Speaker 1: My name is Clay Neukleman.
Speaker 2: This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called
Speaker 2: The Bear Grease Render where we render down, dive deeper,
Speaker 2: and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast,
Speaker 2: presented by f h F Gear, American Maid, purpose built
Speaker 2: hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged
Speaker 2: as the place as we explore.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited about today.
Speaker 2: We have a very very distinguished guest and I'll say
Speaker 2: that has been on the last two episodes of Bear Grease,
Speaker 2: Geene Hopkins.
Speaker 1: It's such a pleasure. Thank you for coming to Arkansas.
Speaker 3: Well, it's my pleasure. I appreciate you guys inviting me.
Speaker 3: This is exciting for me.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Well, So to fill you in if you haven't been
Speaker 2: paying attention, we did an original episode on Ishi, which
Speaker 2: that's what we're going to talk about extensively in this episode.
Speaker 2: We're we're gonna cover some kind of housekeeping stuff up front,
Speaker 2: but just to let you know where we're going with this,
Speaker 2: we did an episode two what we've now done two episodes.
Speaker 2: We did episode one on Ishi, which was basically his
Speaker 2: history and life before coming into Oreville, California in nineteen eleven.
Speaker 2: His history with what we know of the Yahee and
Speaker 2: this fascinating story. Going to get into it. Then we
Speaker 2: interrupted the series, which we've never done before forgive us.
Speaker 2: We put out an episode where I interviewed Ted Copple,
Speaker 2: which was just an interesting episode, and we dropped it,
Speaker 2: and then now come back to do the final episode
Speaker 2: with Gene that came out on the Bear Grease feed
Speaker 2: Is She two basically, So we're going to talk about.
Speaker 4: All that awesome episode.
Speaker 1: By the way, yes, agreed, no doubt.
Speaker 2: When I first started Bear Grease five years ago, Gene,
Speaker 2: I was telling him this earlier. I had to write
Speaker 2: out twenty six potential topics for this podcast because we
Speaker 2: do a Bear Grease proper or documentary style episode every
Speaker 2: two weeks, and media was like, okay, well, what are
Speaker 2: you going to talk about? Make a year's schedule, and
Speaker 2: Ishi was on that original list, but it's taken me
Speaker 2: five years to get to.
Speaker 3: It, so well, I hope the wait was worth it.
Speaker 2: Oh man, I think it's perfect timing and that yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going to get into all of it. Before we do,
Speaker 2: there's three things I want to talk about. The Mediater
Speaker 2: Live tour that's coming up, the Christmas Tickets Live Tour.
Speaker 1: You got your I got a whole table, man, did you?
Speaker 1: I did excellent?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I haven't decided who the other pair of
Speaker 4: people want to invite.
Speaker 2: Oh, well you might. I could bring them. You could
Speaker 2: bring in a bear Grease listener. The Faydeville show is sold.
Speaker 4: Out exactly except for the two tickets I've got.
Speaker 1: There's six six shows.
Speaker 2: There's a show in Birmingham, Nashville, Tennessee, Memphis, Tennessee, Fadeville, Arkansas, Dallas, Texas,
Speaker 2: and Austin, Texas. Sixth cities, six nights in December, the
Speaker 2: seventeenth through the twenty second. I believe, And uh, I'm
Speaker 2: so proud of Faydeville. Arkansas is the smallest city on
Speaker 2: the tour, right, I mean all those other all those
Speaker 2: other cities are huge, big metropolises. And meat Eater came
Speaker 2: to us three and said, do you think it would
Speaker 2: work in Faydeville?
Speaker 1: And what did that? What do we say?
Speaker 2: We said, buddy, speaking to meat Eater as if it
Speaker 2: were a man, Buddy, you better believe that better people
Speaker 2: in Arkansas are going to show up for Meet Eater
Speaker 2: Live sold.
Speaker 4: Better Razorback Stadium because we're gonna fill it up. Sold
Speaker 4: out in three days, sold out three days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 2: Before the they even actually went on regular sale.
Speaker 4: It was like pre like the pre release.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so all the other shows, the other shows
Speaker 2: are filling up quick. But meeting her live to I
Speaker 2: had a lot of people ask me what the live
Speaker 2: tour is. It's like, a it's like a two hour
Speaker 2: variety show.
Speaker 4: That's a great description.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's it'll be Steve Ranella, Brent Reeves, Giannis
Speaker 2: would tell us Randall Williams and myself. Every every city
Speaker 2: will have a couple of local guests who will be there,
Speaker 2: like surprise guests that we're not going to tell you
Speaker 2: who they are, but people that when you see them
Speaker 2: you'll be like, whoa, They're gonna be there, and like
Speaker 2: there's gonna be music, trivia, storytelling, crowd participation, U A
Speaker 2: lot going on. And so it's it's really fun. I
Speaker 2: mean even if you had non hunting family, I would
Speaker 2: be very shocked if you would bring them to this
Speaker 2: and they wouldn't be entertained.
Speaker 4: Yes, I would agree.
Speaker 1: I mean just a lot of fun. So so excited,
Speaker 1: but so you better get your tickets for the rest
Speaker 1: of the shows. If you're going to go because they're
Speaker 1: probably going to sell out, and if.
Speaker 3: You're trying to get into the fatal show.
Speaker 1: Sorry, you could Josh let you at his table.
Speaker 5: You should.
Speaker 2: What if we left one spot for that table and
Speaker 2: we could have people right in why they wanted to
Speaker 2: be there.
Speaker 1: It's not a bad idea, you know what. I want
Speaker 1: to say this too.
Speaker 2: I don't take it for granted that we can have
Speaker 2: a live show and sell out like it's really it
Speaker 2: means a lot to us that people are willing and
Speaker 2: want to come and come and see us. So I
Speaker 2: don't I don't take it for granted.
Speaker 1: That that that people are you know, are willing to
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Thanks everything, and thanks for showing up in Arkansas.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's number one. Number two.
Speaker 2: Man, if you need a good deer call, this is
Speaker 2: a blatant sales pitch.
Speaker 1: Getting ready, just so happy, ready to be de Yeah.
Speaker 1: This phelps acorn Grunner made burnt osage Orne.
Speaker 4: I'm a little jealous of that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this is uh, we call.
Speaker 2: It the acorn Grunner and it's an inhale exhale grunt bleep.
Speaker 2: You can flip it and it's the opposite. Then it's
Speaker 2: a blow for the bleat in heale for the grunt.
Speaker 2: But I wanted Jason Phelps to make a call that
Speaker 2: a single call with a bleat and a because man,
Speaker 2: I use a bleat as much as I use a grunt.
Speaker 2: And uh and and I've called in a lot of
Speaker 2: deer with a dough bleat, including this.
Speaker 1: This is the deer hunter's call. That's what I call
Speaker 1: it the deer hunters call, because I kill.
Speaker 2: A lot of dough deer by calling them in with
Speaker 2: a dough bleat. I mean, you know, dough out there
Speaker 2: at forty yards, She's not coming to your buck grunt.
Speaker 2: But it's a deer that you want to take right. Man,
Speaker 2: during the early season, especially a dough deer will respond
Speaker 2: to a dough bleat pretty pretty good. What do you think, bear?
Speaker 2: I agree all hype, all commercialization and hype, I.
Speaker 1: Don't think so. Pretty good call? I think so. And
Speaker 1: I was just looking at this one.
Speaker 6: These bodark trees have some pretty nice growth rings on
Speaker 6: them too, so.
Speaker 1: It's pretty good boat ark. Pretty good boat ark.
Speaker 3: I could have made a good bow.
Speaker 4: Uh yeah, yeah, Well they cut them up in the call.
Speaker 7: Right there, he's got some thin rings, but up here
Speaker 7: those are prime ring. Now, thin rings would be better, though, right,
Speaker 7: tighter growth, hard years.
Speaker 6: They're just a lot tougher to work with, really, And
Speaker 6: if you, if you like, hit.
Speaker 7: Them on a tree, standard rock or something, they violate
Speaker 7: a lot easier violate.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a big word sounding about bowl wood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, because then it blows up the whole bow
Speaker 1: if the rings are tight. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, what you're telling me, is there a metaphor?
Speaker 2: You know, we find in life a lot of times
Speaker 2: trees are used as metaphors for life.
Speaker 1: Jesus did it.
Speaker 2: He said the Kingdom of God is like a like
Speaker 2: a mustard seed that grows on the biggest tree and
Speaker 2: the birds. So you're telling me I would have thought
Speaker 2: that the tight rings meant hard years, which meant growth
Speaker 2: of character in tight rings.
Speaker 3: Well, you were follow the bow. You're over here. He
Speaker 3: knows what he's talking about.
Speaker 7: I've made some bows with tight rings and they're great bows.
Speaker 7: But if it's got a thick ring, it's just more security.
Speaker 3: Okay, easier to stay within the ring while you're making
Speaker 3: the bow.
Speaker 1: Eh, yep, exactly. That's probably part of it. Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2: Third thing and then we're gonna start talking about is
Speaker 2: she and Gene, who's like the most interesting man in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 4: I don't always talk about my grandkids.
Speaker 2: Your grandkids, well, well we do too, So this is
Speaker 2: like super serious. In Arkansas this week there was another
Speaker 2: black bear fatality. If you're paying attention on the Nash,
Speaker 2: it's been in New York Times.
Speaker 1: BBC did the BBC report on them.
Speaker 2: It's been in all the major headlines and all the
Speaker 2: news outlets have covered it.
Speaker 1: Media covered it.
Speaker 2: But there was a second bear fatality in less than
Speaker 2: thirty days in Arkansas. In recorded history, recorded history, what
Speaker 2: I would call modern history, there's not been a black
Speaker 2: bear fatality in Arkansas since eighteen There was some after that,
Speaker 2: but usually they were induced inside of a hunting situation
Speaker 2: with dog. I mean like Erskine was killed bears, the
Speaker 2: dog dogs were baying a bear. Guy killed, you know,
Speaker 2: eighteen forty three, you know a man September third, there
Speaker 2: was a man just south of us, about an hour
Speaker 2: near the Mulberry River, on a tractor grading his gravel
Speaker 2: road on a on a I think was a new
Speaker 2: hauland tractor and no connection between a little a little bear,
Speaker 2: I mean eighty pound bear comes up. He films the
Speaker 2: bear and he's like talking to the bear, and.
Speaker 1: Next you know, this bear is kind of like.
Speaker 2: Cat walking, like getting real close, and basically he stops
Speaker 2: filming and the next thing, the bear jumps on the tractor,
Speaker 2: pulls him off the tractor and basically gives injuries to
Speaker 2: the guy that caused him to pass away several weeks
Speaker 2: later after being I see you. So that was just wild,
Speaker 2: and it felt like this lightning struck and it was this.
Speaker 3: One off thing that's unusual.
Speaker 1: It's so unusual.
Speaker 2: And then last Thursday, a man was discovered at a
Speaker 2: campsite in the ozark to a place called a very
Speaker 2: popular place called Sam's Throne, which is in National Forest,
Speaker 2: a place where rock climbers climb some big sheer face
Speaker 2: bluffs and just a big National Forest campground. And a
Speaker 2: man had from Missouri, sixty year old man. They released
Speaker 2: his name.
Speaker 1: Today, oh yeah, yesterday.
