Speaker 1: The Sportsman's Nation podcast network is brought to you by
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Speaker 1: followed by the number twenty. My name is Clay Nukeleman.
Speaker 1: I'm the host of the Bear Honey magazine podcast. I'll
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Speaker 1: everybody is navigating through the COVID Night Team coronavirus stuff
Speaker 1: that's going on all across the world. Pretty interesting times
Speaker 1: we live in. The bad news for bear hunters is
Speaker 1: that those are black. Bear Bonanza has been canceled. We
Speaker 1: said that on the last the last podcast, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to say it again. But we're gonna We're postponing it,
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Speaker 1: we're gonna do that again, sponsored by the back country
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Speaker 1: M check out. Hey, this is a fun podcast about
Speaker 1: how to make bar oil, bear grease, bear lard, bear tallow.
Speaker 1: We go through all the yeah, everything about about bear grease.
Speaker 1: It's a good one. We are at the Bear Honey
Speaker 1: Magazine Global headquarters on quarantine. Social distancing is happening here,
Speaker 1: Colby sitting totally across the room for me, we're legitimately
Speaker 1: a spear linkal spear length. Yeah, about a spear length.
Speaker 1: There's a spear up on the wall. We're about that
Speaker 1: far away. Hey, so I've got I've got Colby the
Speaker 1: bear Tech more head with me, the Global Bear Tech
Speaker 1: Global Bear Tech. Hey, we're gonna do something different than
Speaker 1: we usually do. You know, there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: kinds of podcasts, Colby. There's like short podcasts that like
Speaker 1: have a prescribed time. They're like twenty minutes long, and
Speaker 1: they're just like pounding out information and asking questions. That
Speaker 1: would be like you know, like information based podcast. And
Speaker 1: then there's like a long form conversational top podcast, which
Speaker 1: is typically what we would have. They would have no
Speaker 1: end time. You know, it might go two hours, might
Speaker 1: go an hour and a half, Rabbit trails. It's conversational,
Speaker 1: long form stuff. Yeah, that's my natural ten see inside
Speaker 1: of communications. So that's usually what we do. And I
Speaker 1: think when you communicate like that, you mine out a
Speaker 1: lot of nuggets of information and and stuff about the
Speaker 1: person and stories that are cool. Yeah. Okay, there's a
Speaker 1: third kind of podcast that This one is gonna be
Speaker 1: topic based. Topic based podcast where we pick out a
Speaker 1: topic and we we're gonna take our time, but we're
Speaker 1: gonna mine into the facts, the figures, the everything there
Speaker 1: has to do with this certain topic and we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about it. Okay, and that topic today it is
Speaker 1: bear grease, bear grease, chewing the fat, chewing the fat,
Speaker 1: rendering the fat. So we're gonna just jump right into
Speaker 1: talking about kind of a systematic way. First of all,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about how to harvest the bear fat
Speaker 1: off of a bear, like where you're gonna find out
Speaker 1: what to do proper handling and freeze it, all this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. We're gonna talk about best practices of rendering.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about how to render the fat,
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna talk about uses. So once you
Speaker 1: have this, what do you do with it? And then
Speaker 1: we're gonna end the podcast with talking about some historical
Speaker 1: significance and some kind of fun facts about bargrease. That's
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do. I like it. Okay, First of all,
Speaker 1: let's talk about terminology. There's a lot of different terminology
Speaker 1: with this. We're going with bear grease. Um, but it
Speaker 1: could also be called beare oil. Yes, Like if you're
Speaker 1: doing an Internet search, you might find this topic under
Speaker 1: bare oil, bare grease, or bear lardy or rendered bear fat,
Speaker 1: hurt them all, a lot of different possibilities. Bare grease
Speaker 1: is kind of like the historical, kind of old version
Speaker 1: of of the way to say it in uh gir
Speaker 1: stokers Look written in eighteen thirty seven about his travels
Speaker 1: and hunting in the Ozarks, which we're gonna do a
Speaker 1: podcast at some point about specifically about that book Wild Sport,
Speaker 1: Wild Sports, Yeah, by Frederick Gerstalker. His dog was named
Speaker 1: bear grease. Pretty cool, okay, and so um, but if
Speaker 1: you were being more technical, you probably call it bear
Speaker 1: lard or bear oil, okay. And so that's what that's
Speaker 1: for our purposes, bear grease. So the first topic at
Speaker 1: hand is where do you get bear fat? I think
Speaker 1: step one located bear go back to all the other
Speaker 1: podcasts to learn how to kill a bear? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, so you knowledge while you're quarantine, you can
Speaker 1: learn how to pursue bear, pursue and overtake and kill
Speaker 1: a bear in multiple different settings and locations. Yeah, whatever,
Speaker 1: however you do it, Yeah, kill a bear. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: so you have to find a dead bear. So let
Speaker 1: me use the success has already been achieved. Its success
Speaker 1: has been achieved. We've covered that another podcast Feeling good
Speaker 1: about yourself? Now it's time to get right right. Um.
Speaker 1: Some people may have never skinned a bear, and and
Speaker 1: and so when you think of like lots of fat,
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't find this kind of fat like on
Speaker 1: a deer or on an elk. And sometimes you'll find
Speaker 1: uh elker deer that would have, you know, quite a
Speaker 1: bit of fat like on the rum. But this is
Speaker 1: way different. Um. Basically, basically, when you skin a bear,
Speaker 1: he is gonna depend upon what time of year it is.
Speaker 1: If it's the spring, he's gonna have less fat. If
Speaker 1: it's the fall, he could potentially have a lot of fat.
Speaker 1: You could also kill a bear in the fall that
Speaker 1: didn't have much fat at all. So it's not guaranteed
Speaker 1: that you're gonna have a lot of fat. Um, if
Speaker 1: you killed the bear in mid September, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: less fat than if you killed that bear on November thirty, say,
Speaker 1: like the Arkansas bear season last November. I killed a
Speaker 1: bear one time on November and he was an absolute
Speaker 1: butter ball of fat. Bears typically store their fat on
Speaker 1: their rump, like the biggest the biggest collection of fat
Speaker 1: is gonna be on the bear's rump, but it could
Speaker 1: be all over his body, um, going all the way
Speaker 1: down the top of the back where you'll typically find it.
Speaker 1: It's from the shoulder blades all the way back down
Speaker 1: the body, about halfway down the rib cage to the rump.
