Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to
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Speaker 1: name is Clay Nucleman. I'm the host of the Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into the
Speaker 1: world of hunting the icon of North American wilderness. There,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about tactics here conservation. We will also bring
Speaker 1: you into some of the wildest country on the planet chasing.
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Speaker 1: are good buddies at the Western Bear Foundation. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes just having a voice inside of a situation is
Speaker 1: really important. Sometimes just showing up is the most important
Speaker 1: thing that we can do. And the Western Bear Foundation
Speaker 1: is a voice out there with the bear conflict mitigation
Speaker 1: and right out there in the heat of the battle
Speaker 1: right now with the the listing of the grizzly and
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Speaker 1: there in a pretty crazy conversation with people that don't
Speaker 1: understand our way of life, and and uh, the Western
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Speaker 1: these kind of services that bring attention to needed things
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Speaker 1: This week, I have a very special guest at the
Speaker 1: global headquarters today and that guest is my daughter, River
Speaker 1: Nukem High River. This is your first time, your long
Speaker 1: time listener, first time guest on the podcast. Is that right? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do is we're gonna talk about Rivers
Speaker 1: hunt because the River had a successful bear hunt here
Speaker 1: in Arkansas about just a few weeks ago, and just
Speaker 1: this week we released a video that called River's Bear
Speaker 1: And if you if you haven't seen that video, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it would be it might be better
Speaker 1: to listen to the podcast first, but you gotta if
Speaker 1: you're listening to this podcast, you got to watch the
Speaker 1: video of all the video that that I've produced. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's one of the best films, not just
Speaker 1: because my daughter was in it, which that could potentially
Speaker 1: make me make me biased in some way, but the
Speaker 1: the story spanned two years, a serious accident, a mule wreck,
Speaker 1: and an encounter with a giant color phase bear that
Speaker 1: we did not capitalize on, and then eventually River taken
Speaker 1: a really nice bear in Arkansas, I mean a very
Speaker 1: nice bear, pope and young nineteen inch plus skull bear
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. And but more important than that, the whole
Speaker 1: sequence of events from the perspective of a father was
Speaker 1: really powerful because River had to endure a lot, she
Speaker 1: had to practice a lot of restraint, and uh so
Speaker 1: what we're gonna talk about all those details, But so River,
Speaker 1: I want to start off with a little little history.
Speaker 1: When River was how old are you when you saw
Speaker 1: your first bear out there with when we were baiting
Speaker 1: bears when we were I was like four the first
Speaker 1: bear I saw. Do you remember? I remember that so vividly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell us that story. Well, we had a bait and
Speaker 1: you're you didn't. We didn't have any picture to the
Speaker 1: bear or just any bear, and you were gonna you
Speaker 1: were we were gonna move the bank and move somewhere else.
Speaker 1: But that night I was gonna go with you the
Speaker 1: next day. And that night I had a dream that
Speaker 1: we were at the bear bait and there's bear, there's
Speaker 1: like cubs. It was just a bunch of cups. The
Speaker 1: bear had left. That's what happened. The bears. The bears
Speaker 1: were gone. Like I was baiting bears and I had
Speaker 1: one bait and the and the bears left, and so
Speaker 1: you know, I would have come home. You'd have been
Speaker 1: four and might have been dramatic. I was like, the
Speaker 1: bears are gone, you know, Yeah, Okay, that's probably what happened.
Speaker 1: And then you had a dream and yeah, I had
Speaker 1: a dream and there was just a bunch of bears
Speaker 1: at the bait and you're four years old. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I begged you to let us bait it one more time.
Speaker 1: And so we went out like a couple of days later,
Speaker 1: and we had the back filled with bread and we
Speaker 1: carried it back there. You gave me like a little
Speaker 1: Walmart sack and you had a big old trash bag
Speaker 1: and I carried it out there and I was just
Speaker 1: like not, I was just like dancing through the woods
Speaker 1: with my little trash bag of bread, and I looked
Speaker 1: up and you were like crouching down on the ground
Speaker 1: and you were looking at me with your finger over
Speaker 1: your mouth, telling me to be quiet. And I tiptoed
Speaker 1: over there, and you pointed out and there was like
Speaker 1: to me, it was a massive bear and it looked
Speaker 1: so big, and I was scared. I just grounded on
Speaker 1: your arm and was like, oh my gosh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember exactly what you said. You were just like happy,
Speaker 1: go lucky, and then you saw the bear immediately latched
Speaker 1: onto my leg and said let's go. You just said,
Speaker 1: you just said let's go. I mean, you were just like,
Speaker 1: I don't want any man. When in my mind when
Speaker 1: I looked back, I remember that being awesome and not
Speaker 1: being scared. But it was so funny because you were
Speaker 1: just like just immediately just like let's go, let's get
Speaker 1: out of here. So so that was Rivers like first
Speaker 1: thing first like like sequence of interacting with bears and
Speaker 1: and so for years we were like River had a
Speaker 1: dream that the bears came back, and actually yeah, and
Speaker 1: and uh so that was that, and then you would
Speaker 1: have bear baited with me and stuff for years. But
Speaker 1: so I saw a lot of people letting their young
Speaker 1: kids shoot bears over bait, which man more power to them,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. I did not want the newcome kids to
Speaker 1: kill a bear until I felt like they could truly
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Yeah, And you had it instilled in us
Speaker 1: that like a bear was this majesting animal and if
Speaker 1: you were going to kill it, you were gonna earn it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's a lot of the video. Like when watching
Speaker 1: the video, you see that we weren't gonna be able
Speaker 1: to kill a bear. Let's we could shoot it with
Speaker 1: bo Yeah. And that was the challenge pretty much. Well
Speaker 1: and and uh and not to take something away from
Speaker 1: somebody that lets a six or seven or eight year
Speaker 1: old kids shoot a bear, that's that's any parents progative.
Speaker 1: But I just knew that it would cheapen it a
Speaker 1: little bit if you were that young. And so you
Speaker 1: were the first nucom that I ever let bear hunt.
Speaker 1: I mean, for years, y'all were totally capable. Y'all were
Speaker 1: killing deer, y'all were killing turkeys. Uh. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: knew that, you knew what was happening and everything. But
Speaker 1: you were thirteen years old when you could pull the
Speaker 1: weight limit for archery in Arkansas, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I worked for that all summer. It's like, you, ever,
Speaker 1: this is the year where I want you to kill
Speaker 1: a bear and uh. And so that was and you
Speaker 1: just turned thirteen and uh and you killed a bear
Speaker 1: the first first afternoon we hunted. I mean you helped
Speaker 1: me bait and do a bunch of stuff that you
Speaker 1: killed a really nice colored face bear out at at
Speaker 1: James Lawrence's old home place and out in the mountains,
Speaker 1: and uh, that was a really awesome experience. And we
Speaker 1: you killed the bear, knew come killed the bear. Well,
Speaker 1: So as it goes in our family, we don't just
Speaker 1: have unlimited access to be able to hunt and shoot
Speaker 1: bears over bait. I mean, we've got some good properties,
Speaker 1: but usually what it boils down to is we work
Speaker 1: our fingers to the bone and when opening day comes,
Speaker 1: we have one spot. That's good. Yeah, because I killed
Speaker 1: that bear when I was thirteen, and then the next
Speaker 1: year I didn't. I sat on a bait for a
Speaker 1: long time, I didn't even see a bear. And when
Speaker 1: I was fifteen we went back where well point being,
Speaker 1: the next year I decided to bypass our oldest son
Speaker 1: and and skip down to our youngest son and let
Speaker 1: him bear because Bear wanted to kill it. On. Well,
Speaker 1: we've made a we I feel like every kid is
Speaker 1: so different that you can't just script out just they're
Speaker 1: supposed to do. Baron Newcomb, he was hunting with me
Speaker 1: in the mountains in National Forest and I just said, hey, Bear,
Speaker 1: how about you not kill a bear overbait? You you
Speaker 1: you restrain yourself from that, and you just take five
Speaker 1: years and let's try to kill one in the mountains.
