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Speaker 1: outrageously Dependable. My name is Clay Nucleman. I'm the host
Speaker 1: of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your
Speaker 1: host into the world of hunting the icon of North
Speaker 1: American wilderness. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation who will
Speaker 1: also bring you into some of the wildest country on
Speaker 1: the planet Chasing the Battery. Thanks for checking out the
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I want to relay some news
Speaker 1: to you guys that is very much so related to
Speaker 1: the podcast. If you remember, several weeks ago, on episode
Speaker 1: twenty one, we interviewed a man named or A Lee Province.
Speaker 1: It was the title of the episode was Old Mountain
Speaker 1: Hunter or Lee Province. We received word this week that
Speaker 1: Mr Or passed away on April fourth. It was really
Speaker 1: a shock because we were just at his house. He
Speaker 1: was full of life, years old, was in great mental health,
Speaker 1: and just we had an incredible conversation with him that
Speaker 1: I'm so so glad that we were able to record,
Speaker 1: and we were grieved to hear the news. But I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what, Mr Or lived a heck of a
Speaker 1: life and he was he maintained his health throughout his
Speaker 1: life and passed away at the age of nine. And
Speaker 1: I'm just so grateful that we were able to record
Speaker 1: some some of his oral history just as we sat
Speaker 1: down with him and talked, and so I wanted to
Speaker 1: I wanted to let you guys know that, and just
Speaker 1: the Province family, all the Bear Hunting magazine folks, and
Speaker 1: our our deepest condolences to you. But also we just
Speaker 1: want to celebrate the life of an old mountain hunter
Speaker 1: who he wasn't just a mountain hunter or to his family,
Speaker 1: was known as an incredible patriarch, a man of great faith,
Speaker 1: a leader, a man who maintained a strong biblical value
Speaker 1: system his entire life and it never swayed. And that's
Speaker 1: that's the kind of man that I like to tip
Speaker 1: my hat too. And so hey, our condolences to the
Speaker 1: Province family onto this episode. This episode is the third
Speaker 1: in our series about all things related to Spring Bear Hunter.
Speaker 1: We wanted to bring some really relevant content. The first
Speaker 1: was about spring bear hunting for Dummies, where we just
Speaker 1: went through the ins and outs of wind, where, how
Speaker 1: and why spring bear hunting. The second was about shot placement.
Speaker 1: And this episode is about judging bears. Black bears are
Speaker 1: some of the most difficult animals to judge. We're gonna
Speaker 1: go through multiple, multiple things and have a really in
Speaker 1: depth conversation, not just about stuff that we've searched on
Speaker 1: the internet, but these are things that we have seen
Speaker 1: in the field that we that I use, that Ryan
Speaker 1: Grab uses to to truly judge bear. And honestly, I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot of information online and in different places
Speaker 1: that I just I don't think it's applicable everywhere, and
Speaker 1: some of it just isn't isn't always dependable. So we
Speaker 1: we give some insight into judging bears that I think
Speaker 1: will be really good. I want to bring up one
Speaker 1: more thing today. We released a video called Alaska Wild
Speaker 1: on the Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a brown bear hunt in Alaska where Billy Moles and
Speaker 1: his hunter take a massive bear that they predator called
Speaker 1: in It's incredible video. We even have some footage on
Speaker 1: there of a big nine and a half foot bear
Speaker 1: breeding a soal incredible, incredible video. Go to our YouTube
Speaker 1: channel and check it out. While you're there, check out
Speaker 1: our Tea Spring account t Spring. It's basically a merchandise
Speaker 1: m an online merchandise store that's attached to specific YouTube channels,
Speaker 1: and it has allowed us to offer a wide range
Speaker 1: of merchandise bear hunting related merchandise from hoodies, longsleeve shirts,
Speaker 1: coffee mugs, iPhone cases, um women's clothing, all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff in all kinds of different unique, fun, custom designs,
Speaker 1: and all kinds of different colors that we've never been
Speaker 1: able to offer before. So check out the Bear Hunting
Speaker 1: Magazine T Spring account t Spring Store on our YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: When you check out Billy's video on our YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: use code b h M to get off all your
Speaker 1: Bare Hunting Magazine Tea Spring purchases through April. Let me
Speaker 1: say that again. Use code b h M at checkout
Speaker 1: on the Bare Hunting Magazine Tea Spring Store to get
Speaker 1: off all your purchases through April, and again you access
Speaker 1: to t Spring Store through our YouTube channel. It'll be
Speaker 1: like right down below the YouTube channel you click on
Speaker 1: it all kind of awesome stuff. And trophy hunting, my friends,
Speaker 1: is actually what saved North American big game by taking
Speaker 1: the emphasis off the young and the females, putting it
Speaker 1: on the older mature males. So man, I will take
Speaker 1: zero flat from anyone on the planet saying that we're
Speaker 1: trophy hunters because we want to kill big bears and
Speaker 1: not little ones. Who is the conservation hero my brothers,
Speaker 1: the guy that shoots the first juvenile bear to the barrel,
Speaker 1: or the brethren like in this room, who wait for
Speaker 1: the big ones. Welcome to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast.
Speaker 1: We are going to have another one of our technical,
Speaker 1: nitty gritty nerd out bear sessions about judging bears in
Speaker 1: the field. Judging bears, trying to tell if a bear
Speaker 1: is a male or female, if it's a older mature male,
Speaker 1: or if it's a juvenile male. Basically judging bears just
Speaker 1: like we would whitetails. Judging you judge a whitetail by
Speaker 1: all these different characteristics we're gonna talk about bears. Bears
Speaker 1: are one of the hardest animals to judge in the field,
Speaker 1: for sure. I mean, I think you could talk to
Speaker 1: guys all over the country that have hunted all over
Speaker 1: and they would say the hardest animal to judge in
Speaker 1: North America, it's a black bear. I have with me again,
Speaker 1: Ryan Grab also known as flint Face Grab. Flint Face. Yep,
Speaker 1: Ryan is Kobe. You wouldn't know this. Ryan is was
Speaker 1: notorious for taking pictures with animals and just having this
Speaker 1: like flint face, just like just flint face. So I
Speaker 1: started calling flint Face. Now he's now he smiles more
Speaker 1: on these big trophy photos. We've got Ryan Grab here
Speaker 1: with me. Yeah, now he grins like a girl scout.
Speaker 1: I got so Ryan Grab is here. Ryan's been on
Speaker 1: the last couple of podcasts. And I've got to say
Speaker 1: it just in case you haven't listened to the podcast before,
Speaker 1: but Ryan is an expert bear hunter, troubled with me
Speaker 1: many places in Canada. But you've you have done your
Speaker 1: bare big in this here in Arkansas. And that's how
Speaker 1: I know you as being a expert Arkansas bear hunter.
Speaker 1: Been hunting. I mean, you've killed a ton, You've killed
Speaker 1: a pile of bears here in Arkansas. And as I've
Speaker 1: said in the last three podcasts, you were killing bears
Speaker 1: when my Mama was still wifing my nose. Would you
Speaker 1: agree with us if you say so? All right? All right,
Speaker 1: So that's Ryan Grab. I've got Colby moorehead with me.
Speaker 1: I've introduced Colby to Colby works for Bear Hunting magazine.
Speaker 1: So Kobe is, uh, you don't really even have a
Speaker 1: job title, do you know. It's just like now, Kobe.
Speaker 1: Kobe does all kind of stuff for me, Bear Tech,
Speaker 1: bear Tech. Koby is a bear hunting magazine, Bear Tech.
Speaker 1: Mr can do, attitude, can do. That's all right. Koby
Speaker 1: is doing a ton of stuff for me, including getting
Speaker 1: Bear Horizon on Amazon. I don't know when this podcast
Speaker 1: is gonna be released, but you can be looking for it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have our Bear Horizon show on Amazon. That's
Speaker 1: one thing that he's done for me. But anyway, he
Speaker 1: does a whole lot of stuff. But that's neither here
Speaker 1: nor there. Let's talk about jo and bears. We're gonna
Speaker 1: try to just jump right into this thing. Toughest big
Speaker 1: game animal in North America to judge by many standards. Um,
Speaker 1: bears don't have antlers, do they? Have you ever killed
Speaker 1: the bear with antlers? No? I've only seen a couple
Speaker 1: on trail Kim. But bears don't have antlers, and this
Speaker 1: is just the truth of it. A hundred pound bear
Speaker 1: has this has a lot of fairly similar to characteristics
Speaker 1: as a four hundred pound bear, and that again, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into the nuances to disprove that. But I mean,
Speaker 1: if you were to see hundred pound bear on a
Speaker 1: hillside five yards away, you could be deceived into thinking
Speaker 1: that that was a big one because of what we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about scale. But what what we're looking at
Speaker 1: is we're fine, We're we're we're nitpicking the nuanced features
Speaker 1: of a bear to try to understand what makes a
Speaker 1: trophy bear. And we're gonna use that term. Let's let's
Speaker 1: let's let's not use the term trophy. Let's use the
Speaker 1: term mature. A mature male. That's what we're after. Inside
Speaker 1: of bear hunting, the target animal and almost any situation
Speaker 1: is going to be an older class, mature male animal.
