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Speaker 1: Outrageously Dependable. My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host
Speaker 1: of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your
Speaker 1: host into the world of hunting the icon of North
Speaker 1: American wilderness and bear We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation
Speaker 1: that will also bring you into some of the wildest
Speaker 1: country on the planet. Chasing band. We are in British Columbia, Canada.
Speaker 1: How about you guys introduce yourselves to my To my
Speaker 1: right is Devin Jewel, owner Pacific Bar Openers in British Columbia, Canada.
Speaker 1: Kevin Jewel. To my left is Daniel Rupe. What do
Speaker 1: you do? Dan? I am the owner of Nothing. Come
Speaker 1: Clay's buddy and uh my along for the ride and
Speaker 1: having the time of my life. That's right. So we're
Speaker 1: sitting at bear camp here at Pacific Bear Outfitters in
Speaker 1: beautiful British Columbia, Canada. That's what they say on their
Speaker 1: license plates. Beautiful British Columbia, Canada. They are not lying,
Speaker 1: They're not They're not lying at all. So we got
Speaker 1: a fire crackling in front of us. It's about sixty degrees.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert. Dan and I no longer have bear tags.
Speaker 1: We did add bar tags that were unused. Now our
Speaker 1: barre tags argused. And so this the first the last episode.
Speaker 1: Dan told us his story and we gave quite a
Speaker 1: bit of context for this hunt in our relationship. And
Speaker 1: so as just a quick recap, Dan and I are
Speaker 1: like long time friends. Our families have been friends for
Speaker 1: a long time. We're both from Arkansas, but Dan has
Speaker 1: been out of the country for about Dan and his
Speaker 1: wife family have been out of the country for about
Speaker 1: ten years. And so Dan and I bow hunting together
Speaker 1: back in the early two thousand's and just had some
Speaker 1: We were just like Dan kind of got into bow hunting,
Speaker 1: uh through me, and we just had an awesome time.
Speaker 1: So that's Dan and I its history, and they're back
Speaker 1: in They were back in the States for a short
Speaker 1: time and we've been planning this hunt for a long time.
Speaker 1: And so Devin Jewel, Devin W. Jewel had I had
Speaker 1: a W into most people's things because of the very
Speaker 1: monumental time in my life when President George W. Bush
Speaker 1: was our was our president. So I just added W
Speaker 1: to everybody's name. I don't know why. Devin W. Jewel
Speaker 1: he uh. He graciously graciously Hattison as camp this year.
Speaker 1: So Devin and I were the only ones in camp.
Speaker 1: And I want to give just a little bit of
Speaker 1: a context of British Columbia is an el primo place
Speaker 1: to hunt black bear. When you look at the scope
Speaker 1: of northern bear hunting, black bear hunting, British Columbia is
Speaker 1: at the at the top of the heap in terms
Speaker 1: of in many places. And it's not it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: that there's this is the only place to kill a
Speaker 1: big bear. But when I say at the top of
Speaker 1: the heap, I mean it's These are some of the
Speaker 1: more expensive hunts in Canada. On an outfit and hunt,
Speaker 1: you've got to have an outfitter to hunt. A non
Speaker 1: resident has de an outfitter to hunt in Canada. And
Speaker 1: the the epic beauty of this place is what stands out.
Speaker 1: We're in the coast mountains of BC, which this is
Speaker 1: basically the I mean, would you say this is the
Speaker 1: northern stretch of the Rockies. No, No, the Rockies is
Speaker 1: totally different. So Rockies border Alberta, BC. This is totally
Speaker 1: cost range just runs up the ocean, starts in like
Speaker 1: northern California ish and but it's not big there, and
Speaker 1: then runs up into like Alaska. Ok. Yeah, through So
Speaker 1: it runs all through BC and up into Alaska. And
Speaker 1: it's one of the newest mountain ranges in North America.
Speaker 1: So it's very point, very pointy, very new, very glaciated place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Really dramatic, Yeah, very dramatic. So from almost any vantage
Speaker 1: point we can we are in dense forest, but can
Speaker 1: see the tops of snow covered mountains. We talked about
Speaker 1: last episode about the epic water features of this place,
Speaker 1: big glacial, fast moving rivers, waterfalls around every corner. That
Speaker 1: if they were in Arkansas, we would have a state
Speaker 1: park there. You know, one thing we did you saying
Speaker 1: almost from any vantage point we can see SnowCat mountains
Speaker 1: just kind of I think. Another thing that makes this
Speaker 1: place and this hunt really fun is you feel like
Speaker 1: you're a part of this again from Arkansas and rarely
Speaker 1: seeing snow on the ground for more than about fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: being in a land where you're surrounded by these snow
Speaker 1: cat mountains. But I'm walking around a T shirt. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm hiking. I'm getting warm. We're not freezing. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're super comfortable. It's uh, were stand there nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. So it's kind of like the
Speaker 1: best of both worlds, mild temperatures, super comfortable, but we're
Speaker 1: looking at the snow cat mountains, which is like crazy.
Speaker 1: Usually when you're in a place where it's really wild
Speaker 1: and are out, you're also I feel like, at least
Speaker 1: I have been weatherwise also really uncomfortable. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. So anytime I've done stuff like this,
Speaker 1: it's been in the Himalayas, and you're either struggling with
Speaker 1: altitude sickness or you are freezing your tail off no
Speaker 1: matter what you're doing. You could be sitting on the
Speaker 1: fire and you're still cold. But here, I mean, you've
Speaker 1: got all the beauty of that, but no problem with altitude,
Speaker 1: and you are just fit as a fiddle weatherwise, it's
Speaker 1: no problem. Yeah. Amazing. Now, So Dan and something He's
Speaker 1: been on a couple of pretty big adventures. And uh,
Speaker 1: how far did y'all hike? You doing on a five
Speaker 1: day backpack trip in the Himalays and summited a nice mountain.
Speaker 1: We didn't make a summit the weather closed in US,
Speaker 1: but we hiked up to sixteen thousand five feet um
Speaker 1: and then that's pretty tall. Yeah, that's pretty The oxygen
Speaker 1: of eighteen thousand feet is uh when it's half of
Speaker 1: the oxygen content for sea level. So basically it takes
Speaker 1: two breaths to do what you normally do. But you're
Speaker 1: you're you know, you're you're working a lot harder to wow. Wow.
Speaker 1: So British Columbia is this beautiful place to me this
Speaker 1: the water, the mountains, but also the bear hunting tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about just devn like like maybe
Speaker 1: maybe just recap what we said last time about how
Speaker 1: the western side of these mountains are more lush and
Speaker 1: so critters are bigger. Yeah, so for especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to bears, So rainfall kind of equates to like
Speaker 1: numbers of bears and quality of bears. So you get
Speaker 1: on the west side of the coast range, just like
Speaker 1: precipitation is measured in like feet a year, right, so
Speaker 1: the others on the east side, of course it's much drier,
Speaker 1: almost like air in desert. So on the west side
Speaker 1: of the mountain ra and you get just get more
Speaker 1: more berries, more growth, fire. We just a longer growing
Speaker 1: season and far more plentiful growth from that. So of
Speaker 1: course higher densities of bears and bigger bears. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So British Columbia, you know, talking about it being a
Speaker 1: a primo destination for black bear. These bears have, like
Speaker 1: the older mature males in this region are known for
Speaker 1: having big frames, big guerrilla like frontal like big arms,
Speaker 1: big chests, big frames. I mean, every every destination kind
Speaker 1: of has something that's unique, you know, And I would
Speaker 1: say that that's a feature of here is just big
Speaker 1: old bears, gorilla like bears, and a lot of bears. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. For me, that really surprised. We've had
Speaker 1: some really cool bear encounters. Before we get into my hunt,
Speaker 1: maybe we'll talk about the encounter we had yesterday rant.