Speaker 1: And so he's not hunted over bait until this year.
Speaker 1: He went hunting with James overbait one day without me knowing.
Speaker 1: They were supposed to go deer hunting. Did you know that?
Speaker 1: I thought Mr James was taking bear deer hunting and
Speaker 1: they went and said on that bait, good thing, he
Speaker 1: did get one, good thing, he didn't get one. Well,
Speaker 1: so so Bear rivers younger brother has been bypassed. And
Speaker 1: Shepherd killed the bear, and I really wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of throw Shepherd a bone, and he had a lot
Speaker 1: of desire, and for whatever reason, I just felt like
Speaker 1: I needed to give him a taste of success fairly easily.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that's played out very well because
Speaker 1: now Shepherd is like, I mean in like well, in
Speaker 1: like June, and he's like, hey, Dad, we gotta start shooting.
Speaker 1: We gotta start getting ready. Where are we gonna bait? What?
Speaker 1: You know? He's like, He's like, he always makes sure
Speaker 1: I'm shooting my bow. Yeah, and so Shepherd yeah, so
Speaker 1: so well he sell that to say. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: we gained access to a piece of property that was
Speaker 1: inaccessible by vehicle. Okay, you could not drive a four
Speaker 1: wheeler in there, legally you could not. The only way
Speaker 1: to get in there is either by foot or by
Speaker 1: equine animal. And is it basically a mile and a
Speaker 1: half from where we could park the truck straight up
Speaker 1: a mountain, a lot of elevation gain for Arkansas. And
Speaker 1: we gained access to hunt this piece of private land.
Speaker 1: And in Arkansas we can only bait bears on private
Speaker 1: land in certain zones, okay, And so we knew that
Speaker 1: this property was gonna be pretty good. We really did,
Speaker 1: just because of how secluded it was typically in Arkansas
Speaker 1: and and pretty much anyway, the more secluded, the more
Speaker 1: access to vast amounts of public land around where you're baiting,
Speaker 1: the more of that the better. So we knew this
Speaker 1: place was going to be good. So in UH in
Speaker 1: early September, we gained access to the property and we
Speaker 1: started baiting on September. Is that correct? Is that when
Speaker 1: it happened? It was? But yeah, yeah, let's just say
Speaker 1: it was. So on September two thousand and eighteen, River
Speaker 1: and I basically bushed whack in bush whacked into where
Speaker 1: we could where we could park. We had two mules
Speaker 1: with paniards. We loaded up the mules with probably a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty to two h pounds of bait each. UH
Speaker 1: season opened in like eight days. It opened on September,
Speaker 1: so we were just baiting like seven days, seven days
Speaker 1: before season. We went up there. We didn't carry a
Speaker 1: barrel in. We just put the bait right on the ground,
Speaker 1: put up a fair box and a cutting back camera
Speaker 1: and left it and just had no idea what was like.
Speaker 1: You know, when you start a new bait, even if
Speaker 1: it's in a good location, a lot of times these
Speaker 1: bears are fixed in on baits and other places. Like
Speaker 1: baiting does kind of change the bear landscape for a
Speaker 1: certain period of time because bears are extremely habitual, even
Speaker 1: down to the day of when they show up at
Speaker 1: a bait site, there really are river um It's it's
Speaker 1: like a it's like a biological thing. Like if a
Speaker 1: bear knows that this certain section of a white oak
Speaker 1: ridge always produces, he remembers that for his entire life,
Speaker 1: and he goes back there and checks it every year.
Speaker 1: And I remember Will Beason one time told him that
Speaker 1: he used to leave cameras up year around on his
Speaker 1: bait sites even when he wasn't baiting, and the bears
Speaker 1: would always show for like years in a row. The
Speaker 1: bears showed up on the very same day, even before
Speaker 1: he started bating. Yeah, like like they they they were
Speaker 1: real meticulous about when they started baiting bears. And uh
Speaker 1: in a bear would have not been there for months
Speaker 1: and would show up the day before they started baiting.
Speaker 1: And they just know they're just so. I say that
Speaker 1: to say, even if you have a good location, you
Speaker 1: never know if you're gonna be able to draw bears
Speaker 1: because bears maybe you know, I mean bear movement is
Speaker 1: is navy is influenced by bear baits. When you can
Speaker 1: bait bears, it's pulling bears away. So we didn't know
Speaker 1: well and just like I wanted to kill a bear
Speaker 1: that year, I didn't kill the bear. I think I
Speaker 1: was fifteen and I hadn't kill a bear since I
Speaker 1: was Well, you hunted, you killed the bear in fifteen,
Speaker 1: you hunted sixteen and seventeen and didn't kill anything. I
Speaker 1: wanted kill the bear, and we were like, why don't
Speaker 1: we kill it? For whatever reason? When I got access
Speaker 1: to this property, I was just like, Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be river spot, did you know? I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. I was just like gonna go bating
Speaker 1: with you and maybe well, I mean I could have
Speaker 1: done anything with that spot. I could or like a
Speaker 1: lot of times on the day or like a couple
Speaker 1: of days, like we'd be driving down to where we're
Speaker 1: gonna bear hunt and we'd be like, okay, River's gonna hunt.
Speaker 1: Hear Chevard's gonna here. I was just going baiting with
Speaker 1: you the day one. I didn't know that was gonna
Speaker 1: be my spot. I didn't know. Probably just weren't paying
Speaker 1: attention when I told you, probably not. But but I
Speaker 1: just had not like I would just going to bait
Speaker 1: with you, like I wasn't well, I had in my
Speaker 1: mind from the very beginning for whatever reason. I was
Speaker 1: just like, this is gonna be river spot because I
Speaker 1: knew it's gonna be really hard. Yeah, pretty quick I
Speaker 1: realized like this is gonna be my spot, and this
Speaker 1: is like a significant mountain. But and and it was
Speaker 1: I knew it was gonna be incredible. I really did.
Speaker 1: And uh, and I just I just had this. I
Speaker 1: just I don't know, it's just like from the very beginnings,
Speaker 1: like this gonna be river spot. I mean, I've never
Speaker 1: killed a bear up there, you know. Um September two, eighteen,
Speaker 1: we go up there, we put out our bait, we leave,
Speaker 1: and it's hard to get up comment. It's it's a
Speaker 1: it's an hour and a half walk and we're leading
Speaker 1: mules in but on foot. Okay, so we're not riding
Speaker 1: the mules in most of the time. We're leading the
Speaker 1: mules in there, carrying all our gear on our bait.
Speaker 1: So we're getting a heck of a workout hour and
Speaker 1: a half through the mountains up to this spot, which
Speaker 1: on the on the garment, it's it's really only about
Speaker 1: a mile and a half, but you're gaining about you're
Speaker 1: gaining a lot of elevation for these mountains. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really does. It really does. But so here's what happened,
Speaker 1: is is we had a riding saddle on my young
Speaker 1: mule Easy, which a lot of you guys may have seen.
