Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation, brought to you by
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Speaker 1: find the one that's right for you. You can enter
Speaker 1: the discount code year four y E A R the
Speaker 1: number four and save. My name is Clay Nucleman. I'm
Speaker 1: the host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also
Speaker 1: be your host into the world of hunting the icon
Speaker 1: of North American Wilderness. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation,
Speaker 1: but will also bring you into some of the wildest
Speaker 1: country on the planet. Chasing the Better Man on X
Speaker 1: with baiting, it's basically equivalent to hunting out of a
Speaker 1: helicopter with a machine gun. In Chad Newton attend helicopter
Speaker 1: machine gun is equivalent to baiting bear using on it Yeah.
Speaker 1: With Colby moorehead yeah, okay, bam and smoke Yeah, smoke.
Speaker 1: You should not be fair, Chase. Yeah, Smokey is not fair, Chase.
Speaker 1: This is the third podcast in our Montana Tour series.
Speaker 1: We did a podcast with Justin Rebecca Spring. Justin is
Speaker 1: the director of records for the Boon and Crockett Club.
Speaker 1: We did a podcast with Gym Sessions Jared Peterson with
Speaker 1: Huska MA Optics and Best of the West Rifles and
Speaker 1: Cody Wyoming. This podcast is where Colby moorehead the Bear
Speaker 1: Tech and I sit down and talk about our do
Speaker 1: it yourself mule based Montana backcountry spring black bear hunt.
Speaker 1: This is a in depth podcast that we just go
Speaker 1: through all the details of our hunt. You're gonna be
Speaker 1: able to watch this hunt at some point very soon
Speaker 1: on the Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel, and we want
Speaker 1: to invite you to check out our YouTube channel, and uh,
Speaker 1: we've got some incredible videos on there that you're gonna enjoy.
Speaker 1: Without further ado, I want to continue to remind you
Speaker 1: about our Patreon page. The Bear Hunting Magazine Patreon page
Speaker 1: is designed for those who want to support the podcast,
Speaker 1: but also our YouTube channel, which is free content. So
Speaker 1: check out Patreon. But more importantly, or likewise, or both,
Speaker 1: check out Bear Hunting Magazine. Bear Hunty Magazine is the
Speaker 1: world's only all bear hunting print magazine. We've been in
Speaker 1: print for twenty years. By supporting Bear Hunting Magazine, you
Speaker 1: are supporting the ancient and honorable culture of hunting in
Speaker 1: North America. And uh, it's a great magazine. We print
Speaker 1: six issues a year. We worked hard. We worked hard
Speaker 1: to make it as relevant and as real as possible.
Speaker 1: We're not just trying to fill the pages with stuff.
Speaker 1: We really are trying to give show the full gamut
Speaker 1: of bear hunting in North America. Hey, you're gonna enjoy
Speaker 1: this podcast. We talked about the challenges of the hunt,
Speaker 1: we talked about bears, we talked about hunting out west.
Speaker 1: It's a great podcast. You couldn't enjoy it. This podcast
Speaker 1: is gonna be the third or fourth in our Montana
Speaker 1: Tour series of podcasts. So Colby Moorehead and I have
Speaker 1: the Bear Tech got back about ten or twelve days
Speaker 1: ago from Montana. About ten days ago. Today we're at
Speaker 1: the Global headquarters and we've had ten or twelve days
Speaker 1: to ruminate upon the events of are we were gone
Speaker 1: eleven days on our do it yourself Montana mule based
Speaker 1: black bear hunt. Um, let me give just a little
Speaker 1: bit of the story behind this year I had. This
Speaker 1: was my third trip to Montana in I went to
Speaker 1: Montana with my wife. We drove up there and we
Speaker 1: hunted in western Montana. We were kind of hosted by
Speaker 1: Justina Rebecca Spring near Missoula, Montana. They told us some
Speaker 1: places that we should go and we did a backpack
Speaker 1: based five and a half day hunt. No equine animals.
Speaker 1: We just packed in gear. I think I had a
Speaker 1: sixty pound pack. Misty carried like a forty five pound pack.
Speaker 1: We went into the back country for five full days.
Speaker 1: The first day we were there we saw a sound
Speaker 1: of cub We didn't see bears for four days. Finally,
Speaker 1: on the fifth day we saw a bear that we
Speaker 1: couldn't get too big Boor. It was our first like
Speaker 1: western back country hunting experience. I came away from that
Speaker 1: hunt with it with my tail took between my legs
Speaker 1: really because it was a difficult hunt, I mean, and
Speaker 1: we didn't kill a bear, And to me, it's always
Speaker 1: such a It is a difficult thing to invest that
Speaker 1: much time and energy into a hunt and you not
Speaker 1: get what you went there for. Obviously, that's part of
Speaker 1: fair chase hunting is that there are no guarantees. Um. So,
Speaker 1: with the knowledge of that game from this hunt, in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, Jim Sessions and I from Huska my Best
Speaker 1: of the West, went back to pretty much the same
Speaker 1: region of Montana on an equine based hunt. We really
Speaker 1: didn't have that much information. Jim is a veteran Western hunter,
Speaker 1: but he had never been to these areas before, and
Speaker 1: we went up to Montana and we hunted for six
Speaker 1: full days and we the closest that we got to
Speaker 1: a bear was like a thousand yards for real, um,
Speaker 1: super difficult hunt, and and we didn't kill any bears.
Speaker 1: But I learned. So so now I have these two
Speaker 1: six days, five and a half days, eleven and a
Speaker 1: half days in Montana, and I in and what people
Speaker 1: were telling me was or what I was seeing from
Speaker 1: my sources in Montana, my local sources, is that guys
Speaker 1: were killing bears basically by driving around, being mobile and
Speaker 1: finding bears and clear cuts, walking roads in the in
Speaker 1: the comments, so, I mean, these guys were kind of
Speaker 1: like wild Clay, You spent eleven days in Montana and
Speaker 1: he didn't kill a bear. You're doing something wrong, okay.
Speaker 1: And I kind of agreed with them in a sense
Speaker 1: because I knew that the methods that they were employing
Speaker 1: were probably more effective, but it was more important for
Speaker 1: me to do it kind of the way I wanted
Speaker 1: to do it in terms of being a back country hunt.
Speaker 1: And then we introduced mules and horses, which to me
Speaker 1: is the way that I want to spring bear hunt
Speaker 1: in the West. That's just why I wanted to do it.
Speaker 1: I've got we'll get into my mules and stuff, and
Speaker 1: so they were like, you're doing it wrong. You should
Speaker 1: have killed a bear. Um. And these people were trying
Speaker 1: to help me. Obviously, these were like my friends. And
Speaker 1: so what we did in twenty nineteen was we did
Speaker 1: kind of a morphed hunt between these two things, which
Speaker 1: we brought equine animals. We were in back country, but
Speaker 1: the equine animals allowed us two access areas that we
Speaker 1: just probably couldn't have on foot in a day or
Speaker 1: two and carried all the equipment that we needed. But
Speaker 1: we were mobile. We went to multiple different places. In
Speaker 1: the times past, I had locked myself into certain regions
Speaker 1: like I would be like we're going to this place
Speaker 1: and we're gonna stay there for six days. Well this
Speaker 1: time we said, hey, we're gonna be mobile. We're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna day hunt into places on the mules and
Speaker 1: then come back out. If we get in there and
Speaker 1: find critters, we're gonna stay there. We're gonna camp, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna be mobile. And that's what we did. So
Speaker 1: that that brings up to speed with where we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So in this podcast we're just gonna talk about the
Speaker 1: details of the time we did a gear related podcast before.
Speaker 1: But the cool thing is is that Kolby went with me.
Speaker 1: How many days before this hunt did I'd like say, Kobe,
Speaker 1: you're coming with me to Montana, maybe like six six
Speaker 1: or seven six or seven days? Yeah, so you had
Speaker 1: plenty of time to prepare and to get physically in shape.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, No, No, you didn't jump on like the
Speaker 1: trendy fitness plan to like. No, I figured that my
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be able to get through my first initial
Speaker 1: soreness before we were going to be there. Yea from
Speaker 1: light really hitting it. I don't even have Arkansas legs
Speaker 1: yet at this point, and it's like, let's go to Montana.
Speaker 1: Trekking polls saved my life. Yeah, well, it was a
Speaker 1: unique situation. I was looking for somebody to go that.
Speaker 1: First of all, I needed a video man and uh,
Speaker 1: I needed a video man documentary and I and I
Speaker 1: needed somebody that was flexible. And that's why I didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was lots of people that could have gone.
Speaker 1: I would have enjoyed going, but I needed somebody that
Speaker 1: was flexible because we were basing this trip based a
Speaker 1: lot upon the weather, and I wanted to do an
Speaker 1: early season hunt, but I didn't want it to be
Speaker 1: too early. And so I mean just a week before
Speaker 1: we went is really when we decided we were gonna go,
Speaker 1: and then we even delayed it. I think you had
Speaker 1: six days before we originally planned, but then we delayed
Speaker 1: the trip five days, so you actually had eleventh days,
Speaker 1: so you could have been in shape by that. I
Speaker 1: totally could have been. No, And so I totally sprung
Speaker 1: this on Kolbe. And so there were a couple of
Speaker 1: challenges in that we were gonna this was gonna be
Speaker 1: a mule based hunt, and you've never written a meal,
Speaker 1: So how did you? So we prepare you for this
Speaker 1: twenty minutes on the back of Smoky at my house
Speaker 1: the day before we left. Yeah, literally the day before
Speaker 1: we left, or two days before now it was. It
Speaker 1: was it was that Saturday, we left Sunday night, that's right.
Speaker 1: I was like, hey man, we probably better make sure
Speaker 1: that like everything's okay and that, and so we we this.
Speaker 1: This was my friend Trey Autrey's mule. If you watched
Speaker 1: our our film hundred Dollars Squirrel, there's a white mule
Speaker 1: that Trey Autry rides, and uh, we borrowed Smokey, and
Speaker 1: Smokey's like, we don't even know how old he is,
Speaker 1: but he's just like an old warrior safe, like just
Speaker 1: a dead, broke, awesome mule. And so I knew that
Speaker 1: Colbe would be safe because that was my number one thing.
Speaker 1: I knew he couldn't ride a young mule like I'm riding.
