Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation, brought to you by
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Speaker 1: time to go wild dot com. My name is Clay Nucleman.
Speaker 1: I'm the host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll
Speaker 1: also be your host into the world of hunting the
Speaker 1: icon of North American wilderness, the bear. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation,
Speaker 1: but will also bring you into some of the wildest
Speaker 1: country on the planet Chasing Bear. Welcome to the Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting Magazine Podcast. We are here at the global headquarters
Speaker 1: of Bear Hunting Magazine. Jedas right outside, probably gonna be
Speaker 1: barking a little bit. It is October the twenty six October,
Speaker 1: and I have with me in the office too of
Speaker 1: my really good friends that have done a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff with me over the years. I got Brent Reads
Speaker 1: here sitting at about eleven o'clock, and I got Ryan
Speaker 1: Grab sitting about one o'clock. They're sitting pretty close to
Speaker 1: each other, awkwardly close, but I'm glad at six. But no,
Speaker 1: these guys. These guys traveled up. Brent traveled up from
Speaker 1: central Arkansas. Ryan traveled up from western Arkansas to meet here,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk about Saskatchewan. What we're gonna cover
Speaker 1: in this podcast is the last three years Brent, Ryan,
Speaker 1: and I in a conglomerate of other Arkansans and a
Speaker 1: Wisconsin I I by the name of Mark Cuddyback have
Speaker 1: have traveled to Saskatchewan. Martin just the last two years,
Speaker 1: but all of us the last three years, we've traveled
Speaker 1: the northern Saskatchewan to hunt with Bear Pro Safaris and
Speaker 1: Colby Morrison. And this hunt has become something really unique
Speaker 1: for me. I mean, I get to travel a lot
Speaker 1: with Bear Hunting Magazine to a lot of different outfitters,
Speaker 1: and I've hunt with some of the best outfitters in
Speaker 1: the world. I really do. The Saskatchewan hunt has become
Speaker 1: so fun primarily because of the boat ride on the
Speaker 1: first year, the sixty mile boat rode. So these are
Speaker 1: the iconic moments that have made Bear Prosafaris what it is.
Speaker 1: The iconic boat ride, sixty mile boat ride and high
Speaker 1: water high seas the first year and then the second
Speaker 1: year seventeen, the the hunt for the color face bear,
Speaker 1: which became a pretty well known hunt because it's bear
Speaker 1: came in touched my era Brent video that the video
Speaker 1: I think has one point six or one point seven
Speaker 1: moving views on YouTube. But that hunt was like as
Speaker 1: far as bated bears bear hunts going the north, that
Speaker 1: was one of the most spectacular hunts of all time.
Speaker 1: Number one, I missed a huge probably probably Boon and
Speaker 1: Crockett class bear with a tread bow. We saw you're
Speaker 1: rubbing the salt and still, and we saw we saw
Speaker 1: bore breeding the south. We had this big color phase
Speaker 1: bear come in and run these other bears off, and
Speaker 1: so bear prostafaris to us is this unique, unique place.
Speaker 1: But before we get going with that, I want to
Speaker 1: I wanna hear from you guys. So Brent, Brent w Reeves,
Speaker 1: uh not. Brent's filmed with me for several years, written
Speaker 1: some articles for me, done some bare recipes. But Brent,
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about yourself. That's a that's
Speaker 1: such a dumb question. Every podcaster asked, tell me about yourself.
Speaker 1: You already, oh man. I grew up in South Arkansas
Speaker 1: and I've been in career wise, I guess law enforcement
Speaker 1: for the almost twenty eight years now, and got into
Speaker 1: the Guide in Business, the Duck Guide in Business with
Speaker 1: my brother, uh about gosh, close to thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: I guess, and we retired from that, and I just
Speaker 1: got interested in filming, and I've been filming uh hunts,
Speaker 1: you know, all over. I've been fortunate enough to to
Speaker 1: be taught by some really good videographers and uh and
Speaker 1: then I've pretty well told Clay how to do everything
Speaker 1: what Ryan didn't tell him. Yeah, that's that's right. I
Speaker 1: kind of started him at first, he finished him up,
Speaker 1: so uh but I've it's just been a crazy trip, man,
Speaker 1: as far as what that camera has allowed me to do,
Speaker 1: in the places I've got to go and the things
Speaker 1: I've got to see and the people that I've met
Speaker 1: that I mean, that was cool, you know when you
Speaker 1: talk about that Saskatchewan the last three years, the first
Speaker 1: year anytime people experience a near death experience and all
Speaker 1: of them lived through it. You know, you were brothers
Speaker 1: for life, whether it's a combat or in a boat
Speaker 1: on whatever lake that was Wallaston Lake that tried to
Speaker 1: kill us in Canada. So it was I was holding
Speaker 1: on too empty um empty gas cans, like thinking, when
Speaker 1: I end up in that water, I'm gonna have my
Speaker 1: life vest and I'm going to have this jerry can
Speaker 1: as the Canadians call the lids off of them. It was,
Speaker 1: you know, we were it was it was two boats
Speaker 1: right whenere you were and Kobe in one boat and
Speaker 1: always three boats. Three boats, yeah, three boats. So this
Speaker 1: this was twenty first year we hunted, and so Kolby
Speaker 1: was Kolby's camp was on the back side of this lake.
Speaker 1: It was. It was fifty fifty five. It was fifty
Speaker 1: five miles as the crow flies and then but we
Speaker 1: were hugging the inside bank of the lake because we
Speaker 1: couldn't get out in the middle. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you'll remember that. Colby said, there'll be it'll be a
Speaker 1: little bit longer for boat ride today. We're gonna have
Speaker 1: to stay close to the bank. And I was like,
Speaker 1: we were all like, okay, it's like a thirty minute
Speaker 1: thirty minute boat ride. Yeah, no, man. I kept looking
Speaker 1: at my watch and in my crucifix and they just
Speaker 1: kept was. It was long, man, it was the longest
Speaker 1: boat route ever raining it was. It wasn't pouring rain,
Speaker 1: but it was I was trying to fish, but we
Speaker 1: were running just a little too fat. He was trolling.
Speaker 1: He had his five and diamonds spoon up the side,
Speaker 1: trying to catch a pike. It was so so that
Speaker 1: that year was iconic. That year I killed the bear
Speaker 1: on the first day. It was a nice bear. It
Speaker 1: was a poping young bear, but it was not It
Speaker 1: was not the bear that you go to Saskatchewan to
Speaker 1: take him. It was a good one, right, and so
Speaker 1: you fill me on that, you feel me there. So
Speaker 1: we were done after one day and then Ryan hunted
Speaker 1: and you killed the bear. On the fourth day. It
Speaker 1: was the Yeah, we had one more day to hunt,
Speaker 1: and Kobe took us to the new place. It was raining,
Speaker 1: put a tarp over her head. I was kind of
Speaker 1: thinking this wasn't gonna work. It sounded like popcorn popping
Speaker 1: above her head, hitting rain, hitting that tar. But we
Speaker 1: wasn't there what thirty minutes and board and sale come
Speaker 1: in and yeah, we talked about it for a little bit,
Speaker 1: but we end up taking the board and but anyway,
Speaker 1: it was a good hunt. We had a good time.
Speaker 1: The fishing was phenomenal. You know, the camp was exceptional
Speaker 1: the food, and it was I wish we could go
Speaker 1: back to that exact location. We didn't realize how spoiled
Speaker 1: how well we had it that year. Hey, before we
Speaker 1: get too far off track, this was an introduction, So
Speaker 1: Brent Rufe was introducing himself. So you were talking about
Speaker 1: you talked about being a duckt guide, being in law enforcement.
Speaker 1: You talked, then you transitioned into you've you've followed people
Speaker 1: around and filmed and hunted all over the place for
Speaker 1: the last couple of years. Yeah, well I got the
Speaker 1: last couple of last ten years. Yeah, about probably fifteen years.
Speaker 1: I met a guy out and they didn't even make
Speaker 1: cameras fifteen years. Well, that's where VCR take. I was
Speaker 1: drawn on the OKA, on the side of a kve
Speaker 1: That's where I started. But I was filming a or
Speaker 1: hosting a film crew at my guide's service, my brother's
Speaker 1: and I guide service, and became friends with one of
Speaker 1: the videographers there, and that's that's how I got started.
Speaker 1: So it was by accident. But your history with me
Speaker 1: is that probably six seven years ago with Arkansas Black
Speaker 1: Bear Association, which at the time I was running, you
Speaker 1: contacted me and we were. We just talked about filming
Speaker 1: bear here in Arkansas coming up to me. I sent
Speaker 1: you an email, I think, and then I called you
Speaker 1: and uh, I was like, I told you what I
Speaker 1: was doing. That I was, you know, kind of a
Speaker 1: freelance videographer and I'd like to come film you. And
Speaker 1: you were like, okay, whatever, and pretty much that was it.
Speaker 1: You hung up. You kind of blew me off there
Speaker 1: for that. I didn't you got to hear from you.
Speaker 1: And then the next year, next year, you called and said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: come on here and let's do some filming. And I've
Speaker 1: taken you under my wing. And I can't count how
Speaker 1: many times I've saved you life and I've I've been
Speaker 1: a big blessing to you. Collect you know that's true. Well,
Speaker 1: very good, So Ryan Grab, right now, let me let
Speaker 1: me give let me give a little history of Ryan Grab,
Speaker 1: Ryan Grab. When I have a question about bear hunting
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, I call Ryan Grab, Ryan Grab, and I
Speaker 1: will if this could be disproven, I would love I
Speaker 1: would love for it to be but I believe this would.
