up by wounded bear
Speaker 1: is a real possibility, especially or something like that. So
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about that with all the kids, and so
Speaker 1: I'm saying get back, get back, everybody, and we're trying
Speaker 1: to track the bear and anyway, we go down another
Speaker 1: ten yards and there's another bed, and finally I say,
Speaker 1: that's it. We gotta get out of here. This you know,
Speaker 1: you this bear is alive. And so we all back
Speaker 1: out and uh, to make a long story short, we
Speaker 1: go track another two bears, not one. We tracked Brent's
Speaker 1: bear and Aaron Marshall's bear, and we get back here
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about those two. But we get back
Speaker 1: here at eleven something probably always later. That wasn't it
Speaker 1: was no one was started. But okay, we get back here. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we about eleven o'clock. We go back up there, and
Speaker 1: that bear had ran fifteen yards past where he last was,
Speaker 1: so I mean laid down one more time by some
Speaker 1: big bended four times and probably sixty seventy yards and uh.
Speaker 1: And so we do a knee cropsy. That's a new word, James,
Speaker 1: that we've learned. It's not an an autopsy is specifically
Speaker 1: for human. Is that right? So if you if you
Speaker 1: are examining the internal organs of a dead human, it's
Speaker 1: called an autopsy. If you're examining an animal, it's called
Speaker 1: a knee cropsy. It's our understanding. Yeah, I've done on
Speaker 1: a horse before the vet. Okay, So we're curious as
Speaker 1: to what where he hit this bear, and so we
Speaker 1: opened it up real, real delicately, and the bear was
Speaker 1: hit in the lower portion of the lungs. Dad double
Speaker 1: lung shot and two of those slick trick blades, rake
Speaker 1: down the heart. There were actually cut the heart and
Speaker 1: hit two lungs, and that bear bedded four times and
Speaker 1: was bleeding this you know, dark maroon blood. I mean
Speaker 1: just still Now, did the bear die in the amount
Speaker 1: of time that it was supposed to? Yes, the bear
Speaker 1: died within a hundred yards, that's normal. The blood was
Speaker 1: not normal, the bedding down was not normal. And the
Speaker 1: way the bear acted was pretty abnormal because it ran
Speaker 1: off real fast and then it just walked. Usually you
Speaker 1: double on them, they do just like a death run.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of weird things about it. And
Speaker 1: I don't know what to say other than just every
Speaker 1: bear is different. I think a lot of blood trails
Speaker 1: have to do with the amount of fat a bear has.
Speaker 1: And we've been talking about this year how every bear
Speaker 1: we've skin has had an incredible amount of fat. What
Speaker 1: are your thoughts, hey, you know, I'm sure this is
Speaker 1: not right, but this is what I think that dear
Speaker 1: that bear did not even know it was hit. It's
Speaker 1: like a beasting and it goes, it jumps and it
Speaker 1: takes off running and it looks around. He thinks, well,
Speaker 1: there's no you know, there's no bee, there's no I mean,
Speaker 1: and so it just it just says, man, I don't
Speaker 1: feel good. I think I'm gonna take a nap, and
Speaker 1: then it gets restless and it goes you know, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to get away from here. And
Speaker 1: I don't think that the bear knew it was even hit.
Speaker 1: But when you say it's abnormal for a double long
Speaker 1: heart shot animal to bed four times in seventy yards, well,
Speaker 1: very very but I think that the animal probably died,
Speaker 1: like you said, in the appropriate amount of time, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it died within three minutes, eight minutes, ten minutes.
Speaker 1: But but every time it would bed down, you would think,
Speaker 1: I'm not feeling good. I've got it. And it just
Speaker 1: all came together for me that the that the arrow
Speaker 1: was in the very bottom the lungs, like, so it's
Speaker 1: still had a lot of its lungs. I heard somebody
Speaker 1: talking the other day about how not all liver shots
Speaker 1: are created equal if you just nicked the liver. If so,
Speaker 1: I think that era went through a pretty I mean,
Speaker 1: any part of the lung is vital, but it went
Speaker 1: through the very lower section of the lung and it
Speaker 1: just scratched the heart I think that bear just had
Speaker 1: a little bit more life in it, even though it
Speaker 1: was very much so mortally wounded age. Yeah, well for
Speaker 1: your first Arkansas bear, you've killed a bear up in Canada.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, my first standard dodging dodging smoker. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: getting smoked out. Uh yeah, my first US bear. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you killed a baron cannon. Were you excited? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: after it finally was like, oh yeah, it was good.
