Speaker 1: Yeah, my name is Clay and Nukeleman. This is a
Speaker 1: production of the bear Grease podcast called The Bear Grease Render,
Speaker 1: where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f
Speaker 1: HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear
Speaker 1: that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore.
Speaker 1: All right, Corey, go ahead and put that bear fat
Speaker 1: in all of it. Yep, let's uh, we just need
Speaker 1: to keep it stirring. So we are. We're in Montana
Speaker 1: and we've got a we've got a fire going. We're
Speaker 1: on the side of the creek here. We just put
Speaker 1: about seven pounds of fresh Montana spring color phase bear
Speaker 1: fat into a Dutch oven and maybe the most apropos
Speaker 1: bear grease render of all time. We're gonna render bear
Speaker 1: grease while we are talking. So welcome to the bear
Speaker 1: Grease Render. Everybody. Like I said, We're in Montana and
Speaker 1: I'm joined by two special guests. I have to my left,
Speaker 1: Bear John nwcom my son. Hello, how's it going bear,
Speaker 1: pretty kid? Pretty good? Bears got a story to tell
Speaker 1: us here a little bit. And then Corey Hawkins of
Speaker 1: Meat Eater Corey, good to have you, Man, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. We are we're creekside. We've been bear hunting
Speaker 1: in Montana, and so for for anybody that this would
Speaker 1: be their first bear grease render, the bear grease render
Speaker 1: is when we we generally talk about the previous week's podcast.
Speaker 1: On this episode, this is in the field Burghery Surrender,
Speaker 1: which is a little bit different. We're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: the adventures that we've had over the last five days.
Speaker 1: This is the fifth day of our Western Spring bear Hunt. Corey.
Speaker 1: You've been doing this for a long time though, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: sure have up in these parts anyway. Bear this is
Speaker 1: your first spring bear hunt, Western spring bear hunt. What
Speaker 1: are your impressions so far? Man, Um, I like it.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a lot different than hunting back in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: I mean, like everything's bigger, so, like you're the hunting
Speaker 1: is just way different. Yeah, big mountains, big big mountains.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk some about our last Genuine Outlaw series.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about that, but we're also going to
Speaker 1: talk about that on the next render. But I want
Speaker 1: to dive into our hunt this week, Corey. This is
Speaker 1: my seventh Montana Spring bear hunt, and I think nine years.
Speaker 1: I think it's my seventh hunt. No, No, seventh hunt
Speaker 1: in eight years, because once I came twice last year,
Speaker 1: I came twice to Montana. Um, so I'm counting that
Speaker 1: is two different hunts. Man. You've got it back in
Speaker 1: here for a long time, that's right. Tell me what
Speaker 1: you used to do before you work for meat Eater,
Speaker 1: and then I want to hear what you do for
Speaker 1: meat Eater. Well, I guided back here for eight years. Uh,
Speaker 1: fisherman in the summer, I should say spring bear hunters,
Speaker 1: and then fisherman all summer, and then come September we
Speaker 1: do eight weeks of archery and then rifle elk hunters too.
Speaker 1: Guided back here for a while, and then moved down
Speaker 1: to Bozeman and guided fisherman and hunters down around Bozeman
Speaker 1: for about seven years after that. So I've been guiding
Speaker 1: for about fifteen years until I started for meat Eater.
Speaker 1: You started for meat to your year and a half ago? Correct?
Speaker 1: And now, Bart, did you know that Corey guided for
Speaker 1: a big fancy elk outfit in Montana. In you guided,
Speaker 1: I mean like over thirty successful elk hunts for hunters,
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah, what years would that have been. Really,
Speaker 1: did you tell the name of that place or no?
Speaker 1: It's the c A Ranch, Yeah, Climbing Arrow Ranch. It
Speaker 1: just sold to its some new owners, So the history
Speaker 1: of it has changed quite a bit just in the
Speaker 1: last year. It's not a secret place anymore. It's it's
Speaker 1: a well known ranch for both its history and the
Speaker 1: elk hunting. Guys like Will Primos, who's been on the show,
Speaker 1: has hunted there. Yeah, so we're bear, we're up here
Speaker 1: talking and and Corey had heard Will Primos on this
Speaker 1: podcast and he was like, yeah, I know Wilbur Primos.
Speaker 1: I guided him for elk old Wilbur. Yeah, isn't that cool?
Speaker 1: Now you were guiding back into you were doing horse trips,
Speaker 1: mule trips back into some pretty wild places. M So
Speaker 1: you've been around equine and mules a lot my whole life. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I grew up with him. My parents had a couple
Speaker 1: of horses, more show horsing. They'd throw my little cute,
Speaker 1: blonde hair, blue eyed kid on a on a bay
Speaker 1: horse and ride me around and we'd win some blue
Speaker 1: ribbons just for showing. And then they my parents did
Speaker 1: some trips back in here on horseback, so I grew
Speaker 1: up with them, and then they got a little expensive
Speaker 1: as I got older, so we got rid of horses.
Speaker 1: But then when I started working back here, started using
Speaker 1: horses and mules packing on them. So our hunt this week,
Speaker 1: we're just on foot. We Uh, I didn't the last
Speaker 1: I think twice I brought mules for spring bear hunting
Speaker 1: into Montana. Um, but this year we're just on foot.
Speaker 1: And uh, we've walked. How much do you think we've
Speaker 1: walked over the last four days, Corey, I'd say we've
Speaker 1: we've averaged about ten miles a day, so over forty
Speaker 1: miles fifty miles. Yeah, we've covered We've covered some ground. Bear,
Speaker 1: were you a little bit more out after day through? Yes?
Speaker 1: I gotta say though, these Arkansas boys do pretty well
Speaker 1: in the Montana Mountains. I will say, well, bears getting
Speaker 1: big enough now where he can outwalk and out hunt me,
Speaker 1: that's for sure. But I can see that it took
Speaker 1: him a while to get there, but he's there now.
Speaker 1: We've got this, Uh, we've got a big Dutch oven
Speaker 1: that's just full of very fat. We're gonna have to
Speaker 1: get this fire hotter um, that's for sure. Yeah, move that,
Speaker 1: So we gotta great over the fire, and we really
Speaker 1: want to get that fire right up under that pot.
Speaker 1: It's gotta be pretty dr and hot to render it down, Okay,
Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta tell. So the the way that
Speaker 1: we're hunting these bears up here is that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of heavily forested area, not a lot of openings,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of logging activity, and so we're
Speaker 1: walking roads. So these roads green up before everything else.
Speaker 1: And it's no secret about how in the Northwest people
Speaker 1: hunt bears. In the spring, there's there's no berries, the
Speaker 1: berries haven't ripened yet, there's no hard mask because hard
Speaker 1: mask grow was all summer and then as ready in
Speaker 1: the fall. Pretty much what these bears have to eat
Speaker 1: is insects that are coming out, and then green vegetation
Speaker 1: and then anything that could catch as far as meat,
Speaker 1: like they might catch an elk calf for a moose
Speaker 1: calf or find winter kill carrying type of stuff. That
Speaker 1: means though, that these roads create openings in the timber
Speaker 1: where green grass grows, vegetation grows. There's these clear cuts
Speaker 1: wherever the sun can reach the forest floor, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be green stuff and man, there's no rhyme or reason. Well,
Speaker 1: there is rhyme or reason, but you're basically just trying
Speaker 1: to cover as much possible ground as as you can
Speaker 1: find bear sign and then hunt in those areas. And
Speaker 1: bear sign would be bear scat along roads. You might
Speaker 1: see bears from a long ways if in places there's
Speaker 1: small openings where you can see stuff. But this week
Speaker 1: we've had, we've it's been pretty wild because we've seen Corey.