Speaker 1: That's what we're after. Okay, traditional methods, what would you say, Ryan,
Speaker 1: are the traditional statements that people use to describe big males.
Speaker 1: I'd say the most notorious would be small ears, yep,
Speaker 1: creased head, yep, um, you know bigger risks pads for sure.
Speaker 1: Probably the small ear myth. Yeah, that's that's what you
Speaker 1: hear people say all the time. Like you could Google
Speaker 1: search small ear bear and it would be there'd being
Speaker 1: articles all over the place. But let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: just jump right into this is that I have seen
Speaker 1: you have seen times when that didn't characterize the characterizing
Speaker 1: older mature male at all. Um. Definitely, the classic big
Speaker 1: bore is gonna look like he has small ears that
Speaker 1: are on the side of his head, you know, because
Speaker 1: his skulls so big, head so big that it's like
Speaker 1: those ears as he gets older just kind of moves
Speaker 1: down his head. But I've also killed some whop or
Speaker 1: bears that to me had mickey mouse ears. For instance,
Speaker 1: the bear I killed this year in Oklahoma, I called
Speaker 1: him Batman because of how big his ears were. He
Speaker 1: had these big curled ears. I have also found that
Speaker 1: bears have different shapes and looks based upon what part
Speaker 1: of the country they're in. I mean, I've never seen
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, and correct me if you think I'm wrong.
Speaker 1: I personally have never hunted a really big giant bear
Speaker 1: in Arkansas or Oklahoma that I would have categorized as
Speaker 1: having small ears. Would you have no, You know, I
Speaker 1: think there's almost to me a difference and the way
Speaker 1: they look in the Washingtaws here and you know, mid
Speaker 1: Arkansas compared to the Yeah, it seems like they've got
Speaker 1: distinguished facial features. Maybe even hide is a little different. Well,
Speaker 1: then there are two separate populations. I mean they really are.
Speaker 1: In Arkansas, we've got basically to what they call ala
Speaker 1: Patrick populations of bears, which means they're kind of independent
Speaker 1: of one another, based upon some geographic and man made
Speaker 1: barriers of the Arkansas River which is not man made
Speaker 1: to Kolbe, but the Interstate forty, which runs right by
Speaker 1: the Arkansas River is man made, so that it separates
Speaker 1: these two populations. And very few bear bears are crossing
Speaker 1: over to breed into these different places, and so there's
Speaker 1: even slight differences in between ninety miles. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: there's some generalizations like for instance, um, well these aren't generalizations,
Speaker 1: these are true. Uh. Newfoundland is known for having big
Speaker 1: skulled bears. Uh, Prince of Wales Island is known for
Speaker 1: having large sculled bears. There's other places that are known
Speaker 1: for not having big skulld bears, but you still might
Speaker 1: have a big bear that is huge body wise, but
Speaker 1: his skull would be smaller. Um. There are definitely different
Speaker 1: characteristics of bears, just like white tails. I mean, you
Speaker 1: have some places where white tails are gonna have express
Speaker 1: this big, massive, heavy horn deer, like Canada, and they
Speaker 1: have other places where they're not as much. UM. That
Speaker 1: being said, bears are not affected by the um is
Speaker 1: it Bergmann's law that states that the further you get
Speaker 1: away from the equator, the larger body sized mammals are
Speaker 1: to retain heat. That's why Canadian white tails are bigger
Speaker 1: than white tails in the Florida keys. Bears are exempt
Speaker 1: from that law that because they hibernate during the winter.
Speaker 1: They technically don't hibernate, they go into state of torpor,
Speaker 1: but they they are exempt from that law because they
Speaker 1: are not enduring the cold temperatures, just taking it right
Speaker 1: in the face like all these other animals. So, bears
Speaker 1: in Florida, bears in Arkansas, bears in Oklahoma, bears in
Speaker 1: North Carolina could be as big or even bigger than
Speaker 1: Canadian bears. Okay, let's just separate that out. There's just
Speaker 1: some bared knowledge, bare nerd technoledge. I wish we had
Speaker 1: the body size of the Carolina bears. This gap. That's
Speaker 1: not amazing, no doubt. I mean, we've got big bears,
Speaker 1: but they've got some monsters. They do they do. Some
Speaker 1: of the biggest bears in the world are on the
Speaker 1: Eastern Coast. Some of the biggest skull bears in the world, though,
Speaker 1: are also in Pennsylvania. Some of the top five bears
Speaker 1: skulls in the world have come come out of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: And part of that probably has to do with their
Speaker 1: age structure, because they've got a lot of older bears
Speaker 1: because they don't hunt over bait or with hounds. They're
Speaker 1: just spotting stock or drive hunting these bears, so they're
Speaker 1: really not taken out a big percentage of the bears
Speaker 1: every year. But so okay, we've established that there are
Speaker 1: bears in different places are going to be different, They're
Speaker 1: gonna look different. Um, we've established that ears and a
Speaker 1: crease on the head are sometimes that's what somebody might say,
Speaker 1: small ears and a crease on the head, that's the
Speaker 1: only bear you shoot. Well, if that had been the
Speaker 1: way that I judge bears, my whole life. I'd have
Speaker 1: very few bears, A lot of the big bears that
Speaker 1: I've killed. As a matter of fact, the only Boone
Speaker 1: and Crockett bear that I have ever killed, Ryan, I
Speaker 1: would say, didn't have either one of those didn't have
Speaker 1: a crease on his head, and I would say he
Speaker 1: had big ears. Um and well, I don't want to
Speaker 1: get into body weight yet, but let's just talk about
Speaker 1: those two things. Um My, good buddy Heath Martin, expert
Speaker 1: bear hunter here in Arkansas, has a story of going
Speaker 1: to Canada and shooting a color phase bear that had,
Speaker 1: I mean just a ripple crease down its forehead. They
Speaker 1: were hunting the big color phase mail. This color phase
Speaker 1: bear comes in. They think it's the big male, has
Speaker 1: a big crease. He shoots it and it's a sal
Speaker 1: Sal with a crease. And I've been noticing that more
Speaker 1: and more. The more I see bears, the more I'm like,
Speaker 1: man sALS will have a crease on their head too.
Speaker 1: Have you have you seen that before? Ryan? Not so
Speaker 1: much here in Arkansas probably no. Uh, I've seen some
Speaker 1: big sales. I think a lot of the determining factor
Speaker 1: on the sales is seems like they're muzzle wants to
Speaker 1: blend in even to where they have the blonde brows.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed that? And probably the total length of
Speaker 1: the bear. The boars will always have lankier, longer body
Speaker 1: versus a sale they're more compact. Yes, yes, I've heard
Speaker 1: people describe it that a sal is pear shaped like
Speaker 1: a narrow front end, big back end. Uh. So, let's
Speaker 1: see where do I want to go? There's so many
Speaker 1: different places we could go here, let's go Let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and just describe the characteristics of older mature mail
Speaker 1: as we would just say it now. We're not saying
Speaker 1: that ears increase are not indicators of an older mature mail.