Speaker 1: Oh there's always drama, man, you wonder if you kill
Speaker 1: them or not. Hey, I would like to say that
Speaker 1: the picture of those two bear and with bear the
Speaker 1: human bear with his eight point buck there was one
Speaker 1: of the prettiest bear pictures I've seen. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was beautiful. You probably see it, did see it? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they'll see it in Bear Hunting magazine. Well and and
Speaker 1: so now that's a great segue into where those other
Speaker 1: animals came from. So Brent Reeves, everybody Brent Reeves who's
Speaker 1: been on the podcast a lot. Brent was hunting over
Speaker 1: here a couple of miles and uh, now Brent had
Speaker 1: wasn't really part of the camp that much because he
Speaker 1: just drove in real quick and started hunting. Um, but
Speaker 1: he shows up at camp and says, hey, I killed
Speaker 1: a bear, and so you'd kill the bear. He'd kill
Speaker 1: the bear. Yeah, And so we go over to help Brent.
Speaker 1: All of us, just the whole mob of people go
Speaker 1: over to help Brent. Trackis Baron. He had heard it
Speaker 1: death mom five times. Yeah. So Brent's killed two bears
Speaker 1: and both of them have death mound. I can't remember
Speaker 1: the last time a bear I killed death Mond for real?
Speaker 1: Your first bear did? Yeah? Yeah, Dad was with me
Speaker 1: the first bear killed it, death Mond. But so we
Speaker 1: go over there and when we get there, some of
Speaker 1: our other friends. This is just a small, tight knit community.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the answer to We we get over
Speaker 1: there and on the side of the road is a
Speaker 1: truck that we recognize and it's uh, they wouldn't mind
Speaker 1: us saying their names. It was. It was Aaron Marshall
Speaker 1: and his dad Ken, and uh, they say, well, we've
Speaker 1: shot a bear, and uh, it's funny because Aaron listens
Speaker 1: to this podcast and and uh he told me where
Speaker 1: he shot it, and he said, you know, he said
Speaker 1: they'd listen to I can't remember which podcast he listened to. Well,
Speaker 1: we find Brent's bear. I'm coming. I'm gonna come back
Speaker 1: to Aaron because we learned some stuff on his bear
Speaker 1: as well. Um, we find we find Brent's bear relative
Speaker 1: of ly easy because it didn't only run about forty
Speaker 1: yards and it was a very nice bore. We think
Speaker 1: three fifty plus. Um, James found it. James found it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were all over the hillside Dad this bear. There's
Speaker 1: just almost a straight cliff and we find this bear
Speaker 1: wrapped up around kind of a tree, about a two
Speaker 1: inch sapling on the side of this cliff. And Brent
Speaker 1: and I get to the bear and I pick up
Speaker 1: its head to look at it, and we're high fiving.
Speaker 1: And when I picked up its head, the body shifts
Speaker 1: and that bear just goes to the bottom, I mean
Speaker 1: just disappears and goes all the way down the creek.
Speaker 1: It was a Bob's letter y, So we relocated our
Speaker 1: we relocated to the creek and U no, So Brent
Speaker 1: just made a great double long hit you know, mid
Speaker 1: mid body, you know, dead center to lungs. The bear
Speaker 1: didn't go far. And so then we got Aaron had
Speaker 1: shot a bear and it was his first bear, and
Speaker 1: it was just a little ways up the road, and
Speaker 1: so we said, well, let's all go help Aaron track
Speaker 1: his bear. And so we go up there and we
Speaker 1: tracked the bear and it was almost identical to your
Speaker 1: blood trail exactly in one night. Yeah, we're just kind
Speaker 1: of a mystery what happened. It was this deep red blood.