Speaker 1: So we we already used our tags. We were actually
Speaker 1: going out to shoot some b roll for for video,
Speaker 1: and we stopped at just a random location that had
Speaker 1: some nice vistas and we get out of the truck
Speaker 1: and Devon goes, holy cow. Canadians don't say holy cow,
Speaker 1: they say other stuff. He said, holy expletive, there's a bear.
Speaker 1: And we look over and what did we see, Devon.
Speaker 1: There's a brown like a brown chocolate colored sow. Uh,
Speaker 1: just across the road ground. It's on like a big
Speaker 1: stump garden, like an older tree, which must have a covenant.
Speaker 1: So she was just sitting at the base of the tree,
Speaker 1: watching just across the road, setting on this huge, like
Speaker 1: four ft stump. I mean, it was a spectacular to
Speaker 1: see this bear standing on the stump. And so we're
Speaker 1: all thinking this bear is gonna run away. So we're
Speaker 1: like scrambling to get the cameras. Dan's grabbing the five
Speaker 1: D and we're just like taking pictures. We're thinking we're
Speaker 1: gonna have like thirty seconds towards the bear jumps off
Speaker 1: the stump and leads, and we just like keep taking
Speaker 1: pictures and keep taking video. And it's like, this bear
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be that worried about spying here. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, Dan, walk up to that bear fit
Speaker 1: on me and I'm a bigger idiot for doing it.
Speaker 1: And so he just kind of starts like creeping towards
Speaker 1: this bear, and the bear doesn't move, creeping, creeping, creeping,
Speaker 1: and you're like eight yards from this bear. He's just
Speaker 1: standing there, beautiful chocolate colored color phase bear. And then
Speaker 1: the bear hunting community like a color phace bear is
Speaker 1: a is a unique animal. So it was just a
Speaker 1: spectacular and it wasn't large. I mean, we knew it
Speaker 1: wasn't a big bear, but it was an adult bear.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a it was an adult and you know,
Speaker 1: after assessing the situation, Devon was like, guys, that's a
Speaker 1: female and she's probably has a cub because she would
Speaker 1: not move and then she started getting aggressive. So Dan's
Speaker 1: like seven yards from her taking pictures. I'm like, probably
Speaker 1: I'm hiding in the truck. I'm in the truck, hanging
Speaker 1: out in the window, going get closer, and this bear
Speaker 1: finally like wolf's I mean, we sat there. So the
Speaker 1: longer story is we ended up setting there for thirty
Speaker 1: minimum thirty minutes filming this bear. She was wolfing, popping
Speaker 1: her teeth. She would she would jump towards us and
Speaker 1: stomp the brush, and clearly the bear was was guarding
Speaker 1: a cub that was either up a tree or in
Speaker 1: a hole. She did not want to move, and she
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna move. She actually got closer to us, and
Speaker 1: so you know a situation like that, you don't want
Speaker 1: to push it, but it was hard to leave. Like
Speaker 1: we just kept Devin like was like in the truck,
Speaker 1: just like, okay, guys, what we needed? Yeah, Daniel on
Speaker 1: that we were just like how do we We're just
Speaker 1: like watching this bear, I mean it and it got
Speaker 1: real comfortable with us. I mean, even though it was
Speaker 1: being aggressive, it was kind of odd because it you
Speaker 1: got comfortable it's being there and just like sit down
Speaker 1: and scratch its here wasn't super worried because now when
Speaker 1: we got closer, that's when she got aggressive. And you know,
Speaker 1: in a situation where you're on a baited hunt, you
Speaker 1: see things like this, like you're seeing bear close proximity,
Speaker 1: a lot of bears. But on a spotting stock hunt,
Speaker 1: which in British Columbia that is the only legal method
Speaker 1: of harvest is spotting stocks, you can't use uh well
Speaker 1: it's not. You can. You can hunt with hounds for
Speaker 1: black bear British Columba. You cannot hunt over bait in
Speaker 1: British Columbia and so but it was just a unique
Speaker 1: experience and and uh so that was that was that.
Speaker 1: So Dan killed a bear and then the first episode
Speaker 1: of this you would have heard about damn tunt which
Speaker 1: he killed the bear on the second day. So on
Speaker 1: the third day was my first time to hunt, and
Speaker 1: I was hunting with a new rifle that I got.
Speaker 1: I got the Best of the West Hunter Elite rifle,
Speaker 1: which is a spectacular long range guns, one of the
Speaker 1: I mean the l primo long range gun made in
Speaker 1: my opinion. And uh so this gun is it has
Speaker 1: a custom turret that's built by the guys at Best
Speaker 1: of West three win mag basically Best of the West
Speaker 1: calibrates this gun for you. Drop Data, builds a custom turret,
Speaker 1: sights it in like the packages hunting ready when you
Speaker 1: get it. And this is this gun has got a
Speaker 1: turt that goes out to nine h yards and is
Speaker 1: guaranteed accurate out that far. Now can I shoot it
Speaker 1: that far hunting accurate? No? I mean that to be
Speaker 1: able to shoot that far takes a lot of practice,
Speaker 1: a lot of skill. And I'm a proficient shot, but
Speaker 1: but not not a long range expert. At all. But
Speaker 1: so I'm carrying this Best of the West rifle, and
Speaker 1: Dan killed his bear walking the roads, which that's a
Speaker 1: There's two ways that we hunt here, walking roads because
Speaker 1: road ditches in a heavily forced to region. The ditches
Speaker 1: let sunlight touch the forest floor and so all kinds
Speaker 1: of vegetation that the bears the primarily fireweed growing the ditches,
Speaker 1: So the bears are along these logging roads. So we
Speaker 1: walk the logging roads and find bears. The second way
Speaker 1: is hunting cut blocks, which are forestry chunks out of
Speaker 1: the timber where they've cut all the tree second year
Speaker 1: cut blocks ats are the hot spots. Hot spots, man,
Speaker 1: Just look at those huge bear hides. Wow, look at
Speaker 1: them all. Wow, spectacular bear hides within twelve feet of us.
Speaker 1: So so I told these guys that the way I
Speaker 1: preferred to kill bear in British Columbia was glass in
Speaker 1: these cut blocks. That just to me, that's the way.
Speaker 1: When I envisioned killing the bear here, I envisioned glassing
Speaker 1: in some beautiful glacial valley and seeing black speck far
Speaker 1: away eating fireweed in a cut lock. So it's the
Speaker 1: third day of the hunt. Devon takes us into this
Speaker 1: area that has a lot of two year old cut locks,
Speaker 1: and he had been in there some this year and
Speaker 1: had seen some Did you see some sALS and cubs
Speaker 1: in there? Cubs? I didn't see singles, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I think just salus and clubs. I'd seen so, but
Speaker 1: that was like two weeks ago or yeah, before you
Speaker 1: got near by a bit yea, So you never know.
Speaker 1: So we go back in there because like just the
Speaker 1: scenario is right for there to be a bear there,
Speaker 1: and it's Clay's first day to hunt, and I get
Speaker 1: out of the truck and we start walking down the road.
Speaker 1: Before you do you want to talk about you were
Speaker 1: telling us what a group of bears was called. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this this, this will play greater significance into the
Speaker 1: story later. At some point earlier in the day, I
Speaker 1: had asked a bear trivia question to Devon and Damn,
Speaker 1: and I said, do you guys know what a group
Speaker 1: of bears is called? Because there's a name that's not
Speaker 1: a family yet. What it's like sound cubs? So animals
Speaker 1: animals have grouping names like a covey of quail, a
Speaker 1: herd of elk, a flock of geese, pride of line,
Speaker 1: pride of lions, a a sounder of pigs, a snickerdoodle
Speaker 1: of squirrels, isn't that it? Yeah, snicker dood I can't
Speaker 1: tell if you're joking. I'm joking. It's like, man, snickerdoodle squirrels. So,
Speaker 1: so there's these names that describe groups of animals. Now,
Speaker 1: bears are typically not in groups. So I asked them
Speaker 1: the question and Dan guest, well, the answer to the
Speaker 1: question is a sleuth, which is a sleuth of bears.