Speaker 1: For instance, one of the first years I spring bear hunted,
Speaker 1: we went to Alberta. We killed six poping young bears
Speaker 1: in five days in our camp. One of those bears
Speaker 1: I would have considered as a traditional style big older
Speaker 1: male who's straight up had small ears, straight up had
Speaker 1: ears on the side of his head straight up had
Speaker 1: a crease. One of of six. Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: said we killed six bears of five days. The bears
Speaker 1: that the two bears that I killed which were nineteen
Speaker 1: inch but nineteen inch plus bears, which are that's a
Speaker 1: big bear, well above the pope and young minimum um
Speaker 1: probably weighed in the three hundred three fifty pound range
Speaker 1: in the spring, which is a big bear. These are
Speaker 1: big bears. They all had what I would describe as
Speaker 1: mickey mouse ears, and they were tall and look like
Speaker 1: a race horses. Okay, um, they but the the defining
Speaker 1: features of them that made me know that they were
Speaker 1: older mature males was that they were tall, they were
Speaker 1: very tall, and that they were long, and that they
Speaker 1: had their front legs the front leg of a boar,
Speaker 1: A big boar, he's gonna have like stove pipe legs,
Speaker 1: like a bulldog, big ankles and big pads, as in
Speaker 1: contrast to a sow, which is gonna have thinner legs,
Speaker 1: thinner ankles, smaller pads. To me, almost every big bear
Speaker 1: I've ever killed ryan I have noticed his feet. I mean,
Speaker 1: like if you were to show it, and I'd almost
Speaker 1: go to that more than the head. Like I see
Speaker 1: some pictures of sALS and get truil camera pictures of
Speaker 1: sALS and I was like, if you just showed me
Speaker 1: the head of that bear, I couldn't tell you. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would assume it would just be a big boar,
Speaker 1: But to be a sal I would almost rather look
Speaker 1: at the bear's feet than anything. It seems like the
Speaker 1: back feet also want to sell as not as long
Speaker 1: as the boar's you know, in length, their paths just don't.
Speaker 1: Sal's a lot shorter. Yeah. So when I when I'm
Speaker 1: looking at a boar or looking to determine if a
Speaker 1: boar's trophy size, looking at his feet, looking at his
Speaker 1: front shoulders, looking at his height, that's that is a
Speaker 1: massive factor. And when you're hunting over bait, typically you've
Speaker 1: got a fifty five gallon drum. This this rule could
Speaker 1: be applied anywhere on the earth where there's black bears.
Speaker 1: Was early in North America. But a bear that is
Speaker 1: as tall as a thirty six inch tall drum, if
Speaker 1: his shoulders, not his hairline, but his actual shoulders come
Speaker 1: up to the top of that barrel, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a big bear, is it not? Ruyan Yeah? Usually shooter, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just don't see an immature bear or
Speaker 1: even a a salve that's gonna be as tall as
Speaker 1: a barrel, do you. Every once in a while, like
Speaker 1: the say the sal I had trouble with in Canada?
Speaker 1: Was it two years ago? You know, my first glance
Speaker 1: at that, I thought, boy, there's a shooter. And she
Speaker 1: was probably three hundred maybe three pound bear, but big head,
Speaker 1: she just short. Yeah, I mean that would have been
Speaker 1: a tough one. Yeah. Yeah. She had a cup with
Speaker 1: her though. That's probably the only reason you knew it
Speaker 1: wasn't a born Yeah. I mean you might have figured
Speaker 1: out after a while. Yeah, it takes you know, if
Speaker 1: you studied it for a minute or two, you could
Speaker 1: probably do you think she was truly as tall as
Speaker 1: a barrel like her shoulder, I don't know barrel. There
Speaker 1: was a barrel there, but it was laying down, you know,
Speaker 1: it was chained the tree. But it was a tall bear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. Sayah, that's a tricky one because inside the
Speaker 1: bar world there's different variants of height and well there's
Speaker 1: different there's all these different shapes like you could here
Speaker 1: in Arkansas have a sal bear that weighed hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty five pounds and she might be eighteen years old
Speaker 1: and be fully mature, and maybe she weighs a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty pounds. Heath Martin four or five years ago
Speaker 1: shot a bear here in Arkansas. Turned out it was
Speaker 1: a sal weighed three hundred and forty pounds on scale
Speaker 1: in the fall. And there's just all this variation, just
Speaker 1: like in humans. Nope, she didn't she was a big
Speaker 1: dry sow in Uh. She didn't have a cub with her.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've been getting pictures of this bear and uh.
Speaker 1: And she was a prime animal to take out older
Speaker 1: female and but it just a big bear and uh.
Speaker 1: And he kind of thought maybe it was a sow,
Speaker 1: but it was just you know, he took her. Um
Speaker 1: weighed three pounds on a scale. That being said, there's
Speaker 1: all this variation, So you can't just always say that
Speaker 1: a sow is just gonna be a whole lot smaller,
Speaker 1: because you could very well have a older age class
Speaker 1: male board that weighed three and forty pounds. And I'd
Speaker 1: take that bear anywhere in the world. I really would,
Speaker 1: if I went to Canada. I mean most most of
Speaker 1: the time, I'm gonna shoot that animal. Um. So the boars,
Speaker 1: but the one place, and in your deal would be
Speaker 1: an exception, I would say, I would say the one
Speaker 1: place that you could almost always tell a boar is
Speaker 1: his height and lengthy. I mean You're just never gonna
Speaker 1: have a sow bear that is just this freight train long, tall,
Speaker 1: big animal. You're just not gonna see it. And the
Speaker 1: first time bear hunter might not distinguish that. You know, yes,
Speaker 1: the more time you've spent bear hunting and get to
Speaker 1: see tens upon hundreds of bears, it'll be easier for
Speaker 1: a guy. And so that goes to the second thing
Speaker 1: here we want to talk about is determining the sex
Speaker 1: of a bear. When I was in Saskatchewan last year,
Speaker 1: we watched bears for eight hours a day for five days.
Speaker 1: We were just watching bears like crazy, and I realized
Speaker 1: that these older soals were sometimes hard to distinguish from boars.
Speaker 1: The first thing I looked at, though, was ankle size
Speaker 1: and pad size. Second was the first thing. The second
Speaker 1: thing once they came in is some And the reason
Speaker 1: I'm saying this is these cells were really mature, Like
Speaker 1: I mean, you totally would have said that these cells
Speaker 1: had small ears down the side of their head. I
Speaker 1: mean really they were like like if you had just
Speaker 1: taken a picture, I think you could have almost convinced
Speaker 1: anyone that it was a mature male. So this animals
Speaker 1: coming in there's not really anything to scale the bear
Speaker 1: by trying to determine is this is this a nice male?
Speaker 1: Because in the spring the males are smaller. I mean
Speaker 1: not physical, not this bone structure obviously, but I mean
Speaker 1: they're they're less weight, they've been a then for six months,
Speaker 1: they're thinner. So in the spring a male and a
Speaker 1: female might be harder to distinguish in. The second thing
Speaker 1: I look for was a penal sheath. Yeah, like I mean,
Speaker 1: a boar is gonna have these these sheath hairs that
Speaker 1: hang down and they're four or five inches long, sometimes
Speaker 1: hanging down right in the middle of the belly. You
Speaker 1: can't see there. You can't see the sheath. Really, it's
Speaker 1: not like something big hanging down, you know, but you
Speaker 1: can see those sheath hairs hanging down, And when you
Speaker 1: see that, all of a sudden part of your equation
Speaker 1: is solved. This is a male. I mean that's the
Speaker 1: first thing that I do anytime on bear hunting anywhere,
Speaker 1: is that a borrs sow and that that sal is
Speaker 1: gonna be pear shaped. She's gonna be smaller, she's gonna
Speaker 1: be shorter, she's gonna have thinner ankles, She's gonna have
Speaker 1: smaller paths. She's gonna have a more feminine face. And
Speaker 1: it's kind of a hard thing to describe, but just
Speaker 1: like in a dog, like a big old male, right
Speaker 1: while there's gonna have this boxy, beefy nose and head,
Speaker 1: and a female a sow bear kind of has a
Speaker 1: more feminine feel to the face and head most of
Speaker 1: the time. Agree with that, Ryan, You agree with that, Kolbe.
Speaker 1: From what I've seen, I think you're older bears too,
Speaker 1: And you know this works with sALS. Also is the scruff,
Speaker 1: the beard under the chin. Now, as a bear gets older,
Speaker 1: it seems to have that little guilty Yeah. You see
Speaker 1: that with the Arkansas bears sometimes, yeah, kind of that
Speaker 1: do lap like kind of yeah, like you got going on?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah, kind like me. Now, that is their
Speaker 1: behavior change, like the way they come in on a date,
Speaker 1: the salve versus the board. That's a that's a good one. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean I have seen. I wrote an article and
Speaker 1: this last issue Bear Any magazine that was called five
Speaker 1: thoughts on Judging Black Bear. One thing that I have
Speaker 1: noticed is that the mature boar that's coming into a
Speaker 1: bait site and we're talking about a bait site here,
Speaker 1: you can't always predict what he's gonna do. You can't
Speaker 1: just say, well, the mature boar is gonna just barrel
Speaker 1: in and run everything off the barrel, or you can't
Speaker 1: say the mature boar is gonna be the one that's
Speaker 1: hanging back. And it's really cautious. You don't know what
Speaker 1: they're gonna do. But one thing I have noticed is
Speaker 1: that they almost always act different than every animal at
Speaker 1: debate site. That's not gonna play true in every situation.