Speaker 1: UM found multiple beds within a hundred yards and finally
Speaker 1: after the third bed, and it had been like five
Speaker 1: hours since he shot it. So we waited the appropriate time,
Speaker 1: which that's the biggest thing is give him time. And
Speaker 1: we at the third bed, I was like, we gotta
Speaker 1: get out of here, guys, this is we We just
Speaker 1: got to come back in the morning and getting real thick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that's what we did. We all dropped out,
Speaker 1: and then Aaron and then went back this morning and
Speaker 1: found the bear twenty yards from where we stopped. And
Speaker 1: uh so they came by this morning and had the
Speaker 1: bear in the back of the truck and we helped
Speaker 1: them skin at the bear. It's been cool, so the
Speaker 1: bear was in good shape. Um, so they were able
Speaker 1: to You know, if you do you have any safety
Speaker 1: tips on tracking a bear like that? Is it legal
Speaker 1: to carry a pistol? I mean, I mean it's it's dangerous.
Speaker 1: I think back about that bear we tracked and Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: how crazy that was. I mean, we were out there
Speaker 1: this bear, you know, I thought later, you know, man,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's amazing more people aren't hurt tracking
Speaker 1: a bear to night. Um, but anyway you gotta track them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. The only safety tip I would give is, yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's legal to uh uh, if it's legal to
Speaker 1: carry a side arm, do it. And in most places
Speaker 1: it would be for tracking a bear. It is here,
Speaker 1: we can carry it. You know. I had a warden
Speaker 1: one time. I specifically asked him in Arkansas if I
Speaker 1: could carry a side arm, and he said, what kind
Speaker 1: of side arm? And basically he was like, if you're
Speaker 1: carrying a two seventy then that's uh not okay. And
Speaker 1: I said, I'm carrying a ten millimeter glock with a
Speaker 1: four inch barrel and he's like, that's fine. So his
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, at least his ideology this one warden was
Speaker 1: just carry a gun that shows intent. You know, don't
Speaker 1: carry a don't carry your three mag with a scope
Speaker 1: on it during archery season out in the woods. But
Speaker 1: if you're carrying a side arm, you know a pistol
Speaker 1: short barrel pistol. You're probably okay, and now don't somebody
Speaker 1: needs to check with their war but I don't. I
Speaker 1: usually don't carry a side arm around here, but a
Speaker 1: lot of people do and it's probably a good idea too.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, so we So there's our three bears
Speaker 1: that we had and then bears buck. You had to
Speaker 1: so this. We got this cool photo of Kolbe's bear,
Speaker 1: Brent's bear, and then bear KNUKELM my son had. Because
Speaker 1: he wasn't bear hunting over bait, we let him deer hunt.
Speaker 1: James put it, just put him slap, put him on
Speaker 1: a buck. And uh, I mean the first two hours
Speaker 1: a daylight bear had shot a nice eight point buck
Speaker 1: with a crossbow. Uh. He was supposed to get a
Speaker 1: compound bow but it hadn't come in because of COVID
Speaker 1: and uh so bar had killed the buck. So we
Speaker 1: got the buck and the two bears and uh just
Speaker 1: a great weekend man. Question. You know, I'm not much
Speaker 1: of a bear hunter, and act I'm not a bear hunter.
Speaker 1: I enjoy it, but I don't. I don't do it
Speaker 1: much if ever, But when I looked at the bear,
Speaker 1: Kobe killed. That shot looked perfect, but technically it was
Speaker 1: low based on what you're saying. So I mean, if
Speaker 1: you if it, maybe when Clay does the magazine he
Speaker 1: might even circle that and show where he shot that bear,
Speaker 1: because I mean it was it was perfect. It was
Speaker 1: six inches up from the silhouette of the bottom when
Speaker 1: you looked at it. Did you think the shot was perfect?
Speaker 1: But it was low? It was low? So I mean
Speaker 1: that is crazy And your observation is pretty interesting too,
Speaker 1: that uh, shooting low in the long would allow that
Speaker 1: bear to live another three minutes or five minutes, and
Speaker 1: that and that, and that's a good way to look
Speaker 1: at it. And animal living another three minutes and having
Speaker 1: a lot of energy in that three minute time frame
Speaker 1: can be the difference in finding it or not. And
Speaker 1: you know that that bearer was reacting to its body.
Speaker 1: You know it was going, man, I don't feel good,
Speaker 1: I need to move, I need to go get an
Speaker 1: asper and I need to do something. So you know,
Speaker 1: they say have asper now here. So anyway, James gives
Speaker 1: it to him in the bait. Pretty intriguing deal, really,
Speaker 1: I mean it's there's a lot to be learned from
Speaker 1: that shot. I think, well man, people ought to go
Speaker 1: back and listen to if they have questions on shot placement.