Speaker 1: But that's really where they store this, like the big
Speaker 1: chunks of fat. And so you're you're gonna skin this
Speaker 1: bear just like you would a white tailed deer essentially, Um,
Speaker 1: I mean you're gonna you're gonna make cuts from the
Speaker 1: from the ankles down the inside of the leg to
Speaker 1: the center of the chest. Uh on both sides. You're
Speaker 1: gonna make a split down the belly, and essentially you're
Speaker 1: gonna quarter this animal. But you're gonna want to harvest
Speaker 1: some filets of fat off of this bear, which by
Speaker 1: filets would mean don't do your best to not get
Speaker 1: any little chunks of meat inside the fat in this
Speaker 1: that is gonna be it? Could it could differ in color,
Speaker 1: but typically it's like a pearly white I mean even
Speaker 1: like bright white, kind of granular looking fat like uh,
Speaker 1: pig fat is kind of has a real tight texture.
Speaker 1: Beaver fat has a has a little bit bigger grain
Speaker 1: to it almost, if I could describe it that way,
Speaker 1: it's it's uh. And and so you're just gonna take
Speaker 1: off like usable chunks of fat, like, um, well, this
Speaker 1: bear that I killed, we were literally cutting off four
Speaker 1: inch thick, probably twelve inch long slabs eight inches wide
Speaker 1: that weighed twenty pounds. I went home and weighed a
Speaker 1: piece of fat that I brought home in a weigh
Speaker 1: twenty pounds. Yeah, usually it's gonna be the smaller pieces.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be chunking off little pieces. And I would
Speaker 1: say that you need about you need about probably you know,
Speaker 1: taking home like five pounds of fat would probably get
Speaker 1: you started. Yeah, a couple of jars and uh, from
Speaker 1: the from the collection that I've done one pound. I'm
Speaker 1: looking on my notes here. Uh. We did an article
Speaker 1: on Barony magazine, uh in the September October issue basically, Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see, let's see, I'm looking for my one pound
Speaker 1: of fat. Basically, we'll get you about a pint of
Speaker 1: liquid oil. Yeah, I'm I'm looking for that here, depending
Speaker 1: on how well it renders. Yeah. Um so one that's
Speaker 1: a pretty good that's a pretty good equation, is that
Speaker 1: one pound of fat is gonna render about a pint
Speaker 1: of oil. Okay, but there's different methods for rendering it,
Speaker 1: and some of them are gonna be more efficient than others.
Speaker 1: But you've got this bare fat, You're gonna treat it
Speaker 1: just like a piece of meat. Like if you're if
Speaker 1: you have if you have game bags and you're hauling
Speaker 1: a bear out of the back country, you're just gonna
Speaker 1: pitch them in there. Yeah, You're just gonna put them
Speaker 1: in there. If you're if you're able to get the bear,
Speaker 1: you know, in the back of a truck and you're
Speaker 1: taking it back to your house to process it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to keep it cool, just like anything else. Um,
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to freeze it quickly. I've actually never
Speaker 1: I don't think i've ever rendered fresh lard, like taking
Speaker 1: it straight from the animal, aside from just cooking with it.
Speaker 1: Maybe there, Yeah, I mean like I've never like taken
Speaker 1: unfrozen lard and and rendered it into oil that I
Speaker 1: was gonna keep for a long time. So it freezes
Speaker 1: just fine. Yeah, so you just you just freeze it.
Speaker 1: It actually helps to freeze it. And you'll see later
Speaker 1: when we talk about the methodology for rendering fat. Um.
Speaker 1: But so you're gonna want to freeze it. I have
Speaker 1: heard somebody say that bear fat can spoil and a
Speaker 1: freezer frozen. I've not experienced that, And I've kept fat
Speaker 1: frozen for at least six months before and never had
Speaker 1: any problem with the freezing or or spoiling while it's frozen. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's not been an issue. Um, In the spring
Speaker 1: and fall, you're gonna find different amounts of fat. Last year,
Speaker 1: a year with me in Montana when we killed the
Speaker 1: bear early, I mean this bear hadn't been out of
Speaker 1: denlong killing. I made the fifth sharp Claws, Sharp Claws,
Speaker 1: long guard Hair's beautiful critter. He had a fair bit
Speaker 1: of fat on, I mean enough fat that if I
Speaker 1: had gone to Montana for the sole purpose of bringing
Speaker 1: home some some bear fat to render a couple of pints,
Speaker 1: I could have done it. Now I was I was trimming,
Speaker 1: I was having to be more particular, I was trimming off,
Speaker 1: you know, like these little filets, and they would be
Speaker 1: these thin, like half inch wide filets. I was primarily
Speaker 1: getting off the rump, okay, So and I was able
Speaker 1: to take home probably three or four or five pounds
Speaker 1: of fat. Okay, you kill a bear in the fall,
Speaker 1: you probably could a big bear in the fall, like
Speaker 1: some of these that were killing around here, there would
Speaker 1: be so much fat you'd have a hard time at all. Yeah. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if we're just being honest about it, I mean you you,
Speaker 1: you you could probably I mean, like that bear right
Speaker 1: there that I killed in November, you probably could have
Speaker 1: taken a hundred pounds of fat off of that bear,
Speaker 1: more than you one a haul. Yeah. Well, it's not
Speaker 1: even about hauling, it's just storing it more than you'd
Speaker 1: want to render. I mean, a little bit of bear
Speaker 1: greas goes a long way. Yeah, you have to. You'd
Speaker 1: have to go in empty walmart shelves of jars. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And more power to you, though, uh to to utilize
Speaker 1: as much as the animal as possible. And I think
Speaker 1: that's what's that's a cool part of this idea of
Speaker 1: utilization of bear grease. Because Kobe people in in in
Speaker 1: the United States and these United States, upwards of high
Speaker 1: seventies of of percentage of people approve of modern hunting
Speaker 1: if they believe that the person is using the animal
Speaker 1: for food. So like, let's just say seventy plus percent
Speaker 1: of people are okay with hon anything they believe it's
Speaker 1: done for food. The disconnect that we have with the
Speaker 1: bear hunters and the general populace is that people don't
Speaker 1: immediately assume that we're eating or utilizing bears for food.
Speaker 1: So there's that disconnect that we have to that we
Speaker 1: have to span, is that hey, yeah, we're using bear
Speaker 1: for food. And here's what I say is that you actually,
Speaker 1: we actually, as bear hunters, utilize more of that animal
Speaker 1: than any other kind of big animal that we hunt.