Speaker 1: Just you would have you've probably been killed. But I
Speaker 1: knew Smoky to take care of you. But still some
Speaker 1: close calls. Well, we had some close calls. But so
Speaker 1: you came to my house. We saddled up. We I
Speaker 1: just basically said, all right, get up there, go for
Speaker 1: I said, ride for thirty or forty five minutes, just
Speaker 1: kind of get your feel on this animal. Found out
Speaker 1: I had legs shorter than the schoolgirl. I'm gonna let
Speaker 1: you tell that story. We had to meete. We had
Speaker 1: we had well you remember Trey, Okay, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to so we borrowed the saddle from Trey and Trey
Speaker 1: goes Clay. My daughter rode this mule last time. And
Speaker 1: so these stirrups are like really short, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to lengthen him, if only. And so when Kobe gets
Speaker 1: on the mule, he's like, is there any way to
Speaker 1: make these stirrups shorter? And I was like, man, a
Speaker 1: thirteen year old girl wrote the single last time, but
Speaker 1: she's all legs. Well, so Kobe, she must be. She
Speaker 1: must be. I don't know, Kobe. Uh. So he rode
Speaker 1: the mule. Everything was good. He did good, and I
Speaker 1: mean it was just like I knew you could do it, though,
Speaker 1: And that's an ultimate compliment for real, I wouldn't I mean,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have taken somebody that I knew would fail.
Speaker 1: I knew that you would have the mental stability and
Speaker 1: toughness to do, because that's what it takes. I mean,
Speaker 1: people get scared of equine animals. Almost almost everybody that
Speaker 1: I talked to about mules and horses that have experienced
Speaker 1: with them in the back country, unless they are a
Speaker 1: straight up cowboy or just love equine animals, either love
Speaker 1: them or you hate them. And there's a whole lot
Speaker 1: more people that hate them than love them. And when
Speaker 1: you dig down into why people hate them, it's because
Speaker 1: they're afraid of them. And it's not their fault. I'm
Speaker 1: not faulting someone for being afraid of an animal that uh,
Speaker 1: they've had a bad experience with, because tons of people
Speaker 1: and and that would have been me even through or
Speaker 1: four years ago. But for some reason, Colby, I knew
Speaker 1: that you could handle it, um And I knew that
Speaker 1: that smoke was gonna be safe as safe as a
Speaker 1: mule could be. He's not a big mule, um And
Speaker 1: and he's old. And I've just been around him enough
Speaker 1: and seemed trade mess with him enough to know that
Speaker 1: he's he was the he was the one for the
Speaker 1: job for you. And so but so we so there's
Speaker 1: many things on this trip that we were totally testing out.
Speaker 1: Like I had already been to the Montana back country,
Speaker 1: but we had never carted stock all the way across
Speaker 1: the country, which has his challenges for sure, no doubt.
Speaker 1: I mean, so from northwest Arkansas to let's just say
Speaker 1: Montana is twenty four hours on the GPS, and that
Speaker 1: is driving the speed limit and doesn't include stops and
Speaker 1: different things. And so when you're when you're when you're
Speaker 1: pulling a trailer full of mules, full of equipment, you're
Speaker 1: not driving the speed limit. Most of the time. You're
Speaker 1: don't think we ever hit the speed limit. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean rarely. And so we're like the trip took, I
Speaker 1: couldn't tell you how long, many more, probably six more hours,
Speaker 1: and it's it's probably a thirty hour. We're probably in
Speaker 1: the road thirty hours counting the times when we stopped
Speaker 1: and everything. And but I want to say that that
Speaker 1: in itself was probably the most uh challenging or stressful
Speaker 1: part of the trip for me, because I was using,
Speaker 1: uh a horse trailer that probably was built in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. Yeah, for real, the old horse trailer. And
Speaker 1: if you saw a hundred dollar squirrel, you saw me say,
Speaker 1: you can tell a lot about a man's expendable income
Speaker 1: by his mule trailer. Well, but there was there was
Speaker 1: some major upgrades to this, to this trailer, no doubt. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had some fresh paint, some some official bear Hunting
Speaker 1: magazine stickers. Yes it looks good. There's some new shoes.
Speaker 1: Yes we put we So we did our homework with
Speaker 1: this trailer. Though I had the re the barings repacked
Speaker 1: a couple of whenever ago. We we painted it, uh
Speaker 1: just for just so we wouldn't be profiled on the highway.
Speaker 1: It's like, man, those guys are no telling what they
Speaker 1: got in the back of that. I mean drug dealers.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean the roof even matches the truck.
Speaker 1: So I mean we're color coordinated. It looked good. Got
Speaker 1: our stickers on there. Got our insurance, you know, I
Speaker 1: got yep, I gotta equine based like equine. It was
Speaker 1: called American Equestrian or something. But what I was thinking was,
Speaker 1: what do you do when you're in downtown Denver, downtown
Speaker 1: Kansas City and you have a flat tire on your
Speaker 1: trailer and rush hour traffic and four lane interstate and
Speaker 1: you've got these animals that you you aren't getting out
Speaker 1: of the trailer at that point, I mean on the
Speaker 1: side of the highway, you know, if you're sitting there
Speaker 1: for four or five hours trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: to do in anyway, Now, for like a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty bucks a year, about this Equestrian insurance And basically,
Speaker 1: if you break down, your trailer breaks down, your truck
Speaker 1: breaks down anywhere in the country, they will send a
Speaker 1: record service that's equipped to help people that are traveling
Speaker 1: with equin animals that bring the water and hay, and
Speaker 1: they have boarding facilities put up. Let's say you blow
Speaker 1: a motor where you know, and you're not gonna be
Speaker 1: back on the road in three hours, you know. So
Speaker 1: that was that was good, got new tires, um. But
Speaker 1: we made it the first day to Spearfush, South Dakota,
Speaker 1: and stayed with one of our good friends up there
Speaker 1: that has a farm, and we're able to put the
Speaker 1: animals in a crowd. So that's about a fourteen hour
Speaker 1: trip to Spiritfus, South Dakota, and from Spearfish over to
Speaker 1: western Montana was another well bye bye map another ten hours.
Speaker 1: And uh so by the time we got to spear Fish,
Speaker 1: I felt like our equipment was solid and that we
Speaker 1: were gonna make it up there, right. And uh so
Speaker 1: that was just part of the battle that a lot
Speaker 1: of people wouldn't think about. But you can't you can't
Speaker 1: keep animals in a trailer for long periods of time,
Speaker 1: I mean, for like twenty hours. You know, you want
Speaker 1: to let them out about every every eight hours at least.
Speaker 1: Let them walk around, let them stretch their legs, let
Speaker 1: them roll if they want to roll, give them some grass,
Speaker 1: just kind of let them be horses and mules, um.
Speaker 1: And so we did that um. We we then made
Speaker 1: it to Montana. UM. Once we made it to Montana,
Speaker 1: we went and met with our friends and stayed with them,
Speaker 1: and basically we the first evening we were there, we
Speaker 1: bought our tag and so we had to wait twenty
Speaker 1: four hours. Bought our tag at eleven o'clock on the
Speaker 1: day we entered Montana. We had to wait twenty four
Speaker 1: hours before that tag was ready, so we couldn't hunt
Speaker 1: the next day till eleven o'clock. That evening we weren't hunting,
Speaker 1: but we spotted a bear from several miles away, at
Speaker 1: least two to three miles away. We spotted the bear
Speaker 1: and it was in a place we could hunt. It
Speaker 1: was on public land. It was in a place where
Speaker 1: you could just glass forever. And we found a bear
Speaker 1: on the first day. That was encouraging. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: felt like it was mature enough to go after yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, just from a distance. But it didn't like
Speaker 1: a juvenile. Yeah. It was a good bear. And we
Speaker 1: knew that if there was one bear up there that
Speaker 1: we could see, we thought that potentially on the way
Speaker 1: into this bear that we would find other bears. So
Speaker 1: the next day we we figured out how to get
Speaker 1: into this place, which wasn't straightforward like from where we
Speaker 1: spotted it. We were probably only three miles, but from
Speaker 1: the information we had at the time, the only way
Speaker 1: in there was way around the back side of this
Speaker 1: mountain range and up on public land because it was
Speaker 1: kind of separated by some private land. Between us and
Speaker 1: where we saw the bear was private land, so he
Speaker 1: couldn't just walk straight to this bear. So we had
Speaker 1: to go way around, I mean like thirty minute drive around,
Speaker 1: parked in on some public there's a gated road. And
Speaker 1: so it starts day one, right the day of Kobe's trials.
Speaker 1: That's what we have labeled the Day of Cody, the
Speaker 1: day Kobe became a mule skinner. So we start off
Speaker 1: on the mules. And if you've ever written equine animals,
Speaker 1: they're they're always they're always feisty, full of energy, jumpy,
Speaker 1: ready to roll, like right out of the gate. And
Speaker 1: these animals also have been in a trailer for two
Speaker 1: full days, and they're a new and a new environment.
Speaker 1: And I'll go ahead and interject here that I was
Speaker 1: riding my easy mule. She's three and a half years old.
Speaker 1: She's that's young from you that's like, you know, a teenager.
Speaker 1: It's like having a seventeen year old, you know, mature
Speaker 1: physically eighteen, you know, but but still very young. And uh,
Speaker 1: Izzy's done phenomenal for me. I've I've ridden her extensively
Speaker 1: in the mountains here in Arkansas, UM and in this
Speaker 1: hunt really was a lot about me and Izzy. For
Speaker 1: for me, it was when I first got Izzy in
Speaker 1: twenty mark February. She was basically an untouched mule. She
Speaker 1: had a bride loner. I mean, the guy that raised
Speaker 1: her had you know, he could handle her just a
Speaker 1: little bit, but I mean untrained. And I trained Izzy
Speaker 1: and it was the first time I'd ever trained a mule,
Speaker 1: and it was an incredible life changing experience, truly was um.
Speaker 1: I learned a ton about training animals. And the whole
Speaker 1: point in my mind was to get deeper and stay
Speaker 1: longer in wild places. That's why I had this mule,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to take her to Montana. That's what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. It's just just kind of in
Speaker 1: the mule world. When you hear people say, oh, that
Speaker 1: mule has been out west, You're like, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: good one. Like that, that's kind of like the statis
Speaker 1: factor for mules, you know, because if you if if
Speaker 1: you could trust that animal to take it all the
Speaker 1: way out west and not die, then this is a
Speaker 1: good animal. If both of you come back, okay, it's
Speaker 1: a really good meal. Yes, yes, And so I had
Speaker 1: this idea that I wanted to take easy out west
Speaker 1: and so this was that. Um just for somebody that's
Speaker 1: listening that maybe never has it doesn't hasn't been following
Speaker 1: the Bear Hunting magazine stuff for a while. The video
Speaker 1: there's a video on the Barning Magazine YouTube channel right
Speaker 1: now that has over a million views and it's an
Speaker 1: eleven minute video that encompasses the full training experience that
Speaker 1: me training easy. So it's it's pretty neat. I mean,
Speaker 1: it kind of went viral, especially in the equine world.
Speaker 1: It's called Project Hunting the Mule, and there's actually six
Speaker 1: or seven videos, but the final one has over a
Speaker 1: million views, just bumped over a million, and uh I
Speaker 1: was I was fried by the equine community in many places.
