Speaker 1: I'm in the Ozarks today and tomorrow is the opening
Speaker 1: day of the Arkansas Bear season. It's like a holiday
Speaker 1: to me. We're gonna be competing against the white oak
Speaker 1: acrens to kill these bears. But the day before season today,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be making molasses with my friend Willard Belines. Hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: my name's Klay nukemb And what you just watched was
Speaker 1: the intro to our newest film called Ozark Bear Camp
Speaker 1: with Klay Neukam. It's the latest and Meat Eaters twelve
Speaker 1: and twenty six series brought to you by Moultrie and Onyx,
Speaker 1: And that little intro kind of warms my heart. I
Speaker 1: love the landscape odds. Willard Vilnes is kind of a
Speaker 1: legend around here, and it was a good film. So
Speaker 1: on on what we're doing right here is our companion
Speaker 1: series podcast where we're gonna go behind the scenes, answer
Speaker 1: viewer questions and talk to you about a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff that we weren't able to talk about in the episode.
Speaker 1: And in this film, we head to my Arkansas Bear
Speaker 1: camp with my family, friends and a bunch of other people,
Speaker 1: and well, I guess everybody's family and friends. There were
Speaker 1: no non laws. Just a few people that came that
Speaker 1: just like completely, you know, are not my friends. That's
Speaker 1: not true, But we're gonna talk about that on this podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm joined today by my producer, Hero Mustache, icon Fly
Speaker 1: Fishing Sage, and best friend a guy could ever ask for,
Speaker 1: Josh Landbridge, Spillmaker.
Speaker 2: Very kind of you to write that. Wow, that was Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was touching. Speaking of warm and heart.
Speaker 1: You were at you were beyond this film. I was
Speaker 1: you showed up a couple of times in the film. Ye,
Speaker 1: So well, let's we're excited.
Speaker 2: Man. This the the this film has tons of bear
Speaker 2: hunting in it. You know, it's it's kind of a.
Speaker 1: Iconic and a lot of bear hunt hunting exactly, not
Speaker 1: so not a lot of bear skinning or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the you know this, this region where we're
Speaker 2: hunting is kind of iconic for bear grease especially. You know,
Speaker 2: this would be kind of your home, you know, the
Speaker 2: the the Ozarks and the Washatas are kind of where
Speaker 2: you've cut your teeth hunting. And so, without further ado,
Speaker 2: we want to just dive right in. Like I said,
Speaker 2: there's lots of bear hunting in this film, but the
Speaker 2: film starts with a thing that happens to coincide with
Speaker 2: bear season, and that's the harvest of the sorghum.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was really cool for me because the previous
Speaker 1: year was the first time that I would have made
Speaker 1: sorghum with Willard Blines and the.
Speaker 2: Whole you get into it. Let's actually watch a clip.
Speaker 2: We're gonna watch about a one about a one minute
Speaker 2: clip about the sorghum making. So my dad made Malaysious
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, so that's been about said
Speaker 2: some years ago.
Speaker 1: And then the lines when they came into this valley
Speaker 1: brought with them sorghum seed, and some of that same
Speaker 1: seed is the seed that you grow today, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just been handed down from generation to generation. So that
Speaker 1: mister Dole is putting in there and squeezing all that
Speaker 1: liquid o.
Speaker 2: Right, then you got to boil it down and it
Speaker 2: goes in from the lasius.
Speaker 1: The history is pretty remarkable, and in modern times, the
Speaker 1: timing of the sorghum harvest is coincided with bear season.
Speaker 1: When you're boiling something down like this, really you're just
Speaker 1: removing the water and just concentrating the sugar. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's really all it is. So with the molasses making
Speaker 1: finishing up, It's time to get down to brass tacks.
Speaker 1: We're hunting bears in less than twenty four hours, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna take today's skimmings to sweeten up my bait. Side.
Speaker 2: There you go. Just just a little clip, just a
Speaker 2: little clip from the sorghum making with it.
Speaker 1: Pretty It was pretty cool. The the year before was
Speaker 1: the first year that I'd ever made sorghum with Willard Villines,
Speaker 1: and it was it was right before bear season, and
Speaker 1: so I wanted to I'll tell you exactly what happened
Speaker 1: is the year before I was there with them, just
Speaker 1: a scene just like what you saw. And I made
Speaker 1: a little video on my phone, yep, And I put
Speaker 1: that video my Instagram and really didn't think that much
Speaker 1: about it. It was just a cool video showing the mule grasshopper,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, turning the mill. It showed the
Speaker 1: whole process in less than a minute. And that video
Speaker 1: got thirty million views on Instagram. Thirty point five million
Speaker 1: views on Instagram, and it just kind of cued me
Speaker 1: in that this is something that the world needs to
Speaker 1: see in more details. Right, This is a thirty second,
Speaker 1: maybe minute long clip, and so that's when I talked
Speaker 1: to Willard and said, hey, we're gonna bear hunt next
Speaker 1: year over here. Why and we're gonna have a crew here.
Speaker 1: Why don't we Why don't we film the full sequence
Speaker 1: of you making molasses? And I mean it was no
Speaker 1: sweat off his back. It's like, we're gonna be doing
Speaker 1: it anyway. It was a little bit of coordination with
Speaker 1: when to harvest the sorghum.
Speaker 2: Is that the is that like the optimal time?
Speaker 1: So yes, they it's they always harvest it in September
Speaker 1: and early October. Ok, So you couldn't you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: done it too much earlier. But but here anyway, mid
Speaker 1: to late September to early October.
Speaker 2: You know, it seems like in the harvest and production
Speaker 2: of the sorgum with the volons, like not a lot
Speaker 2: has changed. Is there anything that has changed since they
Speaker 2: started doing that a couple of generations back? I mean
Speaker 2: the way obviously they weren't lifting it with a track.
Speaker 1: So if you go to the store and buy a
Speaker 1: jar of sorghum molasses, most likely that was made in
Speaker 1: a modern mill. You know, they weren't using a mule
Speaker 1: to turn it. It was an electric mill somehow that
Speaker 1: you know, presses down the canes and makes the juice.
Speaker 1: The way that they're doing it is identical to the
Speaker 1: way it would have been done hundred years ago because
Speaker 1: that that mill that he has, the press is has
Speaker 1: been in his family for many years. They actually have
Speaker 1: one of the other brothers. So what's cool about the Blinds.
Speaker 1: Willard Blinds is one of ten children.
Speaker 2: And how old is Willard?
Speaker 1: Willard's seventy eight, and I don't get me talking about
Speaker 1: where he's at, but I want to say he's somewhere
Speaker 1: in the middle. So he he has some brothers that
Speaker 1: were older, and one of the brothers has the original
Speaker 1: mill that his father had had used the sorghum press.
Speaker 1: Am I saying the right word for that?
Speaker 2: I think mill seems right? So, but but that that
Speaker 2: might be a class it might be a press mill.
Speaker 2: Seems like it would be grinding, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the way they're doing it is just the same.
Speaker 1: And it's really pretty simple, you know when you the
Speaker 1: first time I was there, I was like, man, this
Speaker 1: is a complicated process with a lot of stages. You
Speaker 1: just press the canes, get get the juice out, and
Speaker 1: then you just heat it and remove the water. Like
Speaker 1: there's no recipe, right, there's no, there's not, Like, well,
Speaker 1: at this moment, you have to do this. However, that
Speaker 1: makes it sound simple. When that fire is burning, Willard
Speaker 1: and those guys are watching it like a hawk because
Speaker 1: you can ruin it.