Speaker 1: How many bears have we seen? Thirteen? I believe, well
Speaker 1: in fourteen if you count the one that I was
Speaker 1: thirty yards from but couldn't see last night, and so, okay,
Speaker 1: fourteen bears. And give me the breakdown on the species
Speaker 1: of bears. You're getting smoked Corey's getting smoked out. Well,
Speaker 1: we've seen three grizzlies from camp four five grizzlies, and
Speaker 1: the rest were black bears. So five grizzlies and then
Speaker 1: so uh so nine black bears, five grizz nine black bears. Um,
Speaker 1: So let's start off by telling what happened on day
Speaker 1: two with the incident, as we'll call it. All right, bear,
Speaker 1: I need some input from you on this. So it
Speaker 1: had been raining, it had been raining, and it was cold.
Speaker 1: Temperatures have been fairly cold up here, which I like
Speaker 1: for bear hunting in the spring. M hm. And it's
Speaker 1: been raining, and right at last light, we've we've found
Speaker 1: a road that we liked, Corey liked and we decided
Speaker 1: to walk it. We started walking it and we found
Speaker 1: small amount of small what we believed to be a
Speaker 1: small black bear based upon the the gauge of the
Speaker 1: bear scat and the size of it, it looked like
Speaker 1: a small black bear. But then as we're walking, we're
Speaker 1: probably a mile from the truck, and we started seeing
Speaker 1: some big grizz tracks. And I mean, if you can
Speaker 1: tell a grizz track from a black bear track by
Speaker 1: its architecture, you know, uh, black bear, you're typically not
Speaker 1: gonna be able to see the claws and it's kind
Speaker 1: of rounder and just typically smaller a grizz it's gonna
Speaker 1: be much bigger. You're gonna be able to see the claws.
Speaker 1: And this track was just evidently grizz. Did you think
Speaker 1: so bear? I mean, it's like twice as big as
Speaker 1: a black bear track. I think we guessed it was
Speaker 1: about seven inches wide seven path, which okay when you're
Speaker 1: gauging bear tracks, and we got We tested this theory.
Speaker 1: I've done it a hundred times. We tested it again.
Speaker 1: Pretty much the width of the bear track add one
Speaker 1: inch to it, and that typically gives you the square
Speaker 1: of the bear. So if it's a four inch track,
Speaker 1: you go four plus one equals five and so that
Speaker 1: means it's a five ft square bear. So if you
Speaker 1: have a seven inch track, that's typically an eight foot bear.
Speaker 1: It doesn't always play out just like that, but it's
Speaker 1: get you in the ballpark. And the square of a bear,
Speaker 1: my goodness, was just digging ourselves a hole of having
Speaker 1: to explain stuff. Um, bear, how do you square bear?
Speaker 1: Do you know? You measure from claw to claw, like
Speaker 1: the wingspan of the front arms a bear. That's the
Speaker 1: high bear stretched out on the ground, and then from
Speaker 1: tip of the nose to the base of the tail.
Speaker 1: I don't up together divided by two and that gives
Speaker 1: you the square. So like a six ft square bear
Speaker 1: would be like a really solid good bear. Like there
Speaker 1: wouldn't be very many sALS that would square six ft,
Speaker 1: even though it's possible, Um, a seven foot bear would
Speaker 1: be a giant. I have seen with my own eyeballs
Speaker 1: in all the Canadian bear camps and all the bears
Speaker 1: I've seen and help people skin, I've seen one true
Speaker 1: seven footbear, and so everybody and their brother that you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've seen a lot of bears, and
Speaker 1: I've only seen one that was a true seven ft
Speaker 1: square bear. That's just that's just the way it was,
Speaker 1: Like Andy Brown said, that's just the way it happened.
Speaker 1: I loved it when Andy Brown said that on about
Speaker 1: Louis Dell and Charlie turn their dogs out in October one.
Speaker 1: He just said, Clay, that's just the way it happened.
Speaker 1: I've only seen one seven footbear. Um. So there we
Speaker 1: are walking the road hour before dark, it's raining. We
Speaker 1: see grizz tracks, we start seeing a little bit of
Speaker 1: grizz scat, and we see black bear scat, which is
Speaker 1: because typically the griz push out the black bear. That's
Speaker 1: the theory anyway. Yeah, they don't like to hang out
Speaker 1: together as far as I've noticed. Yeah, and we get
Speaker 1: to the end of this road and we're sitting there
Speaker 1: trying to decide what to do and Bear newkem here's
Speaker 1: a stick pop way out in the woods. Probably seventy
Speaker 1: five yards away, and he says, hey, did y'all hear that?
Speaker 1: We stop, and sure enough, pop, we hear another stick pop,
Speaker 1: and Corey says, that's for sure an animal. You know,
Speaker 1: when you hear a twig snap, you know, maybe a
Speaker 1: log fell, or you know, just something a squirrel drop
Speaker 1: a pine cone or something, you know, you never know.
Speaker 1: And it was two distinct crack and then twenty seconds
Speaker 1: later crack, and we're like, there's an animal there. And
Speaker 1: then we keep listening and we're keyed up on it
Speaker 1: now and we hear it's scratching. Kind of what was
Speaker 1: it doing, like digging or something. It sounded like a
Speaker 1: dig sir, something with claws was scratching or digging. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it was right away with all the bear sign thinking.
Speaker 1: So Corey goes, that's for sure a bear. But it's
Speaker 1: in such thick timber, we don't know, we can't see it. Well,
Speaker 1: I have my Phelps Predator call with me, and so
Speaker 1: I go, hey, let's let's predator call that thing and
Speaker 1: see if he'll come in. And what was cool is
Speaker 1: that the whole week Corey had asked me if I
Speaker 1: had ever been successful predator calling a bear, and I've
Speaker 1: not done it a ton, but I told him that
Speaker 1: one time in British Columbia, we called up a bear
Speaker 1: that was probably three yards away by blowing on a
Speaker 1: a rabbit squealer and watched it come across the clear
Speaker 1: cut like in the bow range. It was a small
Speaker 1: bear and um. And then another time in British Columbia,
Speaker 1: on a different hunt, we had a sow out in
Speaker 1: a field bear John Newcomb, and the sow was feeding
Speaker 1: in grasses. Bear we didn't want to kill, We're just
Speaker 1: messing around. We are probably eight yards from her, and
Speaker 1: we go to whaling on a predator call and we
Speaker 1: were thinking she's gonna lift up her head from that
Speaker 1: grass and just come busting into us. She literally didn't
Speaker 1: even lift her head. And I'm not exaggerating. She didn't
Speaker 1: even acknowledge us. And we're yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: just whaling on this thing. It's like didn't affect her
Speaker 1: at all. And then one time in Washington, we probably
Speaker 1: made five or six sets of blowing her predator call
Speaker 1: for bear, so you know, mixed success. Well, I get
Speaker 1: about five yards behind bear and kind of tuck him
Speaker 1: up by a little spruce Corey gets up on a
Speaker 1: bank behind some trees. We've got two guns, were in
Speaker 1: grizz country, and so I pull out my bear spray,
Speaker 1: take the take the safety off, and have bear spray
Speaker 1: because we're in a tight quarters. You can see like
Speaker 1: ten yards in direction, and we got a bear out here.
Speaker 1: We're about to blow on her. Predator call. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a good idea. Man that fast looking good? Holy
Speaker 1: cow at that? Oh my lands, Wow, it's looking really good.