Speaker 1: Uh Man, trolls are everywhere. They're not just in the
Speaker 1: hunting world, but they're in every world. There's there's people
Speaker 1: that just love to just get on there and just
Speaker 1: say you're an idiot, but yeah it is. He's a
Speaker 1: good mule now, um despite me not being very uh
Speaker 1: me being green, but is he's an incredible animal. So
Speaker 1: back to the start of our hunt. We make the
Speaker 1: Montana we ride and I would within the first hour
Speaker 1: of the hunt the ride you you were tested. Do
Speaker 1: you want you want to tell this person? Try? I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's better from my perspective. You're your perspective.
Speaker 1: Will you tell the first you tell it and then
Speaker 1: I'll add to it. All right? Yeah, so we get
Speaker 1: the ride. First, first thing we come against is I
Speaker 1: I have to go under uh a tree that's fallen.
Speaker 1: But there's enough space for for me and old Smokey
Speaker 1: because he's we're both short. Yeah, I think you got off?
Speaker 1: Yeah I got off. Yeah. I was like, I'll just
Speaker 1: try it might as well. Anyways, so we made it okay.
Speaker 1: I was feeling feeling a little bit better. And then
Speaker 1: we we went up and there's some switchbacks and there
Speaker 1: was I guess what you call it? Dead fall? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just dead fall. Yeah, in the West, there's
Speaker 1: dead fall all over roads that just because of the
Speaker 1: snow and fire that burns up trees kills them that
Speaker 1: like unmaintained roads are just full of deadfall. So we
Speaker 1: we'd come off a main road and we're on a
Speaker 1: side old log and trail that was totally unmaintained. Well
Speaker 1: before we got to to this dead fall there was
Speaker 1: the road had a lot of ups and downs, Like
Speaker 1: I don't know, it was just really really rough. I
Speaker 1: don't know what you would call that, um, but it
Speaker 1: just kind of seemed like carved out to where it's
Speaker 1: like imagine like several different triangles that you had to
Speaker 1: go over. And uh, I had to little bit of
Speaker 1: confidence because smoke he took me through it is he
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know what this is. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: the dirt piles where yeah, they tried to close off
Speaker 1: the road. Yeah yeah, so they piled up big big
Speaker 1: piles of dirt keep cars and foreweathers out of there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So so Is he was like, I've never seen this before.
Speaker 1: So Smokey just chucked on through and then she just
Speaker 1: followed along. And so like we would do this thing
Speaker 1: to where is he and Clay would lead and then
Speaker 1: whenever we would come to something that, uh maybe is
Speaker 1: he had an encounter before she was uneasy about. Smokey
Speaker 1: was like, let me add it. Like, you know, I
Speaker 1: would have to hold him back not to go. He's like,
Speaker 1: I'll show how it's done on this part. You know.
Speaker 1: He's very He was a good mentor for Is. He
Speaker 1: he was certain areas because he just didn't care, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then anyways, we came to some dead fall to
Speaker 1: where like the to where the tree had fallen across
Speaker 1: the road and then uh, the low part was on
Speaker 1: the outside edge of the of the road, so there
Speaker 1: was like a decent like drop off I guess, like
Speaker 1: a high, high steep degree of of drop beside it.
Speaker 1: And so Is he just went up to it and
Speaker 1: just stepped over it. No problem. Smoke he's a jumper,
Speaker 1: we found out. He went up and he looked at it,
Speaker 1: and then he just decided I got to jump this thing.
Speaker 1: But in the part of him jumping, his back leg
Speaker 1: called a called a limb too, And so I I
Speaker 1: don't know if I think this is where your perspective
Speaker 1: needs to come in. Yeah, well, let me say too.
Speaker 1: There was all this There were all these limbs, as
Speaker 1: we call it in the industry, widow makers sticking back
Speaker 1: towards us, and we were kind of navigating just a
Speaker 1: small hole through this dead fall. And it actually happened
Speaker 1: twice in about thirty minutes Kobe where we had to
Speaker 1: cross these logs. And the first time is he and
Speaker 1: I made it across, and I turned around just in
Speaker 1: time to see Smoke just sailing through the air. And
Speaker 1: Kobe wasn't ready for it, I guess. And uh, I
Speaker 1: mean you wouldn't have known he was a jumper. I mean,
Speaker 1: is he stepped over and that's kind of what you
Speaker 1: want a mule to do. You really don't want him jump.
Speaker 1: But it was high enough that I think Smoke had
Speaker 1: to jump. And uh, and man, I look back and
Speaker 1: I see about eight inches of air between Colby's butt
Speaker 1: in the saddle, and I see it appeared like your
Speaker 1: feet were out of the stirrups too. I mean, all
Speaker 1: you were holding onto was the reins. If if we
Speaker 1: could have had like a snapshot of that, it would
Speaker 1: have been incredible. And I I just know, I mean,
Speaker 1: like there's not a question. It's like Colby's gonna hit
Speaker 1: the dirt. Like I knew that. And you know, equine
Speaker 1: rex um basically all involved someone hitting the dirt and it.
Speaker 1: It seems like it wouldn't have been that big a deal.
Speaker 1: But I mean, like you hit the dirt while you're
Speaker 1: carrying a forty pound pack, you have a pack on.
Speaker 1: I think at that time, didn't you know we didn't
Speaker 1: have well I mean it sounds simple, but like you
Speaker 1: hit the dirt, you might break your leg. I mean
Speaker 1: there was a steep hill off to the right side.
Speaker 1: I was I was worried about getting impaled by dead fall,
Speaker 1: like for real, or you know, not impaled like you're
Speaker 1: gonna die, but like that dead fall could have put
Speaker 1: a gash on your legs. So big we had, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different things that could have happen. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I see Kolbe in the and I just think, I
Speaker 1: just think, man, he's about to eat dirt. And man,
Speaker 1: you landed that thing like a like a skier, like
Speaker 1: an Olympic skier on those big jumps, and bam, you
Speaker 1: stuck it. You stuck the landing. And I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, and then we go and just a little
Speaker 1: bit up, the same thing happened again, did it not?
Speaker 1: That's the way I remember, And you did this well
Speaker 1: this time I got off is he and That's that's
Speaker 1: when I came over and I was gonna try to
Speaker 1: just like be there. I didn't know what I was
Speaker 1: gonna do. But that's when smokes back foot back feet
Speaker 1: caught the log and the log slam into the back
Speaker 1: of my leg as it jumped. It was a smaller log, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I thought we were both gonna be in the dirt,
Speaker 1: and anyway, we stayed on. So that was that was
Speaker 1: the first like trial by fire that you survived to
Speaker 1: skip ahead just a little bit. The other thing that
Speaker 1: happened that got you your mule skinner wings was on
Speaker 1: day two. Yeah, tell us what happened. I hit the ground. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hit the snow. It was almost inevitable. It was
Speaker 1: gonna happen at some point. We at the end of
Speaker 1: the day when we were talking about how I had
Speaker 1: have this, this full mule experience, there's just the stuff
Speaker 1: that we had done and except for falling off and
Speaker 1: then day two long behold like it was like a
Speaker 1: foreshadowing of U events that were a certainty. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: so we're coming up, we're driving, We're coming down a
Speaker 1: road and there's a big snow bank. We're up in
Speaker 1: about six thousand feet and there's a pretty deep snow bank,
Speaker 1: and the mules are really self preserving, and my in
Speaker 1: my mind, I was like, well, if the mules will
Speaker 1: walk on the snow bank, then it's safe. And so
Speaker 1: smoke just he's out in front leading and he's walking
Speaker 1: across the snow bank. And then you tell me what happened. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Clay turned on his GoPro and he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a cool shot. Well, we're what you know,
Speaker 1: we're walking and all of a sudden, all I see
Speaker 1: is like smoke He's right front foot just disappears, or
Speaker 1: his his hoof his leg and then I mean, I
Speaker 1: get real close to the ground, real quick. But the
Speaker 1: video makes it look a little graceful though, like this
Speaker 1: kind of slow mo. So basically the Smokey's front right
Speaker 1: foot just went to the ground, which was about two
Speaker 1: ft beneath the surface of the snow. Well, I think
Speaker 1: on the video that's what we thought happened in the
Speaker 1: video when we were watching it. He actually just it
Speaker 1: looked like he slipped. Okay, yeah, there's a new I've
Speaker 1: watched it again and again and now have even revised
Speaker 1: what I thought happened. He fell through the snow, just
Speaker 1: like we thought, quickly pulled his leg out of the
Speaker 1: snow while you're still on him, puts his hoof back
Speaker 1: on the snow and slips. So he did both. But
Speaker 1: when he slipped is when you went off canter and
Speaker 1: spot the snow. Because I could have sworn I saw
Speaker 1: his let go through through. Well, you were right, And
Speaker 1: then when we watched, I was like, it didn't even
Speaker 1: go through the snow. He just slipped. It went through
Speaker 1: the snow. Then he slipped, then he went down, and
Speaker 1: that's when you went down. And luckily I had all this.
Speaker 1: It was the first time I turned on the go
Speaker 1: pro the whole trip, and I like thirty seconds before
Speaker 1: I turned on the go pro because it was just
Speaker 1: it was really pretty. We're coming across the snow and
Speaker 1: captured on film, which everybody will be able to see
Speaker 1: Colby hitting the ground on YouTube and social media platforms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're around me, you've already seen it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's just something cool about It's like
Speaker 1: what happened? You got in some street crib around these parts, smoke,
Speaker 1: you broke me in, getting dumped off the mule and then,
Speaker 1: to make a long story short, we rode eighteen and
Speaker 1: a half miles the first day trying to get back
Speaker 1: to where this bear was. From where we saw it again,
Speaker 1: it was only three miles, but to get there we
Speaker 1: and as the crow flies, from where we parked to
Speaker 1: where the bear was may have only been like five
Speaker 1: or six miles. But the switchbacks, like these mountains are
Speaker 1: super steep, and if you're following logging roads, you're following
Speaker 1: these switchbacks. And so I mean you would you'd go
Speaker 1: for a half a mile one direction and turn and
Speaker 1: go for another half mile back the same direction and
Speaker 1: look down in the road would be like seventy five
Speaker 1: yards below you. So you've only gained very little. But
Speaker 1: you really can't take these mules up stuff that's steep
Speaker 1: and stay on them. I mean something that's like a
Speaker 1: I don't know what degree slope it would be, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say a seventy degree slope. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: dang here, straight up. You just can't ride up that stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: a mule could go up it, you could lead that
Speaker 1: animal up it, but then you might as well just
Speaker 1: be walking because you're walking up the mountain, you know.
Speaker 1: So I mean, so you you you choose to use
Speaker 1: these logging roads to have these switchbacks pretty easy on
Speaker 1: the mule, but it does take time. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, our mules aren't big mules. They're not super fast.