Speaker 2: It seems like the critical things would be like timing
Speaker 2: when it's done, you know, keeping it moving and making
Speaker 2: sure that fire doesn't get too hot or too low exactly.
Speaker 1: And they can tell you the taste difference in where
Speaker 1: sorgum's grown, even in their county, Like Willard'll be like, now,
Speaker 1: this cane came from here, and it tastes a little
Speaker 1: bit sweeter than the cane that came from up on
Speaker 1: the mountain.
Speaker 2: So this is this something that happens regionally, Like are
Speaker 2: there other families in that area that.
Speaker 1: Are Yeah, I'd say there's quite a few that, not
Speaker 1: quite a few. There are others that make sorghum just
Speaker 1: this same way, not a lot.
Speaker 2: I wonder if they have like a sorghum off, like
Speaker 2: whoever makes the best sort.
Speaker 1: Oh, it would be contest, highly highly contested.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to judge it. I wouldn't want to
Speaker 2: judge it.
Speaker 1: Yes, but if you haven't had sorghum, it's an interesting product.
Speaker 1: It's it's sweet. You could use it like syrup, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's uh, it's kind of got. It's got a
Speaker 1: very unique taste that if you didn't grow up with it,
Speaker 1: you might be like, you know, it might kind of
Speaker 1: catch you off guard. I grew up eating sorghum glasses.
Speaker 1: My grandfather he treated it like it was like we
Speaker 1: got to go out and have ice cream. I mean
Speaker 1: it was like, hey, you want some sorghum, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean like it was really something special. And what
Speaker 1: he would do is he would pour. He would take
Speaker 1: a butter knife and pour it out of the jar,
Speaker 1: and he could very strategically. You know, it drips. It's
Speaker 1: like thicker than syrup. It's more like honey. It's it's
Speaker 1: like a thinner honey. And so when it's poured out,
Speaker 1: if you just tip the jar back up, it gets
Speaker 1: all over the side of the jar. And so at
Speaker 1: just the right time when you're tipping it back up,
Speaker 1: you zoom the knife across and keep the jar clean,
Speaker 1: and you'd have a little doll up about as big
Speaker 1: as a silver dollar, about a you know, less than
Speaker 1: a quarter inch high. Then he would take a piece
Speaker 1: of butter, a square of butter, and put it in
Speaker 1: there and mash it up with the sorghum and put
Speaker 1: that on biscuits. That's what he did, and it was
Speaker 1: hungry man back in the day before the commercialization of
Speaker 1: sugar and candy. And how much access that the everyday
Speaker 1: American has to sugar, which is bizarre, and you should
Speaker 1: be very concerned with how much sugar you eat. I mean,
Speaker 1: wildly bizarre that of the people watching this video. I mean,
Speaker 1: what are the statistics of how much sugar the average
Speaker 1: American me eats. I mean it's like like fifty pounds
Speaker 1: of sugar or something.
Speaker 3: Yeast at least if you drink so it's insane. You
Speaker 3: should be very very which camera does. You should be
Speaker 3: very concerned about this. But back in the day, to
Speaker 3: have sorghum, which was sweet, was like a treat. It's interesting,
Speaker 3: this olden sugar.
Speaker 2: In your every day in your everyday consumption.
Speaker 1: That's right, And it's it's kind of interesting because when
Speaker 1: I would do this same thing with my kids, Hey,
Speaker 1: you want some sorghum? I mean, I'm ashamed to say
Speaker 1: that they were kind of kind of unimpressed. You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: but kids these now, my kids don't eat that much
Speaker 1: sugar Bear Nukeum No, bar Nukem is like almost sugar free.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And he's also like a.
Speaker 2: Lean mean, he's like two percent body fat.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So no, that kind of stuff is really special
Speaker 1: to me to be able to document it. And what
Speaker 1: is most special, and this is what you get behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, is I wanted to do that for Willard
Speaker 1: and his family, right because Willard's his family's been doing this,
Speaker 1: and I mean, all they would have would just be
Speaker 1: some cell phone videos in modern times and then some
Speaker 1: just you know, a handful of photographs from years ago.
Speaker 1: And so it was pretty cool to have the mediator
Speaker 1: crew there to document it so well. And you know,
Speaker 1: it's about a ten minute clip, so it's not like
Speaker 1: it was exhaustive.
Speaker 2: So that, you know, a couple of questions. First, you
Speaker 2: know that same seed has been passed down for the
Speaker 2: through the generations. Why does that matter? Clay good Sorgum
Speaker 2: good Sorgum, No.
Speaker 1: It's just I think it's just a connection to the past.
Speaker 1: Like the human life is deceptive. It feels like people
Speaker 1: from the eighteen hundreds, third and fourth great grandfathers were
Speaker 1: a long ways away, but they really weren't. And you know,
Speaker 1: by Willard holding that seed and planting it in the
Speaker 1: ground and knowing that his ancestors, you know, you could
Speaker 1: track it back and grew that seed. I think it
Speaker 1: just connects you to the past and to the the
Speaker 1: just just the the heritage of the region, and it's
Speaker 1: it's just unique. I mean, there's there's nothing that I
Speaker 1: could that I have that I could touch that. I
Speaker 1: mean my great grandfather's shotgun, which I've got over there
Speaker 1: like very little. And you know, when you think about history,
Speaker 1: which I talk a lot about history, and you might
Speaker 1: think that I was hyper nostalgic in the way that
Speaker 1: I think about even my life, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that I am. Because the past is interesting. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of the past that we should forget and even
Speaker 1: reject and move past in our own personal lives and
Speaker 1: even in our family's history. Like but it's but the
Speaker 1: knowledge of some of this stuff is powerful. That's more
Speaker 1: a statement of like general understanding of like why the history,
Speaker 1: because I think there's there's probably a can be an
Speaker 1: unhealthy attachment to the past yeah, and this is not that.
Speaker 1: This is a celebration of heritage and a connection to
Speaker 1: a family legacy and uh and over in this part
Speaker 1: of the world, in Newton County and kind of the
Speaker 1: central Ozarks, the name Vlins. There are hundreds of Voliines
Speaker 1: because the guys that brought that sorghum seed. I want
Speaker 1: to say, Willard told me that Abraham Beliines had eighteen children. Wow,
Speaker 1: and they're all still over there and they're they're a
Speaker 1: wonderful family. There are a lot of lot I know,
Speaker 1: a lot of violins over there.
Speaker 2: One last question, and it's kind of a philosophic question,
Speaker 2: would be, oh, another one, what what does Willard represent
Speaker 2: about the Ozarks that you wanted the viewers to appreciate
Speaker 2: m by starting? I mean, you started this film off
Speaker 2: with that. What what is what is it about him
Speaker 2: that you want to us see?
Speaker 1: He's just there are people that are he just has
Speaker 1: such a connection to the Ozarks. He's just a real
Speaker 1: deal Ozarky and like he's not trying to be anything.
Speaker 1: He just is what he is.
Speaker 2: He didn't put those overalls and had on because he
Speaker 2: was going to be on film.