Speaker 1: Because how many deer that people kill did they tan
Speaker 1: their hides? Many? Very few some, but percentage wise, I
Speaker 1: mean probably like one percent of white tailda in this
Speaker 1: country that are harvested are their hides tanned. Well, bear
Speaker 1: I would say upwards of eighty five of bears that
Speaker 1: are harvested their hides are tanned. And obviously that's not
Speaker 1: for food, that's for ornamental purposes. These hides are being
Speaker 1: kept and hung in houses and and you know, used
Speaker 1: as just memory activators, trophies, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: I don't care. That's number one. Number two the meat
Speaker 1: we we this podcast isn't about bear meat, but man,
Speaker 1: bear meat is incredible. Uh, it's hard to refute that
Speaker 1: if you've given it much of a try in more
Speaker 1: than one place. Everybody's got some story about when they
Speaker 1: had bad bear meat. Well I've got a thousand stories
Speaker 1: of when we've had good bear meat, and people that
Speaker 1: want to like it like it. Yeah. Number three, bear fat,
Speaker 1: And that brings us right back to here. There's no
Speaker 1: other animal. I mean, people aren't rendering down the elk
Speaker 1: fat for utilization throughout the year for all these different purposes.
Speaker 1: So that narrative about utilization of animals for a for
Speaker 1: for commodities equating to approval from non hunters, really our
Speaker 1: place is pretty strong right there. You know, um and
Speaker 1: so bear fat, um, so spring and fall. Uh, you
Speaker 1: can get it in the spring, but there's more in
Speaker 1: the fall. Can you think of any other aspect of
Speaker 1: getting the bear fat that somebody might have. You can
Speaker 1: freeze it, cutting it off the rump um. There's really
Speaker 1: not much to it other than that, I mean, it
Speaker 1: takes longer to freeze and than meat, doesn't it. I
Speaker 1: don't know, why would you think that, just because it's
Speaker 1: more of an insulator, like I would think that it
Speaker 1: would take longer to freeze solid than like regular meat.
Speaker 1: But I don't know, I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that's true or not. I mean it's possible, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't think of anything. Yeah, okay, I mean it's
Speaker 1: just let's let's talk about how to how to render
Speaker 1: bear fat. Yeah, okay, So I prefer two. So rendering
Speaker 1: just means that you're heating. You're heating it until it
Speaker 1: turns into a liquid. Rendering as the idea that something
Speaker 1: starts out as a solid and then turns into a liquid.
Speaker 1: Change of state. Yeah, and so when we there's just
Speaker 1: like in most scenarios, there there are ways to do
Speaker 1: something that are fine, but there are also ways to
Speaker 1: do that same thing that are way better, and we
Speaker 1: would call that best practice. So I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: what's best practice for rendering bare fat. But it's quite
Speaker 1: a bit harder. Yeah, not that harder, much harder, but
Speaker 1: quite a bit harder. But the other way is just
Speaker 1: fine air quotes. Yeah, I think. I think one thing
Speaker 1: about the difference between fat and and like taking the
Speaker 1: muscle off or the meat is you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about like getting in big chunks or like keeping
Speaker 1: like some group together. You can just like off, you know, however,
Speaker 1: you can get it off, so there's not liking you right,
Speaker 1: a wrong way to to take it off, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could have small pieces either big pieces. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Um, So let's start with let's
Speaker 1: start with best practice. To me, best practice would be
Speaker 1: too take a semi frozen slab of bear fat that
Speaker 1: would be unfrozen enough that you could that you could
Speaker 1: cut it into small like one to one and a
Speaker 1: half inch cubes. The meat would be cool, and you
Speaker 1: would grind that meat. You're not meat. You would grind
Speaker 1: the fat, run the fat through a grinder and so
Speaker 1: just like a meat grinder, and basically it you know,
Speaker 1: it grinds up this to where the surface area of
Speaker 1: that large fat is way more than if you cube
Speaker 1: it up. And then you you heat that down and
Speaker 1: the render is very efficient. And I guess I've got
Speaker 1: to tell the story of the other way to do it.
Speaker 1: The way I first started doing it was just cubing
Speaker 1: it up into those one to one and a half
Speaker 1: inch squares basically when and it's easiest to cut when
Speaker 1: it's about half frozen. If it's totally thought out room temperature,
Speaker 1: it's much harder to cut. But if it's about if
Speaker 1: it's about half froze, man, you can just you can
Speaker 1: cube it up, just like you're cutting fudge or something.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's fairly solid, but you can still
Speaker 1: get a knife into it. Typically, what I first started
Speaker 1: doing was just putting those one inch cubes down into
Speaker 1: a heat source. And we'll talk about different heat sources
Speaker 1: you can use, and um you could. I would pour
Speaker 1: a little bit of water in there, just a little bit,
Speaker 1: not much, just to keep it from that fat from
Speaker 1: sticking to the heat, sticking to the pan, and then
Speaker 1: you would stir these chunks and basically those chunks would
Speaker 1: just begin to melt down, I mean, almost like butter,
Speaker 1: and you would begin to see liquid form. And you know,
Speaker 1: after uh, four or five minutes, you look down and
Speaker 1: half of those cubes would be gone and there would
Speaker 1: be this amber colored boiling liquid coming up around this
Speaker 1: fat and What happens is you eventually get to the
Speaker 1: point where all the fat that's gonna render is gonna render,
Speaker 1: and you still have some of the fat left and
Speaker 1: little chunks down in this oil, and uh we call
Speaker 1: those the cracklings. And what you would do then as
Speaker 1: you would strain out using uh any kind multiple types
Speaker 1: of strainers, but we like to use a cheese cloth
Speaker 1: cheese cloth over a metal funnel metal strainer funnel type apparatus.
Speaker 1: But that cheese cloth for sure gets all the really
Speaker 1: fine particles because there will be there'll be a little
Speaker 1: particular matter in there, um just from whatever, and you
Speaker 1: you strain that out into we'd like to use Mason jars,
Speaker 1: metal lid Mason jars, point jars down to what are
Speaker 1: those right there? This is like the little like three
Speaker 1: or four like quarter and I think you court point
Speaker 1: What did I say? Did I say? One pound does
Speaker 1: a point? Chucks? One pound does a One pound of
Speaker 1: bare fat will make a court tort? Okay, one one
Speaker 1: pound will make a court yeah yeah yeah. Um, So
Speaker 1: you you run through these cloth and you put it
Speaker 1: in these Mason jars and then you just immediately settled
Speaker 1: it up while it's hot but then you have this
Speaker 1: left over. Um, you have these leftover cracklings that can
Speaker 1: be you can you can salt them and eat them.
Speaker 1: I've used his dog treats before, just put them in
Speaker 1: a ziplog bag and just kept them using as dog treats.
Speaker 1: I've I've used them as snacks later. But there in
Speaker 1: lies the inefficiency because however much fat was in that
Speaker 1: little crackling, you didn't get his liquid oil when you
Speaker 1: when you grind the meat, you get almost a one
Speaker 1: percent efficiency. All of that bare fat turns into oil.