Speaker 1: So if you were to see a grouping of bears,
Speaker 1: perhaps like in a clear cut, and they were all together,
Speaker 1: you'd say, Man, there was a whole sleuth bears up there.
Speaker 1: I might not say that Dan would. But so Dan
Speaker 1: was like, that's kind of a stupid dab. He's like,
Speaker 1: and then what do you say they need? Bears are
Speaker 1: just being here. Bears are just really awesome and big,
Speaker 1: and if you have a group of bears you want
Speaker 1: not there should be a cooler like a pride of lines.
Speaker 1: That's an awesome So I said it would be like
Speaker 1: a council of bears. Yeah, And and Devon was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: council of bears. That sounds very cooler. Yeah, it sounds
Speaker 1: very cooler. More like I didn't even know sleuth of theirs. So,
Speaker 1: so that happened sometime earlier in the day, and so
Speaker 1: we're now hunting in later in the evening, I will
Speaker 1: say that. Yeah, And so now it's kind of like
Speaker 1: prime bear time, like the last four hours of the day.
Speaker 1: We parked the truck on the kind of like at
Speaker 1: the first section of these two year old cut blocks,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna walk about a k into And for
Speaker 1: all you Americans, no idea what a k is? We
Speaker 1: don't either. We're just trying to sound like Devon thousand
Speaker 1: based everything on ten not whatever it is. Y'all came
Speaker 1: up with random measurements. There's nothing more natural than feat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's biblical. It's the biblical measurements feet, feet. It just engaged.
Speaker 1: You don't understand that he gave you two so you
Speaker 1: can get it. So we're we're gonna walk about okay
Speaker 1: into Wait a second, he also gave you ten, oh
Speaker 1: ten fingers tint toes. Yeah, I can't do this anymore. Then.
Speaker 1: I've had challenged this whole trip, translating kilometers in the
Speaker 1: metric system back into something that we understand. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna walk. We're gonna walk back in here. And on
Speaker 1: either side of the road, so we're on kind of
Speaker 1: a slope, and on either side of the road are
Speaker 1: these big cut blocks. And I mean you could see
Speaker 1: up to probably five yards and some places to the
Speaker 1: to the right of us was this big cut block
Speaker 1: that I think I range the furthest point, like five
Speaker 1: and thirty seven yards to the furthest point. Was it
Speaker 1: worth saying? So before I ever did any bear hunting
Speaker 1: or knew anything, you'd say cut block, and I had
Speaker 1: no idea what you're talking about. It's just a large
Speaker 1: swath of the forest that they have very strategically. The
Speaker 1: logging companies have taken the log taking the logs out. Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's a good point because when you come to
Speaker 1: different parts of the world to hunt, people have different
Speaker 1: ways it said. I would call it a clear cut,
Speaker 1: and that technically is not at all a clear cut.
Speaker 1: But in Arkansas that's always say that's a clear cut
Speaker 1: clear cut. I mean just generic place where logging has happened.
Speaker 1: But technically a clear cut would be where they cut
Speaker 1: every single tree. Then they don't just like flatten the place,
Speaker 1: so that is not but Devon calls him cut blocks.
Speaker 1: And Devon's always right here. He is in Arkans saw.
Speaker 1: We'd put him in his place. Uh. So we're walking
Speaker 1: through these cut blocks, and so to the left, as
Speaker 1: you can see five or six yards to the to
Speaker 1: the to the right of U student, to the left
Speaker 1: of us, we're looking up this hill and this cut block,
Speaker 1: and you know, we're kind of ranging as we go,
Speaker 1: and I mean, like the furthest distances we're seeing here
Speaker 1: around four yards. And so these cut blocks are not
Speaker 1: just empty and void of trees, but they're strategically leaves
Speaker 1: strips of trees leave clumps of trees, and they're stumpy
Speaker 1: and rocky, and there's debris and downfall and so but
Speaker 1: more importantly there's fireweed. Where are we after sausage? Where
Speaker 1: there's fireweed growing in these cut blocks. So it's Clay's
Speaker 1: first day to hunt. Ten minutes into huh. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're hardly out of side of the truck. And and
Speaker 1: I just happened to be I think the first one
Speaker 1: that just looked up this direction. And there's a bear.
Speaker 1: And I say, there's a bear, guys, And I see
Speaker 1: the bear moving quickly, which is an unusual I mean,
Speaker 1: like I wouldn't expecting to see a bear just like
Speaker 1: moving fast. And this bears moving fast coming down off
Speaker 1: of a bank. And I feel like the bear is
Speaker 1: like either he's been spooked and he's moving from us,
Speaker 1: or he's just traveling across. And so I'm like, there's
Speaker 1: a bear. He's moving to the left, and he went
Speaker 1: what appeared to me he went into this strip of trees.
Speaker 1: So we actually, rather than go forward, I MINSNC was
Speaker 1: to go backwards the direction of the bear, and I
Speaker 1: feel like we're gonna see the bear on the other
Speaker 1: side of the strip of timber. So we backpedal like
Speaker 1: fifty sixty yards and I arranged where the bear was,
Speaker 1: and the bear was like a hundred and seventy seven yards,
Speaker 1: so hud seventy seven yards uphill from us, pretty significantly.
Speaker 1: Be the wind was going to the thermal. The thermal
Speaker 1: left was pushing our center. Devon, our guide went forward,
Speaker 1: yeah and play you called him back. You and I
Speaker 1: pulled back, and he probably sent it us and not Devon.
Speaker 1: Devon was further down the road and the way the
Speaker 1: wind was going, yeah, they have he probably said it you, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, probably smelled mustache. Your mustache smells like tacos.
Speaker 1: We haven't had tacos and months moose tacos, tacos, moose tacos.
Speaker 1: So well, but turns out the bear hadn't smelled us
Speaker 1: at that point. Dan. Yeah, because we go back like
Speaker 1: for like probably like eight minutes. We're expecting to see
Speaker 1: this bear move in the direction we thought he was moving,
Speaker 1: and we're thinking he's gonna pop out, and Devin finally
Speaker 1: starts creeping up the road and Devon's like probably eighty
Speaker 1: nine yards in front of us down the road and
Speaker 1: he starts flagging us over. He's like, come on, come on,
Speaker 1: and we know what that means. He had seen the bear.
Speaker 1: So what he saw the bear, he was just in
Speaker 1: there feeding eating some fire. He was right where I
Speaker 1: saw it. Yeah, he just was there. I mean the
Speaker 1: cup locked you would think is like flat, but it's
Speaker 1: actually like super fissured, right, and there's like stumps, so
Speaker 1: I mean they can disappear in all those little crevices
Speaker 1: for a little bits they're eating easily. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: what I thought was a moving bear was actually a
Speaker 1: bear that was just like moving to relocate to like
Speaker 1: eat a different patch in Yeah, just graves in a
Speaker 1: different spot. And so here in starts. The interesting part
Speaker 1: of this story is that we have to judge this
Speaker 1: bear and so, well Clay's picky because he killed like
Speaker 1: five bears. True, well not true. Anyways, I've killed like
Speaker 1: ford and I think you you're you're not just wanting
Speaker 1: to kill any bear. You're also not wanting You're you
Speaker 1: got this new gun. Uh, and normally you're shooting was
Speaker 1: a bowl and that's real close range. You're wanting a
Speaker 1: long shot? Yeah, like I I didn't. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to do anything unethical or unnatural. It's like, it's not
Speaker 1: like I wanted to see a bear and like back
Speaker 1: up to shoot it, you know what I'm saying. But
Speaker 1: in my heart of hearts, I was hoping for a
Speaker 1: three hundred plus yard shot. It really wanted even a
Speaker 1: little bit longer, because we we had shot this gun
Speaker 1: pretty extensively beforehand. I mean, this man at forwarder yards
Speaker 1: is like a chip shot with a good dress with
Speaker 1: no wind with time and so the longest shot I'd
Speaker 1: ever shot at an animal with a rifle is probably
Speaker 1: a hundred yards. So this bear is a hundred seventy
Speaker 1: spared hundred seventy seven yards and and I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: the story just like it happened, because Devin and let me,
Speaker 1: let me preface the story, was saying that Devon is
Speaker 1: an expert at judging bears on the pall, on the
Speaker 1: on the hoof bear. He's he's an expert. And I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and say that I'm I'm fair Jojo
Speaker 1: bears myself, just from seeing a lot of them and
Speaker 1: studying it. But this is what's cool though, And Devin
Speaker 1: said this, and I've never heard anybody say it, but
Speaker 1: part of the fun of oh, part of the fun
Speaker 1: of hunting bears is not only just like sexing bears,
Speaker 1: but like judging bears, because it's not they don't have antlers, right,
Speaker 1: They're just a ball fur. So you gotta try and
Speaker 1: like learn all these like character traits that would indicate
Speaker 1: it being a big male or a young male or
Speaker 1: intermediate male or whatever you're looking at, or potentially a giant. Right.