Speaker 2: His name is Max Thomas, and that he had sent
Speaker 2: a picture to his wife on Tuesday of a Baroness
Speaker 2: camp and it had just been like, wow, this is interesting.
Speaker 2: A bear in the camp, not threatened, just had this bear.
Speaker 2: Basically he goes radio silent and on Thursday they called
Speaker 2: the sheriff and say, hey, we do a welfare check.
Speaker 2: My husband hasn't can't get him, haven't talked to him
Speaker 2: since Tuesday. They go and basically there's signs of distress
Speaker 2: in the camp and they follow. They basically find the
Speaker 2: man one hundred and ninety four feet away appeared to
Speaker 2: have been mauled by a black bear. And and they
Speaker 2: put that two together by the pictures and then by
Speaker 2: evidence there and in a unique circumstances I can't really
Speaker 2: talk about fully. Baron Nuklem and I were that night
Speaker 2: called to go to the scene.
Speaker 4: This is like an hour from us, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And so Bear and I went there that night and
Speaker 2: and we helped round up guys that had some dogs
Speaker 2: that would treat a bear, you know, and and they
Speaker 2: free cast dogs. But this track was potential a couple
Speaker 2: of days old. By now didn't get the bear game
Speaker 2: and fish comes in game and fish authorize the use
Speaker 2: of dogs. It's not legal run bear with dogs. It's
Speaker 2: a game and Fish director along with the bear coordinator
Speaker 2: and other people authorize the use. And Glenn Wheeler, the
Speaker 2: Sheriff of Newton County.
Speaker 1: He was on the scene.
Speaker 2: Unique guy, a hunter, kind of had some a little
Speaker 2: bit of background and besides his law enforcement but being
Speaker 2: around bears and whatnot. Anyway, the game and Fish puts
Speaker 2: up traps and bucket snare traps and big tube traps,
Speaker 2: puts up cell cameras all over the place. They shut
Speaker 2: down the campground and basically the best bet is to
Speaker 2: wait for the bear to come back. But we all
Speaker 2: suspected that the bear would not go in the trap
Speaker 2: because we've been baiting bears in Arkansas here Gene, and
Speaker 2: it got to where you couldn't hardly take a bear
Speaker 2: over bait just because they were eating acorns, I mean
Speaker 2: mass crop, just a bumper crop.
Speaker 3: They love those acorns and the protein.
Speaker 2: Yes they do, and so and so basically we were
Speaker 2: the houndsmen were on call, the guys that had these dogs,
Speaker 2: and on Sunday gave and fish got a picture and
Speaker 2: the bear just walked right past all the traps.
Speaker 1: Just didn't even go in them.
Speaker 2: And the houndsmen were called and within two hours dogs
Speaker 2: were on the ground, and within an hour of the
Speaker 2: dogs being on the ground, essentially they tread this bear.
Speaker 2: And so the question that remains, and this has been
Speaker 2: I'm not saying anything that has not been put out
Speaker 2: by the media. We don't know one hundred percent that
Speaker 2: the bear that was killed by game fish in these houndsmen.
Speaker 2: We don't know if that was the bear, but it
Speaker 2: was a We know for sure that it was a
Speaker 2: juvenile male that was in the camp with this guy,
Speaker 2: and we know that this was the only and the
Speaker 2: first bear that showed back up at the spot, and.
Speaker 1: It was a juvenile male.
Speaker 2: There's it's hard, you know, the markings on the bear,
Speaker 2: it's hard to say. I mean, the bear had a
Speaker 2: tan muzzle. The bear that was killed had a tan muzzle,
Speaker 2: so it's it's difficult, but there were no other distinguishing characteristics.
Speaker 3: That Well, the test will come back, that's right.
Speaker 2: So they've they've the DNA test will come back. We'll
Speaker 2: know for certain if it was the bear or not.
Speaker 2: But you know, a lot of people I would imagine
Speaker 2: this year in the state, there's going to be a
Speaker 2: lot of bear encounters that have always happened, and people
Speaker 2: are probably gonna overreact a little bit to them. And
Speaker 2: I think it's already happened even this week, there's been
Speaker 2: reports of a bear that was kind of terrorizing people
Speaker 2: at a camp, which to my knowledge with the information
Speaker 2: I have right now, which this is being recorded before this,
Speaker 2: you're hearing this, but right now, this morning, there was
Speaker 2: a news report of a bear terrorizing some campers and.
Speaker 4: In the area.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yesterday for real, Yes, in Franklin County.
Speaker 2: These hikers on the Ozark Islands Trail reported a bear
Speaker 2: giving them a lot of trouble. The real story and
Speaker 2: what is in the SoundBite is, to my understanding right
Speaker 2: now today is quite a bit different, and it probably
Speaker 2: was fairly normal bear behavior and no one was hurt,
Speaker 2: No one was attacked, no doubt. It was a little
Speaker 2: bit scary for someone, sure, but to my knowledge, it
Speaker 2: would not have been that abnormal. I mean, like basically
Speaker 2: a bear came into the camp.
Speaker 3: People are hyper sensitized right now.
Speaker 2: They are they are, and so I think a lot
Speaker 2: of that's going to happen this year, maybe all over
Speaker 2: bear country.
Speaker 1: And you know, here's the bottom line is, if you
Speaker 1: have a bear.
Speaker 2: Casually dealing with you, that is hanging around, you need
Speaker 2: to get the heck out of there, and you need
Speaker 2: to do everything you can.
Speaker 1: To get that bear out of there, yep.
Speaker 2: Like it's not abnormal to see a bear cruise past
Speaker 2: your camp. I mean sometimes they're pretty nonchalant, especially when
Speaker 2: there's food involved. And that doesn't mean that that bear
Speaker 2: is a super threat. But man, with the current circumscans,
Speaker 2: if I saw a bear that was casual with its
Speaker 2: encounters with humans, I mean, you need to run that
Speaker 2: bear off. You don't need to casually handle.
Speaker 4: Don't be standing there taking pictures of them.
Speaker 2: I mean that and and that's that's the truth anywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the truth anywhere in bear countries. You just can't
Speaker 2: be lasadaisical. You know, ninety nine thousand out of one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand times that bear is not going to do
Speaker 2: anything with you. But for whatever reasons, has happened twice
Speaker 2: in the last month here.
Speaker 4: So anyway, well, our condolences to the family. No doubt
Speaker 4: they're terrible, tragic into these these guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no doubt common sense in the bear woods.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, man, I don't know. I'd probably be
Speaker 4: carrying some pepper spray these days too, Yeah, wouldn't hurt.
Speaker 1: You know. It's kind of changed the way bear and
Speaker 1: I think about black bears.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we've kind of built a ideology of
Speaker 2: just casual, you know, just like, hey, these bears aren't
Speaker 2: going to hurt you. You got a better chance of
Speaker 2: getting you know, hurt on the highway or in engagement
Speaker 2: with the humans. Probably more dangerous than any baron counter
Speaker 2: you'll ever have. But there's something about being arms reached
Speaker 2: from an attack like this that makes you kind of
Speaker 2: just go goly.
Speaker 1: You'd hope you're just prepared.
Speaker 2: But I just want to say it over and over again, man, bears,
Speaker 2: bears are expanding their range all across the country. Bear
Speaker 2: and humans are overlapping more and more and more, and uh,
Speaker 2: there's nothing to be afraid of. That's something to be celebrated,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, in the vast majority of American's opinion.
Speaker 2: But you just can't be casual with them. You can't
Speaker 2: be casual, can't can't let them just come in your
Speaker 2: camp and.
Speaker 3: Don't feed them again common sense?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: Bear.
Speaker 7: You anything to add m Yeah, I mean, like you said,
Speaker 7: it was definitely pretty wild be that close to a
Speaker 7: bear attack like the first one happened, And I mean
Speaker 7: it was pretty wild, but it didn't really, It didn't
Speaker 7: really change any way that I would have gone about
Speaker 7: in bear country. But seeing the second one and actually
Speaker 7: being there was like definitely extremely eye opening.
Speaker 1: To what they could what they could do.
Speaker 7: It definitely like we were in the bearwoods yesterday bear hunting,
Speaker 7: and I was definitely a lot more like I was
Speaker 7: considering what, considering what could happen a lot more and
Speaker 7: just being a lot more cautious about, like, you know,
Speaker 7: getting really close to bears and especially small bears.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's probably the biggest takeaway, isn't it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Yeah, because both bears were juvenile males.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: On average, over the last hundred years, there's been one
Speaker 2: black bear fatality in North America per year on average.
Speaker 1: Some years there's been in North America like North.
Speaker 2: America, Wow, average one per year, But that means some
Speaker 2: years there's none, right, some years there's three, maybe four,
Speaker 2: But on average one. If you're killed by a black bear,
Speaker 2: there is upwards of a ninety degree chance that it
Speaker 2: was a juvenile male that killed you. This is where
Speaker 2: the statistics get interesting. There's a but if you're just attacked,
Speaker 2: like if you just come away with some bytes and
Speaker 2: some scratches, there, it's like thirteen times higher a risk
Speaker 2: that that would be a sal with cubs. I've talked
Speaker 2: to a lot of people who said, oh, probably South cubs,
Speaker 2: and I went No.
Speaker 1: A sow with cubs.
Speaker 2: Her objective inside of an attack would be to defend
Speaker 2: her cubs just enough so they could get way, Like
Speaker 2: she doesn't want.
Speaker 5: To eat you.
Speaker 2: There's a big, huge distinction between a South with cubs
Speaker 2: defending her territory in a close range encounter and the
Speaker 2: very rare, rare, rare, rare thing that is called the
Speaker 2: predatory attack. When a bear sets his sights on you
Speaker 2: and his intent is to kill you. That's it's a thing.
Speaker 2: So does that make sense? So if if you're dead,
Speaker 2: that it was probably a juvenile male that did it.
Speaker 2: If you were attacked and not killed, it was most
Speaker 2: likely a South cubs upwards.
Speaker 5: Of like.
Speaker 1: Thirteen times higher chance. So there's.
Speaker 2: Over ten to like ten to fifteen people per year
Speaker 2: that get attacked by black bears but survive. The vast
Speaker 2: majority of those are sALS with cubs.
Speaker 1: Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the stats are different. Now grizzlies is a
Speaker 2: whole different story, like completely different story that.
Speaker 1: We're not even talking about here.
Speaker 2: But you know, on average, two people per year get
Speaker 2: killed by grizzlies in North America. And when you consider
Speaker 2: how many fewer grizzlies there are in the smaller range, you.
Speaker 1: Really you extrapolate that out.
Speaker 2: Black bears are, you know, all over the place, from
Speaker 2: Maine to Old Mexico, from Florida to Alaska, everywhere in
Speaker 2: between except the Great Plain States essentially, and we have
Speaker 2: one bear killed per year. Grizzlies are essentially in the
Speaker 2: Greater Yelstone ecosystem, and then in Canada up to Alaska.
Speaker 2: I mean, the range just dramatically smaller, and there's two
Speaker 2: kills per year and the attacks are are much more.
Speaker 2: There was a guy attacked an elk hunter attacked pretty
Speaker 2: critically this week. So grizz is a different story. We're
Speaker 2: talking about black bears. But and that's why, and this
Speaker 2: is kind of in the weeds, but that's why.
Speaker 1: It helps to understand what you're doing.