Speaker 1: He may have just a little but but but he
Speaker 1: wears those all the time. I mean, you know, there's
Speaker 1: actually a part of history in all these places that
Speaker 1: we we reflect back to our past and are influenced
Speaker 1: by me wearing these overalls right here. I mean it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a hat tip to the past, and
Speaker 1: I think people still do that today. But but Willard's
Speaker 1: the real deal. He's a he's a mule man, he's
Speaker 1: a hunter. He's just a well respected guy over there.
Speaker 2: Love it, they yeah, yeah, great guy. Okay, let's we
Speaker 2: got another another clip here. Let's go ahead and watch it.
Speaker 1: Bears right now are going into what they call hyperphagia,
Speaker 1: which is a physiological state of incredible increase in metabolism.
Speaker 1: So a bear fell off five to eight thousand calories
Speaker 1: a day in the fall, they can eat twenty thousand
Speaker 1: calories a day. So when you're baiting, you're capitalizing on
Speaker 1: a natural process inside of a bear. We're using pop tarts,
Speaker 1: corn sorghum, molasses, skimmons. We got in a little later
Speaker 1: than we wanted, so it was a quick drop over
Speaker 1: the bait. We filled up the bait barrels. The last
Speaker 1: thing we want to do is spook bears the night
Speaker 1: before the hunt. Everybody's here for the season opener and
Speaker 1: we're having a big time. Much of my hunting is
Speaker 1: primarily solo, but our bear camp is always full of people,
Speaker 1: and that's something that I love. I always got to
Speaker 1: give like the State of the Union, the State of
Speaker 1: the Bear Union. I have pretty good news. Like I
Speaker 1: would say that the bear the bear situation is average
Speaker 1: to slightly below average.
Speaker 2: So tell us, uh, tell us a little bit about
Speaker 2: you know, you typically have a bear camp every year.
Speaker 2: Tell us what made this bear camp different than than
Speaker 2: bear camps in the past.
Speaker 1: Well, it was fun to have Lake Pickle Jordan Bliss
Speaker 1: it there. They were both new bear hunters, had never
Speaker 1: bear hunted before, so it was cool to get to
Speaker 1: introduce them to it. We were actually in a new
Speaker 1: spot that I hadn't hunted for. We were in we
Speaker 1: were in a new spot and uhs and my buddy
Speaker 1: Justin House was there. James Lawrence came up, who's in? Yes?
Speaker 1: And uh there was another interesting guest at our bear
Speaker 1: camp this year. Ted Copple was there as in the
Speaker 1: as in the real Copple that interviewed Richard Nixon. Ted Copple.
Speaker 1: You actually see Ted Copple in the last clip of
Speaker 1: the film sitting by our fire. He's he's wearing all
Speaker 1: black and he's kind of sitting in the back and
Speaker 1: we're playing music and it's the lights are on and
Speaker 1: you actually can see Ted Copple.
Speaker 2: So he had come to do so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what you wouldn't have known from watching the film
Speaker 1: is that CBS Good Morning, Sunday Morning, Sunday, CBS Sunday
Speaker 1: came to our bear camp and we're there for basically
Speaker 1: two of the five days. There were people there. I
Speaker 1: guess there were people there for parts of three of
Speaker 1: five days. They came in on the evening. Ted was
Speaker 1: there all day one of the days, but the guys
Speaker 1: were still there the next day for portion of the day,
Speaker 1: if I recall. Yeah, and they did a spot on
Speaker 1: CBS Sunday Morning, and so Ted interviewed many of us.
Speaker 1: We rendered bear fat. Aside from what you saw, we
Speaker 1: rendered bear fat for CBS Sunday Morning, and he just
Speaker 1: hung out with us.
Speaker 2: I have to say that compared to some of the
Speaker 2: bear camps of the past, which have been awesome, this
Speaker 2: one was a little boogie or two.
Speaker 1: We had a pretty stayed in a really nice cabin.
Speaker 1: We did that was unusual.
Speaker 2: It spoiled there.
Speaker 1: We kind of had to do that because we had
Speaker 1: so many people there and because we had Ted Coppola's
Speaker 1: crew coming and so so we on the Bear Grease
Speaker 1: podcast spoke about when Ted Copple came. He was he
Speaker 1: was a he's eighty five, eighty five years old, younger
Speaker 1: and you don't wreckon anybody. I would say thirty five
Speaker 1: and older would know who Ted Copple was. Was one
Speaker 1: of the most famous, well known faces in America for
Speaker 1: probably twenty five years as a as a broadcast anchor
Speaker 1: for CBS.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, back in the day, kids, there were when
Speaker 1: there was just television. That's you had television and books
Speaker 1: and radio. That's all. You had no cell phones. People
Speaker 1: watched television.
Speaker 2: And Ted Copple was a household name.
Speaker 1: And there were there would have been like three or
Speaker 1: four major networks, and the anchors for the nightly news
Speaker 1: on those those stations were as famous as the president.
Speaker 1: And so Ted Copple was one of those guys.
Speaker 2: He was on Nightline for years.
Speaker 1: Yes, many years, and he was a delightful man.
Speaker 2: He was it honestly surprised me how endearing he I mean,
Speaker 2: just like personable.
Speaker 1: Humble, set with us and just talked. He singled out
Speaker 1: almost everyone in our camp and had fairly in depth conversations,
Speaker 1: personal conversation. When I realized what he was doing was
Speaker 1: Justin House, who can just kind of be a fly
Speaker 1: on the wall at times, was there and there was
Speaker 1: a little bit of a lult. We're in a big group.
Speaker 1: This is after he'd been there for hours, and he
Speaker 1: looked at Justin and he said, Justin, tell me what
Speaker 1: you do. And it was clear that he was trying
Speaker 1: to connect with everybody there. And you know, one time
Speaker 1: I came around a corner and he and Brent were
Speaker 1: sitting over in a chair, just chatting away, no telling
Speaker 1: what Brent was telling him.
Speaker 2: When you guys were out hunting one afternoon, he sat
Speaker 2: down with with your mom and dad and Misty and
Speaker 2: I and I think just the four of us and
Speaker 2: just for hour and a half and just let us
Speaker 2: ask him questions about his career and his family and yeah,
Speaker 2: just really neat. Yeah, what is it about bear Camp
Speaker 2: that means so much to you?
Speaker 1: So most of my hunting, I said it in there,
Speaker 1: most most of My hunting is solo. Like most of
Speaker 1: my hunting, I wake up here at my house and
Speaker 1: you know, go deer hunting or go bear hunting. Then
Speaker 1: maybe somebody comes with me, but you know, I'm driving
Speaker 1: there and hunting for a day or two and coming back.
Speaker 1: Other times I'm leaving on the bigger hunts. To me,
Speaker 1: my hunting and probably most people's hunting can be segregated
Speaker 1: into two things. You're local hunting, but then you're if
Speaker 1: you travel, if you're so fortunate to get to travel
Speaker 1: to hunt, and many people do make one big trip
Speaker 1: hunting trip somewhere, right, you know, you travel. So when
Speaker 1: I travel, I'm usually with people, but it's not home
Speaker 1: and it's not with family. Bear camp is very communal,
Speaker 1: very focused on the camp. Very we're not honestly, we're
Speaker 1: not hunting that hard in terms of hunting. The work
Speaker 1: that goes into it is more than I do for
Speaker 1: anything else that I do, and that's that's hard to
Speaker 1: describe for some people. I mean it just you know,
Speaker 1: the work that goes into baiting bears is the most
Speaker 1: work that I do. Yeah, Like when I go to
Speaker 1: Alaska next month, I'm just going to like show up
Speaker 1: and I've never been there, and all of my energy
Speaker 1: will be dedicated during the time I'm there and then
Speaker 1: I leave. You know this, this takes a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of effort to get there.