Speaker 1: So bear's ready, Corey's ready. We got two guns and
Speaker 1: bear spray and I started. Probably twenty seconds. I make
Speaker 1: eye contact with Corey and I can tell he's watching
Speaker 1: a bear. And what happened. There was a little black bear,
Speaker 1: maybe a four foot black bear, just bounding across the
Speaker 1: logs right for the call, and from what we could
Speaker 1: hear here scratching, Well that must have been what was scratching.
Speaker 1: Twenty seconds of calling. That bear was on us in
Speaker 1: ten seconds and bounded to the edge of the little
Speaker 1: opening we had and then just hit How close was
Speaker 1: it bear? He's probably like ten yards from me, and
Speaker 1: bear has his gun up and pretty much you feit
Speaker 1: stepped in the opening. I don't think we would have
Speaker 1: gauged much. We probably wouldn't. He probably would have just
Speaker 1: shot it. And so you got your gun up. Bears
Speaker 1: come running in and now you what did you tell
Speaker 1: me after that? You said it's kind of you said,
Speaker 1: it's kind of unnerving. Yeah, I mean, like because you're
Speaker 1: right behind me, and so like the bears, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's coming for the predator call. He's wanted to eat something.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like, I mean, you can't tell how
Speaker 1: big he is. You just hear brush cracking. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if it could have been a grizz I
Speaker 1: don't know if eight foot grizzlies about to bust out
Speaker 1: of the brush tan yards in front of me or
Speaker 1: black bear. So and so here come, here comes a
Speaker 1: brush crashing. Corey goes, there's a bear. I can't see
Speaker 1: the bear, and okay, do you take it from here? Corey. Once,
Speaker 1: once I could see it bounding and I could tell
Speaker 1: what it was. I whispered black bear, black bear, and
Speaker 1: both bear. John and I raise our guns up. We
Speaker 1: both had tags both ready to fill it. And the
Speaker 1: bear just came to the edge and stopped like it
Speaker 1: hit a brick wall. It must have winded us or
Speaker 1: seen us standing there, came to that brick wall, stopped
Speaker 1: and just turned and bounded the same speed away as
Speaker 1: it did coming in, and took five steps into the woods,
Speaker 1: and out of nowhere a big silver back grizzly bear,
Speaker 1: chasing right to left, chases that little black bear right
Speaker 1: up into a tree forty yards away from us. I mean,
Speaker 1: the whole scene was twenty thirty yards into the woods,
Speaker 1: but it chases the black bear how high into the
Speaker 1: tree that's up a tree. That little black bear was
Speaker 1: scared to death and so were we. So this little
Speaker 1: black bear comes bound in and I whispered black bear,
Speaker 1: black bear, black bear. When it stopped and turned around,
Speaker 1: and I knew we couldn't get a shot. Two seconds later, grizzly, grizzly, grizzly, grizzly.
Speaker 1: It was intense and just Clay and iron bear. We've
Speaker 1: just started screaming, hey bear, hey bear, get out of here. Bear.
Speaker 1: It was it went from all right, we're gonna get
Speaker 1: a shot here too, we need to protect our lives.
Speaker 1: It felt like, I mean, the way it was running
Speaker 1: across the woods like that, and it was the wildest thing,
Speaker 1: because all you know, you always feel like if there's
Speaker 1: black bear around, there's not a grizz around, and it
Speaker 1: is it is an incredible mystery. Why this grizz in
Speaker 1: that black bear were within no way, They couldn't have
Speaker 1: been more than a hundred yards apart because they I mean,
Speaker 1: we didn't call for thirty seconds. The woods are that
Speaker 1: thick though, they could easily be coming down parallel to
Speaker 1: each other right without knowing each other. It was wet,
Speaker 1: there was no wind. The scent kind of stays around you.
Speaker 1: It's possible they didn't know each other were there. And
Speaker 1: so I mean just a I mean, Corey just said it,
Speaker 1: but basically, this bear comes running the end, we're about
Speaker 1: to shoot it. Corey says, black bear, black bears the word,
Speaker 1: just like about to shoot the bears, thinking about it,
Speaker 1: and then he goes grizz, Grizz, grizz, And at that
Speaker 1: point we all bear clicks the safety office gun. I
Speaker 1: start yelling, hey bear, hey bear, Hey bear, hey bear,
Speaker 1: and kind of step out where I can see good
Speaker 1: and the black bear shoots thirty feet up a tree,
Speaker 1: probably fifty yards from us, and I look out and
Speaker 1: I see the grizz turn and just make eye contact
Speaker 1: with me. Out there at about I felt like it
Speaker 1: was a bowshot away, you know, forty yards, those beady
Speaker 1: little eyes just looking through the dark timber at you.
Speaker 1: It was such a wild scene because there's this grizz
Speaker 1: standing there and there's a black bear in the tree
Speaker 1: right above it, and bears trying to shoot the black bear.
Speaker 1: Bears like shoot it, shoot shoot it. And I absolutely
Speaker 1: would have let him shoot it. But I was thinking,
Speaker 1: is this smart to shoot a black bear? Because we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to skin this black bear back here? That
Speaker 1: was my thought. Why we know for a fact that
Speaker 1: there's a grizz right there the bear, the black bear
Speaker 1: would have landed on the grizzly bear literally, and so
Speaker 1: bear has his gun up and he's saying, Dad, I
Speaker 1: got my crosshairs on that black bear. You wanted to
Speaker 1: shoot it bad you? And then but we're yelling at
Speaker 1: the grizzly bear. So we're hey bear, hey bear, hey bear,
Speaker 1: And so the black bear is flipping out. He ran
Speaker 1: up the tree because the grizz chasing tree, and now
Speaker 1: there's three humans yelling at him, and so I mean,
Speaker 1: just no, sooner than all this have you know, we're talking,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about this for ten minutes. This happened
Speaker 1: in the span of twenty five seconds. Absolute chaos and anyway,
Speaker 1: the bears coming down the tree, and the bear gets
Speaker 1: halfway down the tree and stops, and bear says again, Dad,
Speaker 1: I can shoot, I can shoot, and I go wa
Speaker 1: wa wa wait wait wait wait wait, I just I don't.
Speaker 1: I just wasn't sure enough, you know. And if you're
Speaker 1: not a don't do it. And we weren't. It was
Speaker 1: just too much chaos to know what to do. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we made the right decision. That was day two,
Speaker 1: so we weren't. If it was day five, maybe you know,
Speaker 1: but day two, just take it, take your time, and
Speaker 1: we weren't sure. So that so that was a wild
Speaker 1: wild experience. Now, Corey, guiding one time you had to
Speaker 1: shoot at you know, to scare a griz. Tell me
Speaker 1: that story. Yeah, I had an archery hunter um that
Speaker 1: I was guiding, and we parked our horses and walked
Speaker 1: up this ridge, got onto a little bench and the
Speaker 1: same similar thing. Heard an animal cracking in the woods.
Speaker 1: But we're elk hunting, so assuming it was an elk,
Speaker 1: I mean, that was what we were after, and very
Speaker 1: elk heavy zone. And we got set up without even
Speaker 1: calling or anything, without seeing anything. We just got set
Speaker 1: up to try and call this whatever it was in
Speaker 1: hoping it was a lone bull, elk or something that's September.
Speaker 1: And I set my climing up behind a bush ten
Speaker 1: ft bush, a big alder bush, and I backed up
Speaker 1: about fifty yards and gave one little cow calf squeal,
Speaker 1: and whatever it was was walking towards us. You could
Speaker 1: just hear it a couple of cracks here, like it
Speaker 1: kind of sounded like a hoof. I was. I was
Speaker 1: just thinking, Okay, here we go, here's an elk coming in.