Speaker 2: If if you are attacked by a sow with cubs,
Speaker 2: your best bet is to cover your head and neck,
Speaker 2: getting the ball and act like you're dead because all
Speaker 2: she wants to do is extinguish the threat. Threats O
Speaker 2: ye she will leave you alone and go to her cubs,
Speaker 2: chuckle her cubs out of the tree, and get out
Speaker 2: of there. If it is a predatory animal, predatory meaning stalking,
Speaker 2: direct eye contact, persistence in like, won't leave. If that
Speaker 2: bear attacks you, you better fight for your life because
Speaker 2: he is trying to kill you, right. The majority of
Speaker 2: bear attacks have wounds on the forearms where people put
Speaker 2: up their arm to protect themselves and they get bit
Speaker 2: on the arm and they have lacerations and bites all
Speaker 2: over the face.
Speaker 1: A black bear goes.
Speaker 2: For your face, it's interesting, like they so they don't
Speaker 2: they don't really kill with the precision of like a
Speaker 2: big cat. A big cat would go for the throat,
Speaker 2: and I mean big cat fatalities and humans is just
Speaker 2: like incredibly rare. It does happen, but a black bear
Speaker 2: is more of just like a like a mauling.
Speaker 1: But they do target on the head.
Speaker 2: And you think about it when a black I don't
Speaker 2: know if you've ever seen black bears fight, but when
Speaker 2: two male black bears fight, they target the head of
Speaker 2: the other male like they grab each other's ears and
Speaker 2: they put their arms up almost like their boxing and fight.
Speaker 1: And so I mean a.
Speaker 2: Lot of interesting parallels, but as dark as all that
Speaker 2: is black bears in humans, this conflict isn't going away.
Speaker 2: And the more we kind of educate people, but a
Speaker 2: lot of people have asked me, like, well, do you
Speaker 2: run or do you yell? Man, if a bear came
Speaker 2: into my camp just casually strolled by my camp and
Speaker 2: I'm sitting there camping with my food and everything, I
Speaker 2: would yell and scream and throw stuff and stomp around.
Speaker 1: And I mean, if you can.
Speaker 2: Leave, yeah, at at best, put your food up way
Speaker 2: away from your camp. I mean, that's standard procedure is
Speaker 2: to put your food store, your food away from your camp,
Speaker 2: because they really don't want you, They want your food.
Speaker 2: They're attracted to the camp, to the food. So that's
Speaker 2: my that's my take on the take on the situation.
Speaker 2: And just yeah, true condolence is to the family there
Speaker 2: in Missouri. Just just super sad situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And one one more thing that I learned just from
Speaker 7: the two is that if a if you're not armed
Speaker 7: and a black bear wants to kill you, it's it's
Speaker 7: probably gonna kill you. Like that's the thing that I learned,
Speaker 7: was like, you, like, there's no reason to necessarily be
Speaker 7: afraid of them. But like if it's wanting to kill you,
Speaker 7: it's like you're not gonna fight it off.
Speaker 1: Like these were like eighty pound bears.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and they just I mean, there's like no way
Speaker 7: you're gonna fight one off unless you're arm.
Speaker 2: That is a good point because I talked to a
Speaker 2: buddy of mine this week. He's a big guy, like
Speaker 2: probably two hundred and thirty pounds, and we had this
Speaker 2: conversation about like, ah, if one hundred pounds bear got
Speaker 2: on you, you could just fend it off like you
Speaker 2: would a dog. One hundred pounds of bear muscle is
Speaker 2: way stronger than one hundred pounds of human.
Speaker 3: Muscle, and their reflex is so fast. The claws and
Speaker 3: the teeth, we're no match.
Speaker 4: I think that's the thing. Like if a bear hits
Speaker 4: you in the face claws, I mean that's you're done.
Speaker 4: Like even if you like he takes your vision or
Speaker 4: something like that, it's like you have no defense against that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And if you've ever seen bears fight, which you probably
Speaker 2: have sitting on bear baits in Canada like I have, Mayan.
Speaker 1: God, They're wicked. You wouldn't want to be there. You
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to be on the other end of them,
Speaker 1: just really wanting to tear into.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and back to what you said about them going
Speaker 3: for the face. A lot of times you'll see an
Speaker 3: old bear, but his face is all scarred up from
Speaker 3: the fights. You know. They when they're fighting each other,
Speaker 3: they're going for the head. They're trying to repeat your
Speaker 3: head off. They bite the claw and the muzzles are
Speaker 3: all scarred. Yeah. You know, you can see an old
Speaker 3: boar bear he's been in some battles and those scars
Speaker 3: all show on his muzzle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and ears, yeah right, you know where they're biting
Speaker 2: at each other.
Speaker 4: It just makes me reevaluate that whole video where you
Speaker 4: and Brent were in the stand and that bear comes
Speaker 4: in the the blind like that could have turned south
Speaker 4: in a hurry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's true. Well that was
Speaker 1: a that was a.
Speaker 2: Kind of a dark introduction to a wonderful topic. The
Speaker 2: story of Ischi, to me is one of the great
Speaker 2: stories of this continent.
Speaker 3: I agree, no matter which angle you come from, if
Speaker 3: you come at it like we from the angle of
Speaker 3: bow hunting, you know, in our archery and buehunting history,
Speaker 3: or if you just come at it from an angle
Speaker 3: of you know, anthropology and the history of Native Americans
Speaker 3: in our country, in our country, the evolution of me,
Speaker 3: and you know, the treatment of how we treat each other.
Speaker 3: No matter what angle you come at this story from,
Speaker 3: it's just fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yes, But Gene, give us, give us a little introduction.
Speaker 2: People would have heard me talk about you some on
Speaker 2: the podcast, but you have a long history in bow hunting.
Speaker 2: But I can say this, and you could too if
Speaker 2: you weren't so humble. You have one of, if not
Speaker 2: the premiere collection of bow hunting artific facts in the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do, you know, take away the humble part
Speaker 3: of it. But I'm fascinated with history, you know, And
Speaker 3: I've always been a history buff in school. You know,
Speaker 3: history was my favorite topic. But then I love hunting
Speaker 3: with the bone and arrow. So to be able to
Speaker 3: put the history of hunting with the bow and arrow together,
Speaker 3: you know, how much better can it be? So I've
Speaker 3: always been a collector, you know, a saver. When I
Speaker 3: was young, I got collected coins, and I collected stamps,
Speaker 3: and you know, I collected vintage firearms. But I started
Speaker 3: saving old archery equipment just because you know, as bow
Speaker 3: hunters we do that. We throw our old broadheads in
Speaker 3: a drawer, and pretty soon you've got a drawer full
Speaker 3: of nineteen different broadheads, and then you move from saving
Speaker 3: to collecting. But I really don't think of it as
Speaker 3: collecting anymore. I think of it as caretaking. You know.
Speaker 3: What I'm doing is preserving. What I hope I'm doing
Speaker 3: is preserving the items, but not just the items, but
Speaker 3: the story of the items and the story of the
Speaker 3: people who use those items. I'm caretaking that for my generation,
Speaker 3: and there will be a time when I'm looking for
Speaker 3: somebody like Bear, you know, who's the next caretaker. And
Speaker 3: that's me, our duty. That's what we owe those people
Speaker 3: who came before us, you know, the pioneers of Fred
Speaker 3: Bears and the Glenn Saint Charles. We owe that to them,
Speaker 3: to keep their story alive, all the work they did
Speaker 3: for us and all the sacrifices they made for us,
Speaker 3: to keep that story alive and keep their spirit alive.
Speaker 3: By keeping their story alive.
Speaker 1: Will you tell me what is in your museum, Give
Speaker 1: me a rundown.
Speaker 3: A lot of people will collect something or save something
Speaker 3: that is most interesting to them. I have a really
Speaker 3: good friend in Michigan, John Cabisa, and John focuses on
Speaker 3: the history of bow hunting and Michigan. Other people will
Speaker 3: collect just simply Fred Beher items or Ben Pearson items
Speaker 3: and things, you know, from the history of those people
Speaker 3: or those companies. For me, it's the history of the
Speaker 3: pioneers of our sport. So and I quantify that. What
Speaker 3: I'm saying is, you know, pre nineteen fifty, in nineteen fifty,
Speaker 3: our sport was off the ground pretty good through the
Speaker 3: efforts of Fred Beer and Glenn Saint Charles and Howard
Speaker 3: Hill and Roy Case and a lot of different people.
Speaker 3: But prior to nineteen fifty, there, you know, our sport
Speaker 3: was going through some really difficult times. You know, we
Speaker 3: had been as the bow and arrow had been largely forgotten.
Speaker 3: Even the Native Americans had forgotten about the bow and arrow.
Speaker 3: When the gun came along. If you wanted to go hunting,
Speaker 3: you want hunting to survive, you want hunting to feed
Speaker 3: your family, so you wouldn't take a bow and arrow.
Speaker 3: You'd take a rifle or a shotgun. Well, in the
Speaker 3: late eighteen hundreds, a couple of brothers, the Thompson brothers
Speaker 3: from Crawfordsville, Indiana, wrote a book called The Witchery of Archery,
Speaker 3: and it was right after the Civil War, and right
Speaker 3: after the Civil War, for the time in our country's history,
Speaker 3: people are starting to have a little bit of free time,
Speaker 3: and they're starting to have a little bit of free
Speaker 3: spending money. So you see a lot of sports growing
Speaker 3: at that time. You see badminton, you see tennis, you
Speaker 3: see bicycling, and things like that start to appear as sports.
Speaker 3: And we're starting to look for things to do with
Speaker 3: that spare time and that spare money. So when they
Speaker 3: wrote that book, The Witchery of Archery was published in
Speaker 3: eighteen seventy eight, people around the country are reading this
Speaker 3: book and they're reading the magazine articles that these guys
Speaker 3: are writing, and they're saying that sounds like fun. You know,
Speaker 3: bow and arrow, I'd forgotten about that. Let's pick up,
Speaker 3: let's go find us at bow and arrow. Let's go
Speaker 3: out and shoot. And at that time, not a lot
Speaker 3: of people were hunting with bone arrow. The Thompson brothers
Speaker 3: were a few others were, but target archery started to
Speaker 3: become a big deal, and the National Archery Association was
Speaker 3: formed in eighteen seventy nine through the efforts of the
Speaker 3: Thompson brothers and the exposure they gave to our sport.
Speaker 3: So now we start to see a lot of clubs
Speaker 3: springing up around the country of shooting targets with the
Speaker 3: bawe and air. Well, that kind of tailed off a
Speaker 3: little bit, you know, around nineteen hundred or so, and
Speaker 3: then the story of Issue comes along nineteen eleven. Issue
Speaker 3: comes down meets Pope. You've heard all this, you know,
Speaker 3: in the two podcasts we did before. And then Pope
Speaker 3: writes this book, Hunting with the Ball and Arrow, and
Speaker 3: he publishes this in nineteen twenty three. Now, this book
Speaker 3: really ignites the revolution of fire of people that want
Speaker 3: to go out and hunt with a ball and arrow.