Speaker 2: I mean, for for a month ahead of time.
Speaker 1: Yes, And and so when we're there, though, we're typically
Speaker 1: just hunting the evenings, maybe a little bit in the morning,
Speaker 1: and so we're spending a lot of time at camp,
Speaker 1: a lot of time with people, and that's fun to me. Man.
Speaker 2: We had a we had a great time just just
Speaker 2: having food and you know, in the evenings people would
Speaker 2: show up and you know, one night there were there
Speaker 2: were guys there playing some fantastic music. It was your birthday.
Speaker 2: We celebrated that it was. I mean, we had a
Speaker 2: we had a great time. I've got a couple of
Speaker 2: questions here from some Instagram from Instagram. First questions from
Speaker 2: Isaac Reynolds Isaac Underscore Reynolds thirty four. If you're out there,
Speaker 2: what's your recommended drawweight for bear and what's your favorite
Speaker 2: bear bait to use?
Speaker 1: M you can use archery equipment on a black bear
Speaker 1: that you would use on a white tail deer. Okay
Speaker 1: that they're they're really they're really I wouldn't do anything
Speaker 1: different between my white tail set up and my bear set.
Speaker 2: Up broadheads as well.
Speaker 1: Now that I would do different, I typically I go
Speaker 1: back and forth between expandables with with white tails, I'd
Speaker 1: say seventy five percent of the time I'm using some
Speaker 1: expandable head For white tails, They're thinner skinned, thinner boned,
Speaker 1: They're they're You're more likely, I feel like with a
Speaker 1: white tail to get a compromised hit because of the
Speaker 1: way they can react to a shot and drop and move,
Speaker 1: And so I want a big cutting diameter. When I'm
Speaker 1: bear hunting, I prioritize an entry an exit hole. So
Speaker 1: I want the arrow that is going to penetrate the most.
Speaker 2: Use fixed blade I.
Speaker 1: Would I would not, you wouldn't have to use a
Speaker 1: cut on impact necessarily, but I like to use a
Speaker 1: fixed blade broadhead for black bear. Now, yeah, we I mean,
Speaker 1: we could go into all the stuff about shot placement
Speaker 1: and and I'm.
Speaker 2: Sure that will come up later today. Later, well, we'll
Speaker 2: talk about shot placement. Oh yeah on a bear. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: forgot about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So favorite bear bait. Favorite bear bait is going
Speaker 1: to be carbony for here. Now, what is interesting about
Speaker 1: black bears is that they have such a wide geographic distribution,
Speaker 1: which black bears have the currently of the large mammals
Speaker 1: on this continent have the largest geographic distribution of them all. Okay,
Speaker 1: historically wolves would have had a wider geographic distribution than
Speaker 1: the black bear. Okay, Okay, think about this, Josh. This
Speaker 1: is going back to bear bait and why bears prefer
Speaker 1: different foods in different places. But the wolf essentially would
Speaker 1: have historically ranged from north of the Arctic circle all
Speaker 1: the way down into Old Mexico, from the Atlantic to
Speaker 1: the Pacific. I mean, like without a gap in there.
Speaker 1: They would have been different subspecies of wolves, you know,
Speaker 1: based on the biology and all this. But the wolf
Speaker 1: would have done that, the black bear would do the
Speaker 1: exact same thing, except black bears historically were not in
Speaker 1: the great prairie regions of America. A black bear has
Speaker 1: to have trees to survive, and so there would have
Speaker 1: been pockets in the great Plains where black bears wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been. They would have been in the riparian zones,
Speaker 1: but wolves would have been in those areas. And then
Speaker 1: the treeless areas of the southwestern desert and the Great
Speaker 1: Plains were the only places that there were not black bears.
Speaker 1: So imagine black bears range north of the Arctic Circle
Speaker 1: as well, probably not as high as wolves though, and
Speaker 1: the furthest south southerly. Documented black bears have been around
Speaker 1: Mexico City, which is deep into Mexico. And so, but
Speaker 1: are there wolves today in Arkansas and in Oklahoma and
Speaker 1: in Kansas, No, they're not so historic range the wolf
Speaker 1: had the biggest. Today the black bear does. Because the
Speaker 1: black bear now exists in basically sixty five percent of
Speaker 1: of its historic range and in many regions one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of its historic range, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like in Canada and Alaska, the black bears in one
Speaker 1: hundred percent of its historic range.
Speaker 2: Okay, So how does that tie to bear bait?
Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. Bears prefer different things in different places.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So, for instance, in the Spring and Canada, these outfitters
Speaker 1: are using oats with oil on it. I'm convinced that
Speaker 1: if you put oats with oil on bear bait in
Speaker 1: this part of the world, you would have not great results.
Speaker 1: And we can only hunt in a fall here. But
Speaker 1: my favorite bear bait, I would say, would be pastries. Doughnuts,
Speaker 1: pop tarts, and bread and grease that seems to be
Speaker 1: when we're baiting them. And I want to emphasize for
Speaker 1: anybody that has not been around bear baiting, there's a
Speaker 1: ton of research about baiting black bears, and we cover
Speaker 1: it in my book that's coming out in February, American
Speaker 1: Bear It. We cover it all, but I can just
Speaker 1: summarize for you to say that all the research indicates
Speaker 1: that baiting bears does not habituate them to anthropomorphic foods,
Speaker 1: anthropogenic foods, like they're not going to come raid your
Speaker 1: house because they're being baited, you know, a half a
Speaker 1: mile away. Basically, it's it's not detrimental to they still
Speaker 1: have a preference for Oh they all natural, always going
Speaker 1: to have a preference for natural foods. Yeah, they just do.
Speaker 1: They would rather eat a white oak acorn, so things
Speaker 1: that make a bear fat, but up in Canada they
Speaker 1: would use like oil and oats.
Speaker 2: Okay. One of the questions I had when I watched
Speaker 2: it is you mentioned that during hyperphasia, when they're trying
Speaker 2: to put on weight, that a bear will eat twenty
Speaker 2: thousand calories in a day in nature, What are they
Speaker 2: eaten that they're able to get twenty thousand calories.