Speaker 1: So they're in lies's best practice turning bear fat into
Speaker 1: grease is if you grind it first. Yeah, we didn't
Speaker 1: have much in the last one that we did out
Speaker 1: here much what much anything left? Like most of it
Speaker 1: cooked down? Yeah. Yeah, you'll strain it through that cheese
Speaker 1: cloth and you'll just see small a few small, little
Speaker 1: little chunks of stuff. Um, you know, and I guess
Speaker 1: it's just like burnt bits of fat that that kind
Speaker 1: of solidified rather than turned into oil. Um. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about what kind of heating apparatus. You could do
Speaker 1: this on a stove in a metal pot, just like
Speaker 1: you cook with at home. Put it on low heat
Speaker 1: and stir it and just let it gradually melt down.
Speaker 1: We've done it in jet boils. Um. Last year we
Speaker 1: did it in a jet boil, and I think we
Speaker 1: rendered down probably a pint or two in like eight
Speaker 1: or nine minutes. UM. We also used a turkey cooker,
Speaker 1: which would be a kind of a one of these
Speaker 1: outdoor propane you know, hooks into a large propane tank,
Speaker 1: and used a big aluminum um, big aluminum pot or
Speaker 1: stay in the steel pot whatever. A little fish friers
Speaker 1: growing up. Yeah, yeah, like a fish fryer exactly. And
Speaker 1: we found that the hotter you cook it, the darker
Speaker 1: the oil will be. If you cook it slow and low,
Speaker 1: the oil is lighter. I want to say that we
Speaker 1: were just cooking it up to about two and twenty
Speaker 1: five degrees in the in the low portion, um, and
Speaker 1: it was getting up to it was getting up quite
Speaker 1: a bit hotter than that with the jet boil. I
Speaker 1: think it was right around three hundred degrees and the
Speaker 1: jet boil. Do we try fried daddy too or something like? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we did a fried daddy. Um. You know what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do, Kobe, I'm going to pull up our YouTube
Speaker 1: video so we we did a YouTube video called experimenting
Speaker 1: with Bear Fat, and I'm gonna pull up a few
Speaker 1: of the the stats from that video just as we're
Speaker 1: as we're talking about it, because it was I probably
Speaker 1: should have reviewed this before we uh, before we started.
Speaker 1: But okay, here we go grinding. Okay, yeah, that we
Speaker 1: we We did the cookie turkey cooker up to two
Speaker 1: twenty five degrees. The Fried Daddy cooked at three hundred degrees,
Speaker 1: and so the Fried Daddy oil was a little bit
Speaker 1: darker than than the other oil. The jet boil got
Speaker 1: up to three d and fifteen degrees. We we couldn't
Speaker 1: really regulate the temperature that much with that, but the
Speaker 1: turkey cooker were able to slow it down to about
Speaker 1: two five um. So the jet boil and the Fried
Speaker 1: Daddy we cooked about eight to nine minutes. So this
Speaker 1: doesn't have to take all day. You know, when I
Speaker 1: first started doing this, I had this idea that like
Speaker 1: took hours to like interface mails down quick eight to
Speaker 1: nine minutes. That that those temperatures eight minutes in the
Speaker 1: Fried Daddy, I mean, the oil is totally rendered and
Speaker 1: it doesn't do you any good to keep cooking it
Speaker 1: after it's done. Now, when we did it at two
Speaker 1: twenty five degrees, we had to cook it about thirty
Speaker 1: the thirty five minutes to get it down into oil.
Speaker 1: And one pint per pound of fat one pint tint
Speaker 1: per pound of fat. So we were right, not a
Speaker 1: court one pint per pint pound of fat. Um. So
Speaker 1: what you're gonna have once you so, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: this amber colored liquid. It's gonna be super hot and dangerous. Hey,
Speaker 1: rabbit trail alert. You see my hand right there? Do
Speaker 1: you know what happened in my hand? No? Do you
Speaker 1: not know? You never told me? I'll be darn. Have
Speaker 1: you ever noticed my hand? Tell me the truth? Not
Speaker 1: that I've paid attention. Okay, it used to be way
Speaker 1: more noticeable. But do you see that scar going across
Speaker 1: my knuckles all the way down to my fingernails. Um,
Speaker 1: it used to be really knows what? My hand was
Speaker 1: almost white, and it's because I was burned by bacon
Speaker 1: grease when I was about twenty two years old. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were camping on Buffalo River and we were cooking
Speaker 1: bacon grease over a fire and I went to dump
Speaker 1: the pan, dump the oil out of a cast iron
Speaker 1: skillet and Uh, I used it was kind of using
Speaker 1: a makeshift potholder. It was a it was a hat.
Speaker 1: It was like a straw hat. And I took it
Speaker 1: over just outside of our camp and the the hat
Speaker 1: started smoking like the straw hat. It's like a it
Speaker 1: was like a like a real floppy like women's straw hat.
Speaker 1: Why I was using that, I don't know. I was
Speaker 1: twenty two years old and it kind of freaked me
Speaker 1: out that it was smoking. And I tilted that back,
Speaker 1: tilted it back, and that just sizzling bacon grease went
Speaker 1: all over the top of my hand and h and
Speaker 1: sent me to the hospital, sent me out of work
Speaker 1: for two weeks. And UH had a man. Uh I
Speaker 1: think it was a second degree. It wasn't quite a
Speaker 1: third degree, but all the all the skin burned off
Speaker 1: my hand. It was miserable. Yeah. And I say all
Speaker 1: that to say this stuff is super dangerous. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: really is. I have deep respect for hot oil holds.
Speaker 1: The heat. Oh man, you get it on your skin,
Speaker 1: you're in big trouble. So let's be careful with it. Um.
Speaker 1: The so when you first poured into a jar, it's
Speaker 1: it looks almost like honey it's like liquid, beautiful amber
Speaker 1: colored stuff. As it cools, it will solidify and it'll
Speaker 1: it'll turn into almost like a semi solid, slushy type material.
Speaker 1: But the solids and the oil, like the pure oil,
Speaker 1: will begin to separate. And I've seen different batches of
Speaker 1: oil separate in different quantities, Like I've seen some oil
Speaker 1: colby that was like solid and this beautiful amber colored liquid.
Speaker 1: And that's what me and you were actually trying to
Speaker 1: discover last year when we cooked it at different temperatures.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a temperature variable because you'll get
Speaker 1: some barre oil that you do the same thing and
Speaker 1: it's almost solid. It's this white, creamy fat. And so
Speaker 1: I was like, well, how do you make sure that
Speaker 1: you get this beautiful oil versus this creamy white stuff?