Speaker 1: It's not just like it's a four point got them,
Speaker 1: it's there's a giant blob with a head. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wonder how big it is? So it is very easy
Speaker 1: to make mistakes. Yeah, there's no it really is a
Speaker 1: whole different I mean being a guy that again you know,
Speaker 1: a deer hunter from Arkansas. Uh, I feel like in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways you have to know a lot
Speaker 1: and it really is a lot of skill. I'm also
Speaker 1: not really I don't consider myself a super knowledgeable hunter,
Speaker 1: but I can look at a buck, a white tail buck,
Speaker 1: and I know what kind of bucket is immediately. But
Speaker 1: with a bear, especially on the hoof, on the pall,
Speaker 1: it's an entirely different skill set. It's a whole different,
Speaker 1: but it's a different universe as far as what kind
Speaker 1: of an animal is that. Uh, it's super impressive fascinating
Speaker 1: to me. Well, and what I liked was that Devin
Speaker 1: said that is part of the fun and intrigue of
Speaker 1: bear hunting is is judging the bear. Because when I
Speaker 1: first saw the bear, I don't know if you guys
Speaker 1: remember it, but I told you I thought it was
Speaker 1: a small bear. I mean, like I said, I saw
Speaker 1: a bear, and I said, I think it's a small bear.
Speaker 1: Well let's let's stop right here, though, and let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about judging bears. Like what are you
Speaker 1: looking for in an older mature male two hundred yards
Speaker 1: or five hundred yards trupy belly body posture that'd be
Speaker 1: like a huge part of like judging a posture of body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: big shoulders, like more of a rectangular body shape. Head
Speaker 1: to body rature should be small, but the head should
Speaker 1: look like solid obviously. Like if the first thing a
Speaker 1: non bear hunter says is I saw a bear is huge,
Speaker 1: huge head, well a bear hunt it, that means that's
Speaker 1: probably a small bear. Because if it's all head, that
Speaker 1: means it's just a young bear, right, lanky body, ranky
Speaker 1: body bear. So yeah, just looking for that. Like I
Speaker 1: use the head as like a judge. So like if
Speaker 1: you just average out a black bear head, it's probably like,
Speaker 1: let's just say, for ease of math, it's twelve inches.
Speaker 1: So how many like head lengths could you get into
Speaker 1: the body if you had time to like perfectly horizontally
Speaker 1: length in the bear with its own head as a scale, right,
Speaker 1: because here you can't use like trees or stumps or
Speaker 1: sticks or rocks because everything is so like you can
Speaker 1: have a tree it's a six inch diameter. You can
Speaker 1: have a tree that's like a six foot diameter, so
Speaker 1: you have no scale from the vegetation whatsoever. So yeah,
Speaker 1: just tricks you learn, right, So I would I would
Speaker 1: say for me that a bore is always going to
Speaker 1: be taller like sALS or shorter sALS are pear shaped
Speaker 1: like their their chest is gonna be smaller that butts
Speaker 1: gonna be bigger. Um, would you say that resembles human people?
Speaker 1: All that? Damn comment on that? Uh? No comment, okay,
Speaker 1: but it may or may not. So Uh one thing
Speaker 1: that I look for, and it's harder at longer distances.
Speaker 1: But like front feet, I mean like a bear, a
Speaker 1: mature male, and even on a lesser scale, an immature male,
Speaker 1: it's gonna have wider pads, thicker ankles a sow has
Speaker 1: like skinnier wrists, smaller feet. Um, you are looking for
Speaker 1: the how much daylight is under the belly, But that
Speaker 1: can be deceptive because you can be looking at a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty pounds sow bear with a droopy belly that's
Speaker 1: six inches from the ground, and if you don't understand
Speaker 1: the scale, you'd be like, that's a monster bear. Look,
Speaker 1: it's bellies jagging the ground. Well, it's a four and
Speaker 1: a half foot bear man. So scale is everything, and
Speaker 1: that's what got me on this bear. With scale. So
Speaker 1: you're looking at you're looking for feet, you're looking for
Speaker 1: front shoulders, you're looking for rectangular shape, you're looking for
Speaker 1: just thickness. Like I've noticed, when you see a big
Speaker 1: male bear, you just think he's thick. He's thick, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you you you're not. You know. I noticed in
Speaker 1: retrospect after we spoiler alert past the bear, I remember
Speaker 1: thinking back and what I saw, and I saw a
Speaker 1: bear that didn't have much of a neck. It was
Speaker 1: like his shoulders just went into his head, and and
Speaker 1: that indicated that he was just like this big stocky.
Speaker 1: Whereas that little chocolate bear that we bumped into, she
Speaker 1: had a really long neck. I remember her setting up
Speaker 1: on that stump and we were seven yards and she
Speaker 1: just looked out and her nose would go out and
Speaker 1: she just had a very significant neck. And she was
Speaker 1: also a pretty small bear. Yep, yep. And so I
Speaker 1: would just say that scale is everything because you just
Speaker 1: got to know what you're looking at. But but a
Speaker 1: big mature male is just gonna look thick. So and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell this whole story because I've already told
Speaker 1: you that Devon is an expert, and so Devin and
Speaker 1: and he kind of said this like tongue in cheek,
Speaker 1: but I told him it was a small bear. Devin
Speaker 1: goes out in front of us, seized the bear feeding
Speaker 1: almost in the same spot. I saw it originally, but
Speaker 1: was fooled into thinking that it had moved. And Devin
Speaker 1: waves us over, and you know it's the it's the
Speaker 1: I see a bear wave. I think we all know
Speaker 1: that wave. It's like, come on, come on, come on,
Speaker 1: come on. I mean, I knew he was looking at
Speaker 1: the bear. We go up there and he says, there's
Speaker 1: your seven foot bear. And he kind of said it
Speaker 1: like I knew he didn't like mean that fully, but
Speaker 1: he was trying to say, Clay, that's a big bear.
Speaker 1: Devon is Canadian and he's hard to understand sometimes true. True.
Speaker 1: I thought he was telling a metric system seven metrics seven,
Speaker 1: which would be giant. Okay, no, And so so we
Speaker 1: I run down there. Dan gets the camera set up.
Speaker 1: I dropped down on my knees and I'm looking up
Speaker 1: the mountain at this bear and the wind is hitting
Speaker 1: us right in the back of the net going straight
Speaker 1: to this bear, and through the scope, I see this
Speaker 1: bear at a hundred seventy seven yards, bobbing his head
Speaker 1: up and down, dipping his nose into the into there.
Speaker 1: He's winding us, and we know that our time is limited.
Speaker 1: And immediately Devin says, I don't think that bear seven foot?
Speaker 1: He says, nah, And I hear that that kind of
Speaker 1: like I wonder what tone like if we're playing piano.
Speaker 1: That tone, Nah, like a B flat, like a beef.