Speaker 1: I believe this is true that nobody has killed more
Speaker 1: bear in terms of weight in Arkansas than Ryan Grab.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking about collective weight, Like, however many bears
Speaker 1: you've killed? Bush? I mean, Ryan kills a big bear
Speaker 1: almost every year. When I say big, like, I know
Speaker 1: you you'd probably shoot a three it. I think a
Speaker 1: few years ago you shot up three or something. But
Speaker 1: usually you're killing barrel over four hundred. The bear you
Speaker 1: killed this year away three, and then a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago you killed the four forty. You've killed the
Speaker 1: five hundred and four pounder. I mean Ryan, for we've
Speaker 1: been able to bait bears in Arkansas since two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, and basically since then, Ryan's killed the bear
Speaker 1: almost every year, and um and so anyway, so I
Speaker 1: consider Ryan Grab a bear hunting expert. And then Ryan
Speaker 1: has also gone with me to Canada man the first
Speaker 1: when I acquired bear Hunting magazine. I got the magazine
Speaker 1: in July and all kind of happened really quick, and
Speaker 1: I contacted this outfitter up in Ontario and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: come and hunt. I called Ryan and said you want
Speaker 1: to go it on Terry. He was like yep. So
Speaker 1: we jumped in the truck, drove to Ontario and uh.
Speaker 1: It took about three days hunting within fifty yards of
Speaker 1: gravel roads and uh we killed two bears and the
Speaker 1: one that I killed was I think the biggest bear
Speaker 1: they had ever seen in the camp in their life.
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys were shocked when we showed him
Speaker 1: to the bear. I mean because Ryan and I we
Speaker 1: were we were like, man, this is not good. I
Speaker 1: mean we were Ryan could hear them Jason Aldeane playing
Speaker 1: in the wind, and I could sing along what was
Speaker 1: on the radio, and they were close. So it was no,
Speaker 1: it was no uh wilderness hunt and uh, but we
Speaker 1: we were. It was a super fun hunt. Anyway, we
Speaker 1: ended up both killing bears and and good ones. So
Speaker 1: that was our first like real outing. And ever since then,
Speaker 1: almost every time of hunted in Canada, maybe not every
Speaker 1: year since then, you've gone with me to Canada, I
Speaker 1: think almost. I didn't go with the year y'ad went
Speaker 1: to Alberta. Wish I wish I had went on that
Speaker 1: trip because you all had a big time success on
Speaker 1: that go around. Oh yeah, that was you're right. I
Speaker 1: think every one of you guys killed a couple of
Speaker 1: pairs of piece, didn't you. Yeah that was since fourteen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we killed six three of us killed six pairs.
Speaker 1: So tell us about yourself, Ron, I've just I've grown
Speaker 1: up in western Arkansas and uh, kind of cutting my
Speaker 1: teeth just bow hunting growing up Fort Chaffee. You know
Speaker 1: wildlife manage. Don't you tell them where you hunt? Man? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a secret anymore, but you kill all the
Speaker 1: big deer out of there. Yeah. But anyway, just on
Speaker 1: my own small business right now. But I'm fortunate to
Speaker 1: get out and hunt quite a bit. And I met
Speaker 1: Clay back and I guess the water around two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten you kicked off the and Saw Black Bear
Speaker 1: Association and fortunate to get to know Clay. He's pretty
Speaker 1: good and he invited me on several of these trips
Speaker 1: and we've gotten to be pretty good friends over the years.
Speaker 1: And I would that far. But yeah, but anyway, all
Speaker 1: these trips we go on, we've had a blast with
Speaker 1: the guys we've got to meet. And I can to
Speaker 1: aggravate Brent when he's there a lot of times. But
Speaker 1: also here hunting in Arkansas for bears and in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: You know, we share some secrets and tips and yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like I'm always helping Clay get his animals.
Speaker 1: Out of the woods. But let me say something about Ryan.
Speaker 1: If Ryan does something, he is gonna be really good
Speaker 1: at it. If he hand fishes for catfish, he and
Speaker 1: his career are gonna catch the biggest catfish if he's
Speaker 1: if he's deer hunting, he's gonna kill a big deer.
Speaker 1: If he's bear hunting, he's gonna kill a big bear.
Speaker 1: Rises all around woodsman and I have a time of
Speaker 1: kind of respect for him, and so it's, uh, it's
Speaker 1: been fun to fun to travel. Yeah, well, okay, so
Speaker 1: we got we got these guys introduced and uh, and
Speaker 1: Ryan's been on a couple of episodes of Bare Horizons.
Speaker 1: Brent has been on episodes of Bare Horizons. So Bare Horizons,
Speaker 1: for those of you who don't know, is our is
Speaker 1: our bear hunting show that's on Carbon TV. It's also
Speaker 1: it's mainly on YouTube at this point. But this is
Speaker 1: our fifth year Bare Horizons. So these guys have been
Speaker 1: on and off through there for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: But so now to the topic at hand is Saskatchewan.
Speaker 1: And let me let me start off by to somebody
Speaker 1: that doesn't know much about bear honey, which us being
Speaker 1: from the south ten years ago I didn't know a
Speaker 1: thing about spring bear him. It never really entered my
Speaker 1: mind other than I knew that I wanted to go.
Speaker 1: I knew that it would be fun. It was like, hey,
Speaker 1: it'd be fun one day to travel up north in
Speaker 1: the spring of all times and going a big game hunt.
Speaker 1: I mean that was like far off and I just
Speaker 1: envisioned like maybe one day I'd go one time and
Speaker 1: kill a bear and just be you know, I have
Speaker 1: this great time. Well, now this is something that I'm
Speaker 1: doing every year. And to be able to hunt a
Speaker 1: big game animal in the spring with your bow in
Speaker 1: May and June, it's something that you don't get to do.
Speaker 1: There's a few sheep that you can hunt, but how
Speaker 1: many of us can afford going to sheep hunt in
Speaker 1: in today's culture, with where guys are becoming more and
Speaker 1: more passionate about year round hunting. I mean used to
Speaker 1: when my dad, who was as hard acore hunter as
Speaker 1: there was on the planet, Man, he didn't start thinking
Speaker 1: about deer hunting and tell about September the one I mean,
Speaker 1: you just didn't. You just didn't do it. That's when
Speaker 1: you started shooting your bow. And then as I got
Speaker 1: a little bit older. They started shooting three D archery
Speaker 1: tournaments in the nineties and so it kind of became
Speaker 1: a little bit more of a year round thing. But
Speaker 1: now hunt and it's like a year round passion for
Speaker 1: all of us. We're thinking about it. We're on social
Speaker 1: media where YadA YadA ya, Well that's where to me,
Speaker 1: spring bear hunting plays in a major play for the
Speaker 1: hunters and southern hunters even particularly to be able to
Speaker 1: escape the heat of the South and go up north.
Speaker 1: To me, isn't it is something that oh absolutely, it
Speaker 1: would be hard to replace. It is so stink and
Speaker 1: cool to leave Arkansas in late June, because that's when
Speaker 1: we go to Saskatchewan late June and travel thirty hours,
Speaker 1: whether by plane or whether we drive. Brent and I
Speaker 1: have driven the last two years. We'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: But get up there and it's like, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: cool and you're building the fire. You know, everybody's sitting
Speaker 1: around the fire. We're headed in. You know, it's June,
Speaker 1: late June, as hot as almost as hot as it's
Speaker 1: going to get in Arkansas, and we're packing our winter
Speaker 1: closed to go hunting and Saskatchewan. Your little pink union
Speaker 1: suit that you bring every year. You look, really, I've
Speaker 1: got it on now just in case we were going
Speaker 1: to go up there today. So to me, that's one
Speaker 1: back to the point here, fellas. That's one of the
Speaker 1: coolest things about about that is being able to just
Speaker 1: leave here and go there. The last two years Brent
Speaker 1: and I have driven it's thirty hours up to northern
Speaker 1: Saskatchewan and we usually break up the trip well, stop
Speaker 1: in North Dakota and fight and fight, Uh what are
Speaker 1: we doing? You know what? I'll tell you what when
Speaker 1: I this is like really neither here nor there, but
Speaker 1: on the way back, Okay, on the way there, when
Speaker 1: you when you get into Canada and southern Canada is
Speaker 1: like these big crop fields and flat and it's like,
Speaker 1: to me, the color of the sky kind of changes
Speaker 1: and like you feel like you're there the next like
Speaker 1: the next ten hours, it's like your home. On the
Speaker 1: way back home. When I feel like I'm home is
Speaker 1: when I get to Kansas City and then you start
Speaker 1: driving and you start seeing all these like uh, what
Speaker 1: am I trying to say? All these like Ozarkian restaurants,
Speaker 1: Like I just feel like I'm home. We stopped the
Speaker 1: little gas station on the way back when we stopped
Speaker 1: at that little the little like cracker barrel looking like, man,
Speaker 1: we're home road trip, thirty hour road trip. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: you can get uh chest your chicken, that's it. That's it.
Speaker 1: And the in the gas station your home sweet tea
Speaker 1: a little don't get me started about sweet tea. Did
Speaker 1: is an anomaly if you can find it anywhere overseas.
Speaker 1: So spring bear hunting. Spring bear hunting is truly unique.
Speaker 1: So when we go up to northern Canada and Saskatchewan,
Speaker 1: the cool thing about what Colby is doing is that
Speaker 1: his hunters boat based hunts. So he's on these big
Speaker 1: water systems in in the in the lakes up in Canada.
Speaker 1: This wouldn't be it's kind of unique because these lakes
Speaker 1: and rivers kind of like flood. Well, the river's flowing
Speaker 1: to the lakes and then just on the backside, the
Speaker 1: river flows right out of the lake. So you never
Speaker 1: really know if you're in a lake or a river.
Speaker 1: I mean, even though they're named typically, but these big
Speaker 1: water systems and some of these lakes are gonna be huge,
Speaker 1: I mean like fifty sixty miles across. In the case
Speaker 1: of where we hunted a few years before. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: you you're on a lake and you can't see the
Speaker 1: bank on either side. That was what was foreign to me,
Speaker 1: because it's it's nothing, and you said we're gonna be
Speaker 1: hunting lakes and rivers system. It's nothing like what I
Speaker 1: had pictured in my mind? Was it you? Now? Not
Speaker 1: seeing another boat, It's like you're the first people to
Speaker 1: ever be on that water. There's there's nobody, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like a different planet up there. You actually feel alone.