Speaker 3: I told briefly the story of Doug Easton in the
Speaker 3: earlier podcast. You know, Doug was out as a teenager
Speaker 3: hunting small game rabbits with a shotgun and they come
Speaker 3: back to the car for a break and one of
Speaker 3: the shotguns falls over, discharges and part of the shot
Speaker 3: hit Doug in the legs. A Doug spends a year
Speaker 3: in the hospital recovering from the wounds, and during that
Speaker 3: time somebody brings him one of Pope's books about hunting
Speaker 3: with the ball and arrow, and he read the book,
Speaker 3: and all that time and all the different operations he
Speaker 3: had in the hospital, he reads this book and it
Speaker 3: fires him up about archery. So you know, that's what
Speaker 3: got Dug Easton into archery. And he started shortly after that,
Speaker 3: in the nineteen twenties, he started each Eastern Archery company.
Speaker 3: So story after story after story of people that are
Speaker 3: coming from that. Let's say that point of issue being
Speaker 3: the spark that ignited the fire, and then Pope and
Speaker 3: Young and Compton starting that fire and carrying that fire
Speaker 3: to the next generation. And that's why we're here today.
Speaker 3: If that hadn't happened, if Issui hadn't been the spark,
Speaker 3: if Pope hadn't looked down his window that day and
Speaker 3: saw Issu shooting the bow out there on the grounds
Speaker 3: of the University of California, Pope hadn't walked down of
Speaker 3: his office and went down to issue and what are
Speaker 3: you doing. I'm shooting a bow that looks like fun.
Speaker 3: Pope grew up in Texas and there were a lot
Speaker 3: of Natives Americans still around, and they were still shooting
Speaker 3: a bow's but you know it wasn't it was fun.
Speaker 3: It was a game to the right, right, So he
Speaker 3: had been exposed to a bone arrow. But that day
Speaker 3: and when he saw Issue out there on the lawn
Speaker 3: shooting the bow, is when he went out and he said,
Speaker 3: you know what I want to do this. I want
Speaker 3: to become an archer. And eventually then that translated nerd
Speaker 3: transformed into I want to become a bowl hunter.
Speaker 2: And I think what made the Ishy story and Pope
Speaker 2: that be such a lightning strike is because of the
Speaker 2: nature of who is. She was completely disconnected from Western civilization.
Speaker 2: And you know, if you listen to the first episode,
Speaker 2: you would have seen each He's like fifty years old,
Speaker 2: been in hiding his entire life. His people were incredibly primitive,
Speaker 2: surprisingly primitive. Like when you understand the history of Native
Speaker 2: Americans across the country, you see this like slow roll
Speaker 2: of either extermination, removal to reservations, or assimilation essentially, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, And so there were Native Americans presumably that
Speaker 2: were still shooting bows and whatnot in that time. But
Speaker 2: with Ishi, he stepped out of the woods and that
Speaker 2: had been the primary tool for his entire gather protein.
Speaker 3: That's the only thing he knew was the bowl and arrow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's I want to ask you a question.
Speaker 2: Do you think men Bear had this conversation yesterday?
Speaker 1: Ishi?
Speaker 2: Is this one guy out of that entire civilization that
Speaker 2: was you know, became the epicenter of archery? Do you
Speaker 2: My question is how good was Ishi? Because imagine us
Speaker 2: picking a bow hunter out of all the people that
Speaker 2: we know and that guy being the single touch point
Speaker 2: for archery, and like, I wonder if people in his company,
Speaker 2: in his tribe, I mean, even for generations before, would
Speaker 2: have been like one one extreme would have been like
Speaker 2: Ishi was the best archer, bow hunter, bowyer flint Napper
Speaker 2: of all time. Thank goodness that he was the one
Speaker 2: that made it through to talk to Saxon and Pope.
Speaker 1: Or do you think they would be like.
Speaker 3: You're kidding me, right?
Speaker 1: That guy?
Speaker 2: That guy was Like how you should have had this guy?
Speaker 2: How good do you think she was?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to break that into two. As far
Speaker 3: as Flintnapping goes, I think he must have been one
Speaker 3: of the best. Really, you look at his points and
Speaker 3: I wish you know, at some point I want you
Speaker 3: to look at the point that I've got of his
Speaker 3: and you see the skill that's in that and to
Speaker 3: be able to make a point that precise, and that
Speaker 3: how it is, how hard it is to make one
Speaker 3: thin and still keep that integrity of the point. And
Speaker 3: you know it's this long and and it's so narrow,
Speaker 3: and it's so finally.
Speaker 2: Made baseline competency though, I mean, do you think, like
Speaker 2: everybody was that I've.
Speaker 3: Got some other points that came from that area and
Speaker 3: they're you know, most of those are obsidian points. And
Speaker 3: he Iss, she liked to make points from glass. And
Speaker 3: even before the nineteen eleven, before the capture, he would
Speaker 3: when they were raiding the stock cabins and they were
Speaker 3: raiding the settlers cabins, they would sometimes steal the plates
Speaker 3: and they would go to the trash pile and get
Speaker 3: the broken plates and they would make points from that.
Speaker 3: Or they would get the you know, the old insulators
Speaker 3: from railroads, or you know, they would get the milk
Speaker 3: of magnesia bottles. That would be a favorite for them,
Speaker 3: and they would make it out of glass because glass
Speaker 3: was easier to work than obsidian, and obsidians a volcanic glass.
Speaker 3: But not all obsidian is pure obsidian. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of of abnormalities in the obsidian, but you take a
Speaker 3: glass plate or a bottle or something like that, it's
Speaker 3: pretty pure, so it was easier to make a more
Speaker 3: precise point. So it's maybe not a fair comparison. But
Speaker 3: some of the points that i've that I've got that
Speaker 3: are also from that area. There were you know a
Speaker 3: lot of people call them the Milk Creeks, you know,
Speaker 3: the Yahee, also known as the Creek Indians because they
Speaker 3: came from the Mill Creek area. And those points are
Speaker 3: still fairly well made, you know, but they're not Issue quality.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's because Issue was really really good at what
Speaker 3: he did, and maybe it's because of the media he
Speaker 3: worked in, you know, in the glass the bottles and
Speaker 3: the plates and things was easier to work than obsidian.
Speaker 1: Regardless, it's got a point to the high level of
Speaker 1: skill that that society had.
Speaker 2: Absolutely you just think of the chances of just picking
Speaker 2: one guy, yeah, out of that that stream of people
Speaker 2: for generations and him being as competent as is.
Speaker 1: She was right pretty unique.
Speaker 3: You know, as far as it's hunting and shooting ability.
Speaker 3: There there's a lot of documentation that Pope wrote about
Speaker 3: and some of the others wrote about is his shooting
Speaker 3: skills were good, but they weren't. You know, he wasn't
Speaker 3: going to be an Olympic caliber archer. But that's not
Speaker 3: what he trained for and that's not you know, he
Speaker 3: was about getting the animal close, because when you lose
Speaker 3: an arrow at an animal and his culture, you know,
Speaker 3: that was dinner. And if if this doesn't work, if
Speaker 3: I don't hit him, or I don't kill him, or
Speaker 3: I don't find him, I'm not eating tonight. Well they're
Speaker 3: so they're focusing. They're all their effort was getting the
Speaker 3: animal close. So I don't care about shooting thirty yards.
Speaker 3: You know, we go out and we shoot thirty yards
Speaker 3: forty yards sometimes for fun. He didn't care about that.
Speaker 3: So you know, Pope and especially young were much better shots.
Speaker 1: M okay did is she have a floating anchor?
Speaker 3: His if you look at him, he would anchor more
Speaker 3: into here. And his style of he didn't put his
Speaker 3: fingers around the string like we do, two fingers under,
Speaker 3: three fingers under. He would pinch the string and bring
Speaker 3: it back and it was more like this.
Speaker 1: What was the weight of the bows that he was making.
Speaker 3: I would guess I've never seen an issue bow, but
Speaker 3: I would guess the bows are probably you know, going
Speaker 3: to be forty pound, you know, they're not heavy.
Speaker 2: And he's pinching that string. Yeah, I guess whatever you
Speaker 2: train yourself to do with your hands, your hands.
Speaker 3: You know, his hands on his feet were so Yeah,
Speaker 3: stories of his feet. You know, they gave him shoes
Speaker 3: when when they caught him in the stockyard, they gave
Speaker 3: him some clothing and they gave him some shoes, and
Speaker 3: he wouldn't wear the shoes. They weren't comfortable to him.
Speaker 3: But his feet were so calloused and so rough. He's
Speaker 3: you know that he didn't need the shoes. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: so yeah, if you've done this all your life, if
Speaker 3: you walked over rocks all your life, if you've drawn
Speaker 3: the bow this way all your life, you know, just
Speaker 3: like playing a guitar, you're gonna have callouses, you know,
Speaker 3: and your body's going to adapt to that.
Speaker 1: Bear showing your fingers.
Speaker 6: I've been shooting with two fingers for maybe like eight months,
Speaker 6: and the two fingers that I pull back with are
Speaker 6: like significantly bigger.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Of course he's been shooting without a fingertab. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's just been grat, which if you don't know traditional archery,
Speaker 1: that's pretty most people. I don't do that pretty hardcore.
Speaker 1: I shoot three.
Speaker 2: Fingers under, which isn't necessarily that popular either, but I
Speaker 2: use a finger tab. It's if I pull back a
Speaker 2: traditional bow much over forty pounds with bare fingers, it
Speaker 2: hurts my fingers.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The bear the other day was like, hey, Dad, look
Speaker 2: at my hands, and his fingers are like notably bigger
Speaker 2: on the two that he's been working. So, I mean
Speaker 2: you're starting to see, Yeah, you do that your whole life.
Speaker 4: There's an illustration in one of the books that Gene
Speaker 4: has of issues bowhand too, and the way he the
Speaker 4: way he.
Speaker 3: Held more or less.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's weird. How he used his fingers for a rest.
Speaker 4: I can't I can't even.
Speaker 3: Oh you're talking about the bowhands, the string head.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, the way he had he was.
Speaker 3: He would somehow I can't even try to recreate it here,
Speaker 3: but he would use his hand. We don't. He didn't
Speaker 3: have a shelf on his bow, he didn't have a
Speaker 3: rest on his bow. The arrow would lay on his
Speaker 3: on his fist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but he tucked his thumb.
Speaker 6: It was like a weird his thumb was the shelf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, yeah, I've seen it. It's it's man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they must have been getting stuff close.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's the whole point, you know, and deer
Speaker 3: where I got to say, you know, we both hunted
Speaker 3: a lot, and sometimes you get into an area where
Speaker 3: the animals haven't been hunted as often or as hard,
Speaker 3: and they're not as wary. So you know, I'm thinking,
Speaker 3: you know, they're not the white tail in California at
Speaker 3: that time period. We're probably not as weary as the
Speaker 3: white tail we have today, which see people every day
Speaker 3: have arrowshot at them every week, so you know, it
Speaker 3: might have been a little different game to get animals
Speaker 3: closer to them.
Speaker 2: So you're in your museum though you've got like twenty
Speaker 2: three hundred over two thousand bows and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I felcus again back to that. You know, we
Speaker 3: get a little rabbit hole now and then, but they
Speaker 3: come back out of the rabbit hole. Now. What I
Speaker 3: like are the pre nineteen fifty and that's the era
Speaker 3: where you know, I call it the pioneering era. From
Speaker 3: eighteen seventies to nineteen fifty. This is when people are
Speaker 3: starting to really get into the sport for the first time.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't have books to read, we don't
Speaker 3: have magazines, we don't have videos, and we're going out
Speaker 3: and we're shooting a bow and arrow. But it looks
Speaker 3: like fun. It sounds like fun. It is fun, But
Speaker 3: I don't know what I'm doing. How does an arrow work?