Speaker 1: But either he's gonna be like the bull of the
Speaker 1: woods and it's just gonna roll in there, and you're
Speaker 1: just gonna be like that animal is the king. I
Speaker 1: would use my example of when I shot that color
Speaker 1: phace bear in Canada that came in and touched into
Speaker 1: my earraw. He was the boss of those woods and
Speaker 1: he just barreled in there and was the king. The
Speaker 1: next well, in the same in the same hunt, a
Speaker 1: bear that was actually bigger than him was the most
Speaker 1: timid bear. You remember the one I missed right man,
Speaker 1: He just tiptoed around and he was a monster bear.
Speaker 1: So those two mature animals, they acted different than every other,
Speaker 1: and all the other ones just kind of am in.
Speaker 1: I mean, like a sal And this is why I
Speaker 1: don't understand even a mature salve that's been around the
Speaker 1: planet and knows the system, she might just walk in
Speaker 1: and just go right over to the bat and just
Speaker 1: start eating. You know She's So they're just gonna act different.
Speaker 1: So you can't say that they're always gonna be dominant,
Speaker 1: can't say that they're always gonna be super skittish. It
Speaker 1: could be either one. But when I see a bear
Speaker 1: that is acting different than all the other bears that
Speaker 1: I'm seeing, that's what I'm like. He's special. I mean
Speaker 1: like he's he's probably a target animal. Would you agree
Speaker 1: with that? Yeah, it seems like, you know, they're the
Speaker 1: ones that's gonna sit out there on their button sixty
Speaker 1: yards from the bat and check the wind. Or that's
Speaker 1: these Arkansas bears for sure. Or he could be the
Speaker 1: one that you know, you could have other bears on
Speaker 1: the bat and all of a sudden they wolf and
Speaker 1: take off running and you see one coming. You know
Speaker 1: that's gonna be more mature bear, right, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: no way that that bear I got last year and
Speaker 1: minute Toba didn't smell us. He just didn't care. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. He came right under our stand and just
Speaker 1: ran everything off, and he he didn't care. It's a
Speaker 1: different ball game, I think and Canadian provinces where they
Speaker 1: don't get pressured as like we do, you know down here,
Speaker 1: I think Saskatch like when we're at Saskatchewan. I mean
Speaker 1: then bears don't know you from any other animal. They
Speaker 1: don't have any fear. They're not trying to be dangerous.
Speaker 1: They're curious. But down here the bear usually don't do
Speaker 1: that unless it's a hind them, like white tails down here. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there're spooky, they're skittish. I think Canada they're typically
Speaker 1: less skittish. There's an inverse relationship between the amount of
Speaker 1: exposure to humans and their fear of humans. So in
Speaker 1: places where they never encounter humans, there's less fear. Places
Speaker 1: where they encounter humans all the time, there's more fear.
Speaker 1: It's SEMs like could be the opposite. You'd think they
Speaker 1: just get used to you down here and so they
Speaker 1: would be different, but it's it's in verse. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that's something that's confusing to people because most people don't
Speaker 1: have the view of bears like somebody would have that
Speaker 1: he's hunted down here, but he's also hunted a lot
Speaker 1: up there. So a lot of guys, you know, you
Speaker 1: write an article about using sent control for bears, and
Speaker 1: the guys in Canada are like you, guys don't know
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. Sin control doesn't mean a thing.
Speaker 1: And I'll be honest with you. In Canada, I believe
Speaker 1: sent control basically means nothing. Now, if I had the
Speaker 1: choice of being clean and having the wind in my favor,
Speaker 1: for sure, you're better off if they don't know you're there.
Speaker 1: But every big bear I've ever killed in Canada knew
Speaker 1: I was there and didn't care. But in Arkansas, and Ryan,
Speaker 1: you're an expert here in Arkansas at pulling these big
Speaker 1: bears out of the out of the haystack. You gotta
Speaker 1: do a lot of things right down here at big Bear.
Speaker 1: I think I've been fortunate though, with locations being you know,
Speaker 1: I've been lucky to have places where bears already living,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, they don't have to travel far to
Speaker 1: get to me. I'm actually in places that have water,
Speaker 1: have shade, they're thick, and don't have any human disturbance,
Speaker 1: So That's probably been my key, you know, to harvesting
Speaker 1: been picky on. You're also you're I mean, most of
Speaker 1: these big bears that you've killed, if they would have
Speaker 1: straight up smelled you, they wouldn't have come in during daylight.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't think so very few. That's been what I've
Speaker 1: seen here in Arkansas is that if you were hunting,
Speaker 1: let's say eight years hunting big bears, maybe one maybe
Speaker 1: two of those eight years, you would get lucky and
Speaker 1: if a bear knew you were there, he would come in. Anyway.
Speaker 1: I keep going back to my friend Heath Martin, who's
Speaker 1: a great bear hunter in Arkansas. He killed a big bear,
Speaker 1: one of his biggest bears ever, Boot and Crock a bear,
Speaker 1: uh several years ago, and that bear knew they were there.
Speaker 1: It had just set out there for a long time
Speaker 1: winding them and it just kind of about dark. It
Speaker 1: just it was like, well, I'm just gonna ease in there,
Speaker 1: and that bear just eased in and would look up
Speaker 1: at him, and he kills a bear. That's an exception.
Speaker 1: Most of the time you're not gonna kill that animal.
Speaker 1: But again two and eight or two and ten, you're
Speaker 1: gonna if a bear knows you're there. Now. What you've
Speaker 1: been able to do is you know these locations, Well,
Speaker 1: you're hunting these stands, you're getting up and so these
Speaker 1: bears you're killing just don't know you're there. You got
Speaker 1: good setups, You're in places where the bears want to be.
Speaker 1: I don't mess around in the woods either. You know,
Speaker 1: when I go in and bait, I'm not walking across
Speaker 1: the fence. I'm not walking out bear trails. You know.
Speaker 1: I'll go in, bait quick, get out, you know. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people too are hanging their
Speaker 1: stands or two days before season. I do that in summer.
Speaker 1: You know, some of these older bears will come in
Speaker 1: and before they get to the bait, they want to
Speaker 1: scent check that tree that has stand in it to
Speaker 1: see if you've climbed it. So and over the years
Speaker 1: it's kind of crazy. I've piled dead brush around the
Speaker 1: actual tree. I have a stand in kind of as
Speaker 1: as a barrier. I mean, a bear could go through it,
Speaker 1: and but it looks like a rat's nest around the
Speaker 1: base of this tree. They can't get to that tree
Speaker 1: and really sent check whether I've climbed up it or
Speaker 1: not ye, but I'm a little crazy. But just man,
Speaker 1: you've got every right to be crazy because, like I said,
Speaker 1: and a couple of other podcasts, I think you've killed
Speaker 1: You've killed a ton of big bears in Arkansas seemed
Speaker 1: to keep pulling mount What would you say if you
Speaker 1: were judging bears in Arkansas? What are you looking for?
Speaker 1: We're hunting bar bears in the fall, which we've We've
Speaker 1: also said there's a difference between judging spring bears up
Speaker 1: north or in Montana versus hunting a fall bear here
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. And I mean, and we're when we're hunting
Speaker 1: around here, we're really after an older age classman. What
Speaker 1: would what were the defining characteristics? You know, they don't
Speaker 1: have thick fur up in that time the year, you know,
Speaker 1: late summer, but you know frame length. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, you want to look at their pads.
Speaker 1: The risks characteristics is how they respond a lot of
Speaker 1: times to the bait. But I think you'll you'll know,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially if if a person is running trail cams,
Speaker 1: which you know, I guess everybody does. Uh, you'll give
Speaker 1: you a general idea on what to look for. Distinct
Speaker 1: markings maybe a crest on the chest or a notched deer,
Speaker 1: you know something. So you have to target bear that
Speaker 1: you've evaluated on trail camera, and then you just got
Speaker 1: to make sure that's the bear you're shooting and he's
Speaker 1: coming in. Yeah. Well, for these big, big fall bears
Speaker 1: that we're hunting here in Arkansas, a lot of times
Speaker 1: what we're looking for is weight, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what you're looking for in these big bears here
Speaker 1: are gonna have not always but sometimes sagging bellies, sometimes
Speaker 1: flat bellies, but they're gonna not have a lot of
Speaker 1: air in between the ground and their belly. They're gonna
Speaker 1: be tall, they're gonna look like an angus bull. I mean.