Speaker 1: Client was hoping for a big bull, but I was
Speaker 1: assuming he was going to shoot anything, Like maybe it's
Speaker 1: just a cow coming into the calf call whatever. Twenty
Speaker 1: seconds later, a giant grizzly bear stands over the top
Speaker 1: of this bush. Now that bush might have been nine
Speaker 1: ft tall. I might be over exaggerating, maybe eight ft tall,
Speaker 1: but that bear stood a foot over the top of
Speaker 1: that bush. Now Montana black grizzly bear, excuse me, don't
Speaker 1: get that big. But in the moment it was a giant.
Speaker 1: That bear stands up on two legs and is looking
Speaker 1: for whatever is making that noise. Now that bears on
Speaker 1: the other side of the USh from my hunter, and
Speaker 1: now my hunters on I think a knee or two
Speaker 1: knees waiting for an elk to step out from either side.
Speaker 1: He has no idea. This bush is so thick that
Speaker 1: he has no idea that there's a bear standing five
Speaker 1: yards on the other side of the bush, over the top,
Speaker 1: and it's looking around. And when I see that the bear,
Speaker 1: I pull out my forty four revolver and fired off
Speaker 1: in the air and just start screaming. And the bear
Speaker 1: gets down like it turned on two feet, took off
Speaker 1: and went up the hill, but not out of sight,
Speaker 1: just up and stopped like it scared it, but it
Speaker 1: didn't leave. That was a close call for sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think if he would have saw my hunter and
Speaker 1: caught him off guard like that, who knows what it
Speaker 1: was a big board presley bear. Who knows what the
Speaker 1: bear would have done. Uh, scared the bejesus out of
Speaker 1: that hunter, though. When I when he's quiet, just sitting there,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, a forty four mag goes
Speaker 1: off fifty yards and it scared him a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bet it did. But you probably saved him at
Speaker 1: minimum from a very very close call and and maybe
Speaker 1: even from getting whooped on by it is could have
Speaker 1: could have happened. It was a close call, no doubt. Um.
Speaker 1: We were talking earlier about black bears and grizzly and
Speaker 1: you know, the grizzlies are typically the ones that you
Speaker 1: hear about being dangerous, and and certainly I would say
Speaker 1: that that's true. I mean, they are the ones that
Speaker 1: are dangerous. Um, but you you were telling me a
Speaker 1: story just randomly this morning about a black bear that
Speaker 1: attacked a guy. Tell me that story, Cory. Well, Corey's
Speaker 1: got some good stories, and you spend eight years guiding,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of good stories. Um. We're floating,
Speaker 1: floating our rafts down the river that I was guiding
Speaker 1: on and there was a single gentleman just on the
Speaker 1: river bank. I couldn't tell if he was trying a
Speaker 1: shoe or tying a fly on the end of his
Speaker 1: fly line. I was just sitting there up against a
Speaker 1: big boulder. And as we come up to him, we're saying, Hey,
Speaker 1: how's it going. How long are you gonna be out here?
Speaker 1: You can't back in the wood. I mean, you're way
Speaker 1: away from civilization. Yeah, we're pretty far in there. Um
Speaker 1: and chit chatting. But as the boat goes around this
Speaker 1: rock and this gentleman, as we're floating downstream by him,
Speaker 1: I see a little black bear five and a half
Speaker 1: maybe six ft black bear sniffing that rock like he
Speaker 1: can smell something funny. And I go, black bear, black bear, like, sir,
Speaker 1: get up, there's something sniffing right behind you. And he
Speaker 1: gets up and the bear scurries off, runs up into
Speaker 1: the woods. Didn't think much about it. There's just another
Speaker 1: another bear a little too close to human. But it
Speaker 1: freaked him out for sure. Come to here a week later,
Speaker 1: that gentleman got drug out of his tent by a
Speaker 1: black bear. Whether he had a Snickers bar in his
Speaker 1: tent or his toothpaste or whatever that bear. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it was the same black bear or not,
Speaker 1: but that person got drug out of his tent and
Speaker 1: got beat up pretty bad. If I remember right, life
Speaker 1: flight had to fly in and a black bear. And
Speaker 1: when you told me that story, I mean, it makes
Speaker 1: sense to me that it was I mean, it had
Speaker 1: to have been the same bear. I mean, if it
Speaker 1: was that curious that maybe it's possible. It's very ironic regardless, Well,
Speaker 1: we were what we were talking about was what's more
Speaker 1: dangerous a black bearing or a grizzing And I mean,
Speaker 1: the obvious answer is grizzly, but they're they're definitely more
Speaker 1: grizzly fatalities. But there are quite a few black bear attacks.
Speaker 1: But black bears aren't much much much larger geographic area,
Speaker 1: I mean exponentially larger than where grizz are. So it's
Speaker 1: not really comparing apples to apples, you know, but bear,
Speaker 1: what's the closest bear encounter you've had? Probably that the
Speaker 1: the one we just said. Have you ever been bear
Speaker 1: baiting with me? When we've had bears? Get? I mean,
Speaker 1: I've remember one time whenever I was probably like ten,
Speaker 1: we were going in on a bait and there was
Speaker 1: already bear there m hm. And I actually remember twice
Speaker 1: that happened, and once where we were baiting and there
Speaker 1: was kind of a bear just like probably fifty yards
Speaker 1: away from us. It's kind of circling in Oklahoma. Do
Speaker 1: you remember the one time we had a bear? You
Speaker 1: were just a little boy and there was a little
Speaker 1: bear at a bait, and uh, I kind of halfway
Speaker 1: remember saying, hey, bear, see if you can see how
Speaker 1: close you can get to that bear. And you started stalking,
Speaker 1: and I mean you were just a little kid, and uh,
Speaker 1: you kind of got a little ways away from me,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I was like, this is
Speaker 1: a really bad idea, and I called you back, and
Speaker 1: then I I went in and stalked up pretty close.
Speaker 1: It was when we first started baiting bears. Pretty you
Speaker 1: were guiding. Yeah, yeah, I think I kind of remember
Speaker 1: that I sent you in and it was such a
Speaker 1: small bear. I was like, it was just kind of funny.
Speaker 1: And then and then the bear didn't wasn't afraid, and
Speaker 1: then I moved in and got about five yards from it.
Speaker 1: And then I remember having the initial thought, first time
Speaker 1: I ever thought it of that that's like a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five pound raccoon and I have incredible respect
Speaker 1: for a raccoon. And I was like, oh, I get
Speaker 1: it now. There was a time when I was like,
Speaker 1: I remember having a philosophy at one time in my
Speaker 1: life Corey that a hundred and fifty pound tough man
Speaker 1: ought to be able to combat a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: pounds bear. I was like, bear muscle. Muscle is muscle,
Speaker 1: So if it's a hundred fifty pound bear, other than
Speaker 1: he's got claws and teeth, you should be good. And
Speaker 1: then I've recanted that sense. I think bear muscle is
Speaker 1: more legit than human muscle. Now I realize how stupid
Speaker 1: that was. Punch him in the nose. Punch them in
Speaker 1: the nose. It's like hitting a man in his groin.
Speaker 1: I've heard, I haven't had two yet, but if you
Speaker 1: punch them in the nose, it hurts him. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: their weak spot. M Well, okay, so that was the
Speaker 1: exciting part of day two. The exciting part of day
Speaker 1: three was we we decided to walk back into an
Speaker 1: area that was just kind of walking only, and we've
Speaker 1: we we left the truck around one o'clock. Would you say, guys,
Speaker 1: one o'clock. We leave the truck pretty early, and we
Speaker 1: start finding quite a bit of grizz sign and griff sign.