Speaker 1: I was training Issy and stuff. Well I was just like, hey, Riever,
Speaker 1: you want to ride Easy down the mountain and she's
Speaker 1: like yeah, and I was like okay. And it truly
Speaker 1: is one of the biggest just kind of like blind
Speaker 1: spot mistakes that I've made. Is a father that put
Speaker 1: my kids in danger for real, I look at it
Speaker 1: like that because I just I was just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just ride that three year old mule down down
Speaker 1: this big mount and uh, soon as you got on
Speaker 1: it is he was kind of just just high spirited.
Speaker 1: I remember, you're kind of having a little bit of
Speaker 1: trouble controling her or just lends being so low. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's what. That's what. And I thought that was just
Speaker 1: gonna be at the top of mountain, like at first
Speaker 1: I got caught in not a big mule, but she's
Speaker 1: not a short mule, so you're kind of up in
Speaker 1: the trees. And yeah, boy, riding in Arkansas, that's the
Speaker 1: biggest hazard of riding the way that we're using these
Speaker 1: mules in the mountains of Arkansas is that you're constantly
Speaker 1: ducking and fighting thems, and you could get raked off
Speaker 1: a mule pretty easy if you're not moving around and
Speaker 1: limber and mounting around. And so I just let her
Speaker 1: ride and I was gonna lead my other mule down
Speaker 1: the mountain because we only had a sawbuck. Sawbuck is
Speaker 1: a is a pack saddle that you can't ride, So
Speaker 1: you had a riding saddle. Ellie at the time had
Speaker 1: that pack saddle, you know, And so there just there
Speaker 1: you go off the mount and no, you know, no
Speaker 1: big deal. I didn't even think of think about it.
Speaker 1: Well directly, you get out about fifty yards in front
Speaker 1: of me, maybe forty, and I see Izzie start trotting,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, I started here you
Speaker 1: start yelling, and I see Izzy go into a full gallop.
Speaker 1: What happened? She? We got out a little ways in
Speaker 1: front of you, and there's a limb. There's a limb
Speaker 1: hanging down and it was just like it wasn't It
Speaker 1: was just about as stick as your wrist, and it
Speaker 1: was coming in. It was just gonna hit me like
Speaker 1: right in the chest. And so I bent overside. She
Speaker 1: wasn't trotting yet, and I bent over sideways the duck
Speaker 1: under that limb, which wasn't smart. And when I bent over,
Speaker 1: grabbed the saddle horn and she took off run and
Speaker 1: she just didn't. I guess you just didn't like that.
Speaker 1: I think you squeezed her with your legs, queuing her
Speaker 1: to run, That's probably what it was. And she just
Speaker 1: took off like she she was running fast on that mountain,
Speaker 1: and I didn't have the reins, and you kept you
Speaker 1: were telling me like, yank the rent. You're telling me
Speaker 1: to just pull on it. You're telling me to do something,
Speaker 1: and I was just like I was yelling at the
Speaker 1: top of my lungs. Yeah. And I mean I just
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna let go with that side a word. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so what I see is I see this mule
Speaker 1: at a full gallop just disappear over the crest of
Speaker 1: this steep hill with with rivers sliding off the side.
Speaker 1: That's the last image I've had of you was you
Speaker 1: about halfway off of the mule, like going down and
Speaker 1: this mule running as fast as a mule can run downhill.
Speaker 1: And I've ever since we've been riding mules and with
Speaker 1: the kids involved. I mean there's inherent danger and pretty
Speaker 1: much everything that we do. Um, and I've always just thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, this is dangerous, but this is
Speaker 1: something that we're gonna do. And anyway, this was the
Speaker 1: bad dream that I thought could happen, and it was
Speaker 1: happening out before my eyes. And I dropped the rain
Speaker 1: the leader on my mule and just take off running.
Speaker 1: And I finally catch up with you guys, and I
Speaker 1: see Izzy facing me with no river newcum on her back,
Speaker 1: and I see you head first on the ground on
Speaker 1: your back, with your head down the mountain and your
Speaker 1: legs up the mountain, and I honestly didn't know if
Speaker 1: you if you were alive, And so I run to
Speaker 1: you and yeah, go ahead and go ahead, um, because
Speaker 1: when we were going down, she was like I hung
Speaker 1: on for a long time. I hung out for a
Speaker 1: long time. I'll give you that. Yeah, yeah, And she
Speaker 1: was like jump jumping, like she was like jumping like
Speaker 1: logs and and going through ditches and stuff. And my
Speaker 1: I can't remember why, but somebody it might have been you,
Speaker 1: But somebody told me, if you ever get in a
Speaker 1: situation like that, just kind of roll off. And I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that person was credible, but that's what I'm thinking. God,
Speaker 1: that's what I was thinking in the moment. And my
Speaker 1: foot was like stuck in the stir and the stirrup
Speaker 1: on the other side, and I was leading like I
Speaker 1: was like, I was just riding on like my I
Speaker 1: was not sitting straight up on her. I was like,
Speaker 1: yeah you were, and she was just running on purpose.
Speaker 1: No no, but I was like like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, no, no, I did not. My advice
Speaker 1: is to ride it out. Yeah, that's what you've always
Speaker 1: Somebody said, if you're going to fall, Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: you've always thought. But somebody said, if you're gonna follow,
Speaker 1: just roll off, because I mean, I wasn't even hardly
Speaker 1: on her, Like my one leg was not in the
Speaker 1: stir up anymore. I don't know how that happened, but
Speaker 1: I was just hanging off the side of her as
Speaker 1: she was running, and my other leg was just stuck
Speaker 1: and I couldn't get off Anyways, the saddle like kind
Speaker 1: of broke like something happened, and so kind of probably
Speaker 1: spun a little bit off. Yeah, it suthing happened, and
Speaker 1: I like she jumped over a log and my leg
Speaker 1: finally just got loose and I just hit the ground.
Speaker 1: And at first, I was just kind of like, what
Speaker 1: the heck? And I thought if anything was wrong, it
Speaker 1: was gonna be that I had just broken my leg
Speaker 1: because it twists and side like. I didn't even realize
Speaker 1: that my head is like bleeding or anything at first.
Speaker 1: So I run up to you and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 1: are you okay? Are you okay? Don't move, don't move,
Speaker 1: and and I kind of just started like poking you,
Speaker 1: like you know, and I just thought, if she's if
Speaker 1: she's broken somewhere, you know, you'll be really tender. And
Speaker 1: I kind of, you know, I couldn't find anything broken,
Speaker 1: and I put my head behind your, my hand behind
Speaker 1: your head and pulled my hand out. In my hand
Speaker 1: had a bunch of blood on it, and that's always
Speaker 1: saw the cut on your head, and we didn't think
Speaker 1: it was that big deal. But I remember reaching back
Speaker 1: and like it was deep, like you could feel until
Speaker 1: it was deep. Well, we'll cut we'll shorten the story
Speaker 1: a little bit here. The basically, it was a cut
Speaker 1: so deep that you could see her skull and the
Speaker 1: river can't walked all the way off the mountain eating
Speaker 1: then a mule. I mean, we sat there on the ground.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you exactly what we did. We sat there
Speaker 1: on the ground and we prayed and I just thank
Speaker 1: God that you were alive. And uh and I mean
Speaker 1: we're way back in the mountains, no cell cover. I mean,
Speaker 1: what else we're gonna do. We just walked out of
Speaker 1: there and you were you were, you were capable of that,
Speaker 1: and just shook up and bleeding and um. And we
Speaker 1: go to the nearest medical facility and basically have a
Speaker 1: pretty terrible experience. We stayed there for like eight hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in the waiting room for six hours, and then
Speaker 1: we went back there and sat there for two hours.