Speaker 1: I hear like a B flat note. I think to me,
Speaker 1: you know that that's the third day of the hunt.
Speaker 1: I hunted the first two days, and in the morning
Speaker 1: of the third day, we're basically going after my bear
Speaker 1: and kind of getting it back to camp. So literally,
Speaker 1: you have four more days of four more whole days
Speaker 1: of hunting ahead of you. And you wanted a really long,
Speaker 1: much longer shot. You wanted a big bear, and we
Speaker 1: weren't sure this was a big bear, and were certainly
Speaker 1: wasn't a long shot in and none of us wanted
Speaker 1: to take a take a smaller but I mean, like
Speaker 1: I wanted to get a big bear. Devin wanted me
Speaker 1: to get a big bear. So all the things were
Speaker 1: stacked against us to make a mistake on this bear.
Speaker 1: And so but immediately Devon goes, no, I don't think
Speaker 1: that's a seven footbear. And I and you know, and
Speaker 1: I'm just like, well, what do you think should I shoot?
Speaker 1: I mean, and okay, the bear wins us and the
Speaker 1: bear doesn't run away. The bear just starts just moving
Speaker 1: towards the woodline, just moving slowly towards the woodline. He'd
Speaker 1: stop and look back. I don't think he's sauce a
Speaker 1: doubt he would have seen us with his eyes, but
Speaker 1: he could smell us and he would just walk. And
Speaker 1: so I've got the gun up and I'm ranging, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, ah, he's he's two now he's two twenty five.
Speaker 1: And Devin is totally giving me the option to shoot
Speaker 1: this bear. He's like, it's like, that's a good bear.
Speaker 1: And he said, you know, i'd say six plus and
Speaker 1: then he said, that's probably a six and a half footbear.
Speaker 1: That's what he's that's what you the conclusion you came to, yeah,
Speaker 1: you that's a six and a half foot bear. And
Speaker 1: and I but still I was like, should I shoot
Speaker 1: that bear? Because and I learned something on this hunt
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna come back to and I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you now though six and a half ft bear. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you something later. That's the conclusion of
Speaker 1: this whole thing. But I'm going to tell it to
Speaker 1: you now so that you know it so when I
Speaker 1: tell it to you later sense you'll make more sense.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert. Now you're talking. It's a joke. It's a joke,
Speaker 1: like a humorous joke, but not humorous. It's a humorist joke.
Speaker 1: Was thought, really that funny. A six and half foot
Speaker 1: bear is a whopper bear. I don't care what you say.
Speaker 1: I don't care what your outfitter says. Six and half
Speaker 1: foot bear. It's a big bear, good bear, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So anyway, But at the moment, at the moment,
Speaker 1: we decided that Clay wasn't gonna shoot at six foot
Speaker 1: six and a half ft bear, right right. I mean,
Speaker 1: even now you can tell we're a little hesitant about it.
Speaker 1: But so many things pointed against it, right and so well,
Speaker 1: And and the primary thing for me was I had
Speaker 1: been hunting for ten minutes, the bear was moving away.
Speaker 1: We were gonna have to make a rush decision. And
Speaker 1: there was there was doubt in everyone's voice. Every voice
Speaker 1: around me was like, well, Dan, Dan kind of was
Speaker 1: like he he was like, he was like, man, there's
Speaker 1: we got it on film, Clay, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: this maybe your chance. And in my expertise, that's a
Speaker 1: ten ft bear. Dan's like, that's the world record black bear. No,
Speaker 1: so we video the spare and basically the bear walks
Speaker 1: off and I don't shoot and almost didn't really care
Speaker 1: at the time. At the moment, at the moment, we
Speaker 1: were kind of like proud of ourselves a little bit
Speaker 1: right now, Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is like we are
Speaker 1: the epitome of selective harvest. We were like, in two years,
Speaker 1: that bear will be a whopper. I think I said that.
Speaker 1: Two minutes later we we keep walking and it took
Speaker 1: me about a total of five minutes to like deepen
Speaker 1: my spirit, Like my my mind was still rationalizing why
Speaker 1: this was such a brilliant decision to pass this bear,
Speaker 1: but deep in my heart I was like, holy smull,
Speaker 1: that was a nice bear. And the further we got,
Speaker 1: the more Dan was like trying to make me feel
Speaker 1: good about it. He's like, you're gonna be glad you
Speaker 1: passed that bear, and I was like, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I really want to I'd like to get like a
Speaker 1: just a whopper. Anyway, we go about a k down
Speaker 1: the road and we're talking, we're strategizing about how we're
Speaker 1: gonna get back on that bear. Devin starts saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, we could probably glass room right here if
Speaker 1: we need to get back on that bear later in
Speaker 1: a week. It's like we could probably And I'm I
Speaker 1: mean like I'm already seeing this thing like play out
Speaker 1: like and I'm like, we're gonna be hunting this bear
Speaker 1: of the rest of the week, like and and Devin
Speaker 1: had his camera with him which had a really good zoom,
Speaker 1: and he had zoomed in really on this spar and
Speaker 1: he starts watching the footage and he at some point
Speaker 1: looks at me and goes, I think we made a mistake.
Speaker 1: And he says, look at this and it it shows
Speaker 1: the bear and he has this like it's like a
Speaker 1: bear as a swagger, Like it's like there's a joint
Speaker 1: in the middle of his back and his front legs
Speaker 1: just like pivot. Anyway, I look at it and I go, damn,
Speaker 1: you're right. And I'm looking and I'm thinking about what
Speaker 1: I saw in the scope. What I saw in the
Speaker 1: scope with the thickness, I saw very little. I mean,
Speaker 1: I saw a belly that hung low. I saw thick shoulders,
Speaker 1: I saw, I saw thickness. But for some reason, and
Speaker 1: I think it had to do with that, the first
Speaker 1: ten minutes of the hunt, it was rushed. I had initially,
Speaker 1: when I immediately saw the bear, I thought, oh, that's
Speaker 1: not a very big bear. And you know when we
Speaker 1: were looking at Devon's camera after you pass it walking
Speaker 1: k down, looking at the pictures of that bear that
Speaker 1: zoomed in on that and seeing him walk like that,
Speaker 1: that's when I just immediately I back to thinking a
Speaker 1: council of bears. And that's when I looked at that picture,
Speaker 1: saw him just kind of in his majesty presiding over
Speaker 1: that big cut block, and I said, the councilman, the councilman.
Speaker 1: So Dan names the bear the councilman, the councilman. And
Speaker 1: we realized that maybe we had made a mistake, and
Speaker 1: I really, I'm not gonna take this. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: give this responsibility. This is I had chose, and Devin
Speaker 1: totally was like when I had the opportunity to shoot
Speaker 1: me the first time, He's like clutched your decision, totally
Speaker 1: your decision. Like he wasn't saying, don't shoot the bear.
Speaker 1: He didn't say that at all. He was like, your decision,
Speaker 1: your decision. It's a nice bear, your decision. Well, well yeah,
Speaker 1: but you help. And so then we're like regret me.
Speaker 1: But and this is when, this is when and I
Speaker 1: got I just gotta tell the folks back home. When
Speaker 1: I gave my spiel about why I believe that bear
Speaker 1: would come back. The day before we had bumped a
Speaker 1: bear off the road. Two days before, we bumped a
Speaker 1: bear off the road, and humans walking down a logging
Speaker 1: road with no trucks, no gravel popping, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the bear that's feeding to what he feels
Speaker 1: like it's a secure place, gets bumped off the road
Speaker 1: by human odor. I feel like that bear And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying he's not gonna come back a little wiser.