Speaker 1: I mean, if something happens, you're thinking, how am I
Speaker 1: going to God, He's gonna come find me now. So
Speaker 1: on the road trip up there, we actually we drive
Speaker 1: north until the pavement ends. I guess around Missing Nippi,
Speaker 1: the little community Miss Nippi or is it Larrange where
Speaker 1: the pavement ends in La Range rons the Skatchewan You
Speaker 1: can look it up. And then from there there's it's
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty miles or dirt roads to get
Speaker 1: where we turn off to go to Colby's camp, and
Speaker 1: from from his camp we access boats and travel up
Speaker 1: and down waterways as far as twenty two miles in
Speaker 1: any direction. The first year that we hunted there, Brent
Speaker 1: and I got in a boat and we would travel
Speaker 1: twenty two miles to our bait side, which took about
Speaker 1: an hour. You know, he's running I don't remember what
Speaker 1: what horse power motors. Yeah, and so you can you know,
Speaker 1: we're traveling about twenty miles and hours. It's not a
Speaker 1: bass boat traveling seventy anyway longboat rides. But so, but
Speaker 1: but what he's able to do by getting that far
Speaker 1: north is is he's able to access unhunted bears. I mean,
Speaker 1: I deal with a lot of Canadian outfitters through Bare
Speaker 1: Honey magazine, and what Canada has that we don't have
Speaker 1: is truly massive, massive amounts of true wilderness. And by
Speaker 1: true wilderness, I mean places where there are non vehicular,
Speaker 1: no roads that a vehicle can drive down, I mean
Speaker 1: there there were places up there that we were walking
Speaker 1: and scouting that I would you know, you get the
Speaker 1: impression you may be the only person that's made a
Speaker 1: track in there totally untapped resources. Yeah, yeah, yeah, wrote
Speaker 1: you know, there's only a couple of roads that I mean,
Speaker 1: the Gold dirt road that we were on was the
Speaker 1: only north south road for like sixty or seventy miles,
Speaker 1: like to the east to the west. So I mean this,
Speaker 1: you're completely remote when he takes us to these Listen
Speaker 1: to this. The gym Sessions told me that in the
Speaker 1: United States, the furthest that you can get from a
Speaker 1: road and be sitting in wilderness and as the crow flies.
Speaker 1: The closest road like the furthest you can get away
Speaker 1: from the road is thirty six miles and it's in
Speaker 1: uh it's near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River and Wyoming.
Speaker 1: And uh So if that's thirty six miles, okay. In Canada,
Speaker 1: places like that are everywhere. I mean of the population
Speaker 1: Canada lives within a dred miles of the U. S. Border.
Speaker 1: I've heard that statistic before. And then Canada goes forever north.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a huge count tree and there's just
Speaker 1: nobody that lives up there. Yeah, well you think also,
Speaker 1: you know, not only roads. I think back over the
Speaker 1: last three years and I've been keeping up with it, man,
Speaker 1: I paid attention to it. You don't see a commercial
Speaker 1: jet flow over. If you see an airplane there, aircraft
Speaker 1: of any kind of it's got floats on it and
Speaker 1: it's taking somebody fishing. And that was rare. Hey, when
Speaker 1: I was in Alaska talking about wilderness when I was
Speaker 1: in Alaska. I've been to Alaska twice, south central Alaska.
Speaker 1: You'll be you'll have flown into this river system in
Speaker 1: Alaska boat based hunt there as well, and there is
Speaker 1: hardly a moment when you cannot hear a bushplane flying overhead.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm serious, Like in all the videos and
Speaker 1: stuff I do, you can't hardly talk for all the
Speaker 1: bush planes. It's a little distracting because you're having this
Speaker 1: wilderness experience and constantly bush planes. And I mean that's
Speaker 1: the method of travel in Alaska. And the time of
Speaker 1: year that I was there was when a lot of
Speaker 1: people we're hunting, so it was a busy time. But
Speaker 1: I mean it was like you were in the wilderness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you were probably the only one within miles of where
Speaker 1: you were sitting on the ground, but in the air
Speaker 1: there were planes all over the places. And not taking
Speaker 1: anything away from Alaska, but by GOLLI the most remote
Speaker 1: place I have ever set foot was the first year
Speaker 1: when we drove the boat sixty miles to the camp.
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's what that's when you or somebody
Speaker 1: brought up Hey, there's not even commercial airlines spine over
Speaker 1: and and I mean that was true wilderness, true wilderness,
Speaker 1: and that's that's a commodity that I mean, as we
Speaker 1: continue to move into the current time that we do
Speaker 1: with the encroachment of civilization, the loss of habitat, urban sprawl,
Speaker 1: people populations of humans are increasing, It's like wilderness is
Speaker 1: really something that is valuable. It's valuable to humans, valuable
Speaker 1: to wildlife, valuable to the planet. Anyway to going to
Speaker 1: spring bear hunt in northern Canada, you get to partake
Speaker 1: of that and it's like one piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 1: Absolutely you get to partake of that. And there's also
Speaker 1: something really unique about being really familiar with the world
Speaker 1: that you live in. Like all of us are outdoors
Speaker 1: money and I mean we're contoisseurs of this Arkansas outdoor
Speaker 1: life that we live. We really are. And to go
Speaker 1: up there and to really know nothing, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean like I'm asking I'm asking Colby, like what kind
Speaker 1: of tree is that? I mean, like I feel like
Speaker 1: I feel like the city people that you know come
Speaker 1: with me somewhere and they see a wide oak and
Speaker 1: are like, what kind of tree is that? All three
Speaker 1: of us, it's been our whole lives in the woods
Speaker 1: and gone, you know, adventures hunting or whatever. But that
Speaker 1: place up there is like testosterone and steroids at a baby.
Speaker 1: I mean it is, it's there's you just you can't
Speaker 1: describe it really, and it's it's a It is not
Speaker 1: majestic beauty. Like I've had a lot of people say,
Speaker 1: is it beautiful up there in Order Saskatchewan. It's absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 1: It is not majestic beauty. Majestic beauty would be I
Speaker 1: would define it like rocky mountain beauty, big grand vistas
Speaker 1: and rock formations and stuff that's just really really visually appealing.
Speaker 1: This this to me, is like a rugged, nuanced beauty,
Speaker 1: and the beauty is in the fact that there's this
Speaker 1: massive expanse of wilderness. But what what you typically have
Speaker 1: on the ground is that reindeer moss. Is that what
Speaker 1: they call it. It's liking. I mean, it's like white.
Speaker 1: It's almost like you're walking on the moon. And then
Speaker 1: jack pines, which are these small coniferous trees evergreen. The
Speaker 1: biggest they get is about six inches at the base.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason we hunt on the ground up
Speaker 1: there because the trees ain't big enough to get I
Speaker 1: guess you could maybe lean the ladder stand on some
Speaker 1: of them, but yeah, and it probably bend over if
Speaker 1: the wind blows, you will be so in Yeah, you couldn't.
Speaker 1: And that that is the northern boreal forest. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is the boreal forest. And those trees grow for
Speaker 1: like four months a year. I mean that's I guess
Speaker 1: technically because they hold their needles throughout the winter. They
Speaker 1: actually are going a little photo census throughout the winter.
Speaker 1: But I mean the reason that those trees don't get
Speaker 1: big is because they don't grow there. They've they've been
Speaker 1: They're designed to live in heavy snowfall. And so to me,
Speaker 1: the beauty the appreciation of that place is realizing that
Speaker 1: every creater that's here is an extreme survivalist. I mean,
Speaker 1: like down here where we live in these kind of
Speaker 1: mild latitudes, like you got a pretty big lee way
Speaker 1: of ecological niche that you can live in, if I
Speaker 1: could describe it that way, I mean like they're specialists here,
Speaker 1: but like not that specialist in terms of like how
Speaker 1: an animal adapts. But man, when you get up that
Speaker 1: far north and then you gotta go through eight months
Speaker 1: a hard winter, seven months of hard winter, five ft
Speaker 1: of snow. Yeah, I mean there's not a whole other
Speaker 1: can live. Well, there's there's three, there's four things. There
Speaker 1: are four big game animals in northern Saskatchewan black bear, moose, caribou,
Speaker 1: and wolf. And that's it. That is it. Now there's
Speaker 1: some small game species, but I mean that's that's all
Speaker 1: that's there. And and what is the king of the
Speaker 1: north Woods trick question. Bears? I mean they dominate the landscape.
Speaker 1: I mean the moose, moose populations. Moose is a low
Speaker 1: densey animal. I mean you don't you don't see a
Speaker 1: lot of moose. The caribou up in that part of
Speaker 1: the country, Colby says are rare. Yeah. And now wolves,
Speaker 1: now that's a different story. But there's there's more bears
Speaker 1: and wolves. But per like if you were just doing
Speaker 1: a population density the Northern Woods, black berry is the
Speaker 1: dominant animal, no doubt, way more bears than you know
Speaker 1: people probably could even imagine up there. Yeah, no doubt.
Speaker 1: Have you ever have you done any research to what
Speaker 1: the density what the population density is in that area. No,
Speaker 1: I don't know the specifics of that or even if
Speaker 1: they have a well some of these bears that Kobe's
Speaker 1: hunting right now are collared. They're doing a study up
Speaker 1: in that part of the world right now, and I
Speaker 1: guess it's a population study, but I don't know the
Speaker 1: details of it. But you know, population density is a bear,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. Like a high population of bears
Speaker 1: is a bear. One bear per square mile. High population
Speaker 1: of deer is like forty five deer per square mile.
Speaker 1: So when we say, oh, man, there's a high population
Speaker 1: of bears there, we say that relative to other things,
Speaker 1: like you know, I mean high high density of bears
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, it's like one bear per square mile, which
Speaker 1: that's a good bear population, and it's actually the same
Speaker 1: up there, if not even there's just so much ground
Speaker 1: that you know, there's there's bears are spread out, and
Speaker 1: bears are load inst the animals they're not like white
Speaker 1: tailed deer, they're not they're not a herd animal, you know,
Speaker 1: they're not gregarious. But but there's a there's a ton
Speaker 1: of bears up there, and we see exaggerated our situation
Speaker 1: a little exaggerated in that we're hunting bated bears. So
Speaker 1: these bears are coming in from a lot of different places,
Speaker 1: you know, but those bears don't act like to do
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. You know, these bears too are places Kobe's
Speaker 1: access and that has probably never been hunted, never been bated.