Speaker 1: There uh there you know is these almost fifteen hands
Speaker 1: and smoke it's probably fourteen or less and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: so they're not fast. You know, some guys have these
Speaker 1: uh uh Tennessee Tennessee walking horses and and and different
Speaker 1: things that are probably have a little a little a
Speaker 1: little better pace than our mules. But we weren't interested
Speaker 1: in speed. We're just interested in getting there safe and
Speaker 1: and so that's what we did. But first day, we
Speaker 1: we get to the top of the mountain and we
Speaker 1: realize that we're in too deep to turn around. We're
Speaker 1: further away than than we just couldn't get back really,
Speaker 1: and long story short, we make it to the spot
Speaker 1: where we can see where this bear was, and we
Speaker 1: glassed for maybe thirty minutes from that point, and we
Speaker 1: find the bear at five o'clock that afternoon. So we
Speaker 1: started at eleven because we left kind of right when
Speaker 1: we could start hunting, and it took us six hours
Speaker 1: to get to where to get within a mile or
Speaker 1: the bear, because it's not like we were two hundred
Speaker 1: yards from the bear. We were like a mile, but
Speaker 1: we could see the bear. And then we're like, well,
Speaker 1: here we go, let's go find him. And so it
Speaker 1: takes us an hour to ride around to get to
Speaker 1: where the bear is. We come around this point, I
Speaker 1: see the bear across the canyon six yards. Well, do
Speaker 1: you want to talk about my other trial? Which one
Speaker 1: the one where we had to lead the mules down
Speaker 1: from where the one logging road into it down to
Speaker 1: the lower one. That's where you you turned around and
Speaker 1: I kept on him like rolling and falling. Okay, okay.
Speaker 1: We learned that when you get off these animals to
Speaker 1: lead them like I was able to lead Izzy pretty
Speaker 1: easily down these real steep things. And then Kobe was
Speaker 1: coming behind me, and Smoke would want to catch up
Speaker 1: with us, and so Smoke would be like leading me,
Speaker 1: leading you, and I had said, whatever you do, don't
Speaker 1: let that animal go. That was my thing, and so
Speaker 1: I turned around and Smoke is like dragging you down.
Speaker 1: You're like rolling. Really I turned around four times in
Speaker 1: the period of probably four minutes. Just check on. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was trying to survive myself. So I wasn't that
Speaker 1: worried about you, Koble. I'm sorry, but every time I
Speaker 1: turned around and you were on the ground, and finally
Speaker 1: I just yelled, just let him go, and and and
Speaker 1: everything worked out fine. Like when we let him go,
Speaker 1: he just came and got right behind Izzy. That was
Speaker 1: our method going forward. You just have to let him go.
Speaker 1: I got I got pretty whooked. Yeah, he just rolled
Speaker 1: you down the mountain. And let's jump right to the
Speaker 1: to the shot. Because the first day, first day, and
Speaker 1: remember this is a culmination of two years of hunting
Speaker 1: for me, um, and I had yet to even fire
Speaker 1: a shot at a bear, and so on the first day,
Speaker 1: we come around this corner bear is six hundred for
Speaker 1: the yards, I want to I want to qualify the
Speaker 1: shot because I did take a shot at that distance.
Speaker 1: I'm shooting the best of the west right long range rifle,
Speaker 1: and I could take some heat for taking a shot
Speaker 1: that far, and I'm okay with that because I know
Speaker 1: what that gun is capable capable of, and I know
Speaker 1: what I'm capable of. I'm a good shot with that gun.
Speaker 1: I've shot at a lot at those distances. Um the
Speaker 1: gun is validated the quote unquote out to nine yards,
Speaker 1: which means that it literally has been proven accurate by
Speaker 1: the best of the west guys before I even got
Speaker 1: the gun. At nine yards, the Husking turrets, you can
Speaker 1: dial the yard agen directly, so there's no m o A,
Speaker 1: there's no calculation, there's no hold over. Okay, Usually with
Speaker 1: a scope you would say six and fourty yards and
Speaker 1: you would know the amount to hold over the animals.
Speaker 1: So there's still some guessing that goes on. But with
Speaker 1: the Husk Myth system, you know exactly because there's no
Speaker 1: guessing because their turret is in yardage. So you range
Speaker 1: the barrett six and fifty yards and you put you
Speaker 1: turn the turret to six fifty and you put the
Speaker 1: cross hairs exactly where you want to hit. And so
Speaker 1: that's exactly what we did. I the only thing that
Speaker 1: we didn't calculate for was the wind. And I've got
Speaker 1: a super good prone to position rest rest on the backpack.
Speaker 1: Had you take your beanie off, put the beanie on
Speaker 1: the back butt of the gun, I squeeze the trigger
Speaker 1: and fully confident that this bear is gonna hit the dirt.
Speaker 1: I've I've shot extensively at long range with this gun
Speaker 1: out well beyond six hund fifty yards, and and that
Speaker 1: would be about the effective range that I feel like
Speaker 1: I would shoot an animal for real, I wouldn't. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to shoot one much further than that, just
Speaker 1: because I do know my capabilities and uh and and
Speaker 1: honestly I can hit and this is not this is
Speaker 1: not uh. This can't be equated to how good the
Speaker 1: best of the west rifles are because they're actually better
Speaker 1: than this. But I Clay Knucomb can consistently hit something
Speaker 1: the size of a beach ball at eight hundred yards
Speaker 1: with a two point prone rest. That's a good So,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's pretty pretty good shooting size of a
Speaker 1: beach ball, so big black bear, I mean, that's within bounds.
Speaker 1: But six fifty you know you're gonna drop that circle
Speaker 1: down just a little bit smaller. So totally a legitimate shot.
Speaker 1: But well, we didn't calculate was the wind Kolbe and
Speaker 1: there was a cross wind, and at the time from
Speaker 1: where we were at there wasn't much of a wind.
Speaker 1: We couldn't we couldn't really feel a wind anyway. Soon
Speaker 1: after we shot, we realized there was a cross wind
Speaker 1: in this canyon. You saw the bullet hit far to
Speaker 1: the right of the bear, and the bear was unhit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he scampered off up the mountain, looking around, trying to
Speaker 1: figure what was happened. You know, heard a clap of thunder,
Speaker 1: heard the dirt pop off to his left, and there's
Speaker 1: right and uh so here we are in day one.
Speaker 1: We've just traveled I believe at this point where like
Speaker 1: twelve or thirteen miles I'm not sure away from the
Speaker 1: truck per the amount we've traveled per on x Okay
Speaker 1: and um the so we're in pretty deep and it's
Speaker 1: like six o'clock and it's way too far to go
Speaker 1: back to get to the truck. I mean, if we
Speaker 1: if we went back the way we came, we'd be
Speaker 1: riding for several hours in the dark. Um And it's
Speaker 1: at this point that we have to make a decision
Speaker 1: about how we're gonna get out of here. And it's
Speaker 1: the only time in my hunting career that I've actually
Speaker 1: thought that I was gonna have to stay the night
Speaker 1: unplanned on the mountain. It was it was getting cold,
Speaker 1: it was getting down below freezing at night. We had
Speaker 1: no tent, no sleeping bag, no water. I think I'd
Speaker 1: probably had my jet boil, may have had a jet
Speaker 1: boil like for I'm not sure if I had brought
Speaker 1: any food, but I had jet boil for making coffee.
Speaker 1: I think we had some Becca bars, had some beck
Speaker 1: Of bars. Becca bars are our friend Rebecca Spring makes
Speaker 1: these uh granola chocolate chip raising not raising like cranberry
Speaker 1: dried cranberry big bars with all They're good, so good
Speaker 1: beck Of bars. We I did. We did have some
Speaker 1: Beca Bars. And as we're coming out of there, I
Speaker 1: was it was the only time I've really thought we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to stay the night on the mountain. I
Speaker 1: was envisioned taking the wool saddle pad off my mule
Speaker 1: and using it as a blanket and widen up underneath it,
Speaker 1: and all I really thought there was no other way.
Speaker 1: And at this point is when we pull out the
Speaker 1: on X our on X on our phones and we
Speaker 1: find a route that we previously had not seen that
Speaker 1: came through. It was it was a legal route to
Speaker 1: get out of this place that took us directly down
Speaker 1: the mountain, and we found it. And I want to
Speaker 1: take just a second here to talk about and this
Speaker 1: is an un this is this is a just an
Speaker 1: off the cuff plug for on X. Ridiculously good. And
Speaker 1: I said this while we were on the mountain colbe
Speaker 1: People talk about fair chase these days, you know what
Speaker 1: makes a fair chase hunt? I mean, just let's hunt
Speaker 1: like they did five years ago when it was just
Speaker 1: man versus beast and no technology camp bait bears talk
Speaker 1: about fair chase. Man on X ought to be not
Speaker 1: fair chase. And I'm joking, I'm exaggerating to make a
Speaker 1: point about how good these this on X mapping system is.
Speaker 1: We would not have been able to do what we
Speaker 1: did in six days of hunting. Without on X, would
Speaker 1: have been lost. We would have been lost. We would
Speaker 1: have been we wouldn't have been able to find roads,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have been able to find private land boundaries
Speaker 1: like ridiculous with on X. I joke. I joke all
Speaker 1: the time with people about like they're upset with us
Speaker 1: for using bait for bears, for using hounds for bears,
Speaker 1: saying that that's fair chase. Let me tell you what's
Speaker 1: not fair chase. Using on X. I'm obviously joking. I
Speaker 1: think we should be able to use on X. It
Speaker 1: makes the back country experience better. But there's all these
Speaker 1: different ways to evaluate how we gain advantage over an animal.
Speaker 1: And for someone to turn a blind eye to optics,
Speaker 1: do you think, uh, prehistoric man had optics. We would
Speaker 1: have never found this bear without high quality optics on
Speaker 1: the first night from three or four miles away. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, people have to if people are are not
Speaker 1: wanting to be powerfully hypocritical, they've got to be real
Speaker 1: careful about where they pass judgment on ways that people hunt.
Speaker 1: And obviously at Bear Hunting Magazine we are pro predator
Speaker 1: hunting in every legal method, hunting that's based upon science
Speaker 1: for regulating predator populations for the good of the whole ecosystem,
Speaker 1: for the good of the ungulates, and for the good
Speaker 1: of the bears themselves. And so hounds, bait, trapping, whatever
Speaker 1: is legal, we gotta we gotta maintain it and inside
Speaker 1: the honey. And this is a perfect segue into my
Speaker 1: pet peeve is that there's all these people that are
Speaker 1: big game hunters and and don't understand baiting and hounds
Speaker 1: and these different things, and sometimes by their but inadvertently
Speaker 1: they are actually against us in some way by the
Speaker 1: way the stands that they take on these things, and
Speaker 1: that's hurting the whole hunting community. And so we can
Speaker 1: use bait, Well, you get to use on XA. I
Speaker 1: hope that point is clear. It's it's kind of a joke,
Speaker 1: but baiting man on X with baiting is basically equivalent
Speaker 1: to hunting out of a helicopter with a machine gun.