Speaker 3: What kind of broadhead should I be using. They didn't
Speaker 3: know that a broadhead had to be raiz or sharp,
Speaker 3: surgical sharp. They didn't know that, you know, all the
Speaker 3: things that we take for granted today about hunting with
Speaker 3: a ball and arrow. They were learning, they were discovering.
Speaker 3: And even when I started, I started my first year
Speaker 3: bowling was for deer was nineteen seventy, and a lot
Speaker 3: of the things I was taught in nineteen seventy aren't true.
Speaker 3: I was taught that you wanted to get an arrow
Speaker 3: in a deer, and you wanted the arrow to stay
Speaker 3: in a deer because when he ran, you wanted to
Speaker 3: get to cut, you know, cutting more as he was running.
Speaker 3: Well after that, we learned that we need to get
Speaker 3: blood on the ground, and to get blood on the ground,
Speaker 3: you need an exit wound. And that's where you know,
Speaker 3: especially shooting from a tree stand the entrance round's going
Speaker 3: to be high, the exit wound's going to be low,
Speaker 3: and your your blood trail is going to come from
Speaker 3: down here. So we want complete pass through to be
Speaker 3: able to get that blood on the ground. Well, for
Speaker 3: that to happen, we want that arrow to pass through
Speaker 3: the animal as quickly, in effort effortlessly as possible. We
Speaker 3: don't want the arrow to stay in the animal because
Speaker 3: we're not going to get a blood trail. So they
Speaker 3: were learning all this stuff, you know, they were writing
Speaker 3: the books, and that's the period I like. That's the
Speaker 3: period I like to focus on. So when I'm looking
Speaker 3: for things in my collection, I'm not looking for, you know,
Speaker 3: a nineteen seventy Bear Kodiak, they're great bows. I'm looking
Speaker 3: for something that was a wood bow that was made
Speaker 3: by somebody with a spokeshave and a draw knife over
Speaker 3: their workbench and their blood, sweat and tears are still
Speaker 3: their DNA are still on that wood, you know, And
Speaker 3: that's the that's the kind of stuff I like in
Speaker 3: my collection.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in seventy years it will be Iron Bears, classic
Speaker 4: bows and putting them in him.
Speaker 3: He's gonna sign it though.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wanna I wanna ask you two to give
Speaker 2: us some place to start. What what stood out to you,
Speaker 2: Josh in this second episode.
Speaker 4: Man, it's such a it's it's such a powerful story.
Speaker 4: And I think that there's a lot of things that
Speaker 4: us in modern society could pull from the life of
Speaker 4: Ishi after his emergence. And I think, I think, I'm
Speaker 4: I'm drawn to the character of Ishi. Yeah, and I
Speaker 4: have great appreciation because the injustices that were done to
Speaker 4: his people and to him.
Speaker 3: And he was an eyewitness to all of.
Speaker 4: Those exactly, were incalculable to us, like we can't even
Speaker 4: be compared, like we we don't understand that. But to
Speaker 4: take this man from a jail cell in Oroville to
Speaker 4: Berkeley and for his I don't want to say assimilation,
Speaker 4: because I don't know that is she assimilated, But his
Speaker 4: adaptation to life inside of modern society was incredible. And
Speaker 4: the way that he was able to I can't imagine
Speaker 4: that is she ever forgot about his family or how
Speaker 4: he lived, but how he didn't carry that, I don't
Speaker 4: know another way to say it. Then he walked through
Speaker 4: a fire, came out and didn't smell like smoke, and
Speaker 4: he was able to live his life joyful, build strong
Speaker 4: relationships with people that he cared about, live a life
Speaker 4: in a world that was completely unimaginable to him previously.
Speaker 4: I think it's just commendable for a human being, And
Speaker 4: that is really what impacted me when I hear his story.
Speaker 2: Jan said it a couple of times just about the
Speaker 2: care character of the character.
Speaker 3: The character of the man was incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, he.
Speaker 3: Comes out of hiding in nineteen eleven and he's seen
Speaker 3: his whole family, his whole culture, his whole tribe killed
Speaker 3: before his eyes. These are things he's eyewitness to, and
Speaker 3: he comes out of that in nineteen eleven, comes down
Speaker 3: into that stockyard, and within a matter of two months
Speaker 3: he's at the University of California and they're opening the
Speaker 3: anthropology wing, and of course Issue's going to be a
Speaker 3: focus of the new anthropology wing they're opening. And so
Speaker 3: they have all these dignitaries coming from all over the
Speaker 3: country to come to the opening. They would have come anyhow,
Speaker 3: but they're coming really now. Especially I want to see
Speaker 3: Issue while I'm here. So he's got to transform from
Speaker 3: this stone age man to this man who's going to
Speaker 3: be welcoming dignitaries at the university opening of their new
Speaker 3: anthropology department in just a matter of two months. So
Speaker 3: he's in good clothing and he's taught enough English to
Speaker 3: be able to welcome those people. And when he welcomes
Speaker 3: those people in his culture, in his mind, he has
Speaker 3: to give them the respect to say their name.
Speaker 1: So that was something that he was doing on his own.
Speaker 3: He was doing that on his own. He wasn't coached
Speaker 3: to do that. That was part of his culture, That
Speaker 3: was part of his his respect, you know, for other people.
Speaker 3: So when he would be introduced to somebody, he would hello, mister,
Speaker 3: you know, he would repeat their name on purpose, because
Speaker 3: that was his way of showing respect to people who
Speaker 3: have killed his tribe, his family just a matter of
Speaker 3: years before that. And that was that was a sign
Speaker 3: of his culture, you know.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting because it was said and Krober
Speaker 2: said it in her book, but about how he wouldn't
Speaker 2: say his name because there was no one, no one, no.
Speaker 3: One left alive to give me a name.
Speaker 1: Yes, but that was the story he gave.
Speaker 3: Of course he had a name, you know, that was
Speaker 3: the story he gave them. But of course he had
Speaker 3: a name. Yes, he just in his culture, you weren't
Speaker 3: allowed to say your own name, you.
Speaker 2: Know, right, Well, it's interesting that he was doing what like,
Speaker 2: by him saying your name, it kind of validates that
Speaker 2: ye like, I'm not going to say my name.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's very important for me to know your name, yes,
Speaker 3: but it's not so important for me to be speaking
Speaker 3: my name. So it was, you know, again back to
Speaker 3: the culture of that society that it was not all
Speaker 3: about me, it was about you. It was about us, you.
Speaker 2: Know that that right, that statement right there, and the
Speaker 2: stuff about the name, I just my brain just spends
Speaker 2: when I try to understand what it would be like
Speaker 2: to not have this Western ideology of this individualistic society
Speaker 2: is so deep, it's so deep inside of us, this
Speaker 2: idea of exceptional like personal exceptionalism.
Speaker 3: Me.
Speaker 1: Look what I've done.
Speaker 2: I mean even the We've talked about it in other things,
Speaker 2: but we did a we did a series on to
Speaker 2: comes to the Shawnee Leader, and I talked to Ben Barnes,
Speaker 2: the chief of the Shawnee today, a modern chief, and
Speaker 2: he says that in their language, even the structure of
Speaker 2: language and where they put nouns is different than English.
Speaker 2: English emphasizes who, what, who did it? Like if I
Speaker 2: say something, I say I cook the soup, the emphasis
Speaker 2: on I, And in the Shawnee language the emphasis would
Speaker 2: not be on.
Speaker 1: You, me or who did it? The soup was cooked.
Speaker 1: And you know the point is we are.
Speaker 3: It's foreign to us, but it's there's something to be
Speaker 3: learned from that, right. I think there's a a good
Speaker 3: moral lesson there for us. And I think another interesting story,
Speaker 3: you know, in that time period there where he's again
Speaker 3: he's just come out of this stone age culture and
Speaker 3: how he's living in you know, the University of California
Speaker 3: and meeting all these dignitaries from all over the world,
Speaker 3: and he would be invited to go into these different rooms,
Speaker 3: different meetings and such. And when he walked into the room,
Speaker 3: one of the things he would always say to people
Speaker 3: as he walked in and he was trying again to
Speaker 3: speak English, you know, he was trying to assimilate, you know,
Speaker 3: his into this new world. And when he walked into
Speaker 3: the room, he would say, everybody happy, And it was
Speaker 3: really important for him. It was really important for him
Speaker 3: to know that everybody in the room was feeling good.
Speaker 3: Are you happy? You know, everybidy happy. You can just
Speaker 3: imagine his accent, you know, saying that. And I think
Speaker 3: that's just another another aspect of who he was as
Speaker 3: a man. But I think he was as a man
Speaker 3: probably as he was the culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm just imagining him walking into his camp
Speaker 2: on Mill Creek with his mother and his sister cousin.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was part of their culture.
Speaker 3: It was part of their culture.
Speaker 1: It would have had to have been.
Speaker 2: And that's what's so unique about issue that will never,
Speaker 2: at least on this continent that never have another opportunity
Speaker 2: to is to deal with somebody that was that isolated
Speaker 2: from Western society and to draw these conclusions about who
Speaker 2: they were. Here's the questions that I have though, Like
Speaker 2: talking about how happy is she was, It's possible a
Speaker 2: critic today could be like, what was he really happy?
Speaker 1: Well, and we all know.
Speaker 2: That humans we're supposed to not just tell every We
Speaker 2: live in a restraint as powerful like if I'm unhappy
Speaker 2: right now, like you don't have to know about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, so, like, I wonder how how traumatic, how
Speaker 2: much his front of being happy and cordial I was real.
Speaker 3: Here's what I think, and I feel pretty confident in this.
Speaker 3: When when the door was closed, he had to shed tears.
Speaker 3: He had to. But when the door was open, that
Speaker 3: was the real issue. You know, the inside of issue
Speaker 3: was a happy person. The inside of issue was an optimist.
Speaker 3: When the door was closed, the memories had to come back.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Yeah, it's wild that he didn't hold any or
Speaker 7: at least it doesn't seem like he held any bitterness
Speaker 7: towards right.
Speaker 1: The people that wiped out his whole culture.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think I think that bitterness, though, is an artifact
Speaker 2: of our modern society.
Speaker 1: I really do.
Speaker 2: Like I don't think he would have known that he
Speaker 2: had permission, and I don't know, not permission from a person,
Speaker 2: That's not what I mean, but like like bitterness, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I think really there's something inside of there's
Speaker 2: something about knowledge and the communication and the all the
Speaker 2: biases that we have about other people or other social
Speaker 2: classes of people or people from wherever that like you kind.
Speaker 1: Of like, you know, I'm going to feel like you can.
Speaker 3: Just just hit me, as you said that, just hit me.
Speaker 3: The world today is filled so full of hate, and
Speaker 3: I wonder if hate was a concept that he even had,
Speaker 3: you know, and.
Speaker 4: Maybe that was the Well, that's an interesting thought.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just you know, everything that's happened over the last
Speaker 3: few weeks, months, and even years. You know, hate is
Speaker 3: a big part of our culture today. Wow. See, if
Speaker 3: we didn't have hate, maybe that's what's separated in.