Speaker 1: In fact, next year he's going to a totally different
Speaker 1: water system. It's probably never been bear hunted before ever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that's something that was hard for me to
Speaker 1: grasp when you told me how big the area is
Speaker 1: that he hunts, and it was I can't even remember,
Speaker 1: to be honest, it was over a hundred thousand square
Speaker 1: miles and even twice that much. It was. It was
Speaker 1: more than an outfitter could hunt. Oh gosh, you yeah,
Speaker 1: in a lifetime. Yeah, and so and and and I'll say,
Speaker 1: and as this pertains to other Canadian outfitters, Kolbe is
Speaker 1: not unique in that situation. I mean, these these Canadian
Speaker 1: outfitters have vast areas that they can hunt, and most
Speaker 1: of them, a lot of them, are the only people
Speaker 1: that are hunting them. I mean, so um, you know,
Speaker 1: just as a plug for other outfitters as well, there's
Speaker 1: a ton outfitters that have some crazy good wilderness highning.
Speaker 1: Only certain ways to access a lot of this, A
Speaker 1: lot of it you can't. There's no way to get
Speaker 1: in there too. Yeah, you couldn't drive. You couldn't drive,
Speaker 1: you could fly on a float plane. Everything in Canada's
Speaker 1: access by water because there there, you know, it's a
Speaker 1: aracial glacial formed regions. So there, I mean, you look
Speaker 1: at a aerial photo or satellite photo on Google Earth
Speaker 1: of any of those Canadian provinces and it is littered,
Speaker 1: I mean littered with lakes, river systems, unbelievable amount of
Speaker 1: water it's flowing out of Canada. And so that's the
Speaker 1: way they get in there. They don't have dirt roads,
Speaker 1: that just little pig trails that go every direction up there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we have established that this is a wilderness hunt.
Speaker 1: That being said, we drive to our camp. The last
Speaker 1: two years we've driven our pickup trucks right to camp. Uh.
Speaker 1: This year we stayed in wall Pence. The year before,
Speaker 1: we stayed in these little wooden takedown cabins that cold
Speaker 1: be made. And the government actually wouldn't let him use
Speaker 1: those this year because of fire danger and they were
Speaker 1: afraid those things would burn and they needed to he
Speaker 1: need to be able to pull evacuate quickly, so they said,
Speaker 1: you can't have those semi permanent structures and so we
Speaker 1: had wall tents. We we so we do drive right
Speaker 1: into camp and then we take the trucks down to
Speaker 1: a boat ramp and get in there and go hunting.
Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about the schedule of the hunt.
Speaker 1: Ryan kind of like like daily, like a daily routine
Speaker 1: that we would do. Well. You know, it's uh, you
Speaker 1: get up there and it don't get well, I guess
Speaker 1: it don't get dark completely, but probably the darkest it
Speaker 1: gets is two o'clock and the sun's rise and by
Speaker 1: what three in the morning, So kind of misses your
Speaker 1: mental state up, you know, trying to sleep when there's
Speaker 1: daylight now coming through the tent wall. But you know,
Speaker 1: we sleep in in the mornings, eat some breakfast, and
Speaker 1: we'll get out, you know, late morning and do a
Speaker 1: little fishing. And the fishing is spectacular. Most these places
Speaker 1: fish don't know what they've never seen tackle, but you know,
Speaker 1: do fish and have good time, hang out with the guys,
Speaker 1: come back, eat, uh, you know, lunch, noonish or so,
Speaker 1: and then we'll have a little seemed like bowshoot and
Speaker 1: make sure everybody's you know, on target, and we gather
Speaker 1: our stuff and off we go, you know. In the
Speaker 1: trucks to get down where the boats are parked. And
Speaker 1: you know, some guys ain't got as far as boat ride,
Speaker 1: but some of us are going it seems like the
Speaker 1: other side of the earth to get to some of these. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, some of the really good baits are within
Speaker 1: two or three miles of the of where we're putting.
Speaker 1: So it's not always there's not a necessarily a correlation
Speaker 1: with the big bears are way back there. I mean.
Speaker 1: But the thing is Kobe goes up there in the
Speaker 1: off season two and looks for these places where bears
Speaker 1: naturally travel. I mean, some of these places bears if
Speaker 1: used for generations that are beat down, like he's narrow
Speaker 1: razorback rich cops will have a game trail on it
Speaker 1: that is beat down, like you know, deep trenches, and
Speaker 1: you know, bears travel them a lot. Sometimes they're in
Speaker 1: pinch pointing around the end of the lake or between
Speaker 1: the marsh and a ridge top or something. He strategically
Speaker 1: puts these baits where guys can you do have good success,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's a key right there. Nothing about
Speaker 1: what he's doing is based on convenience. Hey, he wants
Speaker 1: to see his hunters. You know, shoot bears. He loves that,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was It's interesting and I've I've
Speaker 1: tried to pry as much as I could out of
Speaker 1: Cobit about how he chooses where its baits odes are.
Speaker 1: He tries to spread them out. I've noticed at least
Speaker 1: three to five miles up art right, that seems to
Speaker 1: be the trend. And he likes putting these baits on
Speaker 1: in areas where there are bear trails. And there are
Speaker 1: bear trails up there right, I mean, which you don't
Speaker 1: see that much around here, and uh, he he puts
Speaker 1: them like on waterways, you know, these bears. You there's
Speaker 1: creeks that are smaller feeder creeks that are running into
Speaker 1: these lakes and rivers, and he'll put baits up these
Speaker 1: creek systems there. Even though it's relatively flat there, there
Speaker 1: is some topography. There's some you know, small rises, kind
Speaker 1: of rolling hills. I'm glad you mentioned now. He told
Speaker 1: me that he looks at contours topo maps and he
Speaker 1: will follow on contour too. And a lot of those
Speaker 1: game trails bear trails where you want to call them.
Speaker 1: I mean, it looks like for the folks that haven't
Speaker 1: seen it, it looks like a cow trail in a pasture.
Speaker 1: I mean there's there's just flat beat out and it's dirt,
Speaker 1: and it's his wide you know, eight some of them
Speaker 1: ten inches wide and beat down. And it's when you
Speaker 1: think about the four big animals that you said to
Speaker 1: live there. How long and how old are those you said?
Speaker 1: You said a hundred years, ten thousands? I mean that
Speaker 1: basically the current time frame that we live in. You know,
Speaker 1: ten thousand years ago was when the ice Age kind
Speaker 1: of turned, you know, the Plisto scene turned into the
Speaker 1: modern era. The glaciers are treated. All the current animals
Speaker 1: that we have in North America all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we're here, you know, not really all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: but they were here. So I mean, yeah, so these
Speaker 1: not much has changed in the last ten thousand years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool, you know. And this is an unaltered
Speaker 1: I don't want to interrupt you, but let me just
Speaker 1: say this, and then this is an unaltered ecosystem. Like
Speaker 1: down here, there is no such thing as an altered ecosystem.
Speaker 1: It was yeah, fifty years ago. I mean, that's what's
Speaker 1: cool about these kind of hunts. Yeah, I was just
Speaker 1: gonna say, you know some of these these bates that
Speaker 1: you know, drop the first guy off while we're waiting,
Speaker 1: you know what, castarat out just where he pulled the
Speaker 1: boat up and catch four or five pike just within
Speaker 1: five or six minutes, or you know, wally or something.
Speaker 1: It's just you don't find that down here where we're at,
Speaker 1: you know, true wilderness. Yeah, and and that's that's what
Speaker 1: you've got to appreciate. And there's all different factors of
Speaker 1: these hunts that give them value. Like if you're white
Speaker 1: tail hunting in the Midwest, I mean you're not really
Speaker 1: Wilderness is not really what you're valuing on that hunt.
Speaker 1: Your your value in the white tail deer and his
Speaker 1: antlers and big bucks. When you go to Canada on
Speaker 1: a baited hunt, it's not a typically a test of
Speaker 1: physical endurance. It's not like a rocky mountain elk hunt,
Speaker 1: where really the limiting factor and the thing you're after
Speaker 1: is is you know, testing yourself up against this mountain.
Speaker 1: Like every every hunt has this angle that makes it valuable.
Speaker 1: When I hunt right here close to my house, I
Speaker 1: love it not because I have trophy deer right here.
Speaker 1: I love it because I walk out of my house.
Speaker 1: Tell my kids buy while they're playing basketball, jump in
Speaker 1: my truck. Drive a minute, get up my truck, and
Speaker 1: go hunt and be home at dinner. You know. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: so that hunt has value to me. This hunt has
Speaker 1: value because of wilderness. It's not it's not a technical hunt.
Speaker 1: I mean. And I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about hunting bears over bait, because it's massively misunderstood. Even
Speaker 1: in the hunting community. People are like, I hunting bears
Speaker 1: over donuts. Man, don't knock it till you try to
Speaker 1: come hunt with us and tell us that it's like
Speaker 1: hunting bears in a in a you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's just a it's a unique hunt, and it's
Speaker 1: not just for the kill that makes it unique. Well,
Speaker 1: I had a different I had a different opinion of it,
Speaker 1: only because I had never done it. Not it wasn't
Speaker 1: a bad opinion, you know, I've not against it at all.