Speaker 1: So River turns out has a a concussion, and uh,
Speaker 1: we believe that she probably fractured her rib. They never
Speaker 1: did any x rays on that, but it's because you know,
Speaker 1: there'sn't really not much they can do about a fractured rib.
Speaker 1: But a doctor that we know said it was probably
Speaker 1: And then she had eight staples in her head and
Speaker 1: with out anesthesia. Yeah, it was hours like while the
Speaker 1: guy came in like hours after we'd been there. We
Speaker 1: sat in the rading room for six hours and and
Speaker 1: he said, hey, has she been given any talent all
Speaker 1: or anything for pain? And River and I just looked
Speaker 1: up at him. It was like, no, we hadn't seen anybody.
Speaker 1: And basically he was like, oh my gosh, you've been
Speaker 1: here this long and I I hadn't had any pain. And
Speaker 1: River it's like she she's very just physically tough. She's tough.
Speaker 1: She's been taught to ignore pain like Rambo. And so anyway,
Speaker 1: we I felt terrible because I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: didn't think about it. Anyway, they they put seven eight
Speaker 1: staples the head, and long story short, we're still kind
Speaker 1: of recovering from that in some ways. But so we
Speaker 1: had a mule reck. Well we better start talking about
Speaker 1: barre Hunt. Um so the next year, well, no, no week.
Speaker 1: The next week we go back up on the mountain
Speaker 1: and and we we couldn't get there the first day
Speaker 1: of opening season. This is this is stuff we couldn't
Speaker 1: tell in the video because it was just two complex
Speaker 1: of a story. But we had like flash floods opening
Speaker 1: day of season September Twe we tried to find other
Speaker 1: ways up there, and we drove back into like the
Speaker 1: craziest stuff and tried to in the middle of the woods.
Speaker 1: Well we couldn't cross. There's a creek that we had
Speaker 1: to cross. Well, we couldn't get across. It was too high.
Speaker 1: So we tried to go upstream several miles and come
Speaker 1: in a whole different direction to get back in where
Speaker 1: and we just couldn't do it. So we ended up
Speaker 1: not hunting the first day of season. We went back
Speaker 1: up there the second day the water went down and
Speaker 1: we go up go up there, and it's probably one
Speaker 1: of the hottest bear baits I've ever seen in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: And uh, we had one big bear coming in and
Speaker 1: River was committed to shoot that bear. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we kind of we kind of talked this through, is
Speaker 1: that if we're going to commit to hunting this spot,
Speaker 1: we're not just trying to shoot a bear, We're trying
Speaker 1: to shoot the bear, you know. And so she was
Speaker 1: committed to wait for a big, big mail. That's what
Speaker 1: we wanted to do. That was our goal. That's why
Speaker 1: we put in that much effort and work to go
Speaker 1: in there. Let me say to baiting this spot for
Speaker 1: us was it was in a full day of work
Speaker 1: because it's two and a half hours from where we
Speaker 1: live one way, so that's five basically five hours of driving,
Speaker 1: hauling the mules, loading mules on, you know, putting all
Speaker 1: attack and taking the attack off. I mean basically, you
Speaker 1: left here early in the morning and you got home
Speaker 1: at dark. Baiting this place one time, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of work, a lot of work went into it.
Speaker 1: We go up there and the first day river passed
Speaker 1: seven bears and the big bear never came. Do you
Speaker 1: remember getting out of that stand? I do. That was
Speaker 1: the worst there was. I mean, do you single time
Speaker 1: a bear would come in, I would just be like,
Speaker 1: that is a monster, and I would stand up and
Speaker 1: that would be like, that's probably a two pounds sow
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, and more bears right then
Speaker 1: then most people will see in a lifetime. It was crazy,
Speaker 1: It really was. But like right before we left, I
Speaker 1: was gonna have to go we had a school trip
Speaker 1: and I was going to go on the school trip
Speaker 1: and I did not want to go on the school
Speaker 1: trip without a bear. I was just I was I
Speaker 1: just did not want to do that on this opportunity. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I was at full draw, like I was. I
Speaker 1: was just so close dark. I was like, if you
Speaker 1: want to shoot one of these bears, go ahead. And
Speaker 1: the four bears in front of us, and it was
Speaker 1: getting dark, and you had to leave the next morning early,
Speaker 1: and I I just was I just knew if I
Speaker 1: was gonna get on that bus and I was gonna
Speaker 1: go on that trip, I was gonna come back and
Speaker 1: there's gonna be no bears and I was not gonna
Speaker 1: get a bear again. And I just did not want
Speaker 1: to do that. So I was at full draw and
Speaker 1: I had that pin on one of the bears. I
Speaker 1: don't remember how big it was, but I was just like,
Speaker 1: I can't do it. Man, I'm so glad you didn't. Well,
Speaker 1: this is what I asked, if you remembered. So we're,
Speaker 1: you know, an hour from a truck way back in
Speaker 1: the mountains. We got the mules tied up a quarter
Speaker 1: mile from us, and it gets dark, and that mountain
Speaker 1: was covered in fog, and there were four bears within
Speaker 1: ten yards of our tree. And I turned on I
Speaker 1: turned on my light to just I thought this flashlight'll
Speaker 1: spook them off. Man. I turned on that light and
Speaker 1: they didn't care. I remember when I crawled down and
Speaker 1: got on the ground. I shined my flashlight out and
Speaker 1: there was a bear about eight yards from me this way.
Speaker 1: And I turned the flashlight this way and there was
Speaker 1: a bear about ten yards from me behind me, remember that.
Speaker 1: And I was just like, River, we gotta get out
Speaker 1: of here. And you crawled down and we hooked it
Speaker 1: out of there. I've never I've never quite had an
Speaker 1: experience like that. Um. I mean we've been we've been
Speaker 1: around bears close, but for something about being that far
Speaker 1: back in and that's foggy, it was. It was good.
Speaker 1: It was good. Um. So the river comes back the
Speaker 1: next Saturday, we get there and the absolute perfect situation
Speaker 1: for a bear baiter happens. A giant bear had showed
Speaker 1: up that very day at the bait. He had never
Speaker 1: been there before. What I believe was probably a four
Speaker 1: fifty five pounds solid black bear had been there most
Speaker 1: of the day and he had he had just found
Speaker 1: it that morning. I mean we could tell by truckcre
Speaker 1: and pictures like that bear had never been there until
Speaker 1: that day. Some ways, that was good. In some ways
Speaker 1: it was bad. It was bad because now we were
Speaker 1: there and if he smelled us, I knew because he wasn't.