Speaker 1: And somebody told me that it has to do with
Speaker 1: what the bear has been eating. Like since I haven't
Speaker 1: gone into the science of it, but essentially like the
Speaker 1: choresterol level of the animal. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: true or not, but we couldn't find a way when
Speaker 1: rendering it that it made a difference. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like it just does it on its own, Like how
Speaker 1: much solid and how much liquid. But color had to
Speaker 1: do with temperature. But it doesn't matter that. That's the
Speaker 1: thing like with if you're just if you're just trying
Speaker 1: to have oil just to use for cooking, for all
Speaker 1: the things we're about to talk about, like what do
Speaker 1: you do with this stuff? It doesn't matter if it's
Speaker 1: you you use the creamy white stuff. It's not like
Speaker 1: you have to strain out just to get the the
Speaker 1: the amber colored liquid oil and not use the solid
Speaker 1: stuff because it's not really solid. You put it in
Speaker 1: the paint hot pan and it immediately turns into liquid
Speaker 1: with me, yeah, yeah, changes changes it's solidity. Would solidity
Speaker 1: be a word good enough? Yeah, it would change for
Speaker 1: more of it, like a solid looking to just a
Speaker 1: clear oil. So at room temperature, that's what it looks like.
Speaker 1: If you were to take that. We were looking at
Speaker 1: the barrel oil in our eastern window here at the
Speaker 1: Global Headquarters, and it's got probably uh, I would say
Speaker 1: this amber color liquid that you can see through, and
Speaker 1: then this white and if you took a spoonful of
Speaker 1: that and put it in a frying pan, it would
Speaker 1: immediately turn to just liquid and fried, just like olive oil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's even loose light whenever with that when whenever
Speaker 1: you move it around, like the what looks more solid
Speaker 1: moves around too. Yeah. So that is uh, that's how
Speaker 1: you make it. When you when you pour it into
Speaker 1: these jars, after it's been sieved through cheesecloth, you you
Speaker 1: seal it up, let it cool down before you touch it,
Speaker 1: mess with it, and then you just store. You don't
Speaker 1: even have to refrigerate it. It will store. I have
Speaker 1: used barrel oil that's set on a window sill for
Speaker 1: a year and a half inside of and it get
Speaker 1: cooked with it and it was fine. Yeah, uh it,
Speaker 1: if I'm being honest, it had a slight taste to
Speaker 1: it that the fresher stuff didn't have. That was a
Speaker 1: year and a half later, which I would say that's
Speaker 1: pretty extreme. Yeah. So this stuff easily has a shelf
Speaker 1: life of a year. That's that's really this stuff is. Hey,
Speaker 1: you know what this we did this almost a year ago,
Speaker 1: this oil that we're using now from may Montana bear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh I fried crappy in it, uh ten days ago? Yeah? Perfect? No,
Speaker 1: I mean this beautiful, great frying oil. We did a
Speaker 1: good job. We did a good job. Colby Um, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that a year without refrigeration, a glass jar,
Speaker 1: barrel oil perfect Bear Hunting Magazine approved. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that's what we've found. Um okay, let's talk about us.
Speaker 1: What do you do? What do you do with barreil?
Speaker 1: A lot of things? There's a lot of things, so
Speaker 1: bear oil can here. Here's a simple rundown. Here's a
Speaker 1: SoundBite rundown. And this isn't like a list that's completed.
Speaker 1: This is a list that's always attitude. Right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there's there's always ways. But but you can take
Speaker 1: this list and understand in general practice what this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff is used for. First of all, back in
Speaker 1: the day, they used animal large for different stuff than
Speaker 1: we do today. Now we have some other types of
Speaker 1: oils that we use. Um, but in general, you can
Speaker 1: use barrel oil as a baking substitute for shortening. Yep, okay,
Speaker 1: so in in barrel oil is renowned for pastries. A
Speaker 1: lot of people know that. That's pretty common. I think
Speaker 1: ten years ago that wasn't that common in outdoor space,
Speaker 1: like people. I'm not saying people didn't know it, but
Speaker 1: it's just like anymore, you're just like, what's barre all
Speaker 1: is good for them. People are like pastries, so and
Speaker 1: that's cool. That's good that people know that. We posted
Speaker 1: in UM March April issue Barning Magazine a recipe about
Speaker 1: how to make bear claw danishes using the barrel oil. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: that was a good Yeah. Wild Feast, the wild Feast,
Speaker 1: what's our buddy's name, Michael, The wild Feast um so
Speaker 1: number one. You can use it as a substitute for
Speaker 1: anything thing that calls for shortening or margarine not margine
Speaker 1: shortening um number two. And this is my favorite way
Speaker 1: to use it in the way that I like to use.
Speaker 1: Its pan frying stuff we do in the fall a
Speaker 1: lot of times with dear meat. It just seems like
Speaker 1: when the fall comes, I have this inclination to want
Speaker 1: to pan fry, whether it be deer meat, would be
Speaker 1: bear meat, whether it be fried potatoes, fried potatoes and onions.
Speaker 1: And man, that lard is so good for pan fry
Speaker 1: and stuff. Way better. You know, you think people use
Speaker 1: vegetable oil or or whatever. The healthier choice would be
Speaker 1: olive oil. Olive oils like really way better for you
Speaker 1: than conola or vegetable oil. A lot of people know that,
Speaker 1: but historically, if you're pan frying like backstraps, venison backstraps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would use vegetable or canola oil, man use bear fat.
Speaker 1: We could cat fish in it too, yeah, in in
Speaker 1: what in barrel? Yeah yeah yeah. So pan fry and anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like, I love pan frying, fish, hand frying, anything, vegetables, squirrels, anything.
Speaker 1: So if you don't use it for anything other than that,
Speaker 1: like maybe you don't bake a lot man, take the
Speaker 1: lard off a bear that you kill this year, pan
Speaker 1: fry with it. Great thing. Okay, well was it that
Speaker 1: that thing that the guy did with was it with
Speaker 1: gumbo or something like? He did like a yeah, a
Speaker 1: rue for gumbo. So last year I had a guy
Speaker 1: I have to tell you that he wrote a really
Speaker 1: great book about He's a chef down in Louisiana. World.
Speaker 1: Are now gumbo chef? Uh? Camera call his name? He
Speaker 1: sent in his book and and he wanted to do
Speaker 1: a historically accurate rue for gumbo, which called for bear
Speaker 1: fat because all the bear fat from this part of
Speaker 1: the country and the Ozarks would be shipped down the
Speaker 1: White River to the Mississippi River and down to Louisiana.