Speaker 1: It wasn't against it at all, But I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: how easy can that be? It's like catching catfish in
Speaker 1: the bathtub. Not that I have. You would be selective
Speaker 1: on animals, you know too? Then bears a bear don't
Speaker 1: know what we are. We pose any threats, so you
Speaker 1: can sit back and and watch bears for days and
Speaker 1: most of the time and try to, you know, wait
Speaker 1: on that bear that you're looking for, right, And that's
Speaker 1: that's a massive key for hunting over bait, is it
Speaker 1: allows you to be highly selective, highly selective, and that's
Speaker 1: a key for conservation. That's a key for all kinds
Speaker 1: of different stuff. But I was just building this episode
Speaker 1: of Bear Horizon, which will probably be out about the
Speaker 1: time this podcast comes out, so go to Barony Magazine
Speaker 1: YouTube channel and check it out. Brent Reeves and I
Speaker 1: we watched more bear behavior in six days of bear
Speaker 1: hunting up there then the average hardcore woodsman will see
Speaker 1: in a lifetime, probably three lifetimes and six times as
Speaker 1: much as we did in the last two years up there,
Speaker 1: because we hunted like two days now. We that's the
Speaker 1: key feature of this video and you haven't even seen
Speaker 1: it yet. We gotta watch it. It's it finished exporting
Speaker 1: here is that we saw bears, breeding, bears, fighting bears,
Speaker 1: interacting with us bears, doing everything that bears do. And
Speaker 1: there's no other big game hunt where you get to
Speaker 1: watch and see animals for as longer period of time
Speaker 1: at close distance. And I mean when I say close distance,
Speaker 1: I mean like ten yards on the ground, not looking
Speaker 1: through a fence. I mean like there is no other
Speaker 1: big game hunt that is like this, and so that
Speaker 1: is an angle into this bated thing that a guy's
Speaker 1: got to look at, like if you're trying to evaluate
Speaker 1: you know, a hunt man white tail deer hunting. I
Speaker 1: love it, absolutely go bonkers over it and always have
Speaker 1: and always will. Man, that big buck when I see him,
Speaker 1: typically I'm watching him for a very short period of time.
Speaker 1: I mean he enters my life for like seconds before
Speaker 1: hopefully I'm able to harvest him or not. Last year
Speaker 1: I didn't even see a shooter buck. This year I've
Speaker 1: encountered one, and we won't talk about that, but alert
Speaker 1: the what I'm saying is is that these bated hunts
Speaker 1: are really unique. Get to watch these animals and and man,
Speaker 1: there's something that you just you come away with a
Speaker 1: deep appreciation when you get to watch them. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: were on like day four or five, I can't remember,
Speaker 1: and we had bears to contend there was not There
Speaker 1: was one hour maybe when we were on bait that
Speaker 1: we didn't have bears out in front of us, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't a bear that you wanted to shoot. I
Speaker 1: can remember making you laugh. You turned around and looked
Speaker 1: at me at one point and I just said, Bory,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean it. I was just trying to be funny.
Speaker 1: We got tired of watching bears. It was the I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, it was like watching Channel two for
Speaker 1: a while there. It was this is a good place
Speaker 1: to actually talk about the specifics of our hunt. So Brent,
Speaker 1: Brent was with me, Brent was filming, were hunting for
Speaker 1: five days. Kolby took us down a creek and when
Speaker 1: I said creek, it was like seven yards wide, like
Speaker 1: a small cook. Didn't go down it. He went left
Speaker 1: and right. Yeah. Yeah, oh man, look at the drone
Speaker 1: footage and you'll see what we're talking about from the video.
Speaker 1: But Kobe and this was a pretty unique bait. There
Speaker 1: was a creek that was navigable. Yeah, it's a good word.
Speaker 1: I didn't quite set right. Uh about five miles he
Speaker 1: could take his boat, his inflatable boats. Oh jeez, we
Speaker 1: gotta talk about we got a lot to talk about um.
Speaker 1: And so we went five miles. It took forty five
Speaker 1: minutes of just zigging and zagging and dodging limbs, and
Speaker 1: we went way back in here to this bait. He
Speaker 1: had very very as far as you can take the boat.
Speaker 1: Brett and I hunted there for five days, and within
Speaker 1: ten seconds of us sitting down the first day, two
Speaker 1: bears were coming. And that was a trend every single
Speaker 1: day when we sat down, and you'll see it in
Speaker 1: the video every time I do my interview first day,
Speaker 1: because we did it real strategically this time. Every single
Speaker 1: day I did day one, this is what's happening day
Speaker 1: to day, three, day four, day five. That's how the
Speaker 1: video lines out. Every single one of those clips, there's
Speaker 1: a bear within ten yards of mean while I'm talking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it wasn't like we were just you know, messing
Speaker 1: around getting ready. We were son. We would sit down
Speaker 1: and I mean scramble to get our gears. What was coming.
Speaker 1: We knew what was coming, and I just knew that,
Speaker 1: you know, probably the big shooter was gonna walk in,
Speaker 1: and so I mean we were just scrambled get everything together,
Speaker 1: and man, the bears would be there. And we watched
Speaker 1: bears for eight hours a day for five days. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was hardly a was there a two hour section
Speaker 1: where there wasn't a bear in front of us a seconds,
Speaker 1: a few minutes ago. I don't think there was an
Speaker 1: hour there wasn't be in front of That's true. That
Speaker 1: bait was phenomenal in terms of seeing bears. I think
Speaker 1: maybe the most bears we saw in a day would
Speaker 1: have been like seven or eight. This was also a
Speaker 1: brand new never started it three weeks ago, three weeks before.
Speaker 1: So these these bears have never never been hunted. They
Speaker 1: they probably never Kolbe was probably the first human they
Speaker 1: ever smelled. Yeah, so we're hunting off the ground, We're
Speaker 1: we're just immediately just bears all around us. And so
Speaker 1: it's late June. The bear rut okay, typically, oh man,
Speaker 1: we could get into a big deal about the bear rut. Bears.
Speaker 1: Bears have a unique reproductive methodology called the lady implantation,
Speaker 1: which means the Souths get bread in the summer, but
Speaker 1: they don't start gestation until the winter, early winter, late fall,
Speaker 1: once their bodies have decided whether they can rear young
Speaker 1: or not. Bears are low density animals, so they need
Speaker 1: this big long window of ovulation and ability to breed.
Speaker 1: Of the salves come in like a white tail rut.
Speaker 1: A dough is in heat for like three days because
Speaker 1: she's got a bam get bread, so that that fawn
Speaker 1: is born at the exact time for the highest probability
Speaker 1: of fond survival. A bear low dense, they animal. If
Speaker 1: a bear had a sal bear had a three day heat,
Speaker 1: she may not get bread. So they have these long,
Speaker 1: longer heats, long spans of time. They get bread. And
Speaker 1: so everything about when everything about a breeding cycle has
Speaker 1: to do with fawn arrival or cub arrival in this situation, right,
Speaker 1: so when that animal is gonna pop out, well, they
Speaker 1: they bears regulate when their cubs are born because that
Speaker 1: that fertilized egg doesn't attach to the uterine wall until
Speaker 1: a specific time, usually in early November, and the cubs
Speaker 1: are born hairless, underpound in the den January. Bizarre. You
Speaker 1: couldn't have off that up if you were writing the
Speaker 1: science fiction novel. I'm trying to forget it now. So
Speaker 1: that brings up a long road here, boys to say
Speaker 1: that June is definitely in the window of bear breeding.
Speaker 1: So all these bearriers are at the space and Brent
Speaker 1: and I just know that any day, any hour, any
Speaker 1: second for five days. We just know the next flash
Speaker 1: of fur that we see is going to be this
Speaker 1: tank bore that we've come to Saskatchewan hunt that that
Speaker 1: in itself, for it's been extended that long time, was
Speaker 1: worth the price of admission. I mean you were fueled
Speaker 1: up before we ever got in the boat to get there.
Speaker 1: I mean because you just knew today was the day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just knew what We've seen it before. Yeah, we've
Speaker 1: seen it happen, and we've seen it happened fast there.
Speaker 1: You know, we got spoiled. The first two years we
Speaker 1: hunted up there were killed on the first day the
Speaker 1: first two years were there. Yeah, and target and you
Speaker 1: know the the big the color face bearer we killed
Speaker 1: last year up there. I mean that was a bear
Speaker 1: wasn't even on the and they didn't even have pictures
Speaker 1: of right, he just showed up and showed up. So
Speaker 1: that that's the experience that we were looking you know,
Speaker 1: to repeat. Yeah, in in the logistics of this bait,
Speaker 1: Kobe didn't have a camera out at the time. Just
Speaker 1: the logistics of it. It's hard to understand, but there
Speaker 1: was so we put up a camera when we got there.
Speaker 1: Almost all Kobe's baits have have have cameras on them.
Speaker 1: This one didn't, so we didn't know exactly what was
Speaker 1: coming in there. But there was so many bears. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just like, there's for sure a shooter board
Speaker 1: coming in here. Within the first day when we get there.
Speaker 1: One of the first bears that is there within ten
Speaker 1: seconds of us sitting down is a nice color face
Speaker 1: bear that probably most bear hunters wouldn't have passed. I
Speaker 1: mean it was I don't even want to say the
Speaker 1: size of it because I don't know, and it was
Speaker 1: a that weight. Really isn't how you evaluate these spring
Speaker 1: bears because they're thin. They're coming out of the probably
Speaker 1: probably a four year old boar, three to four year
Speaker 1: old boar. I mean, nice bear, beautiful like blaze orange color.
Speaker 1: You guys have to watch this video again. It's's he's
Speaker 1: so pretty. So this bear comes in like right off
Speaker 1: the bat. And and we basically watched this bear every
Speaker 1: day for five days, and we just keep waiting in
Speaker 1: the in the big board just doesn't come, doesn't come,
Speaker 1: doesn't come, doesn't come, and uh, and it doesn't really
Speaker 1: make sense because the places covered in sous and uh,
Speaker 1: and we saw three different color phrase boars that were
Speaker 1: just I mean just right. And I have very high
Speaker 1: standards when it comes to bear hunting. I mean I do.
Speaker 1: And uh So, if I was just wanting to take
Speaker 1: home a good, good boar, it could have easily done
Speaker 1: it the first first day. But I was I was
Speaker 1: waiting for a tank that so I went up there
Speaker 1: and it just it didn't come. And that's the that's
Speaker 1: the that's just hunting. That's just that's just part of it.