Speaker 1: He'd never been to the bait, he had never smelled
Speaker 1: human there, that he was going to be real sensitive
Speaker 1: to human intrusion, where the other bears that had been
Speaker 1: there the whole time we've been baiting would probably be
Speaker 1: a little bit more tolerant of the human smell. Well,
Speaker 1: that turned out exactly right. At four o'clock, the big,
Speaker 1: big black bear came in and got down the wind
Speaker 1: of us and disappeared. We never saw him again, am
Speaker 1: I right? We we We didn't even show that in
Speaker 1: the video. I mean you just couldn't because I mean
Speaker 1: it's just like this image of this like bear way
Speaker 1: off and I couldn't even tell that part of the story. Well,
Speaker 1: about forty five minutes before dark, the bear that we
Speaker 1: were well, that the other bear that we were after,
Speaker 1: showed up a dark, chocolate, very large board. I haven't
Speaker 1: officially asked h Ryan grabbed my official Arkansas bear Bait
Speaker 1: wait guess or champion, but I'm pretty sure that he
Speaker 1: would agree that the bear was easily over four hundred
Speaker 1: and probably in the four fifty range. That's what I believe. Um,
Speaker 1: and the bear smells us, he knows we're there, We're
Speaker 1: up in a tree stand and he comes right in
Speaker 1: and he's at like eight yards broadside, and River shoots
Speaker 1: him high. I mean, and and you'll see it in
Speaker 1: the video. It's like heartbreaking. Hits him right in a
Speaker 1: backstrap with a forty pound bow and the Arab penetrates
Speaker 1: in about five inches and the bear runs off. We
Speaker 1: spend the entire next day looking for the bear, would
Speaker 1: never find the bear. We get trail camera pictures of
Speaker 1: the bear. It was actually three days later. We get
Speaker 1: trail camera pictures of the bear with a big white
Speaker 1: spot on his back, fully alive, and he continued to
Speaker 1: stay at that bait the rest of the year, only
Speaker 1: coming in at dark. And we were crushed. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: It was hard to take that. It really was hard
Speaker 1: to take. I mean, obviously for for reasons that could
Speaker 1: even go and stated, I mean, you know, for new
Speaker 1: hunters that might be listening to this, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a massive deal to wounded animal. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's never your goal. It's an outlier in terms of
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen that often, but it did. The good
Speaker 1: news was is that we knew for sure that this
Speaker 1: bear lived and was okay, which was fantastic in that respect.
Speaker 1: We spent the entire next day looking for that bear
Speaker 1: and the Holy cow. I mean, just like it was over.
Speaker 1: Like there's only so many times we could go down there,
Speaker 1: and it's not like we could just keep hunting for
Speaker 1: another week, and we did. We came back another day
Speaker 1: and one bear came in, yeah, which was which was
Speaker 1: not normal. Things things dry up quick, like like in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: It's like you get this short window before the acrons fall,
Speaker 1: and uh, and we knew it was gonna drive quick,
Speaker 1: and it did. And uh and River and I came
Speaker 1: out of the season having invested all this work and
Speaker 1: we're just kind of dang that it didn't happen. And
Speaker 1: we were both kind of like shocked and surprised, and
Speaker 1: we really you learned a lot, though, didn't you. River
Speaker 1: talked to me about exactness. That was a phrase that
Speaker 1: that we we we kind of used a lot this
Speaker 1: year in at your arrow was just a little bit off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and because of that, I didn't I came out without
Speaker 1: a bear. Yeah, And so I mean you took that
Speaker 1: as a principle for your life though, I want to
Speaker 1: hear you, Um, Yeah, exactness was a word that we
Speaker 1: used a lot in this last year. And um hm,
Speaker 1: like as a hunter, you know, going and you know,
Speaker 1: like we would we know there's a specific spot on
Speaker 1: that bear that you need to hit, and like we
Speaker 1: would look at we look at the bear targets, we
Speaker 1: would look at pictures and we would watch videos and
Speaker 1: like you knew where to hit the bear. And on
Speaker 1: the day I was like two inches off. And because
Speaker 1: that I came out without a bear, and there was
Speaker 1: like that was kind of a thing that we talked about.
Speaker 1: I don't even know how to do, but we we
Speaker 1: talked about it as a principle for life, is that
Speaker 1: you know there are places where not just in shooting bows,
Speaker 1: but in other places in life that you know you
Speaker 1: needed to be more exact and more intentional and aware.
Speaker 1: And I think you did a great job of taking
Speaker 1: this principle you learned from hunting and applying it back
Speaker 1: into your life. That's what I heard you say all year,
Speaker 1: is that is that you were thinking about that with school,
Speaker 1: you were thinking about that with other things. Is that
Speaker 1: you know it seems like such a small miss because
Speaker 1: it was like if you watched the shot, like even me,
Speaker 1: you know, in the stand. I'm like, man, I think
Speaker 1: you probably got his lungs. I mean, like it's it's
Speaker 1: like one of those shots that you're kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was a little high, but it might work. So
Speaker 1: it's like it was inches away from being just a
Speaker 1: tin ring shot, but because because it was off, the
Speaker 1: whole thing I mean. And so inside of life, man,
Speaker 1: sometimes you gotta be exact. Yeah, And there's just a
Speaker 1: lot of places, like a lot of practical things like
Speaker 1: in school or even at home, where there are things
Speaker 1: that it's like you can be just two inches off
Speaker 1: or you can be a little ways away, and if
Speaker 1: you don't hit the mark, it doesn't like, it doesn't count.
Speaker 1: It doesn't count. That was just the thing for that.
Speaker 1: And so River and I we I've got a confession.
Speaker 1: We like Adele um like and what's the song that
Speaker 1: we sing someone like you talking about that? Uh, well,
Speaker 1: you were the first one that said that. One day
Speaker 1: we were listening to music on just driving. In this song,
Speaker 1: it's just really sad like love song about how she
Speaker 1: is looking for someone like you and it's and it
Speaker 1: was talking about this love lost like Adele had like
Speaker 1: had this man she lost him and now she's looking
Speaker 1: for someone like you. And so River and I are
Speaker 1: singing this and she's like, this is the bear from
Speaker 1: last year, and I was like yeah, And so every
Speaker 1: time we heard that, I'm serious. I bet we did
Speaker 1: that many times this year When we heard that song,
Speaker 1: we would say, this is bear. We're gonna get that bear.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get that bear. We're looking for someone like you.
Speaker 1: And we'd say this huge image of this giant, world
Speaker 1: class chocolate bear that slipped through our fingers. But you know,
Speaker 1: we learned from it. And so that brings us to
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. Okay, And you know, honestly, coming off the
Speaker 1: mountain last year, I'm not sure that you wanted to
Speaker 1: go back up on the mountain. That it's a really
Speaker 1: special mountain because every single time we would walk up
Speaker 1: that mountain and I get settled on that tree stand
Speaker 1: and I'd be like, I am never doing this again.
Speaker 1: Like it was not easy. And it kind of sounds
Speaker 1: ridiculous when you say it's just a mile and a half,
Speaker 1: but like it was not easy to get back. It
Speaker 1: was not easy to get back up there. And I
Speaker 1: mean I had a concussion that whole season, and I
Speaker 1: had a fractioned rib and like that hurts, like it's
Speaker 1: about that, and yeah, yes, like it was hard to
Speaker 1: get up there. Yeah, so that's that's the one problem
Speaker 1: with like video, Like you watched this twelve minute video
Speaker 1: that we made and you kind of feel like everything
Speaker 1: was just like perfect, like you see the tribulation. But
Speaker 1: it was tough. It really was, like, Yeah, there would
Speaker 1: be times when we get off that mountain it would
Speaker 1: be so hot, we would have been walking for a
Speaker 1: long time and I had a concussion and we would
Speaker 1: get up there and it's just like I could hardly,
Speaker 1: like and I had a pretty bad concussion, I could hardly.
Speaker 1: It was just it was hard. Like it was just
Speaker 1: it was hard. And we would go up there again
Speaker 1: and again and again, and every time we come out
Speaker 1: of there without a bear. And one time we came
Speaker 1: out of there and we were like, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to go back up here tomorrow and track a bear
Speaker 1: that I just wounded. That was hard, that man, that
Speaker 1: was very That was hard for me. I came back
Speaker 1: and it took me about a week to get back
Speaker 1: on track mentally. It was just to get excited about
Speaker 1: hunting again. Yeah, I mean it was it was ridiculously hard.