Speaker 1: It's just gonna be like huge piles of bear scat
Speaker 1: that are just way bigger than you know, a black
Speaker 1: bear would have. It's usually pretty obvious. It's like the
Speaker 1: size of a horse horsecat. Yeah, and so we started
Speaker 1: seeing some grizz sign We continued to do a little
Speaker 1: predator colling. We were kind of encouraged by our success
Speaker 1: with presuted Colin, so we had a pretty good system
Speaker 1: where I would have the bear a spray out and
Speaker 1: I would be turned around behind these guys and they
Speaker 1: had two rifles. And we started predator calling in bigger,
Speaker 1: more open areas where you could see something coming. And
Speaker 1: we we probably predator called four or five more sets
Speaker 1: and and never had any success. Even though we did.
Speaker 1: Predator called at a sou and cubs that we saw,
Speaker 1: and they moved towards us slightly, but they wouldn't commit
Speaker 1: to coming in. We could see him a long ways off,
Speaker 1: so on this day, I'm getting ahead of myself, but
Speaker 1: we we would later in the day see a sow
Speaker 1: with cubs, black bear, black bear predator call at him.
Speaker 1: The sal just got real nervous and got pacing around,
Speaker 1: and she'd trot forty yards closer to us and then
Speaker 1: stop and the cubs would run up to her, and
Speaker 1: then she'd kind of run back, and you could tell
Speaker 1: us she was just kind of confused, and she was
Speaker 1: out there about two yards from us and never would
Speaker 1: commit but m and we just wanted to see what
Speaker 1: she would do. But prior to that, we're coming around.
Speaker 1: We started seeing some bear scat in the road, and
Speaker 1: then what happened bear? We come around a corner and
Speaker 1: we look up and what do we see. It's like
Speaker 1: a almost completely blonde Hold on, hold on, you're missing
Speaker 1: one the grizz Oh, I don't want you to cut
Speaker 1: to the chase yet. Before we saw the sow and
Speaker 1: two cubs. We've seen a lot of bears this week.
Speaker 1: We saw a grizzly bear probably eighty nine yards away.
Speaker 1: We kind of come up over a little rise. There's
Speaker 1: a grizzly eighty nine yards away, just in the wide open,
Speaker 1: and we watch it for a little while, and finally
Speaker 1: it kind of moves off and we we let it.
Speaker 1: After we watched it for a minute, we kind of
Speaker 1: let it know that we were there, just kind of
Speaker 1: made our presence known, just kind of waved our hands
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, it didn't take much. She saw
Speaker 1: took off, took off, and that's when we hunted on up,
Speaker 1: saw the black bear, sound cubs, and then we split
Speaker 1: up for the first time in the hunt. Corey kept
Speaker 1: going down the road, and Bear and I dropped off
Speaker 1: the mountain to a lower road that we'd found on
Speaker 1: on X. We knew there was a road route below us,
Speaker 1: and we've been split up. It took us probably thirty
Speaker 1: minutes forty five minutes at most to get down to
Speaker 1: the road, and we're making our way back to the truck.
Speaker 1: And now it's about seven o'clock and Bear and I
Speaker 1: are coming down this road and this road corey just
Speaker 1: beautiful green grass, which is perfect. And it was in
Speaker 1: a cut, so both sides of the road had, for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, they had been cut by the Forest Service.
Speaker 1: So there was just like big openings, which is great,
Speaker 1: and around the big openings was big dark timber. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's getting the last two hours of daylight,
Speaker 1: just prime time, and you're just slipping along, just just
Speaker 1: trying to see a bear before it sees you, and
Speaker 1: you're thinking it's gonna be a hundred and fifty yards
Speaker 1: away or or ninety yards away. Bear and I are
Speaker 1: just moving down through their slow and Bear was I
Speaker 1: pumped about that? I mean, just was I Like, what
Speaker 1: did I say? You were saying that this is where
Speaker 1: we're gonna kill a bear? Ye? Now, I say that
Speaker 1: like every day we go hunting, but this one was
Speaker 1: like this one, I was a little amped up more
Speaker 1: than usual, Right, yep, could you tell. So we're walking
Speaker 1: down this road and I'm this is bears first spring
Speaker 1: bear hunts, so so I'm trying to just tell him
Speaker 1: how how good this scenario is that we found ourselves
Speaker 1: in and uh, yeah, man, the bear fat is looking
Speaker 1: incredible liquid gold here. So what we've done is we've yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get back to the hunt. We gotta we
Speaker 1: gotta talk about this for a minute. We've pulled the
Speaker 1: heat off of this fat and there's there's still what
Speaker 1: I would call the cracklings. Did you see one? It's
Speaker 1: pretty just like chicken. Tastes like chicken. Yeah, it's hot,
Speaker 1: but yeah, um it's like a pork, I would say.
Speaker 1: The oil is light like, kind of amber colored, and
Speaker 1: the cracklings there's a we'll get a little bit more
Speaker 1: liquid oil out of that. The finer that you can
Speaker 1: cut your bare fat, put it on low heat. The
Speaker 1: finer that you can cut it, the more yield of
Speaker 1: liquid bear grease, bare oil you'll get from it. All
Speaker 1: we did was we cubed up. We cubed up about
Speaker 1: five to seven pounds of bear fat, put it in
Speaker 1: the Dutch oven and put good heat on it. And
Speaker 1: Corey has been stirring at this whole time, and so
Speaker 1: it's now probably eight liquid solid and the little cracklings
Speaker 1: eventually get down to where they won't render out in
Speaker 1: to liquid oil anymore. The best way though, to do it,
Speaker 1: to get the most yield of liquid oil and burgrease
Speaker 1: is to grind it um. But in this scenario we
Speaker 1: had to We had to just dice it up into
Speaker 1: like one inch cubes and then just keep it stirring,
Speaker 1: keep it on good heat. And what we'll do now
Speaker 1: is we're gonna let it cool down for a while
Speaker 1: and we're gonna run it through a dish towel as
Speaker 1: a filter to filter out any just any particles that
Speaker 1: were in there. You know, some of our meat in
Speaker 1: the field, you know, there might have been a something
Speaker 1: on it. We're gonna filter it through a dish towel
Speaker 1: and pour it into some jars that we have, and
Speaker 1: so we'll get some fantastic oil. But we're gonna kind
Speaker 1: of let it. We'll let it take a little bit
Speaker 1: of heat, but we're gonna let it cool down. So
Speaker 1: there we were Bear John. We're walking down the road.
Speaker 1: It's prime time. We're looking out to our left at
Speaker 1: big snow covered mountains, walking through a road of emerald green.
Speaker 1: It was like a bear hunter's dream. It's like it
Speaker 1: being November five and you're setting over a bunch of
Speaker 1: good sign and in your white tailed tree stand and
Speaker 1: if you just feel like it's about to happen. I
Speaker 1: really felt like it's about to happen. Well, what happens there?
Speaker 1: What happened? Well? So we so we're walking down this
Speaker 1: road and there's kind of like this little rise in
Speaker 1: the road where it kind of goes up and then
Speaker 1: drops down, and there's like a little brush pile almost
Speaker 1: to the left of the road right even with like
Speaker 1: the peak of the rise, so we can't really see
Speaker 1: anything in that area, like because the brush is covering it.
Speaker 1: And then there's the rise, so we can't see over that.