Speaker 1: But even even in big bears, right, if you have
Speaker 1: two five pound bears, they could look different. Like you
Speaker 1: could have a short, fat bear that was a little
Speaker 1: bit shorter, squatty or fatter, or you could have a
Speaker 1: huge frame bear like Batman who squared eight foot and
Speaker 1: was seven ft something from nose to tail, I mean,
Speaker 1: he was he had a frame man um. But you
Speaker 1: could also have a five hundred pound bear like rock Slide.
Speaker 1: The spear that I've gotten out in the office, he
Speaker 1: was only six ft six from nose to tell really,
Speaker 1: so I mean he was six inches shorter from those
Speaker 1: to tail. But I believe that he would have weighed
Speaker 1: in the same class as that other killed him late
Speaker 1: in the year or two, probably when he had been
Speaker 1: feeding on masts, so he was blown up from I
Speaker 1: think on a baited hunt. Also, you could say, if
Speaker 1: you've been baiting for a month and you've got a
Speaker 1: mature bear that's been eating donuts taken in thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of calories for a month, versus a bear that
Speaker 1: just showed up four days before season, which is gonna
Speaker 1: be lank here may have a big head, boone and
Speaker 1: crocking hound, yeah, but he won't have the belly sack,
Speaker 1: you know, as the one that's been kemped out there
Speaker 1: for a month. Well, the largest skulled bear that I've
Speaker 1: ever taken was a boar bear that only weighed three
Speaker 1: or sixty pounds. Yeah, the bear that I killed this
Speaker 1: year weade five hundred and fifty pounds and had a
Speaker 1: smaller skull than a three and or sixty pound bear.
Speaker 1: That's a good segue into the different ways different people
Speaker 1: in the country gauge the size of a bear. There's
Speaker 1: three ways pretty much. The people gauge bear skull size, weight,
Speaker 1: and square all very very different. You it's hard to
Speaker 1: determine skull size by any characteristic. I mean, like, I
Speaker 1: keep going back to this bear, five hundred fifty pound
Speaker 1: bear that I killed this year in Oklahoma, is gonna
Speaker 1: score on the high nineteens. Yeah, he's not gonna make twenty.
Speaker 1: The biggest bear I've killed was over five hundred and
Speaker 1: it was only nineteen. The biggest weight bear, the biggest
Speaker 1: bears weight over five hundred pounds and had under a
Speaker 1: twenty skull. Then I killed a four four or forty
Speaker 1: bear that actually made Booner twenty five eighths sixteenths excuse me,
Speaker 1: five sixteenths. So that's a great example I want people
Speaker 1: to hear that is that body weight has very little
Speaker 1: to do with skull size. The biggest skulled bear that
Speaker 1: I've ever taken was a six year old bear. My
Speaker 1: big bear was six years old. The name Oklahoma Bear,
Speaker 1: six years old. Um. The this bear right here, this
Speaker 1: rock slide bear that I believe wade five pounds, um,
Speaker 1: he was nine years old. Now in in Batman, the
Speaker 1: five fifty pound bear this year. That's not gonna score
Speaker 1: twenty inches. That's right there, Ryan, We hadn't tooth aged him,
Speaker 1: but I would be shocked if that bear wasn't over
Speaker 1: ten years old. What did he score? Well, I've green
Speaker 1: scored him under twenty, I mean like nineteen in fourteen, sixteens,
Speaker 1: I mean just right there. You know he green scored
Speaker 1: right at twenty I mean twenty and zero sixteen. Well,
Speaker 1: he had the body to make up for it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and see that's the thing. And as we're talking
Speaker 1: about trophies, uh, you know, judging these bears, I could
Speaker 1: care less with that bear scored twenty. It would have
Speaker 1: been cool if he'd scored one. I mean I would
Speaker 1: have been thrilled. But in my mind, and for the
Speaker 1: way we're hunting down here, Ryan, we're just after we're
Speaker 1: after a big, older, heavy bear. On top of that,
Speaker 1: you had history with him for what three four years? Yeah,
Speaker 1: about five years. We'd had it probably for five years.
Speaker 1: And he was one of the first bears that was
Speaker 1: over there. You know, he had been tagged at some
Speaker 1: time in his life, but was missing the tags. You know,
Speaker 1: he had holes in his ears and that had been
Speaker 1: really found that, didn't you. Yeah, that had been interesting
Speaker 1: to little No no more about his story. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: had a hole in his ear, Kobe, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: never known it. Royan was just looking at the bear
Speaker 1: and he's like, hey, this thing has been tagged. There
Speaker 1: was just a perfect hole running his ear. Tagg had
Speaker 1: pulled out the Game of Fish. Asked me if he
Speaker 1: had a lip tattoo. And I could not discern the
Speaker 1: lip tattoo. No. I look myself and didn't didn't see anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's another another bear that's out there. Oh, go ahead,
Speaker 1: go ahead, it's in the video. Man, I'm busted now,
Speaker 1: go ahead. Yeah. No, the other bear has two tags. Yeah, yellow,
Speaker 1: yellow tag, and we got the same history with the
Speaker 1: yellow tag and Brian, without my influence, was yellow Tag
Speaker 1: bigger than Batman? I think so. I'd say at least pounds,
Speaker 1: probably at least forty pounds, yeah, probably six pounds beer
Speaker 1: for real. I mean when I saw Batman coming in,
Speaker 1: I recognized that it was Batman. My heart kind of went,
Speaker 1: oh man, it's not yellow Tag, which is ridiculous because
Speaker 1: this is a But that just shows you how big
Speaker 1: deather Bear was. He he was visibly fatter and heavier.
Speaker 1: How much how much he made you think he was
Speaker 1: a hundred pounds more? And that's the thing that really
Speaker 1: we're not I don't think we're even qualified to yes,
Speaker 1: because if you just looked at like body volume and mass,
Speaker 1: me and Dad believed that he weighed a hundred more pounds.
Speaker 1: But it could be scaled though, because maybe Batman had
Speaker 1: a frame like a bull elk, and maybe Yellow Tag
Speaker 1: was just a little bit more compact, so he just
Speaker 1: looked fatter. So maybe he was the same weight, but
Speaker 1: just kind of like a heavy guy that a short,
Speaker 1: fat guy that weighs a hundred ninety pounds versus a tall,
Speaker 1: skinny guy that weighs a hundred nine pounds. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Um, So, I don't know, but what
Speaker 1: we're looking for in Arkansas is these big heavy bears.
Speaker 1: That's what we're after. Um. But let's let's go to
Speaker 1: a spotting stock hunt out west Man. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: kill a five d pound um spring black bear in Montana.
Speaker 1: You're probably not gonna kill a five pound bear in Montana. Ever. Uh,
Speaker 1: those bears out western arid regions with less nutrients, they're
Speaker 1: just not as big. That being said, you can still
Speaker 1: kill boone and crocket bear. You could still kill a
Speaker 1: bear with a great, big frame. But what I have
Speaker 1: this goes back to on a spot stock hunt, when
Speaker 1: you're judging a bear from a long distance. You're not
Speaker 1: getting to watch this bear from traill camera. You have
Speaker 1: no experience with this bear you're looking for. You're looking
Speaker 1: for all these characteristics, you know, big front shoulders, stove
Speaker 1: pipe legs, big pads, um, flat belly. Typically a big
Speaker 1: spring bear's gonna have a flat bearre belly, where a
Speaker 1: sow is gonna have more of a pear shaped like
Speaker 1: an angled belly that drops down from a smaller chest
Speaker 1: down into a bigger butt. Okay, a boar is often
Speaker 1: gonna look like a big bull. You know. A good way,
Speaker 1: a good practice test for somebody that's trying to understand
Speaker 1: how to judge bears. I would say, when you're driving
Speaker 1: past cattle fields. Now we're in a part of the
Speaker 1: world we have a lot of cattle. Your eyes scan
Speaker 1: a whole pasture of cattle, and you can immediately pick
Speaker 1: out the bull based upon his length and just his square,
Speaker 1: boxy shape. It's almost like that with bears. Would you agree?
Speaker 1: He's that a good analogy, but you could tell. I mean,
Speaker 1: like you could teach your five year old son what
Speaker 1: the bull is not just by looking at his gear.