Speaker 1: And for making this rue, which is basically the first
Speaker 1: step in making gumbo, you needed some type of lard.
Speaker 1: So these guys had in the old cookbooks that said
Speaker 1: to use bear lard to make the roof. Well, he
Speaker 1: didn't know where to find bear lard. He contacted us
Speaker 1: and I sent him a pint and he made his
Speaker 1: roof for his gumbo. Yeah that's pretty cool. And yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I've read in the historical literature where people ate bear
Speaker 1: grease like butter. Like they would have a jar like
Speaker 1: that and put it on bread. And again, you gotta
Speaker 1: remember back in those times, these were people that were
Speaker 1: just looking for ways to in take calories. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean these people were surviving, and so they you know,
Speaker 1: salt some bar grease and and spread it on a
Speaker 1: piece of toast. I have it. They would use it
Speaker 1: like molasses, like pop it on the plate right beside him.
Speaker 1: People from the South may not eat molasses, but you
Speaker 1: know the way we would eat molasses. Just take a
Speaker 1: big spoonful of molasses and put it on a put
Speaker 1: it on your plate and with your biscuits, and usually
Speaker 1: in breakfast is when you eat it, you just take
Speaker 1: a little nippa molasses with it. Well, that's the way
Speaker 1: they would eat bear grease, eat it like butter. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: those those are most of the cooking type things that
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about. That that covers a fairly
Speaker 1: wide span there. But uh, it can also be used
Speaker 1: for softening and waterproofing leather. So it's in oil. Um.
Speaker 1: I've used it on my boots and times past, and
Speaker 1: it does a good job of waterproofing. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: say that it's not as good as some of the
Speaker 1: more modern waterproofing technologies. Yeah, I just don't think it
Speaker 1: is um at least not in its raw state like
Speaker 1: minx fed oil and stuff. Some of that stuff is
Speaker 1: top notch still today, and I'm not sure how that's processed.
Speaker 1: Minx foed oil, I'm not sure how that's processed to
Speaker 1: turn it into that kind of creamy almost like lotion
Speaker 1: e type white stuff that you put on your boots.
Speaker 1: I put barrel on boot. It's it does repel water,
Speaker 1: but I just don't think it's quite as good, So
Speaker 1: I think they used to use it for that. I've
Speaker 1: also heard complaints that if you barre oil your boots
Speaker 1: and you like leave them in a dark closet for
Speaker 1: six months without wearing them. They can come out and
Speaker 1: you can have a little bit of mold on your boot. Okay,
Speaker 1: but if you regularly apply it and you're it's a
Speaker 1: pair of boots that you're using, I don't think you
Speaker 1: have any problem with it. But remember back of a day,
Speaker 1: it is the best they had, so they were it
Speaker 1: would have been great, you know, way better than nothing.
Speaker 1: So more exploration going on there. Okay, oiling metals which
Speaker 1: would be knife knife blades. So you gotta think back
Speaker 1: in the day, they weren't using stainless steel. We're just
Speaker 1: these guys were just using like standard type uh steel
Speaker 1: that would easily rest and so they oiled knife blades.
Speaker 1: I still do that today, that big knife right there,
Speaker 1: that's in that sheath you pulled out right, and now
Speaker 1: I don't have a film on it from a year
Speaker 1: ago when I put barrel el on it. Uh. They
Speaker 1: also used it for oil and guns, which you can
Speaker 1: still use to this day. I have not found any
Speaker 1: negative consequence to using barrel oil on a modern firearm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody may be able to contradict me on that. I
Speaker 1: have yet to find it. They also used the barrel
Speaker 1: oil as a lubricant for muzzloader patches. So they were
Speaker 1: cramming round musket balls, you know, down of down guns,
Speaker 1: and they would they would wet the patch with barrel oil.
Speaker 1: Makes perfect sense. Yeah, that's pretty cool stuff. Okay. Uh
Speaker 1: they used barrel oil for fuel in oil burning lamps,
Speaker 1: which we tried yep um, and I haven't ran that
Speaker 1: experiment to my satisfaction yet, colbe because the we only
Speaker 1: had a short wick. And uh, I just poured barrel
Speaker 1: oil down in this oil burning lamp and lit it
Speaker 1: and it will certainly light, But it burned away quicker
Speaker 1: than I was anticipating, and I burned up my wick.
Speaker 1: I've got some more wicks ordered. This is from last year.
Speaker 1: I just ordered some wicks, by the way. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: they used it as a fuel for basically producing light,
Speaker 1: you know, and in a lamp, in a fuel burning lamp. Okay,
Speaker 1: wells around here for brooks. Blevins told me that they
Speaker 1: used it for making candles. Yeah, the bare oil for
Speaker 1: making candles, which would be to make use it in
Speaker 1: the wax in some way. Uh. And then the final
Speaker 1: one on my list here is making Lye soap, so
Speaker 1: you use animal fat to make Lye soap. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: guy sent us some the other day from Montana and
Speaker 1: he said, this is a bear tallo He called it
Speaker 1: bear Tallow. There's another name, bear tallow. Coconut oil, olive oil,
Speaker 1: castor oil, uh spit s P I t U l
Speaker 1: I n A, and essential oils. And it is a
Speaker 1: beautiful bar of soap. Smells great Lye soap has so
Speaker 1: many different positive things that guys talk about. One of
Speaker 1: the coolest things that's coming to mill. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 1: was cool. A guy one of our readers up in
Speaker 1: Montana sent that to I've tried to make bear fat
Speaker 1: lie soap one time, Kolbe, and it turned out more
Speaker 1: like bear fat uh bear fat shampoo. Okay, it didn't solve,
Speaker 1: it didn't solidify. I did it wrong. It was a
Speaker 1: pretty big process. And so it's it's this liquid when
Speaker 1: it's hot and you're supposed to just like leave it
Speaker 1: in these trays like overnight. Yeah, you come back the
Speaker 1: next day and you have this like sheet of soap. Well,
Speaker 1: when I came back the next day, it didn't solidify completely.
Speaker 1: So it's real mushy, So I called it shampoo. It
Speaker 1: was more like a shampoo. But I actually want to
Speaker 1: experiment with that some more. But any kind of animal
Speaker 1: lard you can use to make lass soap, which is
Speaker 1: has a lot of positive benefits. Okay, can you think
Speaker 1: of anything else that I didn't hit there? I mean
Speaker 1: I came up with a pun. Oh, of course you did.