Speaker 1: In a day in the fall, hard mast has incredible
Speaker 1: chloric content, okay, and so like a white oak acorn
Speaker 1: has five to seven calories per acorn, right, And imagine
Speaker 1: I tell a story in the Book of Once when
Speaker 1: I actually watched and the only reason I knew the
Speaker 1: timestamp was because I videoed it. But I watched bear
Speaker 1: eat white oak acres for eighteen minutes straight without lifting
Speaker 1: its head.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And just estimating that that bear was chomping one white
Speaker 1: oak acre in every five seconds, which probably would be
Speaker 1: about as fast as it would it would have consumed
Speaker 1: like eighteen hundred calories in like eighteen minutes. It may
Speaker 1: not have been that precise eighteen and eighteen makes me
Speaker 1: think my numbers are wrong, but it consumed an enormous
Speaker 1: like over a thousand calories in at eighteen minutes. And
Speaker 1: it's like, how many times could it do that in
Speaker 1: a day? Twenty thousand fairly easily could. So yeah, they're
Speaker 1: just cramming on the calories. They But what's so cool
Speaker 1: about these bears is that they have to because our
Speaker 1: bears here are typically up and on their feet for
Speaker 1: ten to nine months a year, but in the highest
Speaker 1: portion of their range, way up in the north there
Speaker 1: the boy I don't want to spill too much about
Speaker 1: the book, that the coolest fact in the book, the
Speaker 1: coolest fact in the whole book, is the longest documented
Speaker 1: denning that we've ever seen a bear stay in. It
Speaker 1: in like a collared bear. They knew when it went in,
Speaker 1: they knew when it came out, and let me just say,
Speaker 1: it was an unbelievable amount of time.
Speaker 2: And when they're there, they're not eating, they're not drinking,
Speaker 2: they're not defecating. That'surin eating.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: That is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's yes, it is. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's an absolutely fascinating process. But that connects
Speaker 1: back to them eating, having to eat twenty thousand calories
Speaker 1: a day or being able to all is that they're
Speaker 1: trying to make a year's living in six to nine months,
Speaker 1: so they got to pack it all in. And that's
Speaker 1: and a bear is just built to consume calories. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just has big intestines, big stomach, the ability, you know,
Speaker 1: a mouth that just can just consume and and process
Speaker 1: it quickly. I mean like every They're just a They're
Speaker 1: just an eating machine, is what they are. And the
Speaker 1: coolest thing about bears is there, they're they're they're omnivores,
Speaker 1: and whatever's happening ecologically on planet Earth, it is favoring omnivores.
Speaker 1: It is favoring generalists. Specialists are often the things that
Speaker 1: are struggling. And that's why that we see the black
Speaker 1: bear thriving. Every research population of bears is stable or increasing.
Speaker 2: Right now, that's awesome. One more, one more viewer question,
Speaker 2: the simple one. Do you have a favorite fresh kill
Speaker 2: camp meal? And that's from mac fink Biner seven eleven.
Speaker 1: You know, I think I don't have a fancy answer,
Speaker 1: but just to cook a backstrap over a fire, some
Speaker 1: seasoning on it, yeah, or just to just fright pan fright, battered,
Speaker 1: pan fried. This is the way to go.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we've got another clip here.
Speaker 1: Man. I'm excited for you.
Speaker 2: I'm just eager, man. I'm ready to get up there.
Speaker 2: I'm ready to see a bear from a stand. That's
Speaker 2: just it's gonna be something new.
Speaker 1: For me, Doctor Pickle. We're starting our hunt in the
Speaker 1: early afternoon. Bears are crepuscular, so they move at dawn
Speaker 1: in dusk, but these baited bears move a lot at night,
Speaker 1: so we opt to go and start hunting in mid
Speaker 1: afternoon when the bears aren't there, and just set up
Speaker 1: and wait for the last hour of daylight. Maybe Lake's
Speaker 1: anticipation the seeing bears had something to do with it,
Speaker 1: but he actually doesn't have to sit long until he
Speaker 1: actually sees a bear. Right here, I see now the
Speaker 1: bear coming on the right. Lake has some truly big
Speaker 1: bears that are coming into this bait. We know they're
Speaker 1: coming in, and we also know that these aren't them,
Speaker 1: so today they get a pass. But in this kind
Speaker 1: of hunt, your options can change by the day and
Speaker 1: even by the hour.
Speaker 2: So you've you've you've kind of addressed a lot of
Speaker 2: the a lot of the de baiting issues. I feel
Speaker 2: like the film does a good job showing just how
Speaker 2: difficult it is to bait, I mean, the work that
Speaker 2: goes into it. But just because you bait doesn't mean
Speaker 2: it's a sure thing. So there's dissenters. Is there anything
Speaker 2: that you haven't covered that you feel like you want
Speaker 2: to communicate about baiting? You know, there's always the comments,
Speaker 2: you know, this is cheating this isn't fair, you know.
Speaker 1: I would I would say that somebody that would say that, well,
Speaker 1: I would say to them, let's look at the bigger
Speaker 1: picture of bear management. Wherever there is a season that
Speaker 1: allows it to be legal to hunt bears over bait
Speaker 1: or use hounds, the other methods of hunting, which basically
Speaker 1: would be spot in stock, would be inadequate to harvest
Speaker 1: the number of bears that needed to be taken out
Speaker 1: of that system. Let me give you an example. Arkansas
Speaker 1: currently has about six thousand bears in the state, which
Speaker 1: is not is really not that many, right. So many
Speaker 1: other places like don't come here to hunt. It's not
Speaker 1: that great, right, Georgia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee. All
Speaker 1: these places have more more bears than us. But in
Speaker 1: twenty years Arkansas has Arkansas hunters have legally harvested over
Speaker 1: ten thousand bears.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: I talked to a biologist who we did the math together,
Speaker 1: and if there was no hunting since the year two thousand,
Speaker 1: there would be between twenty and thirty thousand bears in
Speaker 1: the state. Like with the reproduction, like counting how many
Speaker 1: were taken out and basically the carrying capacity of the state,
Speaker 1: and the habitat that we have is a you know,
Speaker 1: it's probably we're reaching it. They're actually trying to keep
Speaker 1: the population just stable. And there's many factors that go
Speaker 1: into that. There's actual habitat constraints. And six thousand. I
Speaker 1: kind of get bummed when I hear that number, because
Speaker 1: that at one time they believe this state had fifty
Speaker 1: thousand bears, and to say we have six thousand and
Speaker 1: us celebrate that today is kind of like, wow, that
Speaker 1: doesn't sound that great. But the truth is is that
Speaker 1: this place is full of houses in roads and shopping
Speaker 1: malls and permuta grass fields that are no longer bear
Speaker 1: habitat that at one time were every square inch of basically,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just using Arkansas as an example, but
Speaker 1: you could extrapolate this out every direction. Every square inch
Speaker 1: of the state used to be bear habitat and would
Speaker 1: have been used by bears in some way. Okay, and
Speaker 1: so today actual habitat is a limitation. But then number
Speaker 1: two and even more important and most important, the reason
Speaker 1: that we couldn't have thirty thousand bears in the state
Speaker 1: is the cultural tolerance, which is how many how many
Speaker 1: bears will a culture tolerate how often, how comfortable are
Speaker 1: you going to be with bears sleeping under your house?