Speaker 1: It's rigging, as James Lawrence says, uh, but uh, but
Speaker 1: you're just his body shape, you know. I mean you
Speaker 1: can teach you kids to do that. It's almost like
Speaker 1: the same thing. And it's much easier to determine the
Speaker 1: trophy class of a bear if it's older. Like when
Speaker 1: you get a juvenile male and a juvenile female, that's
Speaker 1: a hard one to determine, am I right? I mean
Speaker 1: that's that's like splitting hairs sometimes, Like if you got
Speaker 1: a hundred and eighty pound bear out there on the
Speaker 1: side of the mountain, You're like, is that a male
Speaker 1: or female? Boy? Would be hard to tell. When you
Speaker 1: really can tell the difference is is just when you
Speaker 1: get a big, guerrilla like black bear. Like when we
Speaker 1: were in Montana two years ago, we did see two
Speaker 1: big boards that like a thousand yards and they were
Speaker 1: trailing a sow. And I mean almost with your naked eye,
Speaker 1: you could tell that the animal behind that was trailing
Speaker 1: this animal. It was either a cub that was leading
Speaker 1: in a big fat south following a cub, or it
Speaker 1: was a sow with a big heavy boar fall. And
Speaker 1: so it's like when you put the scope up and
Speaker 1: you're like, that's not a cub, that's a board, Like
Speaker 1: it was easy to tell that boar kind of had
Speaker 1: a sway walk. I hear a lot of people talk
Speaker 1: about the way they walk, which that's a That is
Speaker 1: one of the factors. Before I forget it, though, let
Speaker 1: me say this, which is probably the most important factor
Speaker 1: in uh judging bear, is that you've got to use
Speaker 1: multiple factors to determine this bearer. You if you use
Speaker 1: one thing, you'll mess up. And that was the whole
Speaker 1: point of this article that I wrote in the March
Speaker 1: April issue Barony magazine, is that if you just use
Speaker 1: ear size, you're gonna let a whole lot of big
Speaker 1: bears walk off that we're probably shoot your bears if
Speaker 1: you just use um sagging belly. Like if you just
Speaker 1: say I'm not shooting a bear unless there's only eight
Speaker 1: inches of daylight between the ground and the bottom is belly,
Speaker 1: you might end up shooting a sow because you know
Speaker 1: some of these sALS have pot bellies. And are short,
Speaker 1: and if you don't understand scale, you might shoot her.
Speaker 1: So you gotta do multiple things. Look at his pads,
Speaker 1: look at his boxy head, look at his length, look
Speaker 1: at his height. And when you get three two to
Speaker 1: three things that are pointing your two towards older mature mail,
Speaker 1: that's when I can say, yep, that's an animal that
Speaker 1: I want to take. I think that's the best piece
Speaker 1: of advice that's ever been said about by bears. Fair
Speaker 1: The pads on that bear you killed in Ontario, you
Speaker 1: remember them front pads, was that it was like it
Speaker 1: was like he was made to like swim like huge
Speaker 1: pads and some polar bear what have or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do. I don't think I kill the bear pads
Speaker 1: that big sense, I don't think so. I think y'all
Speaker 1: aw teg that's probably got you know what the these
Speaker 1: these bears around here, I just don't see them, even
Speaker 1: the big ones have feet like that though. It was
Speaker 1: like it was just yeah, it really was. It's almost
Speaker 1: like a grizzly bear. But and that would be just
Speaker 1: like a human. Somebody might have big hands, somebody might
Speaker 1: have average sized hands. Okay, so we've talked about uh, wait, square,
Speaker 1: Let's talk about square real quick. Square is the most
Speaker 1: to me, like inaccurate way to judge bears between people,
Speaker 1: because everybody kind of does it different. You hear outfitters
Speaker 1: all the time talking about seven foot bears, and in
Speaker 1: my Canadian hunting career, which is not I've not been
Speaker 1: doing this for twenty years. Don't get me wrong, but
Speaker 1: I've been in quite a few bear camps the last
Speaker 1: six years. I have yet to see a seven foot
Speaker 1: square bear come out of Canada in a camp that
Speaker 1: I have been in. And I have been in some
Speaker 1: camps with some fantastic bears that were killed. Um dog
Speaker 1: gone it. I'm gonna have to recount what I just said. No, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no. My big bear that weighed four and thirty
Speaker 1: five pounds from Ontario. Uh, I squared him after he
Speaker 1: was skin though in tan and he only squared six
Speaker 1: ft eight but green, I have a feeling he would
Speaker 1: have been pushing seven. Yeah, he would have had another
Speaker 1: four inches. I think you would. I think you would have.
Speaker 1: That's my point is is that everybody always says that,
Speaker 1: I mean, you'll hear outfitters and not to have knocked
Speaker 1: my my good outfitters and I'm not knocking my good ones,
Speaker 1: because the good ones are doing it right. But like
Speaker 1: everybody's like seven foot bear, seven footbear, man, seven foot
Speaker 1: bears are hard to come by, and that's not the
Speaker 1: standard of what is in my book a trophy quality animal.
Speaker 1: I mean, in my book, if I if I've learned this,
Speaker 1: if I see a bear that is six and a
Speaker 1: half foot square, and I'm not determining this in my
Speaker 1: mind before I shoot it, I've just learned when Clay
Speaker 1: Newcom sees a bear and shoots it a lot of times,
Speaker 1: it's about six ft six, you know, I mean that's
Speaker 1: a big bear. Uh In. A six ft six bear
Speaker 1: might have a ton of weight on him. He might
Speaker 1: be boot and crock an animal. Um, But anyway, square
Speaker 1: size is the distance between the base of the tail
Speaker 1: to the tip of the nose on a green hide,
Speaker 1: combined with the distance between claw to claw measurement. Then
Speaker 1: the average of those two numbers. Okay, Um. Lots of
Speaker 1: the Canadian bears I've killed have been in that six
Speaker 1: and a half to six ft eight range, And that's
Speaker 1: a monster bear, monster bear. A lot of guys say
Speaker 1: a six ft bear is a shooter bear. I mean
Speaker 1: that's kind of a number that's stuwn around as a
Speaker 1: nice six ftbear, you know. Um, you get into the
Speaker 1: five foot bears and you're you're you're you're looking at
Speaker 1: a smaller animal. Um, but so square weight skull size
Speaker 1: spring bears are typically going to be lean lean. I mean,
Speaker 1: you might kill a whopper spring bear that weighs three pounds. Man.
Speaker 1: I hear it all the time on the phone. Runde
Speaker 1: guys call and they're asking me about spring bear hunting,
Speaker 1: and they're like, you know what I mean, Like they
Speaker 1: kind of build up like they're they're willing to take
Speaker 1: any you know. It's like I'd just like to kill
Speaker 1: a decent bear. You know, I'd probably even shoot a
Speaker 1: three hundred pound bear if I went up there. And
Speaker 1: when they say that, I realized they don't really know
Speaker 1: what they're talking about, because like they're like the minimum
Speaker 1: I would shoot would be about a three hundred pound bear,
Speaker 1: as if that were a small bear. But what I
Speaker 1: want to say to him is, man, three hundred pounds
Speaker 1: spring bear is a pretty big bear. Three hundred pounds
Speaker 1: when he's got four or five inches the hair, you know,
Speaker 1: winter coat on him. But once you get that hide
Speaker 1: off of him, there's not gonna be much fat, not
Speaker 1: in the spring. Yeah. Yeah, well and all these things
Speaker 1: do that. Is it relevant to the region you're hunting?
Speaker 1: For sure? Yeah, for sure. I mean, but spring bears all,
Speaker 1: let's just say all over Canada. I mean, no doubt
Speaker 1: every year there are outliers. There's always outliers in anything.
Speaker 1: So you could kill a spring bears five pounds. I
Speaker 1: never have done it. I've never seen it done in
Speaker 1: the camp that I've been in. The biggest spring bears
Speaker 1: I've ever seen killed were probably something that you've killed Ryan,
Speaker 1: that weighed in the three to three fifty range. Biggest
Speaker 1: spring bears I've ever seen. I mean, I've never seen
Speaker 1: one any bigger than probably uh well, I'm I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of that bear you killed in Saskatchewan two years ago.
Speaker 1: I mean, they just don't get that much bigger. Jared
Speaker 1: Summers killed was Okay, that was a big one. That
Speaker 1: was Yeah, that was a nice beer, very nice beer.
Speaker 1: What would you say that in a way, man, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Probably in the threes. So, you know, I
Speaker 1: think I remember you saying between three fifty and three
Speaker 1: seventy five or something. And I mean that's a whopper
Speaker 1: spring bear. So the point being don't go to don't
Speaker 1: go into the spring really with weight as your way
Speaker 1: to qualify weather bears, the shooter, you'll be disappointed. Um,
Speaker 1: I would go into a spring hunt just looking for
Speaker 1: an older, mature male, you know. And so three things
Speaker 1: skull size, weight, square. Talk about skull size just a minute.