Speaker 1: He'd be a little wiser about what happened. But there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of active logging in this region. Like
Speaker 1: we we saw logging trucks as we were coming in
Speaker 1: and out. We actually saw tree planters about a a
Speaker 1: k up the road that we're moving around, and this
Speaker 1: bear had only smelled us, and so I said, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't think we really hurt this bear much. I
Speaker 1: don't think we bumped him that bad, because we're down
Speaker 1: on the road, we're tunity yards from him, and he
Speaker 1: had just smelled us. And so there was this inkling
Speaker 1: of hope that the bear would come back. But I think,
Speaker 1: deep down, at least Odd deep down, did not think
Speaker 1: that he would come back that night. Now, tell me, honestly,
Speaker 1: what did you think? Good? I guess I like, but
Speaker 1: at the moment, like in the hunting situation, usually usually
Speaker 1: things don't work in your favor, no, generally, So you know,
Speaker 1: I was thinking we'd come back tomorrow. Yeah, probably. But
Speaker 1: Devin Devon uses a a lighter to test the wind,
Speaker 1: and so right now currently the wind was coming up
Speaker 1: the mountain, like blowing back into where bear wind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the initial like whift that had scared him pushed him
Speaker 1: off the first time. And so Devon says, well, let's
Speaker 1: wait till the thermal shift and we'll go back to
Speaker 1: where we saw the bear and just maybe he'd be there.
Speaker 1: And and you know, when you're holding the gun. When
Speaker 1: it's your time to hunt, you just don't. A lot
Speaker 1: of times you just don't think it's gonna work out perfect.
Speaker 1: It couldn't possibly work out. The councilman. Surely he's no dummy.
Speaker 1: He's no dummy. He didn't get that big and be
Speaker 1: elected as councilman by being stupid. And so we sat
Speaker 1: there for like thirty minutes, and we're regret I'm regretting it.
Speaker 1: I'm starting to feel that regret. And Devin's lighting is lighter,
Speaker 1: and there's just like a tipping point in the evening
Speaker 1: when the thermal's just are to fall down the mountain.
Speaker 1: And so the second that happened, we said let's go,
Speaker 1: and we walked. I would say, no more than a
Speaker 1: hundred yards down the road. Devon's out maybe thirty or
Speaker 1: forty yards in front of us. We're still the men
Speaker 1: the decision, Yeah, we really were. And Devin gives us
Speaker 1: the I see a bear wave and I heard him
Speaker 1: say there is just like there is, And I just
Speaker 1: man that the thrill of hunting to me is found
Speaker 1: in the first encounter with an animal, or like the
Speaker 1: first like to me, when I'm white tail hunting every season,
Speaker 1: I look forward to the first deer that I see
Speaker 1: of the year from the stand, and I to this day,
Speaker 1: if it's a dough, if it's a faun, my heart
Speaker 1: skips a beat and it's just like it, dear, you know,
Speaker 1: when I'm bear hunting, that first flash of black fur
Speaker 1: from hunting over bay or what I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: And that's what I was like for me, he said,
Speaker 1: there is, and it's just like, you're kidding. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's my that's my expletive, you're kidding, you
Speaker 1: dirty canuck. You line to me, you can't trust them.
Speaker 1: And so he goes there he is, and he gives us,
Speaker 1: gives us the bear the bear wave, and I go,
Speaker 1: come on, d and we just like start moving fast
Speaker 1: and bam, I hit the ditch because there's a there's
Speaker 1: a pretty nice little ditch there that I knew I
Speaker 1: could get my body lower than the road and get
Speaker 1: kind of a natural angle where I could be totally
Speaker 1: prone on the ground because he's significantly yeah, he's I
Speaker 1: would say, elevation wise, he was, yeah, two plus feet
Speaker 1: above us, and he's in the woodline. And he had
Speaker 1: all he had done was he went into the woods.
Speaker 1: We watched him walk into the woods, and I mean
Speaker 1: he just went up there and just laid down for
Speaker 1: an hour. Bath room took him nap. Yeah, you could.
Speaker 1: We could speculate on what he did. Well, they probably
Speaker 1: attended chambers. Had what attended the chambers the council chambers anymore.
Speaker 1: You said he probably went to the bathroom, looked at
Speaker 1: the magazine. Maybe Red Bear. Don't even tell him thinks
Speaker 1: you guys have been plotting. They've been plotting against me
Speaker 1: all week as publisher Barony Magazine. We won't bring that
Speaker 1: up though. So the councilman had gone into the gone
Speaker 1: into the woods, and I mean just popped out in
Speaker 1: the same spot. But he's what he's not as this
Speaker 1: at the same spot that he was when we passed
Speaker 1: on him. He's in the same cupblock, but he's further away.
Speaker 1: So the first shot hundred seventies something this one, I'm
Speaker 1: laying on my belly with briars like piercing me. You're
Speaker 1: behind me with a camera. Devin's on his knees right
Speaker 1: to the right of me, you know, glass and telling
Speaker 1: me what the bears doing. And I range and I
Speaker 1: get a range of four hundred some yards. So you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, this is a shooter bear. He's
Speaker 1: a great bear. We've had lots of time to think
Speaker 1: about it. And not only that, but now he is,
Speaker 1: he's a It's gonna be a significant shot, which is
Speaker 1: what I wanted. That's what I wanted. I wanted it
Speaker 1: and wanted it, and so I'm prone and I dialed
Speaker 1: the Dillar tour at to four hundred yards on your husk,
Speaker 1: the mall on my five by twenty and zoom that
Speaker 1: bad boy up to twenty power and and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: on the rest. And I truly was, um I was.
Speaker 1: I was a little bit surprised at how nervous I was.
Speaker 1: I was surprised at how my heartbeat impacted the bounce
Speaker 1: of those cross hairs all over that bear at that distance,
Speaker 1: you know, like you just it was just like boom, boom, boom,
Speaker 1: and like the gun was jumping with my heartbeat. And
Speaker 1: I wasn't tired from walking anywhere. It literally was like
Speaker 1: adrenaling and excitement. I knew I needed to settle down,
Speaker 1: but we also had lots of time. But and this
Speaker 1: is where people mess up is you got lots of time.
Speaker 1: But you there's this thing, there's this predatory instinct inside
Speaker 1: of you that just wants to do it quick. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're just like gotta get this done. I would say
Speaker 1: from my experience with harvesting animals, that is the biggest
Speaker 1: mistake that people make, is that like, when you see
Speaker 1: what you're after, you think you've got to get it done.
Speaker 1: And there are certain situations when you do. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: there's certainly situations when you when you when you have
Speaker 1: to act quickly if you're gonna capitalize on an opportunity.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean a mature hunter is gonna know
Speaker 1: when that's the case and when it's not. And so
Speaker 1: I had to like talk myself down to like this
Speaker 1: bears not going anywhere because actually moving down the mountain,
Speaker 1: I've got plenty of time. I can wait for my
Speaker 1: heartbeat to slow down, breathe, and so at that point
Speaker 1: like talk myself down, and the situation just unfolded. I
Speaker 1: had a veteran bow hunter from from Arkansas one time
Speaker 1: tell me something is really simple, but it it's meant
Speaker 1: a lot to me over the year. It's really simple.
Speaker 1: But he said, most bow hunters make a mistake because
Speaker 1: they don't let the situation unfold before them. They try
Speaker 1: to ach or the opportunity. They don't make the opera.
Speaker 1: They don't let the opportunity unfold. They try to make
Speaker 1: the opportunity happen. Force it. You can't force it. If
Speaker 1: you force it, you'll mess it up. You can't force
Speaker 1: the council. You can't force the councilman to do anything.
Speaker 1: Not this, not no. So Devin has given me the
Speaker 1: play by play of what he's doing because he's thinking
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot at any second. He's like broadside bears
Speaker 1: behind a rock quarter in two. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: great commentary. It's like having a spotter that's just and
Speaker 1: I'm watching the bear, but it's it's confirming. He's confirming
Speaker 1: what my eyes are seeing. So it's given me confidence.