Speaker 1: I tell you what, I've been in a lot of
Speaker 1: bear camps, and wounded bears are a real deal. They're
Speaker 1: just so different than white tails. And I mean we
Speaker 1: could I don't want to go into all the details
Speaker 1: of the shot placement on this one, but there's it's nuanced.
Speaker 1: You better make sure you got your ducks in a
Speaker 1: row before you pull a trigger on a bear. How
Speaker 1: you know what I would say, but I wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: I'd follow your instructions. But when you see a shot
Speaker 1: like kobe Head and you know it's a good shot,
Speaker 1: go ahead and stay with the bear. You wait three hours,
Speaker 1: the bear is dead. I mean he's dead as a
Speaker 1: stinking hammer when y'all turn around. So so really you
Speaker 1: should have went ahead and said, you know, hindsight, the
Speaker 1: best thing does come back. But technically, when you see
Speaker 1: that ara and it's going through buth lungs, that that
Speaker 1: sucker is is dead is a hammer man? You ight
Speaker 1: have seen the era though. If you have seen that era,
Speaker 1: you would have said it was an optical illusion what
Speaker 1: we saw. Well, you know, when when that thing goes
Speaker 1: through what it's when it goes through a deer. You
Speaker 1: know you're gonna see that thing's going through hair on
Speaker 1: the way out. It's almost like you got it. You
Speaker 1: got a filter out there cleaning your arrow off. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: But anyway, yeah, yeah, it was it. There's always a
Speaker 1: lot of nuance inside of these things. That's that's hard
Speaker 1: to predict. That James was saying. Every year something new
Speaker 1: happens and where there's always some drama, you know, and
Speaker 1: we always you know, we usually we almost always recovered
Speaker 1: the animals, but there's none of them are the same.
Speaker 1: But I like those blood trails like Brent had that
Speaker 1: just you know, you want to hit the center of
Speaker 1: the vitals for sure. Do you ever track blood? No?
Speaker 1: We well they heard it, they heard it moan just
Speaker 1: right over there. So we were just looking for a bear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't very far. You know, I just wonder
Speaker 1: if that moan is not when you get the perfect
Speaker 1: kill shot. Yeah. I thought about that last night. What
Speaker 1: dictates a death? Moan? You know what? Brent asked me
Speaker 1: on the way back. Brent and I we were up
Speaker 1: till four am last night. We had to go into
Speaker 1: town to get ice, and he said, uh, he says,
Speaker 1: what do you think about the death moan? Clay? And
Speaker 1: I didn't really know what he was getting at, and
Speaker 1: I just said, I said, it's pretty uh, pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: There's only a couple of as far as I know,
Speaker 1: there's only two big game animals that death moan, and
Speaker 1: one of them is some type of buffalo, maybe a
Speaker 1: cape buffalo. Uh, the only big game animals that do that.
Speaker 1: And a death moan for those who wouldn't know it.
Speaker 1: Some I found about twenty of bears that are killed
Speaker 1: death mona how would this be? Only twenty percent of
Speaker 1: them were shocked where they're gonna die within forty yards
Speaker 1: that that bear knows absolutely he is a dead animal.
Speaker 1: I mean you've hit him center of center or heart
Speaker 1: and he goes, hey, man, this is it. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do my moan. So where if you shoot just
Speaker 1: a little low. I mean he he didn't even know.
Speaker 1: I don't think your bear knew knew that he was
Speaker 1: even hit. I think you're onto something there. Because I
Speaker 1: had I had the the or the beginnings of that thought,
Speaker 1: and I didn't pull it all the way through, but
Speaker 1: I had the thought for the first time yesterday, I
Speaker 1: wonder if there is some type of if you could
Speaker 1: really get the data to see, okay, on this type
Speaker 1: of shot, bears death moan and on these type they don't.
Speaker 1: I do know for certain. Well, here's this is true,
Speaker 1: is that when they like if an animal goes off
Speaker 1: and if it's like a liver shot and they die
Speaker 1: a couple of hours later, which is not ideal, but
Speaker 1: it happens, they only moan on a first dear that
Speaker 1: bear that you killed. I doubt if we did an
Speaker 1: autopsy on it. But do you remember where you hit?