Speaker 1: We we've already touched on. You can't determine and skull
Speaker 1: size by almost anything. Five hundred fifty pound bear that
Speaker 1: doesn't make Boone and Crockett and a three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty pound bear that does. Um, eighteen inches is the
Speaker 1: minimum for Pope and Young. So once I made a
Speaker 1: graph and put it in Barre Hunting magazine that did
Speaker 1: like a comparative scale between using Pope and young minimums
Speaker 1: for white tail, which people are really familiar with. Like
Speaker 1: if you say hundred in white tail, people are like, okay,
Speaker 1: I know what kind of deal that is. And then
Speaker 1: when you say hundred seventy inch white tail, they go, oh,
Speaker 1: that's a big one. Um. So if eighteen inches was
Speaker 1: equivalent to a hundred twenty five inch white tail and
Speaker 1: twenty one inches was equivalent to a hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: inch white tail. A nineteen inch bear would be equivalent
Speaker 1: to a hundred forty two hundred and fifty inch whitetail.
Speaker 1: So if you think of it like that, I mean
Speaker 1: a hundred not many people are gonna be passing a
Speaker 1: hundred forty hundred fifty inch white tails. Drop that down
Speaker 1: into bears and you see that a nineteen inch bear
Speaker 1: is a nice animal. Um. I mean, like you said,
Speaker 1: you've killed five hundred pound bears that scored in the nineteens,
Speaker 1: as have I. Uh, Kobe, what did your bear score
Speaker 1: in the fall in Manitoba? We refted out eighteen and something.
Speaker 1: It was low eighteens, I think. Okay, So Coby killed
Speaker 1: a bear that was in the three in or fifty
Speaker 1: pound range in the fall. In the spring, that bear
Speaker 1: would have weighed under three and pounds most likely, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, but by August and put on some weight
Speaker 1: was probably the three fifty pound rang three and fifty
Speaker 1: pound range. Um. I actually thought the bear would probably
Speaker 1: have scored more. To me, it looked like it would be.
Speaker 1: I I probably would have said, man, that's got to
Speaker 1: be a nineteen inch plus bear. But it scored just
Speaker 1: over the pope young minimum. Yeah. I think Corey said
Speaker 1: that his bears don't typically have a larger scoll in
Speaker 1: that in that area. I mean like they have good schools,
Speaker 1: but compared to their body weight, like that ratio is
Speaker 1: they have some big they do, and they do have
Speaker 1: some big body bears up there and fall. I mean
Speaker 1: they're killing some four pound bears. The bear I killed
Speaker 1: Saskatchewan with it two years ago head looked big, but
Speaker 1: once we got the hide off of it, he didn't
Speaker 1: have a occipital protruded back. It's like it was just gone. Man.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget that one, because that taught me a lot. Ryan.
Speaker 1: When I recovered that bear, I was with you when
Speaker 1: you we recovered the bear. The bear had canines that
Speaker 1: were war I mean, it had every indication of it
Speaker 1: being an older male. I mean an old warrior, big head,
Speaker 1: big feet, big body, I mean, square head. And I
Speaker 1: told Ryan, I said, I'll bet you my truck that
Speaker 1: that bear scores over twenty inches. Do you remember me
Speaker 1: saying that. I mean, it was like that bear is
Speaker 1: going to score over twenty inches. And when we got
Speaker 1: back and I brought my calipers and we scored your
Speaker 1: bear and my bear, Ryan, my color bear was a
Speaker 1: much was a lesser bear, I mean big time, body, size, length, everything,
Speaker 1: but that color bear had a bigger skull than yours.
Speaker 1: And and it was because you know, you measure bear
Speaker 1: skull based up on the length and the width of
Speaker 1: the dried skull. And uh, the occipital bone is this
Speaker 1: wing bone that sticks off the back of the skull.
Speaker 1: In Ryan's bear, it was just like flat back there.
Speaker 1: And most of these bears that score good have this
Speaker 1: big wing that flows off the back like a pterodactyl
Speaker 1: head or I mean tarodactyls. If you killed and I
Speaker 1: mean you scared to score those, yeah, that's a good way.
Speaker 1: I mean it's yeah, it's it's just like point off
Speaker 1: the back of the head. So that's a good example.
Speaker 1: So bear skulls are all over the place. A lot
Speaker 1: of it all has to do with genetics. I've asked
Speaker 1: some of the best bear biologists in the country their
Speaker 1: thoughts on whether a bear skull actually grows over time,
Speaker 1: and the best answer there, to my knowledge, there's been
Speaker 1: no real scientific studies because does a ten year old
Speaker 1: bear like batman, would he have kept growing? Let's just
Speaker 1: say he's ten years old. If I had killed him
Speaker 1: when he was twenty years old, would he have scored more?
Speaker 1: Here's my philosophy, maybe a little bit. I think these
Speaker 1: older bears add some bone mass to to to the skull.
Speaker 1: But I do not believe that he would have ever
Speaker 1: been aye bear. I just don't think he was gonna
Speaker 1: add an inch. It seems like they get them little
Speaker 1: calcified growths. You know a lot of these little ridges.
Speaker 1: And have you noticed that older bear is gonna have
Speaker 1: a lot of calcification on the skull. Where where a
Speaker 1: young bear is just smooth like butter, just smooth all
Speaker 1: over the skull, old bear is gonna have ridges and
Speaker 1: fissures and little bumps. And that's where I think that
Speaker 1: they might add some bone ask that may account for
Speaker 1: some growth. But I keep going back to my the
Speaker 1: one Boone and crocketbear I've ever killed that had a
Speaker 1: he was six years old and had a twenty and
Speaker 1: eight sixteenth cent skull like he he he may have
Speaker 1: been Boone and Crockett when he was four years old,
Speaker 1: but he had a smooth skull. I mean, maybe he
Speaker 1: would have grown a litit over time, but it's genetics,
Speaker 1: just like is a seventeen year old boy, all right,
Speaker 1: let's say eighteen nineteen year old boy. He's got the
Speaker 1: frame that he's gonna carry his whole life. He's not
Speaker 1: growing still, you know. So I've never really been able
Speaker 1: to find a real concrete scientific answer about that because
Speaker 1: they've just never it's just not something that they're studying, Uh,
Speaker 1: that I found yet. Maybe somebody's got a better answer.
Speaker 1: But I'd like to find a bear that had a
Speaker 1: skull like Brent Reeves has, Scott Man. Brent Reeves, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, Brent would be like, uh, he would be
Speaker 1: like one of those like big wristed, big hand meaty
Speaker 1: kind of squatty bears. He's even got the small ears too,
Speaker 1: He's got small ears. Yeah. Oh, Brent Reeves. I'm glad
Speaker 1: he's not here right now. Me too, Brent. Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: never listens to the Bear Honey Magazine podcast. That joker, Brent.
Speaker 1: When you hear this text me, Oh okay, guys, difference
Speaker 1: between spring and spring and fall scale. Let's hit one
Speaker 1: more thing. Scale is everything. Guys make this mistake all
Speaker 1: the time, is that they see a bear, they shoot it.
Speaker 1: They go up to it. They think it's a big bear,
Speaker 1: but it's a small bear. Scale So if you're spotting
Speaker 1: style hunting out out in Montana, you need to have
Speaker 1: a general understanding of the plants around that animal. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: when I was in Montana, I knew that there were
Speaker 1: these certain bushes they were about thirty inches tall. And
Speaker 1: if I was looking at the bear a thousand yards
Speaker 1: away and those bushes were everywhere, you know, and he
Speaker 1: was walking through that, I was like, dang, his shoulders
Speaker 1: are way up above those bushes, or if they were
Speaker 1: below it. And man, if that bear was just out
Speaker 1: on a barren hillside, it would have been almost impossible
Speaker 1: quickly to determine. But so you gotta have scale. So
Speaker 1: if you're hunting over a bait site, you've got to
Speaker 1: understand what sized barrels there are. I've got a story
Speaker 1: when I was in Saskatchewan the first year, I had
Speaker 1: in my mind that you could you would shoot a
Speaker 1: bear if his if he was as tall as the barrel.