Speaker 1: And it actually played out really good one time, because
Speaker 1: I thought at one point I thought the bear was
Speaker 1: quartered away, just because like this black blob is just
Speaker 1: like moving through brush through rocks, And at one time
Speaker 1: my perception of what happened was contradictory to what he said,
Speaker 1: and I was actually about to shoot, and then he
Speaker 1: said I was like, wait a minute, and I reevaluated
Speaker 1: what I was seeing, and I was like, oh, the
Speaker 1: bear is actually quartering to me, so you know, he's
Speaker 1: like spotting for me, just like broadside quartering to moving
Speaker 1: down behind the rock, brushing away. Da da da da dada.
Speaker 1: When the bear was close to four in her yards,
Speaker 1: he was broadside and I was actually gonna squeeze. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was on and I waiting, you know, trying not
Speaker 1: to anticipate when the gun is gonna go off, and
Speaker 1: the squeeze just gets harder and harder and harder, and
Speaker 1: I really know the trigger pulling, it's kind of shot
Speaker 1: it enough and pretty much I realized I'm like jamming
Speaker 1: on the trigger and I'm like the safety time click.
Speaker 1: So I had, you know, lift my head, clicked the
Speaker 1: safety off de breath, you know, because I just knew
Speaker 1: I was about to squeezed the trigger. Safety was on. Well,
Speaker 1: by this time, the bear's reposition moved and it was
Speaker 1: probably another solid five minutes before I shot. How long
Speaker 1: y'all think we actually did that? When we watched him
Speaker 1: for a long time, I think it was five minutes.
Speaker 1: And when you're looking through the scope at a bear,
Speaker 1: that's a long time. So so the bear moves down
Speaker 1: and he was at four hundre yards to begin with,
Speaker 1: and every time he's moving, he's actually getting closer to us,
Speaker 1: kind of just snaking down through this cut block. I'm
Speaker 1: ranging from my belly and it was really disrupting to
Speaker 1: have to range because you're you're down on the scope
Speaker 1: and you got him found, you're on twenty power. He's
Speaker 1: hard to see kind of and then he's moving and
Speaker 1: you're like, well, he's probably moved ten and fifteen yards
Speaker 1: and range him again. So you raise your head up,
Speaker 1: you range him, and by the time you find him again,
Speaker 1: he's moved a little bit further. And so Devin kept
Speaker 1: saying he's moved, but it's not a significant distance, or
Speaker 1: he's moved laterally, so there's not any further than he was.
Speaker 1: So that was helpful because because I would be like,
Speaker 1: i gotta range him again, he said, no, he's he's
Speaker 1: basically at the same range. So that was helpful. And
Speaker 1: so finally the bear turns roadside boom, and the bear
Speaker 1: was at three and fifty yards per the range. Founder
Speaker 1: and I lose track of the bear in the scope,
Speaker 1: but these guys are both watching it and they see
Speaker 1: the bear run up the hill maybe eight yards, and
Speaker 1: it's really kind of spectacular to me, the bears running
Speaker 1: up pretty steep incline and just tips over backwards with
Speaker 1: feet straight up in the air and just starts rolling
Speaker 1: down the hill. I mean it was like, and I
Speaker 1: was jacking in another shell to shoot him again, because
Speaker 1: all that I saw was a shot and the bear ran. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I'm jacking another shell in and before I
Speaker 1: can even get another shell in, Devon's like, he's down,
Speaker 1: He's paws up, paws up, and Dan says, Councilman's down.
Speaker 1: Meetings of journey. The meetings of journed. Councilman. Session is
Speaker 1: closed session, it's closed. And so I was excited, I
Speaker 1: really was. And and to me it was a unique
Speaker 1: experience student animal at For me, what was long range?
Speaker 1: I mean for Western guys, that's pretty far for real,
Speaker 1: for real life panting three fifties, not close, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so so most of my hunting of recent years
Speaker 1: has been very close range, I mean hunting with traditional archery. Man,
Speaker 1: I want to be within twelve yards of him, and so,
Speaker 1: but this was an equal compelling experience to shoot one
Speaker 1: of that far and the way I would describe it
Speaker 1: is that it's almost like you know, uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's like a it's like a magical experience to be
Speaker 1: that far from an animal and to boom and he dies. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a whole different skill set and very specific that
Speaker 1: differs widely from traditional archer or a bow hunting. And
Speaker 1: it's super I mean when you say every time your
Speaker 1: heart beat, those crosshairs would bounce as would bounce a
Speaker 1: foot is the bear, you know. It's so it's crazy
Speaker 1: and and it what gave what was really cool was
Speaker 1: having a very accurate weapon. I mean that gun is
Speaker 1: a shooter big time, and so that gives you the
Speaker 1: confidence that the bullet's gonna hit where the crosshairs are
Speaker 1: on that And it's a great thing about it is
Speaker 1: you can trust that gun. The bad thing about it
Speaker 1: is if there's a mess up, you only have one
Speaker 1: person to blame. Yeah, So we go up to the
Speaker 1: bear and it just spectacular scenery. I mean, you're just
Speaker 1: you feel like you're on top of the world. That's
Speaker 1: what you were saying. It's like you killed a bear
Speaker 1: onp of because you did. We're we're looking at across
Speaker 1: this huge glacial valley, snow capped mountains, just spectacular, and
Speaker 1: to me, that was the highlight of it to me
Speaker 1: to kill a bear. You know, bears are iconic of
Speaker 1: North American wilderness, and you need to kill a bear
Speaker 1: in the wilderness and it that's the experience, that's the adventure,
Speaker 1: that's the fun, is where these critters live. And so
Speaker 1: that was so cool. And so we get up to
Speaker 1: the bear and I mean, he's just he's a thumper.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no way. I just don't know how
Speaker 1: anybody would pass this bear. I think immediately from you know, again,
Speaker 1: no one very little about bear, but no one the
Speaker 1: bear that I had shot the day before, and I'm
Speaker 1: so devon again, probably would want me to wait, but
Speaker 1: I just wanted one so bad. But then seeing immediately
Speaker 1: walking up on this bear, it was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: that's a big bear. It's just huge, spectacular coat. Oh man,
Speaker 1: the fur on these bears is as good as any
Speaker 1: fur I've ever seen on a black bear. Now I
Speaker 1: want to measure the fur on the rump of my bear.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's got to be five inches long, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to confirm that it's long. At the highest point,
Speaker 1: you know, at the longest point, but the bear and
Speaker 1: so here's the here's the here's the cut to the chase.
Speaker 1: Is the bear ended up square and six and a
Speaker 1: half foot exactly exactly what Devon a ridged in the league.
Speaker 1: You know, when he really evaluated, he was like from
Speaker 1: sixth and far and so. And then to go back
Speaker 1: to the spoiler alert that already spoiled you with minutes ago,
Speaker 1: that I'm gonna spoil you with now, is that a
Speaker 1: six and a half foot bear is a whopper, especially
Speaker 1: if it's thick. I mean, I suspect you could shoot
Speaker 1: a six and a half footbear that didn't weigh as
Speaker 1: much as the spear. I'm I'm kind of funny when
Speaker 1: it comes to wait. I usually I try to estimate
Speaker 1: on the underside of what it weighed. I think that
Speaker 1: bear in a range would have weighed three to three
Speaker 1: seventy five probably pretty close. Yeah, yeah, And that's a
Speaker 1: toad of a spring bear. So this bear was you know,
Speaker 1: the six six and see in the bear oting community
Speaker 1: like seven foot is like the mark. But I want
Speaker 1: to draw the mark and say seven foots at whopper bear.
Speaker 1: I've killed a lot of bears. I've never killed as
Speaker 1: a true seven ft square bear, and I and and
Speaker 1: I've killed bears that way five pounds, four and thirty
Speaker 1: five pounds. Uh. So what I'm saying is is that
Speaker 1: kind of in hunting, you know, you you get these
Speaker 1: things like, oh, you gotta kill a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: white tail. Well I'm telling you I travel across the
Speaker 1: globe to kill a hundred forty white tail in my bow.