Speaker 1: And every time we go up that mountain, I would saying,
Speaker 1: I am going down this mountain and I'm never coming back.
Speaker 1: And then I didn't get a bear, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to come back next year. I think
Speaker 1: you can't just end it like this. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: we weren't even sure that we were gonna be able
Speaker 1: to bait back up there this year. Uh, just because
Speaker 1: of the time commitments and it just it just takes
Speaker 1: your whole season basically, or the first of your season.
Speaker 1: But we we were like, yeah, we're gonna do it,
Speaker 1: and uh, and so we started baiting bears this year
Speaker 1: on about September again and that we had a new mule.
Speaker 1: We went up there, we we put out bait um
Speaker 1: and I mean basically we went in there and hunted
Speaker 1: and and we didn't have Uh, we had some really
Speaker 1: good bears coming in. But this year was way different
Speaker 1: than last year. Last year was a pretty incredible year
Speaker 1: for bears responding to bait because of the lack of
Speaker 1: mass crop here and this year mass crop was heavy,
Speaker 1: and um, so I knew the odds were gonna be harder,
Speaker 1: but we we we shot the bow all summer. I
Speaker 1: was I was wishing you'd shot a little bit more
Speaker 1: at times, didn't I Yeah, But you did good. The
Speaker 1: River is a good shot. And we we practiced everyone
Speaker 1: up there, baby with we set everything up and we
Speaker 1: came back on opening day, which this year was September nine. Um,
Speaker 1: it was actually the second day of the season when
Speaker 1: you killed the bear. Yeah. Yeah, But we went in
Speaker 1: there and and we we sat for several hours and
Speaker 1: only saw two smaller bears, which by this point, this
Speaker 1: was the only time that River was going to get.
Speaker 1: The hunt was basically these two days, and I knew
Speaker 1: that the next weekend the bears would be gone. So
Speaker 1: it's like, man, if we're gonna make this happen, we
Speaker 1: gotta make it happen River. And so I was just
Speaker 1: I was just like I'm not getting off this mountain,
Speaker 1: like I wasn't. I did not want to leave without
Speaker 1: a bear, and like I didn't last time, but this
Speaker 1: time it was like if it's dark and there's a
Speaker 1: smaller bear, yeah, And I was with it. And I
Speaker 1: was trying to take all the pressure off for any
Speaker 1: type of size or anything, because you know, at different
Speaker 1: times I would have you know, probably influenced you not
Speaker 1: to take a smaller bear. So we were just like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's just go kill a bear. I mean, that's kind
Speaker 1: of the way I took it, was like, let's just
Speaker 1: go kill a bear up there. We got the mules,
Speaker 1: we can call it off. And I wanted to test
Speaker 1: my mules. I wanted to see this whole system work,
Speaker 1: which is, if we kill a bear back there, can
Speaker 1: we get it out number one? Um. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to test the whole system and kind of reap some
Speaker 1: of the reward of all the work that we've done.
Speaker 1: And so we go up there and and and and
Speaker 1: where it's not real promising what we're seeing. Um. And
Speaker 1: right at dark, right at dark on the second day
Speaker 1: of the season, we see a big bear come in
Speaker 1: from the south on the horizon. And did you see
Speaker 1: him up there? You can you can just seventy yards away,
Speaker 1: and you can just you can tell is a mature bore.
Speaker 1: But the wind had supposed to be blowing out of
Speaker 1: the south, and it was blown directly out of the north,
Speaker 1: which was sending our scent right up where this bear was.
Speaker 1: I knew for sure that he was smelling us. Well,
Speaker 1: he just kind of disappears, and I just think, well,
Speaker 1: it's a done deal. He's not coming in. Well, it
Speaker 1: starts to get dark, I mean so dark that you
Speaker 1: could only see about forty yards probably, and I see
Speaker 1: the bobbing tan nose of a bear out there and
Speaker 1: just a silhouette of black. And I see this bear,
Speaker 1: bob in his head out there at about forty yards
Speaker 1: and I go wherever he's right, he's over there, and
Speaker 1: I watched him and watch him, and he's sitting on
Speaker 1: his rump and he's just they just it's almost like
Speaker 1: he's just he's torn, like he wants to come in,
Speaker 1: but he knows that that we're somewhere around. He just
Speaker 1: had to have and I just watched him just Bob's
Speaker 1: head and Bob's head move around and and finally when
Speaker 1: it just got dark enough. And I've seen older boars
Speaker 1: do this several times. It doesn't always happen, but when
Speaker 1: it got to just like a certain point, he was
Speaker 1: just like, Okay, I'm going in. It's dark enough, And
Speaker 1: I mean he just walked right in. And it was
Speaker 1: probably within minutes of being not being able to shoot.
Speaker 1: It was that dark, and you can see on the
Speaker 1: camera it was dark. I didn't know if River could
Speaker 1: see your pins or not. And I we sure weren't
Speaker 1: gonna mess around and take a bad shot, and so
Speaker 1: I just said, if you can see your pins, pull
Speaker 1: your bow back and just see what you can see.
Speaker 1: So she pulls her bow back, and I'm focused on filming,
Speaker 1: and I've got my right ear turned to her. Okay,
Speaker 1: I am basically deaf in my right ear, and River
Speaker 1: is at full draw and this bear is like it
Speaker 1: like probably ten yards and she's not shooting. She's not shooting.
Speaker 1: She's not shooting. He was a little bit quartering too
Speaker 1: righte coarter he was, And I was just trying to
Speaker 1: make sure that he wasn't like I was just I
Speaker 1: was so scared of getting a bad shot like what
Speaker 1: happened last year. I did not want to have anything,
Speaker 1: and so I was gonna like take my time. And
Speaker 1: I was trying to ask him. I was trying to
Speaker 1: you were you were talking to me? And I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I was trying to just be I was just like,
Speaker 1: he's not too turned, right, he's not too turned and
Speaker 1: and so well you were saying, can I shoot in that?
Speaker 1: What you're saying, just trying to make sure that she
Speaker 1: wasn't Can I shoot? Can I shoot? And I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: but not saying anything. I'm thinking, shoot shoot. And finally
Speaker 1: she's held the bow for so long. I leaned around
Speaker 1: the tree and I say, let your bow down. And
Speaker 1: she lets her bow down, and I said, could you
Speaker 1: see your sights? And she said yeah? And I said
Speaker 1: why didn't you shoot? She said, I was asking you shoot?
Speaker 1: And I said shoot that about the yeah. And when
Speaker 1: you said let your boat down, I thought you were
Speaker 1: gonna tell me not to shoot it. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: know why, but I told you let your bow down
Speaker 1: because you held up for so long. I was afraid
Speaker 1: you're gonna get tired and maybe make a bat shot.
Speaker 1: And so when you let your bow down, I said,
Speaker 1: could you see your pens? And and you said yeah?
Speaker 1: And I said why do you shoot? And you said,
Speaker 1: I mean the way I remember it was. You were like, well,
Speaker 1: I was asking you if I could shoot. I was like,
Speaker 1: I didn't hear you the right side, yea. And we
Speaker 1: obviously weren't yelling, and we were whispering, and I just said,
Speaker 1: and shoot that bear. And and so she pulls her
Speaker 1: bow back and just has no trouble, find her a pin,
Speaker 1: put it on this bear. And and man, when I
Speaker 1: heard that arrow hit, I knew we were in the chips.