Speaker 2: Well and the fact that we could imagine a culture
Speaker 2: that didn't have hate, Yeah, because you know, you think
Speaker 2: about you would think, Ischi with this little tight group
Speaker 2: of people that have been exterminated, that his family would
Speaker 2: have been sitting up on that mountain looking down there,
Speaker 2: saying those evil people, Yeah, it's trying to kill us.
Speaker 2: We've got to And maybe they weren't.
Speaker 3: You know. And I've got a bookshelf full of books
Speaker 3: on issue. You know, Krober's book is one, and that's
Speaker 3: the most well known, but there's a lot of books.
Speaker 3: I brought several here today, every book that I've read
Speaker 3: about issue over the years. Nothing in there is ever
Speaker 3: makes you believe there was there was animosity, you know,
Speaker 3: hate or animosity, whichever word you want to use. Nothing
Speaker 3: in there ever leads me to believe that he or
Speaker 3: his family members ever had any of that feeling even
Speaker 3: while they were all alive.
Speaker 2: That's an odd place to be though, when you when
Speaker 2: you know that these people are after you to kill you.
Speaker 2: They the surveyors that stole all their gear and supplies,
Speaker 2: which is just it's just hard to imagine.
Speaker 1: It's also I also.
Speaker 2: Know that historical revision is really complicated for us today
Speaker 2: to be like, oh, those you know, barbarians, How could
Speaker 2: they do that? I mean, you know, in their time,
Speaker 2: I don't know, for some reason they felt the liberty
Speaker 2: to take take that stuff from them?
Speaker 3: How could you?
Speaker 1: Do?
Speaker 3: You know this? This old lady is obviously on her deathbed,
Speaker 3: laying there in the camp, and she's under the covers,
Speaker 3: and you steal everything. You steal everything except the bed
Speaker 3: and the covers that she's got. You take everything that
Speaker 3: they need to make food, to get food, to gather food,
Speaker 3: the baskets to carry the food. They take it all
Speaker 3: as souvenirs and leave the lady laying there. I mean,
Speaker 3: what kind of person does that take?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's that's one of the wild stories.
Speaker 3: That's one of the ones that makes me just cringe,
Speaker 3: you know, you know, I just you know, human nature
Speaker 3: can sometimes maybe there's evil in us that is buried deep,
Speaker 3: and most of us keep that buried deep and sometimes
Speaker 3: it comes to the surface. And that came to the surface.
Speaker 2: I think that would be a result of generations of
Speaker 2: not viewing those people as yeah, they're not people's right.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just like and there had been that
Speaker 2: was at the tail end of literally a century plus
Speaker 2: long I mean centuries plus long genocide. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 2: like these people were sub sub human, right. I think
Speaker 2: that's the only way that you could just see.
Speaker 3: Way could do it in your mind? How could you sleep?
Speaker 3: You know? The story of Kingsley's Cave, which we talked
Speaker 3: about in the podcast, is one of the last massacres,
Speaker 3: you know, mass massacres of the Yahi. And there were
Speaker 3: about thirty three Yahie in this cave. They had been
Speaker 3: chased by these people, these four vigilantes, and they thirty
Speaker 3: three of the last remaining Yahi's going to this cave
Speaker 3: and these men walk in there with their rifles and
Speaker 3: just start shooting. You know, these people in a cave
Speaker 3: backed up against the wall, and they just men, women
Speaker 3: and children, and they just start shooting. Within One of
Speaker 3: them had a fifty six caliber Sharp's rifle and he's
Speaker 3: just blasting away with this repeater sharps, and he puts
Speaker 3: the rifle down and picks his pistol up to finish
Speaker 3: the job. And you know what he said afterwards, I
Speaker 3: put the rifle down and picked up the pistol because
Speaker 3: the rifle was tearing them up too bad, especially the
Speaker 3: little ones.
Speaker 5: Wow, brute.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. I mean that makes me cringe sitting
Speaker 3: here today.
Speaker 1: The brutality of it. Wow, incredible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But you know, I'll go back to the you know,
Speaker 3: talk about the good things about Ishi. I think again,
Speaker 3: the things we can learn from Ishi. You know, the
Speaker 3: optimist in him. You know, when they went on the
Speaker 3: nineteen forty expedition back up in the Yahee country, he
Speaker 3: didn't want to go because there were too many I
Speaker 3: think you said fourteen fourteen, nineteen fourteen. He takes Pope
Speaker 3: and Waterman and Krober and Pope's son Saxton Junior. Well,
Speaker 3: they planned this trip without him really being involved. And
Speaker 3: then they go to him and say, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: Issu She, We're going to go back up into where
Speaker 3: you came from and we're going to do a little
Speaker 3: expedition back up in there to see all these stories
Speaker 3: you tell us. We want to go see it issues like,
Speaker 3: you know, I don't really want to go. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, and I can imagine what's going on in
Speaker 3: his mind. There's a lot of ghosts up there that
Speaker 3: all the memories that I don't want to relive. He
Speaker 3: didn't say that, but I got to think that's what
Speaker 3: he's thinking. You know, he didn't want to go. One
Speaker 3: person that I read speculated that he didn't want to
Speaker 3: go because he thought they were going to take him
Speaker 3: back up there and release him, you know, that they're
Speaker 3: going to put him back into the wild. Well, no,
Speaker 3: that's not what they were going to do. They wanted
Speaker 3: to truly go learn more about him, him and his
Speaker 3: culture by going into where he lived and where he
Speaker 3: had for those during those forty years of concealment. So
Speaker 3: they go up into there, and they finally convinced him
Speaker 3: to go up into there, and we talked about that
Speaker 3: in the podcast.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: They had to make sure that all the equipment they
Speaker 3: took was stored in a room where it wasn't near
Speaker 3: the bones and all the things in the museum, because
Speaker 3: the spirits would have been not favorable on the trip
Speaker 3: if if that had happened. So they put everything in
Speaker 3: boxes and they shield it at all, you know, and
Speaker 3: convinced him that the spirits can't get into these boxes
Speaker 3: and they go up into the.
Speaker 1: She knew that was hogwash, well my life, but he
Speaker 1: was whatever he said.
Speaker 3: But when he got there, Once he got there, it
Speaker 3: was like you could you know, the relief over him
Speaker 3: to be back home. You know, it feels good to
Speaker 3: be home. It always feels good to be home, right
Speaker 3: that I don't want to go to I'm home feeling
Speaker 3: that he must have had. And then he took them
Speaker 3: around to all the places that he drew up, and
Speaker 3: he you know, where the stories he had been telling
Speaker 3: them about killing the bear when he was a young man,
Speaker 3: he killed a bear and you tah, I like the
Speaker 3: way you said it in the podcast. You know, the
Speaker 3: ceremonial disposal of the carcass was you know, he did that,
Speaker 3: and all these years later he's able to walk them
Speaker 3: back and go to that spot and dig those bones up.
Speaker 3: This is where I killed the bear.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: And you know, and they he took them swimming in
Speaker 3: the holes where he swam as a young man. You know,
Speaker 3: he took them back to the grizzly Bear's hiding place
Speaker 3: where he was with the last four when the surveying
Speaker 3: party found them in nineteen oh eight. He recreated that
Speaker 3: whole experience for them on that trip and that trip
Speaker 3: lasted like six weeks and it was it must you know.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine that that trip, like when my buddy
Speaker 2: Steve Renella always talks about it, he could go on
Speaker 2: a time machine, you know, he'd go back with like
Speaker 2: the Pleistocene hunters and seeing kill mammoths and stuff. That
Speaker 2: trip right there would be high on the list.
Speaker 3: That'd be on my bucket list of the.
Speaker 1: Time machine trip.
Speaker 2: To imagine going back there with him. The question that
Speaker 2: I have about that trip, and again it's going back
Speaker 2: trying to get into the head of Ishi. But would
Speaker 2: he have wanted to go back? And if he could,
Speaker 2: I mean like to go back and live like because
Speaker 2: you think about.
Speaker 3: No, he and the you know the books talk about that,
Speaker 3: and his feelings were No, that's that's the old me.
Speaker 3: The new me is here. I'm happy now. I'm happy
Speaker 3: at the university, I'm happy with my job. I'm happy.
Speaker 2: I think that's true because there could And again I'm
Speaker 2: playing a little bit of Devil's Advocate, but just kind
Speaker 2: of trying to answer some question, you know, historical revision.
Speaker 2: You go back and you say, was the guy really
Speaker 2: happy or was he just appeasing his captors?
Speaker 1: How much agency? Actually, there's got.
Speaker 3: To be there's got to be truth to both of that,
Speaker 3: because I think again, the stories and the memories must
Speaker 3: have been overwhelming, and as a person, you me, all
Speaker 3: of us would be the same way if we'd witnessed
Speaker 3: the genocide of our people, of our family. I don't
Speaker 3: know that I want to go back there. It's painful.
Speaker 3: But on the other hand, if I pushed those out
Speaker 3: of my mind, you know, that was home, that was
Speaker 3: where I came from. That's me. So I think that's
Speaker 3: where he transformed. You know, when they first approached him,
Speaker 3: he was like, no, not going, not going to do it,
Speaker 3: and then he was like once he got there.
Speaker 2: I also know that we it's a very difficult thing
Speaker 2: to not over romanticize, like his life living off the
Speaker 2: land too. I mean, I think it's possible that he
Speaker 2: would have come into civilization to California and he would
Speaker 2: have been like, oh, I can.
Speaker 1: Eat three times a day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know have to.
Speaker 1: This bed is pretty comfortable. Yeah, these people are pretty nice.
Speaker 2: You know, in our mind and modern civilization, like now
Speaker 2: we have this romantic thing like we're trying to go back,
Speaker 2: you know, we're like, oh, man, if he could have
Speaker 2: just roam the woods man, he sounds like, by all accounts,
Speaker 2: he came back in he came into this place and
Speaker 2: was just like this is this is the way I
Speaker 2: want to live. I mean, and that's that's probably not
Speaker 2: fair to say that.
Speaker 3: You know, the relief of not having to worry, not
Speaker 3: just about being able to sustain my life through hunting
Speaker 3: and fishing and gathering, but the relief of not being
Speaker 3: shot at every day, you know, or being fear of
Speaker 3: being shot at every day. It must have been I
Speaker 3: can finally sleep, I can finally relax, I can finally rest.
Speaker 3: It probably not just the creature comforts that he had,
Speaker 3: but it was the life that he had.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, man, it wouldn't it have been incredible if
Speaker 1: he would have lived twenty five years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the more we could have learned from him.
Speaker 1: That's the saddest part of the deal.
Speaker 2: I mean, people as should probably learn if they listen
Speaker 2: to Bear Grease and it's an old story, there's going
Speaker 2: to be some tragic yeah, inside of it. Almost all
Speaker 2: these stories end in a tragic way. But I mean, now,
Speaker 2: the fact that he was here for five years is it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm grateful for that. I mean he could
Speaker 2: have come in and died at tuberculosis in six months. O.
Speaker 3: You know, maybe he would have came in and not
Speaker 3: been associated with Krober and Waterman and Pope. You know,
Speaker 3: everything just came together. You know, it could have been
Speaker 3: scripted any better. Yeah, for those people, you know, Edwin Sappier,
Speaker 3: the linguist, Krober and Waterman, the anthropologists, Pope, the doctor
Speaker 3: to have all come into the story and all of
Speaker 3: them been the people they were, They really helped you
Speaker 3: know that story Flower, Yeah, you know, issue could have
Speaker 3: been captured, taken somewhere and the story would have been over.