Speaker 1: That's here. Let's here. It's like, you know, you're using
Speaker 1: bear fat on your on your musket ball. It's like,
Speaker 1: really could be boar butter, boar butter. Okay, Okay, that's
Speaker 1: why Colby gets paid the big bucks here at the
Speaker 1: global headquarters for the puns more butter more. But we're
Speaker 1: gonna market that. You know, I kept it to myself
Speaker 1: for a while. You were grinning over there on the
Speaker 1: Something's having. When Colby grins, there's nothing funny going on.
Speaker 1: He's thinking of a pun. That's that's way his mind works.
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen that often. But um so, the history
Speaker 1: of bear grease, So bear grease is nut was known
Speaker 1: to not go rancid as quickly as pork lard. Okay,
Speaker 1: so pork lard. Now, I've never put pork lard in
Speaker 1: a jar and left it for a year to see,
Speaker 1: so I can't say, but they say that it would
Speaker 1: go bad. Bear lard would keep longer, that's what they say. Um.
Speaker 1: So it was really valuable and it's a super valuable
Speaker 1: commodity in the pioneer days all across the bear range
Speaker 1: where people were trying to forge out a living and
Speaker 1: market hunters for bears sold bear fat. So you killed
Speaker 1: the bear, you sold the hide, You sold the fat,
Speaker 1: and you sold the meat. Bear hide was sold in eels,
Speaker 1: so it's a unit of measurement called an eel, which
Speaker 1: an eel is was the tanned neck of a deer.
Speaker 1: So you'd tell you'd kill a deer, and you would
Speaker 1: tan the neck of the deer, sew it together, make
Speaker 1: a pouch of barrel oil which would hold around a gallon,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit more than a gallon, and then
Speaker 1: you would sew it or seal it up, and they
Speaker 1: would sell an eel of barrel oil and um and
Speaker 1: sell it a market. Um. They were companies. We learned
Speaker 1: from Brooks Blevins last week that there were companies in
Speaker 1: Arkansas and presumably all over the country that made I
Speaker 1: mean they were they were bear fat rendering companies, UM
Speaker 1: that that made oil and they would usually be positioned
Speaker 1: in great places for them to be able to ship
Speaker 1: on the waterways to Almost all the barrel oil coming
Speaker 1: out of Arkansas, most of it was going down to
Speaker 1: Louisiana the markets down there, because it was so easy
Speaker 1: to get down down in that part of the world.
Speaker 1: Wasn't when the town was called like Old Trough or
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, so he gave a big explanation.
Speaker 1: There's a town to to this day, or at least
Speaker 1: a community in Arkansas called the Oil Trough, and uh,
Speaker 1: a couple of different stories, but essentially the oil Trough
Speaker 1: was a barrel oil trough, you know. Um, so it
Speaker 1: was a valued commodity worth a lot of money. Um.
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone, you know, once killed a hundred fifty five
Speaker 1: bears in one winter and he stored bear lard in barrels.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's all this really cool history about bears,
Speaker 1: Old Troff, Arkansas, Bear Grease, the Dog and the Girls
Speaker 1: Darker Book. Um. I mean, back in the day, this
Speaker 1: would have just been like super normal stuff like Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to the store. I'm gonna pick up a
Speaker 1: gallon of milk, some bear grease, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: some cheese. It's you know, it's like, um, this would
Speaker 1: have been like a household commodity, which is so cool
Speaker 1: to think about. Um, And you know, you think about
Speaker 1: the wildlife loss we have. Now you can't sell wildlife
Speaker 1: related commodities, so we can't. It's been taken off the market,
Speaker 1: which essentially killed it from modern culture. You know. I
Speaker 1: mean back in the day when you could buy it,
Speaker 1: everybody would have used it, and it would have been
Speaker 1: common for people to connect what they were using in
Speaker 1: their house back to some wild place in the land. Well, no,
Speaker 1: there's no longer that traction there. So that's why I
Speaker 1: think bear grease is so cool. Um. Lastly, let's close
Speaker 1: by talking about a guy named Gordon Wimsat. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot of folksy stuff around bear grease.
Speaker 1: So Gordon Wimsat. We published an article in the July
Speaker 1: August issue twenty nineteen issue of Barony magazine about Gordon Wimsat,
Speaker 1: who lived in uh Cloudcroft, New Mexico, and Gordon was
Speaker 1: friends when he was young with a guy of Apache descent,
Speaker 1: and that that guy his friend, told him that the
Speaker 1: Apaches used to take the scraped bladder of a deer
Speaker 1: which we're gonna do some experiment with. And they put
Speaker 1: bar oil in the scraped bladder of a deer, which
Speaker 1: the scraped bladder just meant that they fleshed it basically
Speaker 1: like you would have hide, and it hardened and made
Speaker 1: like a little jar essentially, and they would pour rendered
Speaker 1: barrel oil into these bladders. And that's how they stored
Speaker 1: the barrel oil. Well, you could see through the barrel oil.
Speaker 1: It was a it was a clear became a clear container.
Speaker 1: And he said the apaches could forecast the weather looking
Speaker 1: at a bladder of bear grease. Well Gordon Websat he
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen fifteen and basically he spent sixty
Speaker 1: years studying barrel oil. And at one time he had
Speaker 1: a hundred jars of barrel oil in a south facing
Speaker 1: window in his home. And he built an elaborate weather
Speaker 1: forecasting chart that we have printed in Barren Hounting magazine.
Speaker 1: And he became I mean to say he was world
Speaker 1: renowned would probably not be an understatement, but he became
Speaker 1: renowned for being able to forecast weather based upon this
Speaker 1: barrel oil. And essentially what he would do is you
Speaker 1: remember us talking about this solid and then liquid portions
Speaker 1: in a clear jar barrel. Eil is that that changes
Speaker 1: basically with barometric pressure and with weather conditions. You would
Speaker 1: he got to where he he could just notice the slightest,
Speaker 1: most nuanced change in that layer between the solid and
Speaker 1: the liquid. Like you look at this piece of this
Speaker 1: jar right here, Colby, It's like the top of that
Speaker 1: solid layer isn't totally flat. I mean it's not like
Speaker 1: a billiard table. It kind of undulated. It's kind of
Speaker 1: got some curves and some little pieces that stick up
Speaker 1: and it's not flat. Well, Gordon Wibsite said that he
Speaker 1: could forecast the weather based upon what changes inside of that.