Speaker 1: It wasn't everybody was seeing, not everybody, we were seeing
Speaker 1: big bears. Ran ended up killing a big bear spoiler,
Speaker 1: We're gonna get to him. And just to cut to
Speaker 1: the cut to the chase of what happened to me
Speaker 1: is on the final day, well on day for Brent,
Speaker 1: I actually said, I'm not going to shoot that bear today,
Speaker 1: but I might tomorrow. And what was also in the
Speaker 1: back of my mind was Brent had a tag and
Speaker 1: if I killed early, Brent wasn't gonna get to hunt.
Speaker 1: And uh and so in the back of my mind,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking I'd like to get this done. That wasn't
Speaker 1: why that was in the front of life done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so anyway, the final day after watching the bear
Speaker 1: all week, shooting a traditional bow, shooting a takedown recurve
Speaker 1: fifty two pounds inches um Man, with a traditional bow,
Speaker 1: you just can't take anything for granted, nothing, I mean,
Speaker 1: And and that to me is the way that I
Speaker 1: have balanced the scales in some way. Every hunt that
Speaker 1: I do, there's an angle in my mind that I
Speaker 1: want to limit myself. And on baity bear hunts in Canada,
Speaker 1: typically I do it with a traditional bow. It's just
Speaker 1: why I want to roll, It's just what I want
Speaker 1: to do. In Oklahoma two weeks ago, when I killed
Speaker 1: the big bear, I did not want the weapon to
Speaker 1: be the limiting factor of that hunt. The limiting factor
Speaker 1: of that hunt was just getting that bear in front
Speaker 1: of you. So some people are like, why don't you
Speaker 1: used to trad bow clay Man. I love trad bows
Speaker 1: and that's my primary weapon right now. But every hunt
Speaker 1: has a little different angle, and you that's the beauty
Speaker 1: of hunting, as you can cherry pick where you want
Speaker 1: the limiting factor to be. And so shooting a trad
Speaker 1: bow and a I made a bad shot on the bear.
Speaker 1: I mean, what was so hard was that we'd watched
Speaker 1: this bear for so long. It was such an easy shot,
Speaker 1: probably ten yards. And the truth is is I was.
Speaker 1: We can watch the video again. I hit the bear
Speaker 1: at the back edge of the scapula, which is the shoulder,
Speaker 1: So I hit him about three inches high and just
Speaker 1: slightly forward, and if it had been lower it would
Speaker 1: have been per Really, it was only about that far high.
Speaker 1: You guys have to watch the shot. But I smacked
Speaker 1: that bear right in the shoulder and he ran off
Speaker 1: with my era and uh, the bear is still out
Speaker 1: there being a bear today. I mean it didn't. It didn't.
Speaker 1: It didn't get any penetration, just stuck in that scapula.
Speaker 1: And man, I gotta say all the things that I
Speaker 1: gotta say here. It was a terrible experience. Made me
Speaker 1: evaluate all the different things that you know, was was
Speaker 1: I practiced up? Was I ready mentally? And all those
Speaker 1: questions it all just boils back down to just human error.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't win them all. I had actually
Speaker 1: been on an amazing traditional archery streak. That was the
Speaker 1: first bear I've ever shot and not recovered ever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was about that one bear. In all all these
Speaker 1: years of bear hunting, I've never lost a bear and
Speaker 1: U and actually been on a tremendous streak of with
Speaker 1: white tails and bears with a treadbow. And it's this
Speaker 1: is what I told Misty, my wife. I said, if
Speaker 1: you ride bulls, you're gonna get your teeth knocked out.
Speaker 1: If you shoot a traditional boat, you're gonna miss stuff.
Speaker 1: And it just comes with a turf. It was. It was.
Speaker 1: It was a roller coaster, you know that whole time
Speaker 1: we've sat there and when it comes in and you decide, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do it, you know, and we're rolling video. Man,
Speaker 1: it is some of the best stuff I've ever shot.
Speaker 1: And it was from all the different actions and of
Speaker 1: the bears that we got what bears being bears, and
Speaker 1: then we decided to, you know, pull the pin on
Speaker 1: this thing and get it done, and it just didn't
Speaker 1: work out. It was it makes you appreciate more that
Speaker 1: the times that we had before, that the success we
Speaker 1: had before, because you know, we appreciate I mean, I
Speaker 1: you know, I think about those hunts all the time
Speaker 1: and how much fun we had in the interaction we
Speaker 1: had with each other and the bears. And but even
Speaker 1: though the kill is not the the the reason you
Speaker 1: travel up there. You know, it's it's everything combined. But
Speaker 1: it was you know, it was a letdown, and it
Speaker 1: was a letdown. It was a life lesson and a
Speaker 1: hard one. But the reason you can't appreciate the good
Speaker 1: unless you get some of the bad the year before
Speaker 1: that also, everything everybody in camp, I mean it was done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everything worked every great. Yes, I mean it really made
Speaker 1: you appreciate how good that hunting was before, and the
Speaker 1: hunting was excellent this time, you know, and you know
Speaker 1: sometimes the shot just we struggled so well. Listen to this,
Speaker 1: you know, the old adage, and I've heard it on
Speaker 1: a few in a few places, even the last few
Speaker 1: days on social media. Don't take anything. Don't shoot anything
Speaker 1: on the first day. Wait is that right? Don't shoot
Speaker 1: anything on the first day, you wouldn't take on the last.
Speaker 1: Don't pass anything on the first day, you wouldn't shoot
Speaker 1: on the last. I passed the bear on the first day,
Speaker 1: shot him on the last day. I walked away with
Speaker 1: a bad taste in my mouth from that. I truly
Speaker 1: did it. Just it just didn't feel right, and I
Speaker 1: kind of evaluated my motivations for shooting that bear. You know,
Speaker 1: it really wasn't what I came up there to shoot
Speaker 1: and I shot him and it and it didn't turn
Speaker 1: out right. And let me tell you how I applied
Speaker 1: this into my life later. Is the exact same thing
Speaker 1: happened in Manitoba in August. Is that I on the
Speaker 1: first day of the hunt. First day I hunted, I
Speaker 1: filmed the guy. The first day, I had a color
Speaker 1: phase bear come in that probably two people in North
Speaker 1: America would have passed me and Rhyan. Now I was waiting.
Speaker 1: I really wanted a big, heavy, like four plus pound
Speaker 1: fall bear. This was This bear was gorgeous, and I
Speaker 1: passed him on the first day and then because I
Speaker 1: felt like the hunt was gonna be pretty easy. We're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of bears in any way, the last
Speaker 1: day came in in the outfitter. It was like that
Speaker 1: bear is coming in there. He's still there. If you
Speaker 1: want to go hunting, you can. And I knew that
Speaker 1: if I went in there, I would shoot that bear
Speaker 1: and it would have It was a bear that anybody
Speaker 1: would have been proud of. And I actually regretted not
Speaker 1: shooting him on the first day. Okay, but because of
Speaker 1: that Saskatchewan deal, I said, no, I ain't even going
Speaker 1: back in there. Put me over on this other place.
Speaker 1: We hadn't even been where. There. It was a bear
Speaker 1: that I really wanted to type, a bear that I
Speaker 1: really wanted to hunt, was there, and I went over
Speaker 1: there to that bait. The final day of the Manitoba hunt,
Speaker 1: sat there and never saw the big bear. Came home
Speaker 1: without it with a with a with tag my pocket.
Speaker 1: And so I actually felt good about that. I really
Speaker 1: did even did out. Yeah, it did it. It felt
Speaker 1: good to come away losing because I lost twice. I mean,
Speaker 1: I went to I went to Saskatchewan, came over with
Speaker 1: a tag in my pocket, went to Manitoba past bears
Speaker 1: was playing it conservative, came home with a tag in
Speaker 1: my pocket. So man, it's it's it's no fun coming
Speaker 1: back from I've rarely come back from Canada with a
Speaker 1: tag in my pocket. Yeah, well that is not that
Speaker 1: is not the um. The primary goal, I guess is
Speaker 1: to go up there and fill one. So it is
Speaker 1: so a sobering Yeah yeah, to come back with it.
Speaker 1: But you know the what's good about that it was
Speaker 1: your choice. You know, you made that decision and for
Speaker 1: whatever reason internally, you know you did you did you
Speaker 1: feeled your tag. Yeah, your conscience tag or whatever you
Speaker 1: want to call it. You did that. So yeah, you
Speaker 1: didn't come home empty handed, you know. And he's probably
Speaker 1: so nervous he just couldn't pull back. And I was nervous.
Speaker 1: I don't tell you. My legs were shaking. Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: And I think that what that had a lot to
Speaker 1: do with it. I really do, man, I really think
Speaker 1: because I've seen you snapshoot at a at bears before
Speaker 1: and it was just money. Yeah, I've seen you, you know,
Speaker 1: three yards. You know, it's hard to miss one at
Speaker 1: three yards, but at twenty five yards when you shot
Speaker 1: that bear the second time last year, I mean, it
Speaker 1: was it's definitely easier to shoot when your brain doesn't
Speaker 1: have time to catch up with your your the mechanics
Speaker 1: of your physical body, like just to just to shoot bam,
Speaker 1: you know. And that that's a big factor. And that
Speaker 1: to what I'm like, in traditional archery, you go through
Speaker 1: these stages and I kind of felt like I was
Speaker 1: on the honeymoon stage the last three years. I mean
Speaker 1: I was just it was like, what's the big deal,
Speaker 1: what's the big deal? And then and then now I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm getting a little bit panicky when the deer
Speaker 1: walks up or bear walks up because of partly for
Speaker 1: missing that bar in Sasketch. But that that is the
Speaker 1: beauty of traditional archery. I mean, if I if I
Speaker 1: didn't want the weapon to be my limiting factor, I'd
Speaker 1: be shooting the compound bow. And that that's just the
Speaker 1: game I want to play right now, and it may change.
Speaker 1: Just because you would have had a compound don't mean
Speaker 1: you would have killed it off. That's true. That's true.