Speaker 1: So we come up right to the top of this
Speaker 1: this little rise and you like dug down and you're
Speaker 1: like Bear, So I like kind of see it, and
Speaker 1: I can see that it's like blonde. It's real confusing
Speaker 1: hunting with somebody named Bear yes, especially when there's a
Speaker 1: grizz and a black bear running that yet bear bear, No, bear, bear, bear, No, seriously,
Speaker 1: one time, one time, Corey and I keep interrupting this story.
Speaker 1: We'll get there. We gotta draw this out, man, you
Speaker 1: can't just spill the beans this quick. No. One time,
Speaker 1: while we were hunting this week, all three of us
Speaker 1: are walking, We're all just scoping out the woods. It
Speaker 1: was quiet, and I was trying to say something to
Speaker 1: bear John Newcomb, and I said bear, and I remember
Speaker 1: Corey jerked his head like he thought I was saying bear,
Speaker 1: there's a bear? You did. There's a slight difference between uh,
Speaker 1: there's a bear and bear, I mean, almost indiscernible. But
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I'm just trying to get him.
Speaker 1: So okay, there we were yep, and so so I
Speaker 1: say yeah, like saying that there's a bear, and so
Speaker 1: what I was saying, yeah, And so I see the
Speaker 1: bear like right as right as you go down, like
Speaker 1: I see you go down, because you're looking over here,
Speaker 1: and I see a bear like probably thirty five yards
Speaker 1: from us. And at first, like I could tell it
Speaker 1: was like black bear shaped, but it looked like a
Speaker 1: grizzly like I was thinking. I was thinking, like, oh man,
Speaker 1: it's just another grizzly, which would have been cool, but
Speaker 1: you know, we're trying to get a black bear and
Speaker 1: we've seen a lot of grizzlies at this point in
Speaker 1: the hunt. Yeah, you had just seen one an hour before.
Speaker 1: Blonde grizzly Yeah, I mean almost the same color as
Speaker 1: the one that we saw, a grizzled grizzly bear. So
Speaker 1: we kind of like peek back up and you look
Speaker 1: at it and you're like, that's a black bear, and
Speaker 1: you tell me to look at it, and I look
Speaker 1: at it, and I mean, it's definitely a black confirmation
Speaker 1: from him, because you know, to hunt Montana you have
Speaker 1: to take a bear I D Digital Bear I D
Speaker 1: test where they show you pictures of color face bear
Speaker 1: and grizzly bears and it says, is this a grizzly bear,
Speaker 1: is this a brown bear? Is this man? It's it
Speaker 1: would be hard to describe, like unless you when you
Speaker 1: when you see him, you know, and you know bear
Speaker 1: hunters know it would be hard to mess up. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, this bright blonde bear, like I
Speaker 1: did a double take, just like God is that is
Speaker 1: that a black bear? And I wanted and bear was
Speaker 1: going to be the one to pull the trigger, so
Speaker 1: I wanted him to be confident too, and I trusted
Speaker 1: his judgment and I said, are you sure that's a
Speaker 1: black bear? And he said, oh yeah, what what what
Speaker 1: distinguishing characteristics? Um, it was just small. It was more round,
Speaker 1: just like it's body. Just second general, it had a
Speaker 1: little bigger ears, a little closer together. Um that's really all.
Speaker 1: I mean. It just looked like its face like if
Speaker 1: you if you couldn't have seen its head, you'd have
Speaker 1: thought it it would have it would have been hard
Speaker 1: to tell what it was. It's hand to me, its
Speaker 1: head was slightly darker than its body, yeah, and darker legs,
Speaker 1: a little darker legs. And so once we bleach blonde
Speaker 1: on the top, I mean like beautiful, I mean just
Speaker 1: glowing in the sun. I mean it was incredible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I get the gun up. There's kind of
Speaker 1: some like weeds in front of it. How far is
Speaker 1: the bear? Probably less than thirty five probably, Like I mean,
Speaker 1: we could it was a both shot. Yeah, And there's
Speaker 1: some weeds in front of it, and I mean I
Speaker 1: probably could have shot through the weeds and when he
Speaker 1: killed it, but I was not gonna risk that, so
Speaker 1: I kind of like walked to the ride a little
Speaker 1: and you were telling me to shoot, but there were weeds.
Speaker 1: Yeah that there were weeds, and so then it took
Speaker 1: a big step and it was clear. So just freehanded,
Speaker 1: just freehanded, you know, yep, shot it jumped up, probably
Speaker 1: ran fifteen yards and died right next to this little
Speaker 1: brush pile. And yeah, we walked over to it and
Speaker 1: it had a big like diamond crest on it, like
Speaker 1: it was like the shape of a diamond, like a
Speaker 1: white white crest, but there was nothing in the middle,
Speaker 1: so it was just like it was. It was the
Speaker 1: color phase blond brown in the middle. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: for real, I'm not just saying this, it is. It's
Speaker 1: the prettiest black wear I have ever seen. Me too,
Speaker 1: we I was shocked. But I mean when we walked
Speaker 1: up to it, and we knew what color it was
Speaker 1: because we saw it when we shot it. But then
Speaker 1: I walked up to it and Bear picks up that
Speaker 1: front leg and it's got this not just a small diamond,
Speaker 1: not like a six inch diamond. I'm talking like a
Speaker 1: fourteen inch diamond that goes like way down in between
Speaker 1: his front legs and way up on his chest. Just
Speaker 1: this big white spot. You'll see it on my Instagram.
Speaker 1: I'll post on the Clay Nukelem Instagram. Um a picture
Speaker 1: of the bear. I mean, just beautiful bear. Um. I've
Speaker 1: never killed a blonde bear. I've killed multiple color phrase bears,
Speaker 1: but chocolate, cinnamash, cinnamon ish, but never cineamash. Never a
Speaker 1: blonde bear. And uh, and then okay, I'll say this.
Speaker 1: Typically in the West, you can almost take this to
Speaker 1: the bank. Typically in the West, if you see a
Speaker 1: bright blond black bear, usually it's a sow. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, I can't describe it, but usually the soals
Speaker 1: are the ones that are gonna be super light, that
Speaker 1: bleach blonde blonde color. So when I saw the bear,
Speaker 1: I actually thought it was probably a sow. But we
Speaker 1: looked it over and could see it so good, and
Speaker 1: it was kind of in the wide open, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: we knew if it was a sou. I didn't have cubs.
Speaker 1: And when we got up to it, I said, lift
Speaker 1: that thing's legs up, and sure enough, it was a
Speaker 1: bore and it was a It was a good one. Man.
Speaker 1: We we squared it out back at camp and it
Speaker 1: was six ft three wingspan and then five ft eight
Speaker 1: nose to tail. Yep, so it ended up square and
Speaker 1: just under six ft. So if you divided those two numbers,
Speaker 1: ended up squaring five ft ten and a half is
Speaker 1: what we decided. That's a where Western bear hunters dream
Speaker 1: bear right there it is for up here. That's a
Speaker 1: great I mean, if it had been a solid black bear,
Speaker 1: we'd have been thrilled even at the size of it.
Speaker 1: So the fact that it was a colored bear like
Speaker 1: that was just off the charts, man, off the charts.
Speaker 1: It's a rare, rare bear. And we thought that like
Speaker 1: whenever I asked you, like what you'd think it would
Speaker 1: square at first, Like when we just first walked up
Speaker 1: to it, you said, like, it'll probably be like a
Speaker 1: little bit about five ft. Once we started dragging it
Speaker 1: out and started skinning it, you said like maybe five
Speaker 1: and a half and then one so we had it
Speaker 1: like stretched out in the back of the truck. Then yeah,
Speaker 1: just just like bigger usually they get smaller. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: when so bear and I decide, So we're now in
Speaker 1: grizz Country. Deluxe and we've got a bear on the ground,
Speaker 1: and so we knew we needed to work quick. And
Speaker 1: it was it kind of was in a It fell
Speaker 1: in a little bit of a brushy spot. So I said, hey,
Speaker 1: let's drag this thing into that wide open right out there,
Speaker 1: or we'll skin it. And so he and I start
Speaker 1: dragging the thing, and it was all we wanted to drag.