Speaker 1: Ted nugent, ted nugent helicopter machine gun is equivalent to
Speaker 1: baiting bear. Using on X with Colby moorehead yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: bam and smoke yeah, smoke. You should not be fair chase. Yeah,
Speaker 1: smokey is not a fair chase. So we're we're in
Speaker 1: a predicament. We think we're gonna to spend the night.
Speaker 1: We basically navigate our way through some private land and
Speaker 1: find a way out, okay, and we end up at
Speaker 1: dark riding up to the house that we were staying
Speaker 1: at the night before. We're supposed to be driving our
Speaker 1: truck back to this plate. Well, we actually we're gonna camp.
Speaker 1: We ride our mules down these like paved roads and
Speaker 1: get back to our hosts home, knock on their door
Speaker 1: and like, hey, could we borrow your truck to go
Speaker 1: get our truck and we had gone about eighteen and
Speaker 1: a half miles that day, which is an incredible day.
Speaker 1: And you know, to me that is a power that
Speaker 1: that day was an iconic experience for big game hunt
Speaker 1: big game hunting for me. I mean, we worked our
Speaker 1: tails off, went into New country, found the bear that
Speaker 1: we were after, got a shot at the bear we
Speaker 1: were after, failed, got in a sticky situation with daylight.
Speaker 1: I thought we're gonna have to spend the night on
Speaker 1: the mountain without provisions, ended up using technology to navigate through,
Speaker 1: and ended up back to where we're going after dark.
Speaker 1: But after a hard, long day and after day like that,
Speaker 1: you do feel accomplished. You don't feel victorious because if
Speaker 1: we had killed the bear, we'd have felt victorious, But
Speaker 1: you feel accomplished. I feel victorious just for surviving. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you did get man. You when when you rode eighteen
Speaker 1: miles and stayed on that day, I was like, we're
Speaker 1: gonna be okay. Yeah, Kobe and I and I actually
Speaker 1: thought I was right. I knew he could do it,
Speaker 1: and you knew you could do it too. Mostly, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people that couldn't have though, And I say,
Speaker 1: that as a compliment to you. I remember just like
Speaker 1: my legs giving out one of the times that we
Speaker 1: had to lead, and I was just kind of like
Speaker 1: I had that Grandpa walk down the mountain. It was
Speaker 1: like angles, angles, but just like a little like half steps. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: it was a great day. So let's let's skip through
Speaker 1: the next two days. Basically, the next two days were
Speaker 1: fairly uneventful. We tried some new areas, we went into
Speaker 1: some new places. We we stayed overnight at one place,
Speaker 1: Glass the Big Valley. The next morning Glass of the
Speaker 1: same valley. Didn't see any bears on the second day,
Speaker 1: third day, we ended up having to come back out
Speaker 1: for some provisions, for some water, to charge some batteries,
Speaker 1: went back up on the mountain where we shot the
Speaker 1: bear on the first day. We got up there, spent
Speaker 1: the evening glassing and did not see a bear that evening.
Speaker 1: That's correct, we didn't see a bear. There were two
Speaker 1: days we didn't see bear, I think, so let's just
Speaker 1: say that for all purposes, we we certainly didn't put
Speaker 1: a stock on a bear on day three. It was
Speaker 1: day four when things started heating up. But on day
Speaker 1: day so the morning of day four is when from
Speaker 1: our camp and by this time we've now spent two
Speaker 1: nights in the back country and we're camping up where
Speaker 1: we missed the bear on the first day. We're overlooking
Speaker 1: this big draw. It's a burn area, so there's patchy timber,
Speaker 1: but you can see in multiple directions long distance. And
Speaker 1: the thing about hunting up here is like you could
Speaker 1: see a bear, like have a clear sight of a bear,
Speaker 1: but him be hours away from you. And that's what
Speaker 1: it's hard for people to understand. It's hard for me
Speaker 1: to understand. Like sometimes when I think about hunting the West,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, well, there's a bear, go go kill it. Man.
Speaker 1: It is not that easy. I think. The other thing
Speaker 1: about where we were camping was the fact that the
Speaker 1: wind was great for where where we weren't gonna be
Speaker 1: blowing out a lot of a lot of bears if
Speaker 1: they were close, you know. It's the way we came
Speaker 1: in with the wind that just was blowing our scent
Speaker 1: away from the areas where we had seen that before.
Speaker 1: And so I think I don't think we would have
Speaker 1: camped there if we didn't have the new access to
Speaker 1: come in from that other direction. But it would end
Speaker 1: up being perfect well, and we hadn't talked about the
Speaker 1: new access yet. We we skipped over that. We we
Speaker 1: basically looked up a landowner, went and contacted him by
Speaker 1: phone and just said, hey, we're from Arkansas. We kind
Speaker 1: of pulled the Arkansas mule card, which gets a lot
Speaker 1: of sympathy and empathy seems to um and we're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're bear hunting. Would it be possible to go through
Speaker 1: your land? And he was like, sure, no problem if
Speaker 1: people ask, I don't have any problem and uh. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, thank you so much. And I said
Speaker 1: I want to come by and meet you and and
Speaker 1: he was like, well, okay, if you want to do that.
Speaker 1: We went over and shook his hand, talked to him
Speaker 1: for a minute. He was an old outfitter, petted the dogs,
Speaker 1: petted his dogs. That was key. Yeah, we accept your
Speaker 1: animals too. So we we gained access and that's the
Speaker 1: reason we're able to get back in there. I'm glad
Speaker 1: you said that, because that sometimes these stories all come together.
Speaker 1: The first day we had to ride twelve miles to
Speaker 1: get to that spot. Now we only had to ride
Speaker 1: three or four miles to get to that spot because
Speaker 1: of the access we had. So day four, we're glassing
Speaker 1: and you spot a bear across the canyon at nine
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning. Somehow, somehow, it's just like a
Speaker 1: little opening between the trees. And I spotted him, and
Speaker 1: then whenever I came and told you came back, we
Speaker 1: couldn't find him. Yeah, you were just like, I know,
Speaker 1: it was a bear there, and it looked like you.
Speaker 1: I remember you saying it looked like a good bear.
Speaker 1: I mean, just a mature just a just a solid bear.
Speaker 1: And and so from there we were glass and glass
Speaker 1: and glass, try to find us bear. Again, we can't
Speaker 1: find him, but there's a lot of timber over there,
Speaker 1: so we just figure he's in the timber. Well, we
Speaker 1: just ide to go down the mountain to get directly across.
Speaker 1: Didn't you glass him before we made the move, Like
Speaker 1: right before we moved. I we finally found him at
Speaker 1: two hours later. It was at eleven o'clock. He was
Speaker 1: walking down that logging road about probably a quarter mile
Speaker 1: from where you originally saw him, and he yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: he was walking down the logging road and we saw
Speaker 1: him disappear into a little patch of timber. Yeah, do
Speaker 1: you remember, and and that's actually where I ended up
Speaker 1: spoiler alert killing the bear. The next day, we see
Speaker 1: him going to this patch of timber and we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: he's in that timber. We gotta get down across the
Speaker 1: canyon from him and watch that block of timber until
Speaker 1: he comes out. So we we ride the mules, uh,
Speaker 1: probably a mile from our camp. We led him away, well,
Speaker 1: we had to lead him because we we had to
Speaker 1: traverse or a bunch of stuff where it was in
Speaker 1: trails or anything. And we we got directly across the
Speaker 1: camp Indian from this bear and just staked him out.
Speaker 1: I remember we got there, I don't know, twelve thirty
Speaker 1: or one o'clock something like that. And and and the
Speaker 1: whole time we're riding, we we we saw the bear
Speaker 1: going to the timber to eleven. The whole time we're riding,
Speaker 1: we're glass in this like making sure he doesn't leave.
Speaker 1: And we finally get over there and we're confident that
Speaker 1: he's still there. We felt like if he had left,
Speaker 1: we'd have seen him. We just set up camp. We're
Speaker 1: still probably six seven yards away across the canyon. Wind
Speaker 1: is perfect, It's never gonna hurt us. And we just
Speaker 1: set up camp right there, metaphorical camp. We just sit
Speaker 1: down and glass um. While we are sitting there waiting
Speaker 1: for this bear. At four o'clock, a bear appears a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty six yards away from us, on our
Speaker 1: side of the mountain. And I'm sleeping, Colby's asleep, dead asleep.
Speaker 1: I wake up the rocks being chunked at me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I sorry, cold, is like ten ft away. Um, laying
Speaker 1: down on the other side of this log, and I
Speaker 1: hollered at you first, you know, uh, muffled holler, you know,
Speaker 1: call me, call me and you And so I picked
Speaker 1: up a rock and through it hit you. You did it,
Speaker 1: didn't budge you through another one bam. And then your
Speaker 1: eyes popped open and I said, there's a bear right here,
Speaker 1: and you jump up, grab the camera. The bear is
Speaker 1: walking directly towards us, And pretty quickly I was able
Speaker 1: to evaluate that it wasn't a bear that I was
Speaker 1: interested in taking. But it still took a few minutes.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to make sure it wasn't, you know,
Speaker 1: a shooter bear, and and you had a tag. And
Speaker 1: after watching the bear for just too short I mean,
Speaker 1: just the second that I realized I didn't want to
Speaker 1: shoot it. I said, do you want to shoot that bear?
Speaker 1: And you said yes, I do, yeah, And and so
Speaker 1: we switched places. You jump on the gun. This bear
Speaker 1: doesn't know we're here, and he's walking straight towards us
Speaker 1: down the road like feeding on grass. Im And in
Speaker 1: my mind when you jumped down on the gun, it
Speaker 1: was like, we're gonna be skinning a bear in about
Speaker 1: twenty minutes. And uh, what happened. As soon as I
Speaker 1: touched the gun, that bear just decided he was gonna
Speaker 1: go up a path up the forest. Like I don't
Speaker 1: think he knew we were there. It just he just
Speaker 1: kind of just went up through the trees, never had
Speaker 1: a shot. I mean, it was miraculous. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: when later we had what two coyotes that came up
Speaker 1: and went up that same path, so like step for step,
Speaker 1: called the same path as that bear. So Colby Colby's
Speaker 1: opportunity slipped through his hands, which truly, I I I
Speaker 1: that's the only part of the trip that I look
Speaker 1: back on now and I just wish it had been different,
Speaker 1: because it would have been awesome if you to kill
Speaker 1: the bear, and you know, the rest of the trip,
Speaker 1: you never got an opportunity to um. So when that
Speaker 1: bear leaves, we continued to watch across the hillside for
Speaker 1: the big bear. He never showed. Was never shows, never shows,
Speaker 1: never shows. Finally it gets like seven o'clock, seven thirty.
Speaker 1: We've been sitting there since one or two. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: been sitting there for six hour. I think we sit
Speaker 1: there for six hours, and um, we decided that we're
Speaker 1: gonna walk down the trail to get a little bit
Speaker 1: different vantage point. We go down to that vantage point
Speaker 1: and we leave the mules where they are. We leave
Speaker 1: the mules, we start glassing, and what do we spy Blondie,
Speaker 1: a spectacular blonde bear down weighed down in the canyon.