Speaker 1: You can hear it on the video. That's a classic
Speaker 1: passed through, you know, cavity shot. And uh, I mean
Speaker 1: it just and and I knew it passed through, and
Speaker 1: I did not at first. I was actually very very nervous,
Speaker 1: which is wild because it's a you're pulling forty five
Speaker 1: pounds and we were shooting one of those uh day
Speaker 1: six evo hundred grain broad heads, which is a good
Speaker 1: bow or a good a really good cut on impact
Speaker 1: sharp broad head. And uh. And I'm like, how did
Speaker 1: it feel? How did it feel? And she was like
Speaker 1: it felt good. It felt good. Anyway, we crawled down
Speaker 1: and River goes over there and finds her arrow and
Speaker 1: it's just coded in blood. I mean, just like I
Speaker 1: remember telling the guys that I called afterwards. I was like, man,
Speaker 1: she picked up the arrow and her hand was just
Speaker 1: covered in blood after picking up that era, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, meaning it's a good shot. And what we
Speaker 1: didn't realize it was a little bit far back and
Speaker 1: it was and it was probably a liver shot, probably
Speaker 1: one long liver shot. The bear was slightly quarter in two. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we tracked and again you gotta remember, we're a long
Speaker 1: waist from the truck. Now it is black dark because
Speaker 1: we waited about twenty minutes before we even got down.
Speaker 1: So I mean it's like black dark. Were long ways
Speaker 1: from the truck. Um, we don't have cell rank. We
Speaker 1: got cell coverage up on top, but not when we're
Speaker 1: off the side. And anyway, we tracked the bear for
Speaker 1: a little while and and figure out that it was
Speaker 1: the hit was a little bit far back by a
Speaker 1: few things we saw, and uh so I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: we gotta get out of here. So we we dropped
Speaker 1: off the mountain and came back the next morning, and
Speaker 1: I actually had to put a pretty good track job
Speaker 1: on the bear. Found him about probably he probably ran
Speaker 1: three hundred yards through a pop off thicket. Ryan Grab,
Speaker 1: my good buddy, Ryan Grab came and Forest Teeter came
Speaker 1: and we brought the mules up, and I mean we
Speaker 1: found the bear fairly easily, but still we had to work.
Speaker 1: You know, we blood trailed them for three yards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's nothing about this hunt that was. So we get
Speaker 1: up to the bear and it's it's a beautiful, big bore.
Speaker 1: Ryan and I both felt like he probably weighed in
Speaker 1: the three pound change, which is a good bear at
Speaker 1: a big old head. Um. I would later Green score
Speaker 1: the skull at over nineteen inches, which is like you know,
Speaker 1: Poping Young's eighteen inches. I mean, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: big bear. Guys, go to Canada and don't kill bears
Speaker 1: that big. It's a beautiful bear. In the night, the
Speaker 1: bear had been scavenged on by another bear. A bear
Speaker 1: had come in and basically gutted him for us. It's
Speaker 1: pretty wild. I mean it was almost like he didn't
Speaker 1: need any of the meat. He didn't tear up the
Speaker 1: hide except on the belly. And uh, basically he that
Speaker 1: bear ate the guts out of that bear, which was
Speaker 1: pretty wild. Um. And while we were skinning your bear,
Speaker 1: a bear came in on us and got about eight
Speaker 1: It was coming back to the to the carcass to
Speaker 1: get some more dinner. The wind was in our favor,
Speaker 1: and the bear got to about eight yards from us,
Speaker 1: and we just sat there and we're just gonna watch it,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh, it spooked when it finally saw
Speaker 1: us or got down window of this one and then
Speaker 1: we uh, we couldn't get the mules right to where
Speaker 1: the bear was at because of how thick it was.
Speaker 1: So we hauled all the quarters and all the meat
Speaker 1: and hide out to the mules. And this was actually
Speaker 1: is his first time to carry a bear hide. She'd
Speaker 1: carry bear meat. And uh, it took a little bit
Speaker 1: of convincing, but we got the bear hide on her
Speaker 1: back and Ace our old mule, Colby's mule, uh carried
Speaker 1: carried the meat, no problem. I mean he could have
Speaker 1: carried less. About the smell of the bear. He was
Speaker 1: just like, let's go, let's go home. So he we
Speaker 1: put all the quarters on him and came off the
Speaker 1: mountain man. And that's our story. The river got her bear.
Speaker 1: You you I calculated. I think you passed eleven bears
Speaker 1: and and uh, you know, we let one get away,
Speaker 1: so I'm not counting that with the pass. So, um,
Speaker 1: you passed eleven errors. And some of them were nice,
Speaker 1: nice bears, but just not not big older males. And um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's our story. You want to do it again, kil
Speaker 1: bar him. Yeah, of course, what are we gonna do
Speaker 1: next year? M I probably have to kill one, not
Speaker 1: on a bait. Yeah, I don't know what I want
Speaker 1: to do. It's so much work up there. It's incredible
Speaker 1: bear hunting though. Yeah, that was one of the most
Speaker 1: shocking things is that we would sit like that first
Speaker 1: bear I killed and then the other two years that
Speaker 1: are hunting. I mean I would sit on that bait
Speaker 1: for hours, and I mean we saw one and we
Speaker 1: got out there and like we had just got settled
Speaker 1: in and a bear walked up and just came to
Speaker 1: the bottom of the tree and shook it. And that
Speaker 1: bear left and seconds later another bear came and it
Speaker 1: was like that all day long. I mean we got
Speaker 1: to watch sting cubs and it was like it was
Speaker 1: that was crazy and it was amazing, and like that's
Speaker 1: something that can't really be appreciated unless you're like sitting
Speaker 1: in a tree with the bear at the base of
Speaker 1: your tree shaking your tree. Yeah. Well it was a
Speaker 1: great it was a great experience. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the video, I kind of give
Speaker 1: a charge about guarding the gate, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: there's something really beautiful, really powerful about in modern times
Speaker 1: to be able to hunt a majestic beasts as awesome
Speaker 1: as a bear, and in Arkansas in all the places
Speaker 1: that we can. It's an incredible privilege to be able
Speaker 1: to hunt a bear and to and to to eat
Speaker 1: a bear. I mean we eat bear meat were we
Speaker 1: bear meat all the time, healthy organic, good meat. People
Speaker 1: come to our house that aren't hunters and eat it
Speaker 1: and like it, do they not? Am I just making
Speaker 1: that up? No? Yeah, we could name names of all
Speaker 1: the people that come to our house. And bear nucom
Speaker 1: has been winning, uh some bets at school. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a little boy at school that is not from
Speaker 1: he's let's just say he's not from Arkansas, and uh,
Speaker 1: he knows that we hunt. He's a great, good little boy.
Speaker 1: He's our friend. But he found out, you know, he's
Speaker 1: kind of new and he knows that we're hunters, and
Speaker 1: he has no context for hunting at all. And so
Speaker 1: he's like asking, my son, Bear, why are y'all hunting?
Speaker 1: Why are y'all hunting? Bears? Why are you even killing him?
Speaker 1: You just like to kill him? And bears like, no, yeah,
Speaker 1: we do like to kill him, but we eat him
Speaker 1: and we use the hide and we it's it's good.
Speaker 1: And Bears said he quote unquote gave him the conservation
Speaker 1: speech and uh. And so this little boy was like, no,
Speaker 1: you don't eat bears and wild me. They were talking
Speaker 1: about deer hunting baron and Bear said, I bet you
Speaker 1: a dollar tonight we will eat wild game at our
Speaker 1: house and uh. And in that night he came home
Speaker 1: and he said, Dad, what are we having for dinner?