Speaker 1: And in California and in New Jersey and a lot
Speaker 1: of these places, the cultural tolerance and the amount of
Speaker 1: bears there is in this big conflict. That's a lot
Speaker 1: about what my book is about. And I do think
Speaker 1: I would have a high tolerance for more bears. But
Speaker 1: also last year in this state, two people were killed
Speaker 1: by bears, I mean wild this year there's been more
Speaker 1: black bear human fatalities. It's on the rise. I mean,
Speaker 1: it absolutely is on the rise. So to answer your
Speaker 1: question about baiting is that when we beta bear, we
Speaker 1: are playing a very significant role inside of bear management
Speaker 1: to keep the bear population stable. And you couldn't do
Speaker 1: it any other way. You send out spot instack hunters,
Speaker 1: they will not able to harvest the same bears, and
Speaker 1: so you become a pawn inside of a system. And
Speaker 1: when you beat a bear, it's less about like one
Speaker 1: on one and out smarten a bear. It's more about
Speaker 1: I want to pick the specific bear I want to take,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna eat this bear renders fat, tan is hide.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna use this animal to the highest degree, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be selective about the animal that I take
Speaker 1: based upon the opportunity that I have, which varies from
Speaker 1: year to year. My my judgment of what bear that
Speaker 1: I would take changes by the day. With a white
Speaker 1: tailed deer, I might have in my mind what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take and what I'm not, like, maybe I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take a dough Maybe I'm gonna take a one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifteen inch plus buck. With a bear depended upon
Speaker 1: how much meat I need. If I need some grease,
Speaker 1: I might take the oldest best male that I really
Speaker 1: got a shot of taken, which might be a three
Speaker 1: year old male. Does that make sense, Yeah, absolutely, other
Speaker 1: on really good years, which it varies dramatically some years.
Speaker 1: Bear is a very responsive debate, and you can be
Speaker 1: highly selective. And I've taken some multiple five hundred plus
Speaker 1: pound just monster, beautiful stomper bears.
Speaker 2: That you might not have had an opportunity oh to
Speaker 2: harvest past year.
Speaker 1: But there was no chance we were going to kill
Speaker 1: any of those bears, though we had them on camera
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night sporadically, and so like
Speaker 1: Lake sitting there thinking he's going to shoot a five
Speaker 1: hundred pound bear. I mean, by the time we actually
Speaker 1: got him in the stand, it was pretty much like, Hey,
Speaker 1: that's not going to happen. That bear is long gone.
Speaker 1: He's on some white oak ridge, devouring eighteen He's just
Speaker 1: eating NonStop. He doesn't want to be here, he's not here,
Speaker 1: and so that really doesn't answer the question. But baiting
Speaker 1: bears is critical for bear management.
Speaker 2: You mentioned the fifty thousand bears. At one time, there
Speaker 2: was fifty thousand bears in Arkansas. That would have been
Speaker 2: at a time when populations in Arkansas were very small,
Speaker 2: and the one of the main things that took that
Speaker 2: population way down was market hunting.
Speaker 1: Correct with that, more so landscape level logging than even
Speaker 1: market hunting. Okay, yeah, okay. Logging and the loss of
Speaker 1: habitat had had vastly more impact on black bear than
Speaker 1: market hunting. Wow, okay, yep.
Speaker 2: Interesting, Okay, well we would learn you'll learn all this
Speaker 2: in American Bear coming out in February twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 2: I'll be first in line. All right, here's another clip.
Speaker 4: A bear is such a preclusive animal.
Speaker 1: They're an animal the shadows.
Speaker 2: More biology here, folks.
Speaker 5: It's black and mostly made for that is the girl's
Speaker 5: bluffer is for camouflage, and it's it.
Speaker 4: It shows you where they wanna live. The real reason
Speaker 4: that a bear is black is that the the early
Speaker 4: ancestors of black bears, like Deep Deep History, developed in
Speaker 4: the tropics. And there's a thing called Glagger's rule, which
Speaker 4: Glagger's rule means if an animal, the closer they.
Speaker 1: Are to the equator.
Speaker 4: Oftentimes furred mammals are darker because it reduces the last
Speaker 4: potential for them to get like fungal infections. So modern
Speaker 4: geneticists have found that the ancestral color.
Speaker 5: Of the black bear, the du Ursus Americans American black
Speaker 5: bearry is black.
Speaker 4: So they can tell by DNA that a long time
Speaker 4: ago bears.
Speaker 2: Were black and color phase bears.
Speaker 4: A bunch of genetics that can tell developed in the
Speaker 4: southwest US about nine thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: So I never thought that was going to make the cut,
Speaker 1: and I cut a bunch out. Yeah, Yeah, it went
Speaker 1: on and on and on.
Speaker 2: When did you first become interested in you know, you're
Speaker 2: writing this book. When did you first become interested in
Speaker 2: bear biology beyond just hunting bears?
Speaker 1: Well, when I when I killed my first bear in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. That is what catalyzed me to
Speaker 1: really start studying about bears. And I was in college
Speaker 1: at the time and went back to the U of
Speaker 1: A and University of Arkansas and went up into the
Speaker 1: library and started looking for bear books and found at
Speaker 1: the time, what was all the research, academic research that
Speaker 1: had ever been done on our populations of bears. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't that many things. I mean, it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, probably less than less than five like thesis
Speaker 1: projects that people have done and research that people had done.
Speaker 1: And I read it all. I read every word of
Speaker 1: it and just was fascinated by it and didn't really
Speaker 1: have a conclusion of why I was interested in the area.
Speaker 1: It didn't it didn't really. It wasn't like I was saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about this one day. I was
Speaker 1: just interested in it. So taking that first bear was well,
Speaker 1: I tell the story. I've told it many times. Maybe
Speaker 1: I haven't told it on the podcast before, but it's
Speaker 1: definitely in the book.
Speaker 2: If you guys haven't picked up on it. Clay wrote
Speaker 2: a book that's coming on.
Speaker 1: February starts Saving your Pennies when I when I kill
Speaker 1: this bear, I walk up to it, my Dad's with me,
Speaker 1: And this was what year, two thousand one October one,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, at the crack of dawn. I
Speaker 1: shot this bear on the first day it was ever
Speaker 1: legal to hunt over bait, so I claim, And no
Speaker 1: one has disputed me in twenty years. So I'm no
Speaker 1: longer taking disputes because it's so long ago. If you
Speaker 1: think you shot one before me, you probably just don't remember.
Speaker 1: I say that I killed the first legal bear in
Speaker 1: the state of Arkansas over bait. Now I know people
Speaker 1: that killed him illegally before that.
Speaker 2: Have you turned them in?
Speaker 1: No that most there are, many of them are no
Speaker 1: longer with us. But so it's a joke, but I
Speaker 1: actually think it's probably it might be true. It was
Speaker 1: barely shooting, like when a bear. When I watched a
Speaker 1: bear glide, it was so dim, Josh, that I couldn't
Speaker 1: really see the bear's legs. I couldn't quite make out
Speaker 1: his legs. It just looked like a floating black blob
Speaker 1: coming up from down the mountain. And he came right
Speaker 1: in and I was just like, there is Do.
Speaker 2: You have game pictures of him?
Speaker 1: No, we didn't have game cameras. The game cameras didn't
Speaker 1: really come out until later, okay two thousand and one. No, okay,
Speaker 1: we were, but we had I mean, we just knew
Speaker 1: there were bears there because they're eating her bait.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 1: It was the one of the most exciting things in
Speaker 1: my life was that year when it became legal debate bears.
Speaker 1: We started bating bears and they started showing up, and
Speaker 1: we would go out there and we would occasionally see
Speaker 1: a bear and it was just so exciting. And then
Speaker 1: I shoot this bear and when I walk up to it,
Speaker 1: I have I was twenty one years old, and I
Speaker 1: had an incredibly hollow feeling that I knew nothing about
Speaker 1: this animal, and it was just this majestic, awesome animal.