Speaker 1: We've been kind of looking up high pretty much. People
Speaker 1: had told me, and what we had seen was that
Speaker 1: the bears were between four and six thousand feet that's
Speaker 1: just typically where they were. Well, this bear was probably
Speaker 1: three thousand feet down in the bottom of this valley.
Speaker 1: And it was Man, I'll never forget finding that bear
Speaker 1: in the by nose because when I first came out
Speaker 1: and the bear wasn't moving, it just looked like this
Speaker 1: br out of place yellow dot and I was just like,
Speaker 1: no way, that's a color face bear. But dang, it
Speaker 1: sure looks like one. It's but was facing me so
Speaker 1: I couldn't see it's profile. I can see this just
Speaker 1: like bright blond, yellow hump. I get to watching it
Speaker 1: and it didn't move. But before it I just I
Speaker 1: was like, that's a bear, color face bear. And finally
Speaker 1: it moved. I saw its head and I was like,
Speaker 1: that is a color face bear. Ranged and it was
Speaker 1: seven dred yards away. I'm like, Kobe, we got to
Speaker 1: get down there quick. We barrel off the mountain and
Speaker 1: uh get pretty quickly within three and fifty yards of
Speaker 1: it wins in our favor. I get down on the
Speaker 1: gun and I'm gonna take that shot three and fifty
Speaker 1: yards um and dial it in and the bear just
Speaker 1: kind of is it is actually moving away from us.
Speaker 1: So by the time I get down, I just almost
Speaker 1: squeeze the trigger a couple of times, but then like, no, no,
Speaker 1: wait wait if I of the bear kind of goes
Speaker 1: out of sight. So we pick up all our gear
Speaker 1: bust after the bear, and then it kind of becomes
Speaker 1: a rodeo of us, of me trying to get a
Speaker 1: shot on this bear, and what ends up happening is
Speaker 1: we're on a road above this bear, you know, a
Speaker 1: logging road, just to shut off small overgrown logging road,
Speaker 1: not overgrown, but and and this bear is down a
Speaker 1: very steep hill directly below us, and we can just
Speaker 1: see parts of the bear, like I can see the
Speaker 1: top of the bears back. I can see. That's mainly
Speaker 1: the challenge I was faced with. I had your shooting sticks,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking downhill and just right at this bear.
Speaker 1: It's an odd shot angle. And basically we move up
Speaker 1: and down the road multiple times trying to get a
Speaker 1: shot on this bear. As it's moving down the mountain.
Speaker 1: It has no idea that we're directly above it. The
Speaker 1: therminals are going up at that point, and so it's
Speaker 1: I mean, this is about to happen. And I remember,
Speaker 1: right before I squeezed the trigger, I turned to you
Speaker 1: and I said, I don't think that's a very big bear.
Speaker 1: And now that I reflect on it, it was not
Speaker 1: a very big bear. I believe it was a soal
Speaker 1: most of these real bright colored bears out west or south. Well,
Speaker 1: we saw another sal that first day, right with two
Speaker 1: cubs the color facials. Oh that's right, we did. We
Speaker 1: forgot about the first day we saw a sal two
Speaker 1: cups um. But here I am on the now the
Speaker 1: third trip to Montana. This is the closest I've been
Speaker 1: to a bear. And you know, from my position, I
Speaker 1: want to shoot older mature males. I mean I preached that,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't sure about this bear. I mean it's
Speaker 1: it was only upon reflection that I really I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a sow and uh, but I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: this bear. I mean the or fifteen cumulative day of
Speaker 1: hunting in Montana, three trips, I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: big deal. And and I've I've never I have that's
Speaker 1: the only bright blonde bear. Well, I have seen one
Speaker 1: in Saskatchewan. I take that back. I saw bright blond
Speaker 1: bear and Saskatchewan, but spectacular animal Western bear is this
Speaker 1: is this is where I want to take long story short,
Speaker 1: I bury the crosshairs on that bare shoulder and shoot.
Speaker 1: And now I hadn't even told you this. I went
Speaker 1: back and looked at the footage like just on the
Speaker 1: big screen, I was I was fourteen inches above that
Speaker 1: bears back. Well, I'm serious. The ground just it hits
Speaker 1: some rocks. I mean, it was that it was. I
Speaker 1: bet it was fourteen inches over that bears back. I'm
Speaker 1: glad they cameraman captured that you did right over the shoulder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they'll get to see it on bear horizon. I'm
Speaker 1: not ashamed to put it on there. And I missed
Speaker 1: the bear. It bounds off like a gazelle that I
Speaker 1: had the arc, the range compensating or the the angle
Speaker 1: comme sitting range finder, your vortex. Bam. The bear was
Speaker 1: fifty two yards. I think in in line of sight
Speaker 1: it was probably eighty yards. I mean it was that
Speaker 1: steep and uh to this day, and I wish someone
Speaker 1: could explain to me the gun of zero to two
Speaker 1: hundred yards. I had the gun at zero um, and
Speaker 1: I just put the crosshairs mid body. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was just thinking, you know, I might be an inch
Speaker 1: or too high. I really wasn't thinking, to be honest,
Speaker 1: but I mean I I had a rest, I was
Speaker 1: steady squeezed, and I was way high. So maybe somebody
Speaker 1: could give us some insight for why I missed. We
Speaker 1: we kind of speculated, and the bear bounds off and
Speaker 1: and that's it. And I actually went down there and
Speaker 1: you know, just made sure that the bear wasn't laying
Speaker 1: down there dead. You know, we looked. We actually came
Speaker 1: back the next day and looked for the bear. We
Speaker 1: we went way out of away, went down to the
Speaker 1: bottom of that drainage, scouted around down in there, and
Speaker 1: never the bear. The bear is still being a bear
Speaker 1: out there today. Man. So now it's day four and
Speaker 1: I've missed two bears. Well, but then i missed another one.
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting Kobe. No, no, but the end of that day,
Speaker 1: you went back for the mules, and I stayed there,
Speaker 1: and then I see the bear that we were immedially after,
Speaker 1: going back the opposite direction, like going the direction from
Speaker 1: which he came. And so we would have never had
Speaker 1: a play on that bear from where we were with
Speaker 1: what what he was doing. Yeah, So after we shoot
Speaker 1: this colored bear, we see the bear that we were
Speaker 1: originally after, and oh man, he just strutted down that
Speaker 1: mountains from us, not a care in the world, No
Speaker 1: way we could have got to him. I mean it
Speaker 1: was a but we did get intail from that that
Speaker 1: the bear was on that side of the mountain, and
Speaker 1: you know, we hoped he would still be there the
Speaker 1: next day. Yea. So we go back to our our
Speaker 1: backcountry camp and eat a couple of mountain houses. You didn't,
Speaker 1: I did. Um. I went into some mode where I
Speaker 1: just didn't hardly eat. Yeah, he really did. We he
Speaker 1: didn't really eat. And now that was the day that
Speaker 1: I well, by the time I dropped off the mountain
Speaker 1: and came back up, I think we figured out climbed
Speaker 1: about vertical feet that day. Um. Um. We we wake
Speaker 1: up the next morning. Let's just jump to the next day,
Speaker 1: which is day five, and uh, then we go out
Speaker 1: because we're needing water and stuff. I think that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we didn't hunt until that afternoon. Yeah, we had
Speaker 1: to for some reason, we had to come out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did go out. I think we needed water and
Speaker 1: just like different things. Yeah. I think that's the morning
Speaker 1: of the epic breakfast. Oh you're right. Yeah, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: had a big breakfast down at down at the spot. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: the water. But we go back in because we now
Speaker 1: have this this shortcut into this place. It's not that
Speaker 1: hard it you know, it takes us about two hours
Speaker 1: by mule to get back to our camp. So we
Speaker 1: get back to our camp. Uh, we get back to
Speaker 1: our camp kind of late Yeah, it was like three
Speaker 1: o'clock in the afternoon. Yeah, it might have been even
Speaker 1: later in the because I I stayed there because we're
Speaker 1: tearing down camp and setting it up every day, because
Speaker 1: we remember, we're trying to stay mobile. So we get
Speaker 1: back to camp at three or four or maybe even five,
Speaker 1: and I say, we make the decision, Kobe, you just
Speaker 1: stay here in glassroom camp, set up our camp, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to take off on foot. We're gonna leave
Speaker 1: the mules here. And so I go out to the
Speaker 1: point where we had set up the day before, where
Speaker 1: we'd seen the bear. And it took me. I mean
Speaker 1: I had in Glass thirty minutes and I saw the
Speaker 1: bear and he's in basically the same spot, the same
Speaker 1: patch of timber. And I watch him and watch him
Speaker 1: and watch him, and he can't I can't decide which
Speaker 1: direction he's gonna go because the direction that he goes
Speaker 1: will we'll determine which direction that I go. And if
Speaker 1: he goes out the mountain to the south, he'll he's
Speaker 1: kind of out of play. But if he goes to
Speaker 1: the north, back up to the head of the hollow,
Speaker 1: oh man, it's game on. I can eat him well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that all those roads kind of narrow to that point.
Speaker 1: And so towards the head of the you're basically together
Speaker 1: like the top of a triangle. Yes, the closer you
Speaker 1: because you get to the head of the hollow, the
Speaker 1: closer the shot distances across the canyon. Yeah. And I'm
Speaker 1: glassing this bear from a different spot, and you know,
Speaker 1: not knowing what's going on, I'm like, man, that bears yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if it was a different now it was the same bear. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and so I'm trying to determine what the spaar is
Speaker 1: gonna do. And finally it's kind of like he's just
Speaker 1: stalling over there. And I felt like he only had
Speaker 1: two decisions and that he was gonna do one or
Speaker 1: the other, go north or south, but he really didn't.
Speaker 1: He kind of just stayed there. Um. But it was
Speaker 1: hard to determine that because he would be out of
Speaker 1: visibility and invisibility, and basically I felt like he was
Speaker 1: going to go back to the north, which would have
Speaker 1: been to my advantage. And so I start heading up
Speaker 1: the hollow, but he never comes. In long story short,
Speaker 1: I make the decision to try to beat darkness and
Speaker 1: go get on his side. Of the mountain. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like he's not doing anything. I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: go over there to him, and so I just start
Speaker 1: hooking it. And it's a couple a mile walk, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, around the head of this canyon. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember, I'm just walking as fast as I can walk,
Speaker 1: just just pound and pound and pounded. Now wasn't happened
Speaker 1: to There was only one time when I had to
Speaker 1: gain some elevation um. But for the most part it
Speaker 1: was relatively easy walking. Others just long distance, other than
Speaker 1: this one section where it had to gain about five
Speaker 1: feet elevation um. And basically I get over there, and
Speaker 1: at this point it really didn't matter if the wind
Speaker 1: was in my favor or not. I mean, we're on
Speaker 1: day five. I know there's a bear back over here,
Speaker 1: and luckily the wind was in my favor. But even
Speaker 1: if it wasn't, I think I still I still would
Speaker 1: have gone. I mean, we were were. There comes a
Speaker 1: point in a hunt when you just have to make
Speaker 1: something happen and you just have to like feel you
Speaker 1: just have to say something good it's gonna happen. And
Speaker 1: so I come around this point and man, the bear
Speaker 1: is just right there. He's a hundred and sixty nine
Speaker 1: yards standing on this logging road. And when I say road,
Speaker 1: this is like a what do they call it? Defunctionalized road.