Speaker 1: Um make call it, call him crazy. I don't know, Um,
Speaker 1: but we've been observing bear Flat for several years here
Speaker 1: at the Global headquarters, and um, it does get weird sometimes,
Speaker 1: it does change. It does change. It's I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: say it's like massive changes all the time. Um. But
Speaker 1: he so, we we'll somehow make this available where you
Speaker 1: can see Gordon's chart. But he has this like pictograph
Speaker 1: type chart. I'm gonna I'm gonna read you a couple
Speaker 1: of his weather forecasts here. Okay, So number one has
Speaker 1: a description of just like a totally flat top. And
Speaker 1: he says heavy and bottom no change for several hours.
Speaker 1: Clear number two slight build up, some cloud cover like
Speaker 1: if the if the center of the solid part is
Speaker 1: higher than the edges, he said, there'll be cloud cover.
Speaker 1: So these are like really like nuanced weather forecast. Um
Speaker 1: build up and peak like if there's a point, if
Speaker 1: it's like a if it angles up to like a
Speaker 1: pretty distinct point, he says. Um, clouds and moisture close
Speaker 1: at hand. Okay, um, he goes on, you gotta read this,
Speaker 1: people gotta read this article. Gordon got to where he
Speaker 1: was known for predicting earthquakes and pretty crazy stuff. Ripley's
Speaker 1: Believe It or Not did an episode on him back
Speaker 1: in the eighties, and then he was also on Good
Speaker 1: Morning America after he predicted an earthquake in Mexico City. Crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy, Gordon Whim said. He died in nine uh
Speaker 1: at the age of eighty years old. And um, anyway,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool stuff. It was a cool article to read. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was. So you know what, here's another
Speaker 1: use of bear fact. Put it in decorative jars. Okay,
Speaker 1: bear hunters shouldn't spend a lot of time at hobby lobby. Okay,
Speaker 1: really one good reason. But if you want to get
Speaker 1: some cool decorative jars, go ahead and go to hobby lobby.
Speaker 1: Bring your wife with you, you know, so the hobby lobby.
Speaker 1: You need your camouflage, right, Yeah, I wear a Cama Barrett,
Speaker 1: wear a Bear Honeting magazine Bear Grease hat, and you'll
Speaker 1: be you won't lose your Man card some back order
Speaker 1: right now due to popular to man. Yeah, you're right, No,
Speaker 1: I actually I like hobby lobby. Um, go to hobby lobby,
Speaker 1: get some decorative jars, put them in there, and then
Speaker 1: give bear grease away to people as gifts at Christmas time.
Speaker 1: Tell them they can forecast weather if they put in
Speaker 1: the south facing wind there. I've done it. My mother
Speaker 1: in law still has a jar that she's probably had
Speaker 1: for five years, and uh, it's beautiful, still sitting in
Speaker 1: her window. I think if you open it up right
Speaker 1: now and try to use it, I think it would
Speaker 1: be bad after five years. It is beautiful though, because
Speaker 1: the longer it's set there, the more it's solidified. So
Speaker 1: the amber colored liquid is just like almost clear and
Speaker 1: has this solid stuff at the bottom. But it's a
Speaker 1: conversation starter. It's like, yeah, that's that's my bear grease. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's a great use for it. Yeah, I've given
Speaker 1: away a lot of bear grease um and uh a
Speaker 1: lot of people. You know. Uh, Well, there's another lady
Speaker 1: that we both know that has requested some bargrease because
Speaker 1: she wants to use it as a glaze on I
Speaker 1: want to say, meatballs. Yeah, she heard that it would
Speaker 1: be really good for like a Syrian the outside of meatballs. Anyway, Well,
Speaker 1: I'll have to follow up with her on that. Yeah. Hey, man,
Speaker 1: that's I'd say that's a pretty good overview of beargrease. Um,
Speaker 1: a great overview. But the main thing is is is
Speaker 1: we want to we want to continue to educate people that, man,
Speaker 1: we're using these animals. You know, just because this is
Speaker 1: a big predator doesn't mean that we're just taking the
Speaker 1: hides and heading out of town. Um. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we want to encourage people to to to eat it,
Speaker 1: to render down some fat tan the hides. We're we're
Speaker 1: utilized as much of these bears as we can. That's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: closing comments, Kobe, I mean, I think it's just cool
Speaker 1: to be able to assign value to things that people
Speaker 1: don't see value in, you know, and then also to
Speaker 1: like going through it in this way just um taking
Speaker 1: off any any type of thing that would make someone
Speaker 1: think that it was difficult or hard or like remove
Speaker 1: some of the mystery of it, because really like historically
Speaker 1: would be a really normal common practice that you know,
Speaker 1: just kind of lost touch with just based upon I
Speaker 1: mean really like beare numbers are are are high right
Speaker 1: now where they wouldn't have historically been. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like uncovering some history and some common use that
Speaker 1: you know still value today. I mean, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: the pure stuff you could probably use. This doesn't it's
Speaker 1: not gonna have any additives or anything. It's just you know,
Speaker 1: what you take from the land and really like this
Speaker 1: whole like filled the fork and and everything. I mean,
Speaker 1: how cool is it too. It's just one more part
Speaker 1: of the process that you have involvement in inside the house,
Speaker 1: like whenever you're cooking and stuff. It's not I just
Speaker 1: didn't get the meat. I also got the grease of
Speaker 1: the oil and other things that that we're using. So
Speaker 1: I think there's a really cool aspect to that. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't. I didn't mention that this oil
Speaker 1: taste like oil is supposed to taste, which is you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to taste it exactly. Yeah, Like people like,
Speaker 1: what does it taste like? And I'm like, well, good
Speaker 1: oil doesn't taste like anything. Yeah, good oil gives texture
Speaker 1: to food, gives texture to pastries. Like you don't. It's
Speaker 1: not like you're gonna eat an apple pie made from
Speaker 1: burglaries and be like, well that's kind of gamy. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I mean good oil is absent except for just making
Speaker 1: it taste good. And and that is barrel. I thought
Speaker 1: about that while you're talking for some reasons, just like
Speaker 1: it's not like you're compromising something by you know, taste
Speaker 1: like well you fry pan, fry fish or something in
Speaker 1: barre oil, It's not gonna have a gamey taste. It's oil.
Speaker 1: It's oil. Doesn't have a smell to it. No, it
Speaker 1: has a now it probably has. It does have a smell,
Speaker 1: like it smells like something, but so would pig lard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would have a it's not a bad smell like
Speaker 1: it's you don't stick your nose on it. And just
Speaker 1: like I cannot smell that like you wouldn't say that,
Speaker 1: like you would go, something's there, something is there. It's
Speaker 1: not off putting, it's not unusual, not super strong, right right, No,
Speaker 1: it's not. But great, well, hey, all the more reason
Speaker 1: to keep the wild places wild because that's where the
Speaker 1: bears live.