Speaker 1: And that's when I thought, Man, this dude maybe bigger,
Speaker 1: a little bit bigger than I think. You know. I
Speaker 1: would guess the bear weight in the two pound range,
Speaker 1: you know, and for a Western bear, that's a fantastic
Speaker 1: bears a damn weight. A lot of bears. Corey and Man,
Speaker 1: I could make jokes all day. We've I've written articles
Speaker 1: about it about how typically people are at least thirty
Speaker 1: off on their estimation of weight. Uh, if somebody says
Speaker 1: it's two hundred, it's probably that. That's just my assessment
Speaker 1: of of of watching the world. Rarely is anybody under
Speaker 1: that um And and honestly, the bear, the bear was
Speaker 1: I'd say from one now counting the thirty percent, I'm
Speaker 1: hoping that's not thirty off. But well, those packs were
Speaker 1: sure heavy with all the meat the hide and the head.
Speaker 1: You guys were coming out heavy, so Corey was separated
Speaker 1: from us, and so we we go to breaking down
Speaker 1: the bear immediately. I mean, we take a few cell
Speaker 1: phone picks and we we know it's getting dark, and
Speaker 1: we're four miles from the truck, four miles from the truck,
Speaker 1: and I'll all of a sudden, I'm thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: we gotta be watching for Gris. So I pull out
Speaker 1: my bear spray, keep the lid off, the safety off.
Speaker 1: We go to skin in the bear and we get
Speaker 1: it broke down, and probably forty five minutes or so,
Speaker 1: and um get it in our packs and off we
Speaker 1: go to meet you and meet up with you. Anyway,
Speaker 1: incredible hunt. And since that time, Corey and I have
Speaker 1: hunted a little bit, well, we've we've hunded a fair
Speaker 1: bit since that time, but um, I have hadn't killed
Speaker 1: one since. So it's gotten a little warm, so are
Speaker 1: our time frames a little bit narrower. It was wet
Speaker 1: and cold for the first three days, and now it's
Speaker 1: been warm and dry, so it's been, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: a little harder to harder to find him when it's
Speaker 1: warm and dry like it is. So we've done well
Speaker 1: this week. Yeah, I seen a lot of bears. Yeah. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the Genuine Outlaws episode number two,
Speaker 1: but I don't want to go into much of it, guys,
Speaker 1: I want to just I just want to touch on it. Um.
Speaker 1: I know both of you guys have listened to it,
Speaker 1: and this is this is a barg rease render in
Speaker 1: the field where we're literally rendering bargrease. And I want
Speaker 1: to talk about this podcast with the with the render
Speaker 1: crew from back in Arkansas too. But Corey, you listen
Speaker 1: to it. What was your what do you think? Man?
Speaker 1: Intriguing subject number one? I mean and and brave subject.
Speaker 1: Nobody's really talked about this sort of thing. You know,
Speaker 1: there's movies and books of outlaws and bad guys. Nobody's
Speaker 1: really dove in and and uh, operated on it like
Speaker 1: you are in the hunting space. So yeah, well in
Speaker 1: the hunting hunting space. Yeah, exactly, Outlaws, poachers, what have you.
Speaker 1: So it's been an intriguing topic and I love that
Speaker 1: you're diving into it like you are. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: that it was We talked about this extensively, but in
Speaker 1: the in the past, renders and even on the podcast,
Speaker 1: But I kind of want to be true to the
Speaker 1: culture of of of hunting of rural America. And I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, people where I grew up wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about Louis Dell and Charlie Edwards, and so did I,
Speaker 1: And so here I have this podcast where we talk
Speaker 1: about all things hunting, and I'm diving into these little
Speaker 1: nuances inside of hunting and and and just trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what kind of what makes us tick and
Speaker 1: what what what's special? And what is is what what
Speaker 1: what is the culture of hunting? And obviously poaching and
Speaker 1: outlawn is a negative thing in any context, but I
Speaker 1: was just really really had questions of why these guys
Speaker 1: kind of held the positions that they did inside of
Speaker 1: our community and why we were so intrigued by and uh.
Speaker 1: I still don't have all the answer for that, but
Speaker 1: you may never find the answers. But they were definitely
Speaker 1: a interesting oh super interesting brothers Bear. What do you think,
Speaker 1: man Um? Yeah? I thought it was interested too. I remember,
Speaker 1: like you and Papa talking about him, like just how
Speaker 1: they a lot of those stories that were on the podcast,
Speaker 1: I remember hearing from you and Papaul, But yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought it was interesting they had to be like really
Speaker 1: good hunters, I feel like, because I mean, like we
Speaker 1: hunt in that area all the time, and like the
Speaker 1: fact that they could kill more turkeys than we're legal.
Speaker 1: To me, I mean, I know there were more turkeys
Speaker 1: back then, but still to me, seems like you would
Speaker 1: have to be a really good hunter. We can hardly
Speaker 1: kill one. Yeah, man, if we were trying to be outlaws,
Speaker 1: we'd have a hard time. We were like, dog got it,
Speaker 1: I can't kill over my limit for anything. H Uh, Poachers,
Speaker 1: We need to make a movie called Poacher Has Gone
Speaker 1: Bad where a couple of guys go out and inspired
Speaker 1: by the Burglaries Genuine Outlaws podcast series, they're like, dog
Speaker 1: gone up. Man, we're gonna be poachers and they go
Speaker 1: out and they can't kill a thing. They're like, try
Speaker 1: to break every game wall. This is a joke, people,
Speaker 1: This is a joke. Um bear, did listen to this
Speaker 1: make you want to be an outlaw? Okay? Good? Just checking,
Speaker 1: just checking, man, my dad, if Gary nucom were here,
Speaker 1: he's guests on the render often he kept a he
Speaker 1: did a good job with me in I mean just
Speaker 1: he he exposed us to that stuff. And I said
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the podcast that Dad, he instilled
Speaker 1: me with a value system that I mean I've not
Speaker 1: always upheld to. I mean, but I knew breaking game
Speaker 1: laws wasn't the thing to do or something I was
Speaker 1: interested in going out and doing on purpose. And but
Speaker 1: at the same time, he exposed me to all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and um, I think it was really value to me
Speaker 1: to see him and he really did. Man, he was
Speaker 1: He was influential to me in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: when it came to people, because he dealt with so
Speaker 1: many people and when he came home, those are the
Speaker 1: stories he would tell about the people he had met.
Speaker 1: And I just I don't know. I I probably just
Speaker 1: was sitting there as a kid, not saying much not
Speaker 1: He probably didn't even know that I was being impacted
Speaker 1: by a lot of that stuff. But that's the beauty
Speaker 1: of kind of father and son relationship, you know. But
Speaker 1: what else do you think, Corey, anything else? What else
Speaker 1: stood out to you? This is kind of like an
Speaker 1: abbreviated an abbreviated render. As we talked about the genuine
Speaker 1: Outlaw series, I mean, who was a Neil took the
Speaker 1: words right out of my mouth. Just describing them similar
Speaker 1: to Robin Hood, how they were poaching all these animals,
Speaker 1: but they didn't waste the thing, and they were giving
Speaker 1: them to the needy, the less able who couldn't get
Speaker 1: out and hunt, you know, like helping people out at
Speaker 1: the same time breaking laws, being unethical if you were
Speaker 1: to describe it, but but helping people out at the
Speaker 1: same time. Yeah, I mean I could see those two
Speaker 1: being like Robin Hood and Little John walking through the
Speaker 1: forest shooting turkeys and deer, golly wood a day, beautiful rhyme.