Speaker 1: That's just the truth. Now, if I've lived in Iowa
Speaker 1: and it was a resident hunter, I mean maybe that'd
Speaker 1: be different. But so I'll just go on the record
Speaker 1: saying I'll travel across the globe to kill a six
Speaker 1: and a half foot big, old, mean, stinky black bear.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, yeah, yes, so awesome, awesome experience in the
Speaker 1: high country of British Columbia, Canada. Um, we got the
Speaker 1: bear out, We took out all the meat, even cut
Speaker 1: off a little rack of ribs, which, uh, the meat
Speaker 1: is gonna be holly utilized. And Devin, what do you
Speaker 1: have to say about all this? Just another day in
Speaker 1: the Canadian wilderness? Boys now closing comments? Devin, just like,
Speaker 1: do you have any like anything you would add to
Speaker 1: or just even your experience with guiding hunters or fair
Speaker 1: hunting is definitely like an adventure a hunter should try
Speaker 1: because it's so it's not anything like hunting the antlered species, right,
Speaker 1: so it's just a totally different thing. A spring bear
Speaker 1: hunting especially is nice because they're so day active. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's an awesome adventure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I
Speaker 1: throw in a little tidbit of trivia here? It is
Speaker 1: your podcast, so we kind of have to listen. I
Speaker 1: don't even have a podcast, okay. No. Devin Devon told
Speaker 1: us last night that his first memory. He tricked us
Speaker 1: because he said, hey, guys, what's your first memory? And
Speaker 1: me and Daniel said something stupid like I remember like
Speaker 1: riding my bike down the hill. And Devin goes, my
Speaker 1: first memory was I was in my yard. Can I
Speaker 1: tell this? Is it? Okay? Yeah? I think it's cool.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm comfortable with you opening up
Speaker 1: Devon's deepest well he said, it's okay, fire discussion. No, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna no, no, no, he said. He said
Speaker 1: his first memory as a little boy, he was in
Speaker 1: his front yard and Bruce, Columbia, Canada, and bear walks
Speaker 1: by and no one had told him about bear hunting.
Speaker 1: No one had told him that humans could kill bears.
Speaker 1: And hold would have been like three four somewhere, and
Speaker 1: he thought, I want to kill that bear, gun shaped stick, root,
Speaker 1: kill that bear. I don't want to kill that bear.
Speaker 1: And now here we are, and that's what Devin does
Speaker 1: killing bear where thing was even at four years old
Speaker 1: he was six to Yeah, you could walk over a
Speaker 1: mountain and three sticks and he had legs like I'll
Speaker 1: get your raft way out of proportion to the rest
Speaker 1: of his body. Uh So, Dan So closing thoughts, Devin Jewels,
Speaker 1: Pacific Bear Outfitters, come check it out. Yeah, you got
Speaker 1: put in a shameless plug for your find organizations. Bear
Speaker 1: Outfitters custom high quality hunts for large coastal black bear. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I will say that Devin is the god. I mean,
Speaker 1: like you're not been here and there's not like six
Speaker 1: in camp. I mean Dave, Dan and I are the
Speaker 1: only hunters in camp. Uh Now, Dave our our hero.
Speaker 1: Dave is a cook and it's here just like as
Speaker 1: a support. He's an awesome guy. So I mean, like Devon,
Speaker 1: if you come here, I would said, there's a good
Speaker 1: chance that Devon will be guide in here if if
Speaker 1: there were two people that needed God's Devon has close
Speaker 1: friends that are guides that will guide as well, that
Speaker 1: know this area that can. But but a lot of
Speaker 1: times you go on to guide and hunt and you
Speaker 1: book hunt with an outfitter and then you spend the
Speaker 1: week with some kid you don't know. Ye, And that's
Speaker 1: not a bad I don't want to paint that as
Speaker 1: like a negative thing. That's just the way it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so the in every every camp there's a little
Speaker 1: bit of something different that might appealed to somebody. But
Speaker 1: if you talk to Devon, he's the one you're gonna
Speaker 1: be hunting with ya, you know, And so that's cool.
Speaker 1: I think that's cool. So he he takes a lot
Speaker 1: of personal responsibility for the success of these hunts, and
Speaker 1: I mean, he just works hard. And that's why I'm
Speaker 1: back for the second time. And I will tell you
Speaker 1: as publisher Barony Magazine, Uh, you know, have access to
Speaker 1: a lot of different opportunities, which comes to Black Bear.
Speaker 1: And so for me to go to a place twice
Speaker 1: means means something. It really does. I mean for me
Speaker 1: just being a normal guy, and I come because I'm
Speaker 1: your friend. I'm on you know, taking your word for it.
Speaker 1: But I just had no idea of about bear hunting,
Speaker 1: just seeing pictures of it and heard stories, but had
Speaker 1: no idea everything that goes into it. And I intentionally
Speaker 1: set my expectations really low. But in my heart of hearts,
Speaker 1: I wanted everything. I wanted all I wanted, uh like
Speaker 1: dramatic scenery, amazing experience, adventure. I wanted fun. I wanted
Speaker 1: to laugh the whole time with a friend. And and
Speaker 1: I want I thought, I want to spend a whole
Speaker 1: week with a guy that I don't even know. Is
Speaker 1: how's that gonna be? What's that gonna be? Like I
Speaker 1: wanted to kill a bear. I wanted to eat and food,
Speaker 1: you know. On the I had set my expectations a
Speaker 1: little bit deep down. I wanted everything, and all of
Speaker 1: it has way exceeded anything I could have ever won.
Speaker 1: Like on the way here, everybody may have been like
Speaker 1: three days before when you're at my house, I really
Speaker 1: hadn't told you, like the arrangements of camp that we
Speaker 1: would each have our own wall tent, and and Dan
Speaker 1: was like I thought it was gonna be me and
Speaker 1: you in the outfit a little a little pop up
Speaker 1: tent on the side of something mountain. He was like
Speaker 1: totally pumped for months thinking about this hunt, just thinking
Speaker 1: we'll be like roughing it. But but man, we're at
Speaker 1: a really comfortable camp. Each you know, all of us
Speaker 1: have different quite large wall tent. I got my stuff
Speaker 1: just like Strode out all. It's like my cabin up there,
Speaker 1: and so it's real comfortable and eating. We're eating hot food.
Speaker 1: We're you know, we got we just got what we
Speaker 1: need here. Um. And I will say to this would
Speaker 1: be something different than I've seen before for bear outfitters,
Speaker 1: is that that Devon uh fleshes and salts the entire
Speaker 1: bear so that you don't have to take it home frozen.
Speaker 1: And they also clean the skulls while you're here, if possible, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if we have enough time, if you don't
Speaker 1: kill a bear on like the last day. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so basically he saved us a couple of hundred bucks
Speaker 1: minimum in texting the work. We still have taken this
Speaker 1: bear to the text on us to get whatever done
Speaker 1: with that. We're going to do with it. But usually
Speaker 1: you'd have to pay someone quite a bit to take
Speaker 1: out the paws take out the head, flash the hide,
Speaker 1: salta hide. So he's done a lot of work. So
Speaker 1: that's pretty unique, and it'll be super easy. It's easy
Speaker 1: for us to get it back through Canadian customs. We
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about lots of these huts. I'm
Speaker 1: worried about a frozen hide, Like you pull the hide
Speaker 1: out and it's frozen, and you're on the time clock
Speaker 1: after that, and so you're worried, Well, what if it
Speaker 1: gets lost on the way back and I have to
Speaker 1: wait two days for it to arrive and the hides run.
Speaker 1: I mean, these highs are salted and they would be
Speaker 1: good for months. Yeah, so they're they're good list. So
Speaker 1: that's a little Thing's awesome. We've ate good. We've had
Speaker 1: lots of coffee, We've had lots of gatorade, We've had
Speaker 1: lots of French toads. And he made some whopper awesome
Speaker 1: double fried French fried and he's gonna do it again
Speaker 1: today for us. He's gonna make those franchise make the cut,
Speaker 1: those French fries amazing, amazing form real Canadian potatoes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not that Idaho. So eight