Speaker 1: That was the one factor that I was looking for. Well,
Speaker 1: a bear came in the first day that was as
Speaker 1: tall as the barrel. I shot him and it was
Speaker 1: a lesser bear and it was because the barrel had
Speaker 1: been dug into the ground by the bears digging grease
Speaker 1: out from underneath it, so the barrel was sitting in
Speaker 1: six inch hole. So this average bear looked like a
Speaker 1: bear that was big. And that goes back to you
Speaker 1: gotta have more than one factor. But you've got to
Speaker 1: understand scale. So whether it's trees, whether it's bushes, whether
Speaker 1: it's a bait barrel, whether it's a mark on a
Speaker 1: tree that indicates you know, a thirty six inch tall bear,
Speaker 1: you gotta have scale because a hundred pound bear walking
Speaker 1: through the woods can look real similar to a two
Speaker 1: fifty pound bear. It's all about scale. We talked about, Uh,
Speaker 1: Paul's to me, the biggest thing of a of a
Speaker 1: big boar is height. I can't get away from that
Speaker 1: height and Paul shape. That's the way I personally determined.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be things that different people probably pick up on. Uh.
Speaker 1: We talked about determining the sex of bears, which is
Speaker 1: an important part, and we talked about the they're not
Speaker 1: necessarily myths, but they're not the whole truth. So small
Speaker 1: ears is not a myth, A crease on the head
Speaker 1: is not a myth when you're termined in a big bear.
Speaker 1: But it's not the whole story. If that's all you know,
Speaker 1: you're gonna make a mistake a few times out of ten,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh again. As we close down the podcast,
Speaker 1: I go back to this thing about we're not just
Speaker 1: talking about trophy hunting from an aspect of we just
Speaker 1: want to bring home the biggest animal possible. Trophy hunting
Speaker 1: is pretty cool because we're after older mature males. That's
Speaker 1: the best thing to take out of the population. It's
Speaker 1: the best thing for the population to extract older mature
Speaker 1: males that have already contributed to the gene pool. And
Speaker 1: trophy hunting, my friends, is actually what saved North American
Speaker 1: big game by taking the emphasis off the young and
Speaker 1: the females and putting it on the older mature males.
Speaker 1: So man, I will take zero flat from anyone on
Speaker 1: the planet saying that we're trophy hunters because we want
Speaker 1: to kill big bears and not little ones. Who is
Speaker 1: the conservation hero my brothers, the guy that shoots the
Speaker 1: first juvenile bear to the barrel and post a picture
Speaker 1: on Facebook and brags about he's not a trophy hunter
Speaker 1: and he's extracted this animal out of the population before
Speaker 1: it can contribute to the gene pool or the brethren
Speaker 1: like in this room. Wait, but the big ones take
Speaker 1: out the big older mature male has already contributed to
Speaker 1: the gene pool, and we hang his high on our walls.
Speaker 1: We eat his flesh, and we revel in the glory
Speaker 1: that he had while he was on the earth for
Speaker 1: such a long time because he was an older but
Speaker 1: sure male, are you with me? Yeah? Uh? Is it
Speaker 1: not true though? Yeah? I mean guys that like, sometimes
Speaker 1: people feel like they there's some honor in shooting smaller
Speaker 1: animals and claiming not to be a trophy hunter and
Speaker 1: get like, like trophy hunting as it's understood in the
Speaker 1: general hunting populace, it's bad. I mean, like somebody that would,
Speaker 1: for just ego purposes, want to shoot a big bear.
Speaker 1: I mean, do I want to shoot a big bear? Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: I do. Why because I like big bear bear hides
Speaker 1: on my wall. I like more bear meat rather than
Speaker 1: less bear meat. But I also understand the macro goals
Speaker 1: of bear hunting, and it is better to take out
Speaker 1: an older mature male than it is to take out
Speaker 1: a juvenile female. You've got your weekend warriors though that
Speaker 1: you know don't bear hunt much, and they're happy just
Speaker 1: to kill a bear, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to you. I appreciate you saying
Speaker 1: that because I don't want to trash that guy, which
Speaker 1: I'm not. But where are we going with that? I
Speaker 1: want to kill the next hundred pound bearrassy, there's a
Speaker 1: fine line. Let mean, like with youth hunters or everybody
Speaker 1: does have to evaluate their opportunity. And I'll be the
Speaker 1: first to say that for the I mean, I have
Speaker 1: opportunity to hunt bearss and so I I would hope
Speaker 1: that I'm selective. But you may go on one bear
Speaker 1: hunt in your life and on the final day of
Speaker 1: the hunt a juvenile bear comes in shoot it. So
Speaker 1: I really I appreciate you saying that, right because I
Speaker 1: don't want to have an elitist mentality. But I also
Speaker 1: don't want to give somebody to credit who is dogging
Speaker 1: somebody that kills a bunch of big bears because they
Speaker 1: don't have that opportunity. Is that is that fair? YEA, yeah,
Speaker 1: But well, I mean starting out, we killed smaller bears,
Speaker 1: and after so many years. You don't want to kill,
Speaker 1: you know, a smaller bear, just just like deer hunting.
Speaker 1: I guess here gays looking for that next deer and
Speaker 1: you don't. You don't want to make the standards so
Speaker 1: high that you take the joy and fun out of hunting.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, if you don't have big bears, then
Speaker 1: there's no sense and setting your goals that high. I
Speaker 1: mean really here in Arkansas, I mean there are places
Speaker 1: where you're just not gonna kill a big bear. So
Speaker 1: if you're trying to kill five hundred pound bear, you're
Speaker 1: just not everyone kill one. So I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: put that standard down lower man, that's cool. You go
Speaker 1: to Canada on a once in a lifetime trip, Uh,
Speaker 1: you you just want to evaluate the situation and not
Speaker 1: kill hunter pound bear on the first day, when if
Speaker 1: you'd wait until day three, you could have taken a
Speaker 1: a nicer, older, mature male. Yeah. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: kind of where I fit inside of it. When I
Speaker 1: take my kids hunting, it's different when I take I
Speaker 1: mean everything, everything is different. But I feel like bear
Speaker 1: hunters need to have the knowledge in the ability to
Speaker 1: articulate even what I just said about older mature males
Speaker 1: and not being picked on by people who say you're
Speaker 1: a trophy hunter because you kill big animals. I mean,
Speaker 1: I won't take it for a second. Um so that
Speaker 1: there's this, But at the same time, hunting it is
Speaker 1: about enjoyment. It is about I mean, a young bear.
Speaker 1: It's arguable, Batman, his meat tastes incredible, but it's arguable
Speaker 1: that a young bear might taste better than an old bear.
Speaker 1: Not always the case, but could be. So. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe your goals are different. The main thing is, whatever
Speaker 1: your goal is, just stick to it. The guy that
Speaker 1: I kind of, you know that I feel the liberty
Speaker 1: to rib would be the guy that claims to be
Speaker 1: wanting to wait for an older bear, but then just
Speaker 1: shoots one the first day just because he's impatient, when
Speaker 1: he had all this opportunity for another one, you know.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I don't want to I don't want to
Speaker 1: hit on anybody. But these things are true that we say.
Speaker 1: Do you guys agree, sir? What closing comments? Flint face Grib?
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, you've kind of covered everything. We've
Speaker 1: covered it. Kobe, Well, I was just thinking about whenever
Speaker 1: I got the barrel last year, and manu, it's told
Speaker 1: but how we couldn't measure his height because the barrel
Speaker 1: was on the side, and so the thing we used
Speaker 1: was to, uh, it's like, will he fit in the barrel? No,
Speaker 1: he's a good one, that's yeah. Yeah, I've heard it
Speaker 1: told me that is is he said. One thing he
Speaker 1: used to tell his clients was would that air fit
Speaker 1: into a gallon drum? I've used that analogy myself while
Speaker 1: Bear has been on the site. Yeah, looking, man, if
Speaker 1: I pop the top off that barrel with that bear
Speaker 1: fit in there, yeah, and a in a bear over
Speaker 1: three hundred pounds, it's gonna you're gonna be like, man,
Speaker 1: if you fit, he'd barely fit, right, I mean, if
Speaker 1: if it's just like for sure, yeah, it's probably under
Speaker 1: a three inner pound bear. But now, every part of
Speaker 1: the country is different, everybody has different standards, and and again,
Speaker 1: the hunt is all about the experience and the adventure
Speaker 1: and the goals that you've set for yourself. So but these, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: these principles will help somebody judge bear and uh, hey, awesome,
Speaker 1: this is this has been I think a lot of
Speaker 1: information inside of this podcast, and uh, thank you guys
Speaker 1: for being here and thank you. Ryan, appreciate it. Coming up, man, Kobe,
Speaker 1: you were here and we'll be here when this podcast
Speaker 1: is over, so you didn't really have to go anywhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but thanks for being here, Kobe. All right, keep the
Speaker 1: wild places wild because that's where the Bears live. H