Speaker 3: Yeah without those people.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: What I've found most interesting about the podcast, and just
Speaker 7: like listening to the whole story, was like how Ischi
Speaker 7: was kind of this like bottleneck of knowledge, Like all
Speaker 7: the knowledge from like thousands of years got passed through
Speaker 7: one man. Yeah, and you just wonder how much of
Speaker 7: that was lost. Like like whenever you look at like
Speaker 7: Arkansas Black Bears, they had this major population bottleneck and
Speaker 7: so now like the genetic diversity is still recovering. It's
Speaker 7: the same way with all that knowledge, it kind of
Speaker 7: came down to this really tight bottleneck where it was
Speaker 7: just ischy, and then now it's kind of back on
Speaker 7: the you know, like the knowledge is kind of being spread,
Speaker 7: but I'm sure a lot of it is kind of
Speaker 7: being rediscovered. I'm sure, Like you just have to imagine
Speaker 7: how much of it would have been lost? Yeah, like
Speaker 7: how much we don't know. I mean, like the fact
Speaker 7: that easy could go kill a deer in three days
Speaker 7: is like, you know, with a primitive weapon. Like I
Speaker 7: tried all season last year to do that and couldn't
Speaker 7: do it. So it's like it just makes you wonder
Speaker 7: how much did the generations of knowledge?
Speaker 1: How much of that got lost?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we had this conversation yesterday about they go
Speaker 2: up there and in three days kill a deer with
Speaker 2: a primitive bow.
Speaker 1: It's like that's pretty hard.
Speaker 2: I challenge anybody in the country with a primitive bow,
Speaker 2: and there's got there's guys that do it and can
Speaker 2: and have and we've done it. But you know, I've
Speaker 2: got just on the spot to just go kill a
Speaker 2: deer with a bow.
Speaker 3: Of one of the back We're going to back up
Speaker 3: a little bit. You know, you asked me earlier about
Speaker 3: some of the things in my collection. One of the
Speaker 3: things in my collection is a quiver, a back quiver. No,
Speaker 3: it's a belt quiver of Saxon Pope's. It was came
Speaker 3: from the pope's family direct, and it's made of white
Speaker 3: tail deer hide. Pope wouldn't have gone and bought a
Speaker 3: white tail deer hide and made a quiver from it.
Speaker 3: Pope killed that deer. Probably Pope killed that deer. Could
Speaker 3: have been Issue, but it probably Pope killed that deer
Speaker 3: and made that high or made that quiver out of
Speaker 3: the hide from the deer he killed, you know, because
Speaker 3: Issue was there to teach him how to do that.
Speaker 3: And he didn't kill that many white tail deer, you know,
Speaker 3: so it had to be one of the few white
Speaker 3: tail deer he killed in this time period. He died
Speaker 3: in nineteen twenty six, and that story of him going
Speaker 3: up into the mountains with Issue was nineteen fourteen, so
Speaker 3: a very short period of time there, and you know
Speaker 3: he killed I don't know, I don't remember now exactly
Speaker 3: a half a dozen deer during that time one of
Speaker 3: those deer. Is that quiver? It is it has to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you know that you can touch the history,
Speaker 3: you know, when you hold that in your hands, like
Speaker 3: holding that issue point or holding that quiver or the
Speaker 3: bow that Pope killed the lions with over in in Africa.
Speaker 3: When you hold that in your hand, you know you're
Speaker 3: holding the history of that bow. But you're also holding
Speaker 3: the history of that man, the man that made that bow,
Speaker 3: the man that used that bow. And that, to me,
Speaker 3: is what collecting is all about. It's not my collection
Speaker 3: isn't worth a nickel. You couldn't buy my collection. People
Speaker 3: have tried. It's not money. It's history, it's people, it's stories,
Speaker 3: and that's what makes it valuable.
Speaker 1: So interesting, what were the things that you said you
Speaker 1: wanted to You said there were a few things you
Speaker 1: wanted to clear up.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, yeah, I think going back and you
Speaker 3: set the plate for us here when you talked about
Speaker 3: earlier in this taping, you talked about the character of
Speaker 3: the man. And that's one of the things I didn't
Speaker 3: think I did a good enough job with when in
Speaker 3: the two podcasts earlier we talked a lot about the events,
Speaker 3: and we talked a lot about the stories, but we
Speaker 3: didn't talk enough about the character of the man. So
Speaker 3: we've talked a little bit about that today, and I
Speaker 3: think that's one of the main things I wanted to cover.
Speaker 3: But you know what kind of soul it takes to
Speaker 3: go through what he went through and come out of
Speaker 3: it an optimist and you know, walk into a room
Speaker 3: everybody happy. You know, when he left that trip in
Speaker 3: nineteen fourteen, when they finished the trip and they come
Speaker 3: back to the train station and they're going now back
Speaker 3: to Oroville, there's a crowd at the train station waiting
Speaker 3: to see is she leave? They're the hometown He's the
Speaker 3: hometown hero.
Speaker 4: Right, How ironic is that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, just years before you're trying to wipe out the
Speaker 3: whole culture and now he's the hometown hero. Well, there's
Speaker 3: a crowd of people at the train station to see
Speaker 3: is she leave? And that surprises is she? And it
Speaker 3: kind of must make him good. So he's on the
Speaker 3: train and he lowers the window and he sticks his
Speaker 3: head out the train window and he said, ladies and gentlemen, goodbye. Really,
Speaker 3: that's just I mean, that's the kind of man he was.
Speaker 3: You know that's a good gentleman. Good bye my fans.
Speaker 3: Yeah wow, But you know, and how he came from.
Speaker 3: To really emphasize that point, in eighteen ninety four, while
Speaker 3: he was still in concealment, there was one of the
Speaker 3: ranchers who had been his cabin had been raided west
Speaker 3: certainly by the issue or by the Ahi over the years.
Speaker 3: Had gotten tired of being raided, things being stolen from
Speaker 3: his cabin, So I'll get those rascals. So he put
Speaker 3: a sack of flower out on the table. And he
Speaker 3: wasn't there. He used the cabin only temporarily or part time.
Speaker 3: He puts a sack of flower on the table and
Speaker 3: he poisons the sack of flower with rat poison, and
Speaker 3: he puts a sign on the sack of flower that
Speaker 3: says poison. His logic was, if white man comes in,
Speaker 3: white man can read, and he won't take the flower
Speaker 3: because he knows it's poison. But if those rascal yeah
Speaker 3: he come in here, they won't be able to read.
Speaker 3: They'll take the flower and it'll kill them. So that's
Speaker 3: the kind of life that he lived for forty years
Speaker 3: in concealment, people trying to kill him, not to shoot
Speaker 3: him but poison, you know, vermin rat poison. Wow, and
Speaker 3: he comes out of that everybody happy. How do you
Speaker 3: do that? You know?
Speaker 2: I mean it's just it's such the story that shows
Speaker 2: the humanity of all people. Yeah, you know, just all
Speaker 2: the differences that we have and that we see that
Speaker 2: are external between men.
Speaker 1: I mean from different cultures, different times.
Speaker 2: The way we do things is the way we think
Speaker 2: about God, the way we think about our families. Man,
Speaker 2: there's really not that much difference.
Speaker 1: In all of us, you know, they shouldn't be.
Speaker 2: And the fact that the fact that this was notable
Speaker 2: to me, how quickly is she understood in a functional
Speaker 2: way the modern world with a matter of days. It
Speaker 2: just showed like there's no gap in his intelligence. You
Speaker 2: could have taught she had a flying airplane.
Speaker 4: Yep, he could.
Speaker 2: He could have been a pilot in six months and
Speaker 2: flown a plane if he'd have been live. It was
Speaker 2: not an intelligence issue, which I think sometimes there's this
Speaker 2: gap in our ability to think about these these primitive
Speaker 2: cultures as well. They must have been you know, not intelligent.
Speaker 2: Not so, I mean there were he is she could
Speaker 2: have had a i Q off the charts. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying he did, but he could have, and there were
Speaker 2: people that did that were just brilliant and you know,
Speaker 2: too interesting for.
Speaker 3: His family and his you know, other tribe members to
Speaker 3: have lived forty years up there in concealment, and for
Speaker 3: many of those years, people believed they were extinct because
Speaker 3: they were so good at covering their trail, and they
Speaker 3: walked from rock to rock, careful not to even make
Speaker 3: a footprint anywhere, not bend a branch, not break a branch,
Speaker 3: not leave any trace behind. I mean that's a sign
Speaker 3: of intelligence there, you know, in its own way. How
Speaker 3: could you be able to you know, think strategically like
Speaker 3: that for so many years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hey, I want to do something, and I want
Speaker 2: to do it while Jean's here, And it's going to
Speaker 2: surprise y all because y'all didn't know I was going
Speaker 2: to do this. Okay, we have we have a thing, Jane,
Speaker 2: that's called the Bear Grease Hall of Fame, where we
Speaker 2: we we.
Speaker 1: We take this actually quite serious.
Speaker 2: It started a little bit as a kind of a
Speaker 2: funny thing, right, But these are all people that we've
Speaker 2: done stories on, not all of them. I mean, we've
Speaker 2: done hundreds of stories. But there's like twelve. Let's see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.
Speaker 2: There are eleven people in the Hall of Fame. Some
Speaker 2: of our Hall of famers will be Daniel Boone, George mcjonkin,
Speaker 2: Roy Clark. Now Roy Clark is a plot man. This
Speaker 2: is not the singer Roy Clark. Yeah, the compass there,
Speaker 2: Davy Crockett, Wholt Collier. Some of these other guys are
Speaker 2: living guys. But we typically before we do a Hall
Speaker 2: of Fame induction for a person, we usually take a
Speaker 2: long time to think about it and talk about it.
Speaker 1: Yep, y'all know what I'm about to do.
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 3: I feel it coming.
Speaker 1: I want to. I want to.
Speaker 2: I want to make a motion to nominate. Is she
Speaker 2: to be in the Bear Grease Hall of Fame?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 4: I will second that age.
Speaker 1: Can we can we get a raise of hands in
Speaker 1: favor of the issue being in the.
Speaker 2: Hall of famesoutely okay, without a doubt. Never before have
Speaker 2: we so quickly put someone. But when this these stories
Speaker 2: started happening, I was like, she's in the Hall of Fame. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so we'll get a We'll get a little plaque made, yep,
Speaker 2: and he'll be the thirteenth inductee on to the Bargers
Speaker 2: Hall of Fame.
Speaker 3: Excellent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and the guys that we put in.
Speaker 2: There, there's some level of character that's in those in
Speaker 2: the every one of these people that stands out to us.
Speaker 4: It's not just accomplishment.
Speaker 2: Not yeah, it's not it's not just accomplishment base, but
Speaker 2: there's a there's a component of character and that that's
Speaker 2: it's interesting. That's what you emphasized, and that to me,
Speaker 2: that's what stands out about issue. Maybe it's the most
Speaker 2: it's the part of it that you wouldn't think would
Speaker 2: be most interesting, but probably is.