Speaker 1: And you know, I deer hunted and turkey hunted and
Speaker 1: small game hunted up until this point, and you know,
Speaker 1: I knew what deer eight, where they lived, when they bred,
Speaker 1: I knew how to call turkey. I knew about these animals,
Speaker 1: and so when I took one, there was a sense
Speaker 1: of connection to this thing. When I killed this bear,
Speaker 1: I realized I didn't know a thing about it, and
Speaker 1: this was an incredible animal. And honestly, many people of
Speaker 1: the generation before mine and even my generation at the
Speaker 1: time view a bear as just kind of like a
Speaker 1: big raccoon, you know, just kind of like, yeah, shoot,
Speaker 1: all of them, you know. And man, when I walked
Speaker 1: up to it, that is not the sense that I
Speaker 1: had at all. It was just like, Wow, what a beast.
Speaker 1: I cannot believe.
Speaker 2: It was a good bear too.
Speaker 1: I mean it was. It was a nice bear, and
Speaker 1: that just set me on a track to kind of.
Speaker 2: I remember when you got the rug back and I
Speaker 2: was like, wow, like it was one of the coolest
Speaker 2: things I've ever ever seen.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Recto already at j M sixty three has a question
Speaker 2: of the many bears you've harvested, which one of them
Speaker 2: stand out in high quality flavor? Flavor? Can you tell
Speaker 2: the difference from bears that you've killed in different regions.
Speaker 1: No, I wish I could, and maybe somebody that paid
Speaker 1: more attention to their palette could. I will say that
Speaker 1: there's a lot of press about how bears in Southeast
Speaker 1: Alaska taste fishy, and man, I've just I've eaten two
Speaker 1: and I have not found them to really I have
Speaker 1: not bear. Nukomb killed one on the shore of the
Speaker 1: Alaskan coast this year that was eating mussels when he
Speaker 1: when he shot it. And I can't tell the difference
Speaker 1: between that bear and one here in Arkansas, Okay, but
Speaker 1: I think it probably maybe was luck of the draw,
Speaker 1: because it's kind of indisputable that some of these bears
Speaker 1: that are eating a lot of fish in ocean typs food,
Speaker 1: you know, have a kind of a fishy tape. But
Speaker 1: but in the two that I have had, I have
Speaker 1: not I have not had that.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, we've got another clip here. This one's a
Speaker 2: little bit longer. When Lake has his first interaction with
Speaker 2: uh with shooting a bear.
Speaker 1: Based on the pictures, there are about ten different bears
Speaker 1: that have been come into this spake. A lot of
Speaker 1: them look the same. Two bears showed up on the
Speaker 1: first day that Lake saw that he chose to pass.
Speaker 1: I don't want to shoot that back one.
Speaker 2: I think we got him, buddy.
Speaker 4: I just got worried that Lake shot a bear.
Speaker 5: I don't really know anything.
Speaker 1: Lake gives the bear an hour before climbing down to
Speaker 1: assess the situation spare row. He finds his arrow, which
Speaker 1: clearly passed through the bear, but it hardly has any
Speaker 1: blood at all. On it, which is not a good sign.
Speaker 1: And there's hardly any blood on the ground. The whole
Speaker 1: gang comes down from their stands to help look for
Speaker 1: Lake's bear. When there's barely a blood trail like this,
Speaker 1: it takes the whole camp. Luckily, we've got some guys
Speaker 1: with some experience. If we're gonna find this bear, these
Speaker 1: are the guys I'd want helping me across it. All right,
Speaker 1: we got blood right.
Speaker 2: Here, guys, bear coming in clutch.
Speaker 1: It's the head, not much, and there is not much blood,
Speaker 1: and it's that dark red, not great blood.
Speaker 2: What are you saying, honesty? Where it's hitting the bear.
Speaker 2: I want to see it blown out.
Speaker 1: Deal with that.
Speaker 2: And then Leaves does look a little high on it.
Speaker 2: I think I shot him too high.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't want to admit that, but I I
Speaker 1: think that's what happened, and it's easy to do. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a bummer. I hate it for you, man.
Speaker 1: The truth of it is that is that bear is
Speaker 1: going to live and he's gonna be fine.
Speaker 2: So we kind of see the arc of emotion of
Speaker 2: Lake from his first shot, you know, feels pretty good
Speaker 2: about it, and then all of a sudden it comes
Speaker 2: to the realization that the shot placement was not not optimal.
Speaker 2: Why wasn't important to leave that whole sequence in the
Speaker 2: in the film.
Speaker 1: Well, we've we've always at meat or just kind of
Speaker 1: showed things the way it happened, you know. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a as you can see, I mean, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a compromise situation. When Lake shot, I mean the
Speaker 1: bear was broadside probably nineteen yards, I mean, which is
Speaker 1: a chip shot, and he just hit a little high
Speaker 1: and in it it boy that there there really is
Speaker 1: a big hollow spot high on those bears.
Speaker 2: And bears are difficult because they've got so much fur.
Speaker 2: It's hard to see what's.
Speaker 1: I always say that a short haired, light colored animal,
Speaker 1: like a white tailed deer, you can see the contour
Speaker 1: of its body. You can see where the shoulder comes up,
Speaker 1: you can see where the neck comes down and the
Speaker 1: shoulder boulgers. You can see where the rib cage ends.
Speaker 1: A lot of times, you know, you can see the
Speaker 1: you can you can really see and you can really
Speaker 1: aim where you want to. On a black bear, it's
Speaker 1: almost like you are shooting at an inflated blash black
Speaker 1: trash bag and so and when you draw back and
Speaker 1: you're looking through a peep oftentimes all you see is black,
Speaker 1: especially if it's close. Several bears that I've shot close,
Speaker 1: I've drawn back and all you see in your peep
Speaker 1: side is black. And now lake, being at twenty nineteen
Speaker 1: yards would have would have had more aperture than that.
Speaker 1: But I mean, he just said hi. He did. And
Speaker 1: you know, the film doesn't show the extent to which
Speaker 1: we went to look for that bear.
Speaker 2: There were comments of, well, you should have looked for
Speaker 2: it longer. You guys looked for that bear for hours
Speaker 2: and hours.
Speaker 1: We did. We we exhausted our efforts and used all
Speaker 1: the data points that we had, and I mean, I
Speaker 1: will I am fully confident that that bear still alive today.
Speaker 1: And I mean you.
Speaker 2: With collectively inside anything vital.
Speaker 1: That's right. It just it it. It was high passed
Speaker 1: through the backstraps. I mean, we could we could see
Speaker 1: that and uh and you know, lakes and elevated stand
Speaker 1: and you know, it's it's kind of dumb to try
Speaker 1: to justify to the world that we did what we
Speaker 1: should have done. But I mean, I grew up my dad,
Speaker 1: Gary Believernukom was he he was absolutely the biggest stickler
Speaker 1: I've ever been around in my life, for given the
Speaker 1: fullest extent towards tracking an animal that you made any
Speaker 1: contact with with an arrow, you know. And so that's
Speaker 1: that's been built deep inside of me for a long time.