Speaker 1: It's just a perfect it was shot double that that
Speaker 1: bear knew it was dead. I mean, it knew it
Speaker 1: was rand fifty yards are thirty? Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 1: and it was a little downhill and he only got
Speaker 1: I remember thirty yards. It could have been fifty. And um,
Speaker 1: I think that's it. I mean, if you kill that
Speaker 1: bear and you've got the perfect shot, it's gonna go, oh,
Speaker 1: this is my clock is expired. And the other guy
Speaker 1: didn't even always hit. Yeah, Brent was saying that, he
Speaker 1: said it it affected him to hear the bear. Do that,
Speaker 1: you know, because it it really does bring to a
Speaker 1: very intense focus that you've taken the life of an animal.
Speaker 1: You know, you shoot a deer and it runs off
Speaker 1: and dies out of sight. You you you have shot
Speaker 1: that animal. You've been a part of its death. You've
Speaker 1: been the cause of its death. But a big majestic
Speaker 1: beast like a bear shooting it and then it going
Speaker 1: out there, and if you've never heard it, you won't
Speaker 1: believe it when you do. I still haven't heard one. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's it's incredible. Um when h James had to step
Speaker 1: out for a second. Theory, James, have you heard one
Speaker 1: death mon a bear death Moon? Yes, the first one
Speaker 1: I killed with the bow. Um, I went about thirty
Speaker 1: yards just out of sight in death Mond. Uh, I
Speaker 1: had too. M hm. Both of them are young boers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't Uh. The bigger ones then death Moon, but
Speaker 1: the first one in third or fourth Mond Brent said
Speaker 1: his Yeah, that's what we were just talking. James had
Speaker 1: to step away for a second. Yeah, we just went
Speaker 1: through all that. We were talking about the death mon
Speaker 1: multiple times. Well, it's it's a mysterious it's mysterious. I
Speaker 1: would like to understand the biology. But because there's a
Speaker 1: reason everything that happens in the natural world, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a reason, there's a purpose behind it that can
Speaker 1: be explained in some way. And I've never heard much
Speaker 1: commentary on the death moon, but it certainly makes you
Speaker 1: be very aware that you've taken the life of an
Speaker 1: animal and uh and makes you want to utilize that
Speaker 1: animal to the highest levels of responsibility that we can
Speaker 1: as as hunters, for sure. But well, incredible weekend. It's
Speaker 1: great to be able to spend it with all you guys,
Speaker 1: for sure. For sure. James, any closing thoughts you ready
Speaker 1: for next year? He's thinking about it. We're gonna do
Speaker 1: anything different next year. I hope it's the same place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: m m yeah, same outcome, I hope. Yeah, plenty of bears.
Speaker 1: Well there should be. Dad closing thoughts. Good good hunt,
Speaker 1: beautiful photo mm hmm. Colby, No, I'm just glad to
Speaker 1: be able to participate this year. Yeah, yeah, well it
Speaker 1: really was good. I got to meet a lot of
Speaker 1: new cool people and yeah, just have a good bear camp.
Speaker 1: Good bear camp. Well, all right, we are We're gonna
Speaker 1: do the kids are going to continue to do some
Speaker 1: hunt in this afternoon, and then I'm gonna be hunting
Speaker 1: National Forest, so I haven't really hunted this weekend. I've
Speaker 1: just been kind of chauffeur and people and skinning bears.
Speaker 1: That's the main thing I'm That's what I'm good at,
Speaker 1: just skinning bears. That's all get some practice in yep.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, they say, James, they say that
Speaker 1: bear grease helps us and hands and stuff, and you
Speaker 1: mine and yours, particularly our hands are I kind of
Speaker 1: have a nice sheen on my hands right now from
Speaker 1: all the bear oil it's been on them. It kind
Speaker 1: of makes you feel good. I feel more sturized. I
Speaker 1: think it's like rocket fuel for your soul to have
Speaker 1: your fingernails just full of bear grease. Yeah, m hmmm,
Speaker 1: Well I appreciate it. Guys. Keep the wild place as
Speaker 1: wild because that's where the bears live. Ye