Speaker 3: Is how he he Yeah, he could have been just
Speaker 3: another story. I think if he hadn't been the person
Speaker 3: he was, you know, in the character of the man
Speaker 3: I think is what separates him. Yeah, it makes him
Speaker 3: such a unique part of that story.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Way before we uh, before we close down and we're
Speaker 2: we're in no hurry, I want to I want to
Speaker 2: talk to you about Fred Behar. All right, another one
Speaker 2: if you if you don't know Fred barre is, I
Speaker 2: would imagine most people who listen to this podcast would,
Speaker 2: But Fred Bear is considered the father of.
Speaker 1: Modern bow hunting.
Speaker 2: And uh, but to meet something, meet somebody that actually
Speaker 2: knew Fred Behar is pretty unique. But tell me how
Speaker 2: you knew Fred and just kind of your impressions of him.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I've been a bull hunter all my life.
Speaker 3: You know, again I told you earlier. My first big
Speaker 3: game animals were grasshoppers when I was six years old
Speaker 3: out in the cow pastor. So always been infatuated with
Speaker 3: a bow and arrow growing up, turning on the TV
Speaker 3: and watching the American sportsman Fred Bair Glenn Saint Charles
Speaker 3: hunting British Columbia for grizzly bears the highlight of my life,
Speaker 3: you know, as a young person. And then I started
Speaker 3: a retail business and archery retail business back in Columbus, Indiana,
Speaker 3: late seventies, and I was a bear dealer. So as
Speaker 3: a bear dealer, right, you get to go to shows.
Speaker 3: You get to go, you know, at that time, the
Speaker 3: Shot Show. There wasn't an archery trade show at that time,
Speaker 3: so going to the Shot Show and I got to
Speaker 3: be introduced to Fred as a dealer. And Fred was
Speaker 3: such a humble man. You know, if you're a dealer,
Speaker 3: you're at the top of the pyramid in Fred's mind,
Speaker 3: because you know, you're the one out there, You're the
Speaker 3: foot soldier out there bringing our sport to the people.
Speaker 3: You're the top of the pyramid. And that's the way
Speaker 3: Fred treated you. So as a dealer, I had to
Speaker 3: meet him several times, going to shows several times, and
Speaker 3: then you know, after a while, you kind of get
Speaker 3: to know each other and it becomes more of a
Speaker 3: you know, we weren't hunting buddies or anything like that,
Speaker 3: but you know we get to spend time and talk
Speaker 3: and build a friendship. But such a humble man, you know,
Speaker 3: and every story you hear about Fred, you would think
Speaker 3: maybe somebody of that stature, with the you know, all
Speaker 3: those accomplishments that Fred had, would have an ego. If
Speaker 3: Fred had nothing close to an ego. And that's just
Speaker 3: he would walk up to you, shake your hand, and
Speaker 3: he wanted to know about you. You know, what's your story,
Speaker 3: how are you doing? And that's that was Fred Bear.
Speaker 3: And I think without Fred, there were a lot of
Speaker 3: people making archery equipment back in the thirties. You know,
Speaker 3: he started go back to issue is Issue brought Pope
Speaker 3: into archery. Pope brought Compton, Will Compton and our young
Speaker 3: and archery. Our young brought Fred Behar into archery. Fred
Speaker 3: Bear brought me into archery. So I look at it
Speaker 3: like a family tree, you know. Fred Fred was you know,
Speaker 3: uncle Fred to a lot of us, and I think
Speaker 3: his story is worthy of a deep dive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've said it before, Fred Behar. We've got to
Speaker 1: do a bear grease at some point on Fred Bear.
Speaker 1: I mean he deserves that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Look, you said something, and I want to talk about this.
Speaker 2: You said that Fred was the best marketer of archery,
Speaker 2: maybe of all time.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: And that could be taken as, oh, Fred was just
Speaker 2: a good businessman and charismatic, but you kind of looked
Speaker 2: at it and I would too, as that marketing ability
Speaker 2: was actually really powerful, not just for the sport of archery,
Speaker 2: but for getting people on the bandwagon of modern hunting
Speaker 2: and conservation. So like, it took somebody that was really
Speaker 2: good at mark and this is relevant today and this
Speaker 2: is kind of where I'm going.
Speaker 1: It took somebody like a Fred Bear, Like we're all
Speaker 1: here today maybe maybe in large part because of a
Speaker 1: Fred Bear that marketed this to the world.
Speaker 5: Right, And.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just you said this, but it wasn't just
Speaker 2: you said it on the podcast. It wasn't just about
Speaker 2: making good archery equipment. He knew it had to be marketed.
Speaker 3: Well, you go back, you know, he started Bear Products
Speaker 3: Company in nineteen thirty three in Detroit, and at that time,
Speaker 3: archery and bow hunting in particular was not a very
Speaker 3: big sport. You know, there might have been a few
Speaker 3: hundred people across the whole country that were hunting with
Speaker 3: the bow and arrow. But he saw it his love
Speaker 3: for the sport. He saw it as something that he
Speaker 3: could bring to the masses and he could grow this.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't necessarily just to grow Bear archery. It
Speaker 3: was to grow the sport. And that's why all the
Speaker 3: patents that Fred ever put He got a lot of
Speaker 3: patents on archery equipment, he never enforced any of them.
Speaker 3: Patented the boat quiver. Can you imagine how much royalties
Speaker 3: he could have made off of enforcing the patent on
Speaker 3: the bulk uiver. But it was more important for him
Speaker 3: to see that be used to grow the sport than
Speaker 3: it was to make a dollar. And again, I think
Speaker 3: that goes back to character, you know, the character of
Speaker 3: the man. He cared about building the sport that was
Speaker 3: what was important to him, and that's bear archery will grow,
Speaker 3: but only because we're building a sport for it.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay.
Speaker 2: The reason that's relevant today is that there's a group
Speaker 2: of people, it's a very small minority of people that
Speaker 2: would say that modern hunting is over commercialized and is
Speaker 2: being marketed just for the sake of companies making money.
Speaker 2: Which there are plenty of companies that make money. Mediator
Speaker 2: makes money, Bear archery makes money today, Matthew's archery. I mean,
Speaker 2: like companies do make money, so what they're in business for.
Speaker 2: But their criticism is that we're promoting the sport of
Speaker 2: hunting for the sole purpose of making money. And there's
Speaker 2: a whole bunch more people in hunting today because of
Speaker 2: influencers and outdoor media than there would have been. And
Speaker 2: I heard you say something before this, you said, oh,
Speaker 2: there's always been those guys. I mean, basically, the opinion
Speaker 2: of these folks is that we should hunt and not
Speaker 2: talk about it. And in short, what I would say
Speaker 2: is that if we hunted and didn't talk about it,
Speaker 2: a generation from now, this whole thing would be dead.
Speaker 3: It'd be gone. Yep.
Speaker 1: Is that do you believe that to be true.
Speaker 3: Absolutely true. You know, I've been an active member of
Speaker 3: Popen Young. I'm a senior member of Popen Young. And
Speaker 3: Fred was a big part of Popen Young. And Fred
Speaker 3: was Bear Archery. You know, he was in the business.
Speaker 3: He was one of some people will say, you know
Speaker 3: that the commercialization of our sport has ruined our sport. Well,
Speaker 3: if that was true, Fred Bear would have been one
Speaker 3: of the first guys commercializing our sport. He didn't ruin
Speaker 3: our sport. He built our sport. So in are you
Speaker 3: commercializing the sport for the sacrifice of the sport? Are
Speaker 3: you commercializing to build the sport? Yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 3: make a few dollars. Like I said, Fred made money
Speaker 3: with Bear Archery Company, and that was his livelihood from
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty three until he passed away in nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 3: But he didn't do it at the sacrifice of archery.
Speaker 3: He did it at the benefit of archery. And another
Speaker 3: quote I want to give here, and we talked about
Speaker 3: this earlier too. One of the people that crosspaths with
Speaker 3: in my life was the guy that started Muzzy Archery Company.
Speaker 3: John and John and I got to be friends over
Speaker 3: the years and John said something to me one day
Speaker 3: at a show, and he said, there's you know, there's
Speaker 3: some people who want to be something in archery, and
Speaker 3: there's other people who want to do something for archery.
Speaker 3: And I thought, I sat down and I thought, Wow,
Speaker 3: that's really deep, you know, and I think that's where
Speaker 3: we're at. Are you doing what you're doing because you
Speaker 3: want to do something for archery, right? Are you doing
Speaker 3: it because you want to be somebody in archery? Are
Speaker 3: you're trying to be another thread bear? There'll never be
Speaker 3: another thread bear. Quit trying. It's not going to happen.
Speaker 3: You're just making a fool of yourself. But if you're
Speaker 3: trying to do something for archery, hats off to you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a powerful distinction because we have
Speaker 2: something today that we've never had before, which is social
Speaker 2: media influencers, which is a whole different category of marketing
Speaker 2: that the world's never seen before. And so you could
Speaker 2: make the argument that there's a lot of people in
Speaker 2: the hunting, not just bow hunting, but there are a
Speaker 2: lot of people in hunting that are trying to make
Speaker 2: a name for themselves, and you could, you.
Speaker 3: Know, you can smell those people right away.
Speaker 2: Well, I think you're right, and I think there's people
Speaker 2: that would probably get some of them wrong too, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, because I would, It's possible there would be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a lot of criticism of influencers.
Speaker 2: But my point about the hunting stuff is is that
Speaker 2: our culture, I mean, in bicycling and ATV stuff, and
Speaker 2: the equine world and the mule world, in sewing and knitting,
Speaker 2: there are influencers and homemaking and cooking. I mean, our
Speaker 2: culture has now social media influencers. Why wouldn't hunting have
Speaker 2: social media influencers as well? But the motivation of them
Speaker 2: is everything, and they're bad apples there are. But I
Speaker 2: just was thinking about I'm connecting all this kind of Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm kind of including you in a conversation you maybe
Speaker 2: hadn't been in before.
Speaker 1: But like those guys would criticize Fred Behar.
Speaker 3: If you think commercialization of our sport is bad, then
Speaker 3: you criticizing people like Fred Bhar and Ben Pearson, right,
Speaker 3: and you're wrong. Yeah, you know they commercialized our sport
Speaker 3: for the sake of our sport right now, the sake
Speaker 3: of their personal image or to be somebody important, right,
Speaker 3: They didn't cross their mind. Yeah yeah, it was just
Speaker 3: a byproduct of them building our sport.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, that's that's really interesting. Any closing thoughts, Joshua Bear.
Speaker 4: I don't think so. Man, that's been great. I really
Speaker 4: enjoyed this series, and I enjoyed getting to spend time
Speaker 4: with Jene man as a wealth of knowledge in that
Speaker 4: guy right there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't thank you enough for coming to Arkansas
Speaker 2: and being willing to share your story. Anything we could
Speaker 2: ever do for you that would be beneficial, I mean,
Speaker 2: we'd do it.
Speaker 1: I just thank you for I just.
Speaker 3: Keep doing what you're doing. You know, I'm bringing the
Speaker 3: stories and bringing you know, sharing the history of our
Speaker 3: sport and keeping the spirit alive with those people that
Speaker 3: came before us. I think that's that's what motivates me.
Speaker 3: So thank you for helping with that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, all right, keep the wild places wild, because that's
Speaker 2: where the Bears live.