Speaker 1: Slapped in the face with a dead red reality up there,
Speaker 1: you can still feel it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: you're right. I mean it anything could happen with any
Speaker 1: weapon they the So that's what I'm working on. What
Speaker 1: I learned up there from that miss was I really
Speaker 1: have to pick a spot. That's so easy to say.
Speaker 1: It's so easy to say, pick a spot, small man.
Speaker 1: You gotta have a machine for a brain to pick
Speaker 1: a spot when you shoot an animal the traditional bow.
Speaker 1: And I'm still learning how to do that. Uh oh,
Speaker 1: I'm still learning now. Going back to me being nervous,
Speaker 1: like the anticipation of seeing this bear walking, and we
Speaker 1: watched it for thirty minutes before took the shot, and
Speaker 1: I mean I was, I was nervous as a cat.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what I do love that that
Speaker 1: I still get excited when I shoot a bear. And
Speaker 1: will you also add in the fact that regardless of
Speaker 1: the outcome, the world is gonna know one way or
Speaker 1: the other because I'm sitting back there with a camera.
Speaker 1: And as soon as I did it, I knew that
Speaker 1: I could not make an episode about it. I knew
Speaker 1: that I could not, you know, I had to come
Speaker 1: out with it and and just and and hopefully somebody
Speaker 1: will learn and something from this. Nothing else is just
Speaker 1: just realities. Yeah. Yeah, So two days ago, two days ago,
Speaker 1: let's talk about man. Two days ago, I missed a
Speaker 1: for around here, a whopper white tail buck, A good one.
Speaker 1: I mean, not like a one fifty, but for around here,
Speaker 1: a good one. Best deer I've missed in a long time.
Speaker 1: I will stand by my statement that I believe I
Speaker 1: hit really close to where I was aiming. Just a
Speaker 1: deer onen't there. When the air I got there, I
Speaker 1: text Ryan and Brent and tell him I missed, and
Speaker 1: I made the statement on text. I said, Man, I
Speaker 1: watched that deer for twenty minutes before I shot, and
Speaker 1: Brent goes, You're not very good if you have time
Speaker 1: to think about it, I've noticed that you don't perform
Speaker 1: real well. And that is when I drew the line
Speaker 1: in the sand and I was like, too soon, Brent,
Speaker 1: we can no longer to be friends. I said, I'm
Speaker 1: still in the tree. The dust hadn't even settled from
Speaker 1: where that buck kicked up, the leaves running off, And
Speaker 1: Brent's like, yeah, you're not very good when you have
Speaker 1: to think about it. You know, he volunteered the information,
Speaker 1: right right, and like we said, you know, he could
Speaker 1: name the episode, you know, if he makes one out
Speaker 1: of it, Missing this Year's Shooters this year. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a good. Uh. We we got a deal going here
Speaker 1: where well we should we tell the name of your podcast, Brent.
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. No, yeah, yeah, the tagline of this podcast,
Speaker 1: missing this Year's Shooters. That's the inside generale no so
Speaker 1: ms ms A bear. It's all all h A journey
Speaker 1: of traditional archery and the discipline of traditional archery. That's
Speaker 1: what I love about it, I mean, and so to me,
Speaker 1: that's just where I'm at. I want to I want
Speaker 1: to do it with a treadbo. That being said, I'm
Speaker 1: going to Manitoba. I'm carrying a compound bow tomorrow, going
Speaker 1: to Manitoba, and the limiting factor is not I don't
Speaker 1: want it to be the bow, you know, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take it. But man, Ryan tell us, uh, tell us, uh,
Speaker 1: the phone ringing Citro Nella, Alabama. No mosquito is there.
Speaker 1: So so on the on the day that I shot
Speaker 1: my bear, I get a text on the garment and
Speaker 1: reach from Ryan and he says, just shot a big one.
Speaker 1: And so on day five is when you killed your bear.
Speaker 1: Give us, give us just a little rundown of the
Speaker 1: high storm. Well, I shot my bear on the fifth day,
Speaker 1: and you texted me while Brent and I were waiting
Speaker 1: at the boat. Yeah, it was a stif day, you know.
Speaker 1: The first day, Uh, he took me under to a
Speaker 1: different bait, which I had my heart set going to
Speaker 1: where I was going to hunt the rest of the week.
Speaker 1: But I went to this first bat and just seen
Speaker 1: I think it was a younger sale, probably twohundred pound sale.
Speaker 1: That evening it's the only bear i'd seen. But the
Speaker 1: next day I asked him, you know, if we could
Speaker 1: go back to where I'd killed the year before, he said, absolutely,
Speaker 1: which was a lot longer boat ride. So I took
Speaker 1: plenty of pain mids for the boat ride to get
Speaker 1: there because the wind had been blowing. But now I
Speaker 1: just kidding, but uh yeah, he took me to this
Speaker 1: bat and before I could even get settled in the
Speaker 1: blind of bears coming in. And but you know, that
Speaker 1: evening I'd seen I don't know, three or four bears,
Speaker 1: one really nice probably probably close to three hundred pound
Speaker 1: bour come in right off the bat. And as I've
Speaker 1: setting there, I'm trying to film self film h just
Speaker 1: over the know, here comes a big bear, a really
Speaker 1: big bear comes in, commits to the bait and about
Speaker 1: twenty five yards and he just does not give me
Speaker 1: the right angle. But in the meantime, I've got this
Speaker 1: other board circling within arms and reach. So I'm trying
Speaker 1: to shoot, you know, out of the looking over your
Speaker 1: shoulder bear trying to sniff you over here. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got a whopper just right out front that I'm waiting
Speaker 1: to get broadside, and this other one's you know, in
Speaker 1: my pocket, and no one stick set him. But anyway,
Speaker 1: this this bear never get a shot head. It ends
Speaker 1: up running a smaller bear off the bait and just
Speaker 1: kind of disappears for the evening. And which that's that
Speaker 1: first day was what a day? And it was that
Speaker 1: a two Monday. Monday was the first day. Yeah, Monday
Speaker 1: was at the other bait. Tuesday, I didn't get shot.
Speaker 1: Wednesday that same bear come in and the smaller bear, no,
Speaker 1: the bigger bear. Man, I've missed my days up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want me read anyway. I end up getting
Speaker 1: a shot at this bear I've seen the day before,
Speaker 1: which was a big bear, and I end up with
Speaker 1: him shoot right and dream I forgot about that Ryan. Huh.
Speaker 1: Now we can talk about Ry with a compound bow
Speaker 1: and everybody in camp the shot and shot and shot
Speaker 1: every day, you know, so everybody's dead on and I
Speaker 1: don't know how, but I shot, you know, just low
Speaker 1: and I was sick about it. Hey, And let me
Speaker 1: just tell you I was shocked when I heard that.
Speaker 1: I mean Ryan grabbed it and miss bears with a
Speaker 1: compound bow off the ground. Yeah, I was down and out,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't that scared. And what's worse than that
Speaker 1: is he ended up coming back in later that evening
Speaker 1: and he stayed hid behind the barrel, wouldn't give me
Speaker 1: the right shot again, And finally he goes to mosey
Speaker 1: off at about thirty yards broadside. Again, I shoot and
Speaker 1: shoot right and dream and I'm ready to we're going
Speaker 1: to end the podcast on this. But yeah, I forgot
Speaker 1: it too. I forgot you missed it twice. I'm glad
Speaker 1: because y'all haven't been giving me a hard time. Round
Speaker 1: two starts today. Yeah, but the I think it was
Speaker 1: the next day, wasn't there maybe an hour and a
Speaker 1: really nice bear comes right in. We'd actually moved the
Speaker 1: barrel up there just a hair closer to you. I'm
Speaker 1: doubting myself, you know. And but anyway, this other bear
Speaker 1: comes right in, does what I want him to. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just center punched him. He actually run a half
Speaker 1: circle behind me and died just down there at where
Speaker 1: they pulled the boat up. But also while this is
Speaker 1: going on, I'm filming the whole week, self filming and
Speaker 1: get all the spectacular footage. I shoot this bear thing. Man,
Speaker 1: I've really done something, you know. And as I'm doing
Speaker 1: a little post hunt interview there, I noticed that red
Speaker 1: dots not light and needless to say, I didn't get
Speaker 1: any of the the bear coming in the shot anything,
Speaker 1: and I just it would have been a full episode
Speaker 1: to Bear Horizon. You robbed the people. I didn't. I didn't.
Speaker 1: I thought I'm leaving Canada without a scalp because he
Speaker 1: was gonna take Oh man. It was it was like
Speaker 1: getting somebody kicking sand in your eyes when you were down.
Speaker 1: Because Ryan was like, I killed a big one. I
Speaker 1: was like, yes, at least we got we got one
Speaker 1: good bear. Ryan's filming, and then like ten minutes later
Speaker 1: he said, but I didn't get oh man, I wish
Speaker 1: I had. Hey, your last year's video that you self
Speaker 1: film has a hundred two views on YouTube. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is incredible. The same same spots probably could have been
Speaker 1: some of the same bear as you saw. It might
Speaker 1: have been the bear end up killing this year. You know,
Speaker 1: I had not seen that bear that whole week, you know. Okay, see,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that was a new bear. See. That's
Speaker 1: what's so unique about this kind of honey is that
Speaker 1: we set on just a red hot bait for five
Speaker 1: days and never saw just a whopper whopper bear. You said,
Speaker 1: on a red hot bait, and there were three whopper bears.
Speaker 1: And by a whopper, you know, a three hundred plus
Speaker 1: pound spring bear is a big bear. And the and
Speaker 1: the big one that you missed was probably in the
Speaker 1: four hundred pound range, okay, pushing for yeah, so I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's a monster spring bear. Monster spring bear.
Speaker 1: And then the one, the one you killed. How how
Speaker 1: big you think it was? I want to say it
Speaker 1: was three. You know, time was winding down, and I
Speaker 1: mean it was a good bear, right and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I just decided to see if I could miss that
Speaker 1: one too, but yeah, it hitn't even Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: was a it was an awesome hunt that Ryan was
Speaker 1: was in. He was in his favorite little spot over there,
Speaker 1: did really good, had a lot of action. And then
Speaker 1: the sixth day, final day, Brent was up to bat.