Speaker 1: And I said, bear chili. We have bear chili? What
Speaker 1: we have? No, you know it was bear nachos. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it was ranch being bear nachos, that's what. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: he said yes, And I said why are you saying that?
Speaker 1: And he said, I just want to bet with such
Speaker 1: and such. And then so he came back to the
Speaker 1: next day and Bear said, I bet you too. Did
Speaker 1: you bet him two dollars? Did they bet a dollar? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the bets keep going up. Okay, that's that's the
Speaker 1: way I heard. He's like, well, we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: tell them stuff. Um, he's done. They're just kind of joking.
Speaker 1: They're really not exchanging money. But Beart was like, I
Speaker 1: bet you two dollars that we eat while game tonight
Speaker 1: at our house. And Bart had no not And he
Speaker 1: comes home. He says, Dad, what are we doing? And
Speaker 1: I said, man wearing fried deer meat tonight and potatoes
Speaker 1: and he was like yes, And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, it's good dinner. He's like no, I'm happy
Speaker 1: because I want another bet. It's so now appoint being
Speaker 1: the lifestyle that we live. Were privileged to be able
Speaker 1: to live it, and uh and and guarding the gate.
Speaker 1: What guarding the gate means is that the bear hunting
Speaker 1: is the lowest rung on the ladder for the anti
Speaker 1: hunting community to enter into our sphere of hunting really is.
Speaker 1: They're not after elk hunters, they're not after dove hunters,
Speaker 1: they're not after duck hunters. They are after bear hunters,
Speaker 1: and so bear hunters in twenty nineteen, we have got
Speaker 1: to have a powerful narrative and a powerful ethic for
Speaker 1: why we do what we do. And you know, we
Speaker 1: talked about it all the time, but I mean, hunting
Speaker 1: over bad is highly selective, and you were a powerful
Speaker 1: display of that, young lady. You passed eleven bears, You
Speaker 1: passed juveniles and females and waited for an older, mature male.
Speaker 1: And my buddy Brad Green always tells me that I
Speaker 1: need to say that that's not always the best thing
Speaker 1: for conservation. Some management plans want you to take whatever
Speaker 1: bear or whatever type of animal because there's sometimes when
Speaker 1: they're trying to reduce the population, you know, So I
Speaker 1: will say that, I mean it's not every bear hunter
Speaker 1: shouldn't always just do what we're doing, but so, um,
Speaker 1: that's true. But guard the gate means having an intimate
Speaker 1: knowledge of why we do what we do, why we
Speaker 1: use hounds as a management tool for bears, why we
Speaker 1: use bait as a management tool, why it's ethical. It's
Speaker 1: actually really ethical way to hunt bears because you're you
Speaker 1: know where they're gonna be standing. You can set up
Speaker 1: your tree stand in such a way that you're gonna
Speaker 1: get a good shot. Um, you get to age these bears,
Speaker 1: sex these bears. You know where the sALS are, you
Speaker 1: know where you know, you know the sALS have cubs
Speaker 1: because of pictures, And it's like it's actually a really
Speaker 1: clinical way to manage bears. Also highly challenging, also very
Speaker 1: difficult to kill an older mature mail over bait, and
Speaker 1: super exciting and adventurous. I mean, I think we hunt
Speaker 1: for a lot of different reasons. We hunt because honey
Speaker 1: is a management tool. We hunt because we want meat, hide,
Speaker 1: claw and fang of we want wildlife related commodities, we
Speaker 1: want bear oil and setting our window luck right there um.
Speaker 1: But we also hunt because we're hunters and we love
Speaker 1: it and we want adventure, and we don't want to
Speaker 1: just be office clerks all of our life, and some
Speaker 1: parts of our life we have to be office clerks.
Speaker 1: But then the other parts of our life we get
Speaker 1: to go out into wild places and have adventures and
Speaker 1: interact and beautiful places with majestic animals. And that is
Speaker 1: an experience that is powerful and that is what. That's
Speaker 1: what People that don't hunt don't understand it, and it's
Speaker 1: not their fault. They just they've they've never seen it.
Speaker 1: They don't know. Yeah, you can't have like when people,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna respect that animal, there's nothing that I'll
Speaker 1: teach you how to respect a bear more than looking
Speaker 1: at it like head on and staring in the eyes
Speaker 1: of like a monster bear, or or walking up to
Speaker 1: bear that you just killing, and laying your hands on
Speaker 1: that bear and knowing no man has probably ever even
Speaker 1: seen this and much less touched it like that, Like
Speaker 1: that is the most beautiful thing in the world. Is
Speaker 1: putting in all that work and hiking at that fountain
Speaker 1: and and just like washing bears all day, Like that's
Speaker 1: how you gain respect. And there's nobody in the world
Speaker 1: that can respect those bearing more than people that have
Speaker 1: done that. Yeah, well said, Well said, Well, we got
Speaker 1: to remember that the people that are the anti hunting
Speaker 1: world are the people that don't know hunting. They're they're
Speaker 1: not our enemies in a sense. A lot most of
Speaker 1: them just don't know. And those are the people that
Speaker 1: we're trying to influence as the people that don't know,
Speaker 1: Like this little boy at school who now we'll bring
Speaker 1: him around the corner at some point and he'll be like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what they're doing is good. It's a it's a good
Speaker 1: way to gather meet for your family. Um and uh.
Speaker 1: And we've got to tell our story or somebody else
Speaker 1: will tell it for us. And uh. I think that
Speaker 1: being a hunter makes you a better human if you
Speaker 1: do it right, It really does. Did we not on
Speaker 1: that mountain River Nukem. When we came off that mountain,
Speaker 1: I said, let's make a deal. I said, I think
Speaker 1: God has helped us. You killed this bear, I think.
Speaker 1: And we talked, we we talked about a few parameters
Speaker 1: for your life that we felt like needed needed an upgrade,
Speaker 1: didn't we. That's an honorable thing. I'm not saying anything negative.
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, let's do that. I said, we've
Speaker 1: we have partaken of this wonderful thing that we just
Speaker 1: did together two years, two year adventure to take this
Speaker 1: one animal. Let's leverage that and make it make us
Speaker 1: be better humans, didn't we. We talked about school, we
Speaker 1: talked about some other things, and and we kind of
Speaker 1: made a little commitment. And uh and that's that's powerful
Speaker 1: stuff and good stuff. So well, we'll have to forget
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do next year. Yeah, but uh no,
Speaker 1: it was awesome. So yeah, check out check out the
Speaker 1: videos called Rivers Barrett's on the Barony Magazine YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: And hey, the best thing that you could do for
Speaker 1: us is go subscribe to our YouTube channel, watch our videos,
Speaker 1: and comment like it helps us to comment. The other
Speaker 1: thing that you could do for us, as far as
Speaker 1: an ask is, uh, leave a leave a review of
Speaker 1: this podcast, like a written review. Even if you just
Speaker 1: say this podcast is good or this is whatever. Just
Speaker 1: leave us, leave us review, give us some give us
Speaker 1: some stars on how we're doing, and we're about to
Speaker 1: pound out some really great content. I think I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go on a podcast tour over in Tennessee, maybe hit
Speaker 1: from Missouri. UH got some special guests that are gonna
Speaker 1: be on. But anyway, River Knew com Thank you. Anything
Speaker 1: you'd like to say to the peeps out there in
Speaker 1: the podcast world, how about you say m hm, you
Speaker 1: don't want to say that. Ah So keep the wild
Speaker 1: places wild because that's where the beards live.