Speaker 1: There's a phrase that they use out there, a reclaimed
Speaker 1: I mean it hadn't you couldn't have ridden a four
Speaker 1: with her on. I mean just a old logging road
Speaker 1: and the and the bears right there, and I mean
Speaker 1: that's totally in range. He doesn't know him. They're hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty nine yards. I mean that's like a chip shot.
Speaker 1: And man, the excitement and satisfaction of seeing that bear,
Speaker 1: it was incredible. Of all my hunting experiences, it was
Speaker 1: as good as any of them in terms of and
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to describe because of the work
Speaker 1: that we put in up and at that point, not
Speaker 1: but just this time, but with the other two, and
Speaker 1: it's like, finally, I'm really within striking distance of a bear.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have time to get down on him. He
Speaker 1: doesn't know him. Here it's just perfect, and I'm getting
Speaker 1: a proposition. You know, put the gun zero to two hundred,
Speaker 1: put it right behind his shoulder. Bam, you hear the
Speaker 1: shot go off. You can't see us. You can't see
Speaker 1: no idea what's going on. I just knew one shot
Speaker 1: meant one of you is gonna die. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: You were like, please don't miss again. You watched me
Speaker 1: miss twice at long and close and they're like, man,
Speaker 1: he's he's explored the gamut of potential misses here. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I decided that the third times of charm, we're I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start giving you a hard time. Yeah. Well, in
Speaker 1: between two, it's to note that we went and shot
Speaker 1: the gun upon the mountain because we were like, it's
Speaker 1: something wrong. Missed twice, one at close range, when it
Speaker 1: long range, you know, is the gun off? And we
Speaker 1: did go and shoot and right where, shot at tunity
Speaker 1: yards at a rock about probably seven inch rock, and
Speaker 1: just just so we felt good about the gun. But
Speaker 1: still after missing twice, it does take some of your confidence.
Speaker 1: But when I squeezed the trigger, I felt like the
Speaker 1: bear was hit. You know, sometimes with a rifle shot,
Speaker 1: it's amazing you you don't. You feel like they're just
Speaker 1: gonna roll over. But you know, I hit him in
Speaker 1: the lungs, so so if I had hit him in
Speaker 1: the shoulder, he probably would have folded up. But oh
Speaker 1: my god, I wish that would have happened. He still
Speaker 1: would have barreled off there because he was off the
Speaker 1: edge of the road, but he might have just rolled
Speaker 1: down there rather than a hundred yards he but when
Speaker 1: I shot, he sailed like a superhero off that mountain,
Speaker 1: and I just I never see him again. It's just
Speaker 1: a flash, and I run over there, thinking I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get a second shot if he's still moving, and I
Speaker 1: hear him. I don't hear him death moon, but I
Speaker 1: hear him growling down there. Pretty much, if you hear
Speaker 1: a vocalization I've found after a shot, it's usually a
Speaker 1: good thing. And UM felt like the barrel is dead.
Speaker 1: I go over there and pretty much immediately just go
Speaker 1: down to the bear, and I find the bear. UM
Speaker 1: find the bear probably eight two hundred yards below the road,
Speaker 1: And that sounds like he ran far. He didn't run far.
Speaker 1: He just he probably made three or four big bounds
Speaker 1: and then just rolled that. That's how far. It was.
Speaker 1: Pretty it was pretty down. It was Uh it was
Speaker 1: straight down. So man, I was incredibly excited. UH made
Speaker 1: it back to camp surprisingly before dark, and per on
Speaker 1: X I traveled like seven and a half miles round
Speaker 1: trip that afternoon from camp, and Man, we went back
Speaker 1: in there the next day with the mules, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of a another story, but one of the big
Speaker 1: things that we didn't know was whether our mules would
Speaker 1: carry a bear. We didn't We really didn't know. Is
Speaker 1: he was untested, is he is he's carried coons, turkeys.
Speaker 1: I know she'll carry a deer. I've had a deer
Speaker 1: here that uh put up on her back. Um, she's
Speaker 1: had some bad experiences with bears though. When we're baiting
Speaker 1: bears in Arkansas, she had some We had some live
Speaker 1: bears come in on us while we're baiting bears multiple times.
Speaker 1: Kind of freaked her out. Smoke he's the great mystery. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we don't know about Smoke. I mean, a mule
Speaker 1: could go either way. You could have the best mule
Speaker 1: in the world quote unquote like Hiden mule and him
Speaker 1: be petrified of the game. We do not know. We
Speaker 1: don't know Smokey's history trade. It only bought Smoky about
Speaker 1: a year before and had never carried big game on.
Speaker 1: Smoky just carried squirrels on him. So, Man, we start
Speaker 1: bringing up meat and hide and that's a whole other story.
Speaker 1: But we got it up out of there, quartered him
Speaker 1: up on the side of the mountain, brought him out
Speaker 1: of there, and big footholes to get back up. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was, it was. It was. It was true Western
Speaker 1: experience for a hundred yards. Because we had to pack
Speaker 1: that thing out of there. It wouldn't have been that
Speaker 1: bad once we got it up out of that ravine.
Speaker 1: Then it had just been two hours of just kind
Speaker 1: of downhill walking. But basically Izzy was okay with the meat,
Speaker 1: and to make a long story short, she carried the
Speaker 1: meat no problem, but she flipped out on the hide.
Speaker 1: So for all you following Project Honey mule, um, I've
Speaker 1: got to be honest about the update. She flipped out.
Speaker 1: I mean flipped out to the point I thought she
Speaker 1: was gonna hurt herself. Uh, she's tied, she's tied to
Speaker 1: a tree, and uh, I mean I think like she's
Speaker 1: gonna break her neck trying to get away from this
Speaker 1: bear high or break the lead. She hit it hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so much so that I tied another rope onto
Speaker 1: her halter, thinking she's gonna break that lead and bust
Speaker 1: out of here, and we're gonna have to catch her,
Speaker 1: and at least we'll have another lead on her that
Speaker 1: maybe we can catch her. Well, we just took our time.
Speaker 1: If there's one thing that I do understand about training
Speaker 1: equine animals, as you just got to give them time
Speaker 1: and you can't pressure them. And so we sat there
Speaker 1: with that hide within about thirty feet of her for
Speaker 1: probably twenty thirty minutes, just chilled out, just kind of
Speaker 1: set around, messed with the animals. I'll put the meat
Speaker 1: on Izzy, which I was very happy with, very pleased
Speaker 1: that that she let me put the meat on her.
Speaker 1: Had no problem with that. Um, I'd bring meat over
Speaker 1: in my hands were just covered in bare smell, and
Speaker 1: I would feed her these you know, our our range cubes.
Speaker 1: So she's having to put her nose down in bear
Speaker 1: and and and eat. I've fed her on top of
Speaker 1: some of the meat bags, put grain on them, or
Speaker 1: you know, the cubes. And but every time I would
Speaker 1: inch towards her with that hide, she would flip out.
Speaker 1: So pretty much this is a stressful situation because we
Speaker 1: don't know if Smokey's gonna do the same thing. Long
Speaker 1: story short, we bring smoke over and he could care
Speaker 1: less about that bear. Yeah. I mean I put some
Speaker 1: range cubes on the bear hide and he's just like,
Speaker 1: oh cool range cube. He's just like eating the range
Speaker 1: cubes off of this bear hide. I'm like, okay, that's
Speaker 1: a good sign. I mean a I was praying, yeah,
Speaker 1: I really was. I was just like, God, help us
Speaker 1: to make this work somehow. And man's moke saved the day.
Speaker 1: And we just threw that hide over the saddle horn
Speaker 1: smoke and just came out of there, no big deal.
Speaker 1: And it is like she was getting closer and closer
Speaker 1: and getting okay with it, like yeah, so I think
Speaker 1: I think smoke even helped her something. So for two
Speaker 1: hours coming out of there, she was riding right behind Smoky.
Speaker 1: He's carrying this bear hide. She's down window that she's
Speaker 1: watching it. And so it was actually a great experience
Speaker 1: for her. I mean when we stopped, she eating, like
Speaker 1: went up put her nose up to it and see,
Speaker 1: these are the things that you have to do as
Speaker 1: an animal trainer. Is that you know, like somebody that
Speaker 1: didn't they didn't know, might have just been like, well,
Speaker 1: that mule is never gonna carry carry hides. You know
Speaker 1: that Peo will never carry a bear hide, or if
Speaker 1: we'd have pressured her, we truly could have ruined her
Speaker 1: from it. Like if I would have just been just
Speaker 1: like thrown it on her and just said buck all
Speaker 1: you want. I mean, like that would have been a
Speaker 1: massive mistake that you might not ever be will recover from.
Speaker 1: But the way we did it, I was I was
Speaker 1: very happy. I mean I would have been real happy
Speaker 1: if she had just walked up there and I could
Speaker 1: have just thrown it on her back. But it didn't happen,
Speaker 1: and so but she carried all meat out of there
Speaker 1: and out of there we came when he got back
Speaker 1: to the truck about two o'clock in the afternoon. We
Speaker 1: had left our camp at daylight. So it took us
Speaker 1: like eight hours with mules to get that bear out
Speaker 1: of there. We were that far back. It just it
Speaker 1: was just hard. It just everything about that kind of
Speaker 1: hunting and it's hard. Uh, smoke got wore out. I mean,
Speaker 1: this last track, this is day six now, and per
Speaker 1: on X after the full thing we had traveled. I
Speaker 1: think I calculated like fifty eight point five miles or
Speaker 1: something by the time we finished day six with the
Speaker 1: bear hut out and on the way up the mountain
Speaker 1: on day six, smoke was pretty much done. He was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he wasn't living life. He was just like, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's he wasn't lame. You know, sometimes you can get
Speaker 1: an animal in the back country and they they just
Speaker 1: pretty much get where they can't walk and they just
Speaker 1: need to rest for three days, and that's a bad
Speaker 1: situation to be in. Smokey just found his granny gear
Speaker 1: and just would chug along. But every chance he would
Speaker 1: get he would want to go back down the mountain.
Speaker 1: You know, he was trying to just found his low
Speaker 1: gear and he's like, this is what I'm willing to give.