Speaker 1: And here was my deal. I shot that bear on
Speaker 1: the fifth day and actually had another full day to hunt,
Speaker 1: and I just didn't feel right about it. There's no
Speaker 1: that in Saskatchewan I could have continued to hunt. I
Speaker 1: still had an unfilled tag. But I told Brent, I said,
Speaker 1: my hunt's over, I'm done. You're up to bat and
Speaker 1: uh so Brent actually went in where you killed your bear,
Speaker 1: and I knew for sure we were going to get
Speaker 1: a bear. Oh man, I mean I had a great feeling.
Speaker 1: I mean we had one full I mean all it
Speaker 1: takes up there is an afternoon had been destroyed from
Speaker 1: the day. Yeah, I couldn't believe it. We set for
Speaker 1: six hours and saw one bear that wouldn't even hardly
Speaker 1: come into the bait. And so it's just you just
Speaker 1: never know. So Brent got to hunt one day and
Speaker 1: and he could have shot this smaller bear that was there,
Speaker 1: but it just wasn't what we were after. So go back.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to go back against Brian didn't if
Speaker 1: he's gonna go about out of errors. Yeah, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to get some new arrows. Yeah. Well this it's
Speaker 1: it was a phenomenal hunt Bear pross Safari's Northern Saskatchewan,
Speaker 1: and we're probably gonna end up probably end up back
Speaker 1: there this year, some conglomeration of us. We're not sure,
Speaker 1: rights not sure if he can go. You know what
Speaker 1: I'd like to say is there's nobody doing what Kobe's
Speaker 1: doing up there that we're aware of. That's you know
Speaker 1: a lot of these outfitters, you know, it's places it's
Speaker 1: baited year after year after year. Some of them may
Speaker 1: not be that far from you know, access road or something,
Speaker 1: but Kobe takes you somewhere away from you know, the
Speaker 1: norm and put you on fresh bears. And he don't
Speaker 1: take no shortcuts. And you know, it's it's it's amazing
Speaker 1: us in what he does, the hard work that him
Speaker 1: and Dustin do, and you know, I'm amazed at their
Speaker 1: woodsmanship and you know, like I said, their work ethic
Speaker 1: and you know, there's nobody else I would go with
Speaker 1: the fare. I don't think that he spoiled me. Yeah, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I have a ton of respect for all these bear outfairs.
Speaker 1: It's a tremendous amount of work. I mean, those guys
Speaker 1: are just made of steel. They really are. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're purpose driven. You know. I was talking to Okay
Speaker 1: out in California, UM about doing about some bear hunt
Speaker 1: by some film and stuff the other day and this
Speaker 1: is before the Arkansas opener, and told him, you know,
Speaker 1: we had a bear bait going and he put it
Speaker 1: pretty good, and he said he couldn't think of any
Speaker 1: other hunt where you have more sweat equity and involved
Speaker 1: and invested in something than than abated bear hunt. You know,
Speaker 1: I love all types of bear hunting. I love spotting
Speaker 1: stock hunting in the West. I mean, there's just something
Speaker 1: special about it. There's something special about hunting with hounds.
Speaker 1: There's something special about hunting in in these big woods.
Speaker 1: The way we do. You couldn't really call it spotting stock,
Speaker 1: but almost like spotting stock. But the hardest hunts that
Speaker 1: I do in terms of volume of work, are baited hunts,
Speaker 1: you know, and and not taking anything away from a
Speaker 1: spotting stock hunt, takes a ton of skill. It's technical.
Speaker 1: You gotta be in good shape. But man, bear hunts
Speaker 1: a lot of work. You know. I've helped you a
Speaker 1: little bit in the past on a few baits, like
Speaker 1: right before we get into camp, you know, a couple
Speaker 1: of days early and we would bait, you know, and
Speaker 1: I would film some stuff for you or maybe totally
Speaker 1: little bait in or whatever. But this year, with me
Speaker 1: and a friend of mine, we started that that bait.
Speaker 1: That's when I really realized, Man, this this ain't nothing easier.
Speaker 1: But what I tell you, you know what he said,
Speaker 1: the dream is free, but dream is free, the hustle
Speaker 1: is sold separate. I ugh, like that. But it's true,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, and it's you gotta stay on
Speaker 1: if you wanted to work, you gotta stay on top
Speaker 1: of it. And usually bears here, Um, you gotta do
Speaker 1: some work to get to them, to get where they are.
Speaker 1: You can't just drive throw a loaf of bread out.
Speaker 1: They're just gonna take some logistics. You gotta do a
Speaker 1: lot of things right to kill the older, mature, bore
Speaker 1: over bait, especially in Arkansas, Oklahoma. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: best way I can describe it is that you gotta
Speaker 1: do a ton of stuff, right. You gotta do a
Speaker 1: ton of stuff right. Yeah, we almost destroyed the Polarish
Speaker 1: Ranger having to get into this place they get, they
Speaker 1: get the bait to get just to get the barrel
Speaker 1: in there. I mean, it came out looking like something
Speaker 1: the climates were driving around when we were we got
Speaker 1: those hounds. It was terrible. That's where the bears are.
Speaker 1: You got to get to them places, right, It's all
Speaker 1: about location. Well, we'll have another podcast at some point
Speaker 1: with Ryan and maybe probably Brent too, but about Arkansas
Speaker 1: bears and about what we're doing and how we're targeting
Speaker 1: these bears. You know, bears are so cool because they're
Speaker 1: so diverse. I love hunting over bait, and I will
Speaker 1: never not love hunting over bait. I also love going
Speaker 1: out in the mountains national forest and just hunting them
Speaker 1: one on one. I love. I'm probably gonna end up
Speaker 1: out in Tennessee later this fall hunting over hounds. I
Speaker 1: mean that there's such a diverse animal. They cover such
Speaker 1: a wide geographic range they cover, they overlap so many
Speaker 1: different types of hunting cultures. I mean that it's just
Speaker 1: such a unique, unique animal to be able to hunt.
Speaker 1: Whatever is happening ecologically in North America, it's beneficial to bears.
Speaker 1: You show me a bear population that's in decline, a
Speaker 1: black bear population that's in decline in North America, they're
Speaker 1: just they're just not I mean, they're there where they're
Speaker 1: they're they're expanding every direction out of Arkansas, in the
Speaker 1: eastern Oklahoma, southern Missouri, western Mississippi, northern Louisiana, northeast Texas.
Speaker 1: I mean, I grew up in southeast Arkansas, and if
Speaker 1: you wanted to see a bear, you had to drive
Speaker 1: a long ways away. And I got a buddy works
Speaker 1: for the US Fish and Wildlife service down Felsenthal National
Speaker 1: Wildlife Refuge. You want to see a bear, He'll just
Speaker 1: go out and show you one. They're covered in bears everywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is a great time to be a bear hunter,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think for bears are kind of
Speaker 1: overlooked in some ways. And that's what we're trying to
Speaker 1: change your Bear Hunting magazine, And we're trying to educate
Speaker 1: two people to about the conservation angle of this type
Speaker 1: of hunting. I mean, spring bear hunting is strategically half
Speaker 1: in during fawning times. So you take a bear out
Speaker 1: of that population, it's one less bear that's gonna be
Speaker 1: able to target a moose fawn or a caribou fawn
Speaker 1: or a whitetail fawn. I mean there's we use the meat.
Speaker 1: I mean, bear meat is fantastic when it's handled and
Speaker 1: cooked correctly. We use the hide, we we we take
Speaker 1: the skulls. I mean, there's all these wildlife commodities we've
Speaker 1: rendered down the fat, there's all these things that we
Speaker 1: do with bear and we're learning more every day. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I've made it a mission and what I
Speaker 1: do to try to learn more about how to utilize
Speaker 1: this animal that we that we love, value, appreciate, and
Speaker 1: so you just can't be a bear hunter in ten
Speaker 1: and expect this to continue unless we're pretty dern educated
Speaker 1: and even articulate. What I want to do with bear
Speaker 1: any magazine, and with this podcast and with our videos
Speaker 1: is to put words in people's mouths that they can
Speaker 1: then begin to say. And not that I'm the one
Speaker 1: that started it. I mean somebody told me how to
Speaker 1: say it, but just just this idea that if we
Speaker 1: want the bear hunt for charismatic megafauna, for big predators
Speaker 1: to continue in the politically correct, urbanized, civilized, concrete ized
Speaker 1: society that we now live in, we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: get super smart. And even in this world of social media,
Speaker 1: which I don't have a good answer to, it'd probably
Speaker 1: be better if we never, none of us ever put
Speaker 1: anything on the internet about bear hunting. But that's just
Speaker 1: not gonna happen. I mean that's kind of like saying, well,
Speaker 1: it'd be better if nobody drove cars, because people would
Speaker 1: dyeing car x those one wouldn't be depleted. And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: we've kind of we're too far steeped in blood. We
Speaker 1: can't not drive cars. The world knows we bear hunt,
Speaker 1: so we might as well get educated and and our
Speaker 1: goal is to put out some quality media that has
Speaker 1: a a a solid perspective on to portray it as
Speaker 1: it actually is and in the right way to what
Speaker 1: we think is the right way to do things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for the for the species in the sport. Let's yeah,
Speaker 1: species first. Yeah, that's right, that's right. Hey, check out
Speaker 1: the Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel and watch this episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna be the most recent episode about Saskatchewan.
Speaker 1: I don't even know that. I hadn't even named it.
Speaker 1: It swinging a mis swinging in this swing too soon, brother,
Speaker 1: um so, but you'll be able to watch you'll be
Speaker 1: able to watch this episode. Hey, check out our print magazine,
Speaker 1: Shameless plug Man, We've got an awesome print magazine. We're
Speaker 1: the only bare hunting magazine in the world, only print
Speaker 1: barhunting magazine in the world, and you know, check it out. Subscribe,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to podcast. Check out our YouTube channel. Man.
Speaker 1: Keep the wild places why because that's where the fays live.