Speaker 1: You know when I said all that, it wasn't to
Speaker 1: justify what they did, because it doesn't justify what they
Speaker 1: did is just interesting and and just it's just interesting
Speaker 1: and in there ethics when it came to wasting meat,
Speaker 1: I would say they had very high standards, especially for
Speaker 1: the time when it came to wasting meat. And does
Speaker 1: that mean I'm trying to say it was okay for
Speaker 1: you them to coach, No, I'm just saying it was interesting. Well,
Speaker 1: you wish ethical hunters had that same drive to utilize
Speaker 1: the entire animal. There's many people who only get one
Speaker 1: deer tag, one elk tag, but they don't take all
Speaker 1: the meat. They don't cook up those deer elk shanks.
Speaker 1: You know, they don't know about it. They don't. And
Speaker 1: it sounds like these guys, even though they were breaking laws,
Speaker 1: they were somehow on the bright side of things at
Speaker 1: the same time. There was a dark side and a
Speaker 1: bright side. Well, and then I was really, uh, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what, We're going back to the render pot.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and take that off of their court,
Speaker 1: and let's just put the Dutch oven live on it
Speaker 1: so it doesn't get ash in it. I think we're
Speaker 1: so we've rendered it down. It's probably over liquid. We're
Speaker 1: just gonna let it cool in this pot before we
Speaker 1: poured into our jars. But I'm gonna guess we've got
Speaker 1: over a gallon. Would you say we've got to? Do
Speaker 1: you think it's probably a gallon? I mean, and pouring
Speaker 1: a gallon milk jug in there, Yeah, that's a gallon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So no, I I was interested in I asked. I
Speaker 1: asked Stony. I said, I said, hey, Stony, do y'all
Speaker 1: have some deer heads from your uncle and dad. I
Speaker 1: envisioned them just having a barn just full of deer horns,
Speaker 1: and uh, and to be honest with that. I wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna put that on the podcast. I wanted to go
Speaker 1: see him. I mean, these guys were deer hunters too,
Speaker 1: I mean their whole life. I mean, like serious deer
Speaker 1: hunters and says, oh no, they didn't keep any horns,
Speaker 1: and and I was like, what didn't keep any horns?
Speaker 1: I mean, when you hear poacher, you think, oh, somebody
Speaker 1: that's wanting to shoot the biggest buck and you know,
Speaker 1: brag on what a big buck he killed. Around here
Speaker 1: people anywhere, I guess you they shoot animals and you
Speaker 1: just see a decapitated critter because that's where they were after,
Speaker 1: was the trophy. And and does that make it right
Speaker 1: to poach? No? And then the one time that they
Speaker 1: turned somebody in, and that would have been funny, like
Speaker 1: in our community, like if you would have heard Loudell
Speaker 1: and Charlie turned in somebody the game and fish, I mean,
Speaker 1: people would have laughed at that. You know that these
Speaker 1: guys were turning someone in. But the one time they
Speaker 1: turned somebody in was when they found behind a deer camp,
Speaker 1: they found like four deer that just the backstraps and
Speaker 1: horns have been taken, and they were like, Nah, that's
Speaker 1: it isn't gonna fly. They call it game of fish.
Speaker 1: Does that make it right? Bear? It just makes it
Speaker 1: what interesting? Yep, that's what it does. It just makes
Speaker 1: it's just interesting. And I always like it when um
Speaker 1: when when I don't, I just feel like just everybody's
Speaker 1: got a story, and there's value inside of just about
Speaker 1: any story and just about any person's life. And I
Speaker 1: like it when we kind of can can see interesting
Speaker 1: stuff inside of maybe someone that the world had labeled
Speaker 1: as a negative person. And we're gonna dive into this
Speaker 1: a lot deeper. Man, do you all have any closing
Speaker 1: thoughts on the Outlaw podcast? Corey, let's just start their
Speaker 1: Outlaw podcast closing thoughts. I hope you dive in and
Speaker 1: dissect if there's another duo of outlaws or do you
Speaker 1: want some more? I want some more? You're going on
Speaker 1: the record. I know this was kind of just like
Speaker 1: a a tippy toe step into this subject, and I
Speaker 1: hope there's more offended by this, because no, man, it
Speaker 1: may have been just like Crystal Clear like I was.
Speaker 1: I was obviously I was confident enough to do it,
Speaker 1: but I and I have taken a little bit of
Speaker 1: heat because it is controversial. It's controversial to paint someone
Speaker 1: who's clearly an outlaw in any kind of positive light.
Speaker 1: And I absolutely I mean we talked about their whole
Speaker 1: lives and so. But you want some more of it? Okay? Bear?
Speaker 1: What what? What do you think about the Burgers podcast?
Speaker 1: You're a fan or you just kind of like it's
Speaker 1: the dad talking. I like it? You like it? How
Speaker 1: much do you listen to the Barger's podcast? Honestly? Um, well,
Speaker 1: since I started driving on my own, I've been listening
Speaker 1: to it because I thought you were gonna say more
Speaker 1: and I was gonna be really proud. Oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: because whenever I'm in the car with you, when you're
Speaker 1: driving me places, you know, we always listened to them.
Speaker 1: But whenever it's just me, I I listened to him
Speaker 1: to edit them. Corey Bear, how often do you listen
Speaker 1: to the Meat Eater podcast? Probably never? Oh, well, that
Speaker 1: means areas must be a little better no offense. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: great week, what a week? Great week, Gris Encounters, Bear
Speaker 1: Encounters killed the beautiful bear ate some great food. We're
Speaker 1: hunting in cories. This is this is Corey's place, and man,
Speaker 1: thanks a ton for having us up here. My pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming all the way up here. Hey tell us,
Speaker 1: I never got to what you do for meat Eater,
Speaker 1: now you have you. You were the what I was
Speaker 1: the communications coordinator answer and all the incoming emails to
Speaker 1: meat Eater at the meat eater dot com. But I
Speaker 1: just got promoted to the hunt and fish coordinator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I'm fresh at this role. Yeah, I'm excited to work.
Speaker 1: I'll be able to work a lot closer to the
Speaker 1: crew Clay Steve Johnnie. Yeah, Yeah, I'm excited. Excellent. Well,
Speaker 1: we got some bear fat to pour into some jars
Speaker 1: and the next bar Grease podcast. I'm very excited about it.
Speaker 1: It's it's more outlaw stuff, but it's more us dissecting
Speaker 1: the American intrigue with outlaws, not just American, the human
Speaker 1: nature's intrigue with outlaws and kind of dissecting it. I
Speaker 1: think it's gonna help for me to make sense of
Speaker 1: some of this. Yeah, I'm gonna need some of that too,
Speaker 1: because that's what's intriguing. Like, I didn't realize it was
Speaker 1: an intriguing subject, But being able to delve into that
Speaker 1: will make it. And I may or may not have
Speaker 1: interviewed the director of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission
Speaker 1: about poaching in Arkansas. Cool. You have to see if
Speaker 1: I did or not. Maybe that's just a bluff. You
Speaker 1: think it's a think I'm bluff and bear. Doubt it
Speaker 1: a bluff and bear. Get it, bluff and bear. We've
Speaker 1: been bluffed out maybe once or twice this week. Keep
Speaker 1: the wild places wild because that's where the bears live. Amen.