Speaker 1: And we finally on the way up, had to get
Speaker 1: you off of him and we had to walk him
Speaker 1: just to get him going. But thankfully the way down
Speaker 1: the mountain he did great. And man, we came out
Speaker 1: of there feeling like a couple of heroes with a
Speaker 1: bear hide over the saddle horn and meat and kolbe.
Speaker 1: To me, that was iconic moment that as a bear hunter,
Speaker 1: I wanted to experience equine based my mules. I mean,
Speaker 1: smoke wasn't my mule, but close enough. Yeah, Uh, my
Speaker 1: mule that I trained road the whole week. Um, we
Speaker 1: went back in there, we killed a bear. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: we've got this this shirt that I made earlier in
Speaker 1: the year of some artwork that I did. Um, I
Speaker 1: like to draw and stuff anyway, mule riding bear hunter.
Speaker 1: And it's a picture of a guy, um coming out
Speaker 1: with on a mule with a bear draped over the
Speaker 1: saddle horn. And uh, this was that to me. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's all these different categorization of bear hunts,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you can go to southeast Alaska
Speaker 1: and hunt these bears back in these estuaries, you know,
Speaker 1: tidal estuaries, and you can go uh to Arkansas and
Speaker 1: hunt bears over bait. You can go up north and
Speaker 1: hunt bear in the boreal forest. You can go to
Speaker 1: the Appalachians and hunt bear over hounds with those guys
Speaker 1: Western equine based do it yourself. A rifle hunt bear
Speaker 1: is its own category. And so I've experienced a wide
Speaker 1: swath of success and all these different types of hunting,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to do it out west and and
Speaker 1: so it was a big deal and and it was
Speaker 1: a great experience and uh, and it was cool getting
Speaker 1: to do it with you. But being your first time
Speaker 1: out there, first time on mules and uh, I mean
Speaker 1: you you did incredible. I mean especially for having seven
Speaker 1: days to prepare. Guys prepare like six months for these
Speaker 1: kind of things. I tried to get tough quick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's what I that's what I commend you for
Speaker 1: is mental toughness, like you never you know when you're
Speaker 1: you're choosing a hunting partner. Colby never complained, he never
Speaker 1: he never got a sour attitude. He never you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about being sore and being hard, I mean
Speaker 1: just but that never was. It was never like Colby
Speaker 1: wants to go home and and spoiler alert, if you
Speaker 1: ever hunt with me, the worst thing that you can
Speaker 1: do is give that vibe of you want to do
Speaker 1: something else. I mean just just sort it just spoils
Speaker 1: the whole thing for me. Then I've just learned I
Speaker 1: don't hunt with people like that. I mean my dad
Speaker 1: taught me that when I was a kid. I mean
Speaker 1: like in the sixth grade, if I was like, Dad,
Speaker 1: how long are we going to be here? I think
Speaker 1: he kind of pounded that out of me and I
Speaker 1: was like, I could have taken it negatively, but I
Speaker 1: took it as positively. I was like, okay, for us
Speaker 1: to be successful, I cannot let him know that I'm
Speaker 1: not having a good time. Yeah, and and again I
Speaker 1: think that could have warped somebody, or not warped, but
Speaker 1: could have made it a negative experience, like as soon
Speaker 1: as I get out of here, I ain't never come back.
Speaker 1: But for me, it gave me insight into how that
Speaker 1: you manage type two difficulty, you know. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard, like, yeah, I don't ride in eighteen miles
Speaker 1: and missing a bear and the stress of not knowing
Speaker 1: if we're gonna sleep on the mountain with no provisions.
Speaker 1: I mean, like that's not giggly fun, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean that that was stressful to me. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: like I was going Colby, We're gonna come off this
Speaker 1: mountain and we're going home. I mean was there times
Speaker 1: I thought that, Yeah, like lots of times in six
Speaker 1: days of honey, and I'm like, dang, why do we
Speaker 1: even do this? But you just can't say that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a leadership principle, it really is. Is that
Speaker 1: not that you hide your emotions or high difficulty, But
Speaker 1: it's like we're on a mission. We're gonna complete this mission,
Speaker 1: and I'm not because emotions, emotions, attitudes are absolutely contagious,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's really truly what I appreciated about
Speaker 1: you as you never got discouraged. You're always ready to go.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you never were wanting to take shortcuts.
Speaker 1: That's the other thing inside of hunting partnerships is sometimes
Speaker 1: you have somebody that wants to take shortcuts. It's like,
Speaker 1: you really to do this, right, we need to do
Speaker 1: this this way. We need to go up the mountain
Speaker 1: this way. We need to get there, we need to
Speaker 1: camp there, we need to do this, and it's harder.
Speaker 1: And then it's like, well, why don't we just do
Speaker 1: it that way? Well, we don't do it that way
Speaker 1: because we want to win. We don't want to lose.
Speaker 1: We will lose if we do it that way. Well
Speaker 1: that's easier. Well, you know, you get what I'm saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely modified some downhills though I'm I'm a mountain slider. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you that I was surprised I didn't
Speaker 1: have holes in the bottom of all my first light,
Speaker 1: my first life, because I mean, that was the way
Speaker 1: to keep up. Yeah, you were sliding. Yep, you were
Speaker 1: sliding on your ear end most of the time on
Speaker 1: those downtairs. But it worked. It was steep enough for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah where it was. Well, it was an incredible trip.
Speaker 1: Uh we've been Uh. We just wanted to bring to
Speaker 1: you the totality of this adventure in one podcast. And
Speaker 1: you know, I would just say I would encourage people
Speaker 1: go out and spring bear hunt out west and don't
Speaker 1: spect to have just immediate success. I kind of did.
Speaker 1: I kind of felt like the first trip out there,
Speaker 1: we'd be bringing home a bear. Then there's lots of
Speaker 1: people that do. I mean, it's really just a game
Speaker 1: of of of chance and finding that moment of good fortune,
Speaker 1: like of just when you when you connect on a barrier.
Speaker 1: And I mean maybe that happens on the third day
Speaker 1: of your first time out west. Maybe it does, but
Speaker 1: maybe it doesn't. And I and I don't think I
Speaker 1: was prepared for that, uh, because the second time I
Speaker 1: went and made the twenty four hour drive home by
Speaker 1: myself in a vehicle without a bear, I was just like, dang,
Speaker 1: I want to do this again. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: what you think. Um, and I actually took a year
Speaker 1: off and then came back and uh and and we're successful.
Speaker 1: And now I'm starting to build this build this database
Speaker 1: of ways that I feel like it takes to be
Speaker 1: successful out west. I think you've gotta be mobile. You
Speaker 1: gotta be willing to get into back country and stay
Speaker 1: there if they're bears, but if they're not bears, you've
Speaker 1: gotta be able to get out of there. Um. You
Speaker 1: gotta be willing to sitting glass. Um. Those are the
Speaker 1: keys for me being mobile. But the main key was
Speaker 1: we didn't over commit. Like when we would go in,
Speaker 1: we would just take the provisions that we needed to
Speaker 1: just stay like one or two days. If if if
Speaker 1: it had been much more of a production than that,
Speaker 1: I think it would have slowed us down too much.
Speaker 1: But we're pretty mobile. Who made it work? And it
Speaker 1: was early season hunt. I believe I killed the bear.
Speaker 1: I made the fifth it was whatever that Sunday was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: or made the fifth or sixth? Um, I think it
Speaker 1: was the fifth. Oh yeah, I told you that you
Speaker 1: never look at Sinko to Mayo the same weekend. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right, that's right. Yeah, Well, what you're closing thoughts
Speaker 1: on the hunt? Kolbe Oh, it was definitely hard. Uh
Speaker 1: it was fun though. It's one of those hunts such
Speaker 1: you know that it's just so hard you're going to
Speaker 1: appreciate it afterwards, you know, the one one that you're
Speaker 1: gonna look back on finally. Um, definitely learned a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean this was my first like back country hunting
Speaker 1: that way. Like I've been, you know, kind of on
Speaker 1: a back country hunt, but it was like truck hunt,
Speaker 1: I mean camping, yeah, Walton, driving the roads, glassing here
Speaker 1: and there, and it was just a totally different experience.
Speaker 1: And I mean it was it was really it was
Speaker 1: really good and um, you know, I think it definitely
Speaker 1: is going to to help with my ability to navigate
Speaker 1: those things in the future, like looking at switch but
Speaker 1: those switch backs a different way learning where like you
Speaker 1: can uh go from one road to the other to
Speaker 1: cut out a a half mile or whatever. Uh. I
Speaker 1: mean the mules was a big thing. I mean even
Speaker 1: like like the first day we sidehilled a lot and
Speaker 1: that It's like that was a weird feeling, you know.
Speaker 1: I was like, man, the saddle's not gonna slip off
Speaker 1: or something. And uh, I was definitely impress us with
Speaker 1: everything that the mules could do. Um And I think
Speaker 1: like after that first day, whenever we uh learned how
Speaker 1: to manage the relationship between the two mules were Smokey
Speaker 1: just wanted to be on our heels. It helped a lot,
Speaker 1: at least for for me. Uh. But I think like
Speaker 1: just being able to push through those things that just
Speaker 1: like builds character like inside of you to just you know,
Speaker 1: whenever you come up against something. I think the biggest
Speaker 1: thing about these back country hunts is you come to
Speaker 1: a point of like flexibility to where it's like, well
Speaker 1: that didn't work. What now, you know, Like how do
Speaker 1: we adjust and how do we engage this particular scenario
Speaker 1: to where we can come to a point of success,
Speaker 1: you know, or whatever success is inside of our minds. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think just the ability to be flexible and fluid,
Speaker 1: you know, like if your tree stand hunting, you're just
Speaker 1: gonna go and you're gonna sit in that stand for
Speaker 1: the most part. You might hunt to and from it,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, you're committed to that thing.
Speaker 1: And I think that being mobile and and moving back
Speaker 1: and forth and just you know, just being you being
Speaker 1: fluid with what your plans are and not holding onto
Speaker 1: them too tight. I think that was a big thing
Speaker 1: because I mean, you wouldn't have had a shot at
Speaker 1: that blonde bearry even if we had sat there in
Speaker 1: the bear with adopts. It way like just being willing
Speaker 1: not to hold onto anything too tightly. I think it
Speaker 1: was was an important key. Uh you know, even being
Speaker 1: willing to shoot that other bear. You know, well what
Speaker 1: happens to the other one, Well, this bears right here,
Speaker 1: you know it's right yep. So well, incredible experience and
Speaker 1: this is we're gonna have multi more, multiple more podcast
Speaker 1: from the Montana tour. Like we said, we we interviewed
Speaker 1: Joe Condela's interviewed Brian Strickler, an interview Barren Snyder all
Speaker 1: on this trip. They weren't necessarily about this trip, but
Speaker 1: we referenced this trip on this podcast. Hey, thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us, and uh, keep the wild places wild because
Speaker 1: that's where the bears live. Peo