Speaker 1: And uh, those those periphery hits on an animal, if
Speaker 1: you hit one too high or too low, like that
Speaker 1: animal is not going to die. Now if the shot
Speaker 1: had been far back, like if he had hit that
Speaker 1: shot that bear far back and hit it in the guts,
Speaker 1: totally different story because that bear, that's a mortal wound.
Speaker 1: That bear is gonna die, And it's a completely different scenario.
Speaker 1: But we knew based upon the blood on the air,
Speaker 1: you know, we knew that there there there was not
Speaker 1: a chance of finding this animal. But we did exhaust
Speaker 1: We spent. Yeah, we got back to camp way after midnight.
Speaker 2: And I mean, with multiple people.
Speaker 1: What if our to to help those people, What if
Speaker 1: our whole film was just us tracking the bear and
Speaker 1: it was a six hour film. Yeah No, I mean,
Speaker 1: of course we showed this like condensed version, and it's
Speaker 1: a bummer, And you know, I hated it for Lake
Speaker 1: and I hated Ted Copple. Was there that was probably
Speaker 1: the the most difficult part of it is you know,
Speaker 1: when when the America is watching, you're hoping that as
Speaker 1: a hunter, you're going to put your best foot forward,
Speaker 1: and we did in that.
Speaker 2: Just and Lake wasn't being careless or a bad shot.
Speaker 2: It was just I mean, yeah, it just happened.
Speaker 1: Just happened. It could have could have happened to me
Speaker 1: just as easy as it happened to him. And uh,
Speaker 1: and so we had to go talk with Ted Copple
Speaker 1: about this. Yeah, he didn't seem that worked up about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Lake Lake just felt sick about it because y'all
Speaker 2: had to come back to film with Ted Copple here
Speaker 2: after he's been looking for this this bear. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 2: then it was the only thing on his mind while
Speaker 2: we're trying to do the interview. Yeah, and then he
Speaker 2: went back out looking for it even more so. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Lake chose not to continue hunting, yep, after he drew blood.
Speaker 2: What do you think about that decision?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a great decision. In some places
Speaker 1: that's the legal requirement, but not here. Not in most places,
Speaker 1: it's not. There's probably just a few places in the
Speaker 1: country where if you draw blood, you legally have to
Speaker 1: not your tag, so he kind of he chose to
Speaker 1: do that, and I thought it was a good move.
Speaker 2: Yeah. We talked about this a little bit on the
Speaker 2: Last On the Last Companion podcast when you were in
Speaker 2: Alaska hunting bears. But what are some of the pros
Speaker 2: and cons of hunting with a bow and what kind
Speaker 2: of hunter do to mitigate the opportunity to have a
Speaker 2: failed harvest?
Speaker 1: Well, shooting a bear is they're a difficult animal. Really, well,
Speaker 1: I take that back. A well placed arrow is very
Speaker 1: efficient to take me right. People that are used to
Speaker 1: shooting white tailed deer can have trouble shooting a bear, right, Okay.
Speaker 1: The structure of a bear is different than a white
Speaker 1: tail deer, and you aim low on a white tail.
Speaker 1: These are all the bullet points. I always say when
Speaker 1: you're shooting a white tail deer with a bow, you
Speaker 1: aim low because that animal is going to react to
Speaker 1: the sound of the shot and duck. A bear is
Speaker 1: not a prey animal. He does not have the same
Speaker 1: flight response as a prey animal like a white tail deer,
Speaker 1: so they're not going to jump the strings, so you
Speaker 1: don't need to aim low. Of one time I took
Speaker 1: a veteran white tail hunter out a guy that had
Speaker 1: killed three inund of white tails with a bow, and
Speaker 1: he he shot a bear right through the brisket that
Speaker 1: we didn't find, and it was because he was aiming
Speaker 1: low and tight anticipating the bear dropping into that. So
Speaker 1: don't do that. And then the other thing that's slightly
Speaker 1: uncomfortable for whitetail hunters about bears is that you need
Speaker 1: to aim further back, like you need to aim probably
Speaker 1: four to six inches back from the shoulder. And it's because, Josh,
Speaker 1: if we had a picture of a white tailed deer
Speaker 1: and a bear, a white tailed deer's legs are further
Speaker 1: back on its body compared to where its neck and
Speaker 1: brisket come down. Okay, Like, imagine the head of a
Speaker 1: bear and there's just his neck and then there's his shoulder.
Speaker 1: His front legs are up further. Does that make sense, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a white tail deer is back and you can actually
Speaker 1: see his chest stick out like And so it's not
Speaker 1: that their anatomy is different. I mean, in a wild way,
Speaker 1: all mammals are about the same heart, lungs and testines, liver,
Speaker 1: all this stuff is the same, but the positioning of
Speaker 1: the legs on a bear is further forward, so it
Speaker 1: means you have to aim further back from the leg.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, Yeah, yeah, it does.
Speaker 1: So middle of the middle is what some people have said.
Speaker 1: I go, not quite middle of the middle, almost middle
Speaker 1: of the middle, but then back a little bit towards
Speaker 1: the shoulder, even further.
Speaker 2: Than No, no, I see back going back toward the head,
Speaker 2: towards the shoulder. Okay, excellent, Okay, we've got another clip here.
Speaker 1: Man. That's some beautiful bear grease or bear fat right there.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 1: We're a little optimistic. Even I would say this was
Speaker 1: a well.
Speaker 2: Let's go back here. I think it started a little late.
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 1: I would say my predictions were a little optimistic. Even
Speaker 1: I would say this was a below average. But we
Speaker 1: had somebody give us some bear fat. This is fresh
Speaker 1: bear fat, and we're gonna render it down. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put about a quarter inch of water in there so
Speaker 1: that when it hits the pan it doesn't scald and burned.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna put it right in that water.
Speaker 2: And good looking bear fat it.
Speaker 1: Is sitting there. Look at that oil like, boy, you
Speaker 1: want it to be that like light colored. See how
Speaker 1: that's like like the color like chicken broth. That's what
Speaker 1: you want it to stay the whole time. We're almost done.
Speaker 1: I mean you can see these like little pieces like
Speaker 1: they're almost rendered down, like as much as they're gonna
Speaker 1: render down.
Speaker 2: Gotcha.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with our bear fat rendered, we're ready to put
Speaker 1: it in the jars. The lower and slower you cook it,
Speaker 1: the lighter the oil will be. My preference is to
Speaker 1: cook around two hundred and twenty five degrees for forty
Speaker 1: five minutes and tell it's the color of chicken bron.
Speaker 2: All right, well, why great? I think a great way
Speaker 2: to end the film with rendering the bear grease. Why
Speaker 2: has rendering bear grease become something that you're so passionate about.
Speaker 1: Well, let me address a little more functional question. First,
Speaker 1: is that, okay, absolutely the best case scenario when you're
Speaker 1: rendering bear fat is to grind it.
Speaker 2: So we have a question from Kevin Klin eighteen to
Speaker 2: fifteen one. I've got a question rendering bearfat with grinding
Speaker 2: the fat prior to rendering yield more oil? And does
Speaker 2: it does cutting or does cutting it in small cubes?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So in the field like that, you can cut
Speaker 1: it up into cubes just like we did in the
Speaker 1: smaller the cubes, the better, and you can render it
Speaker 1: down and you get a pretty good yield. You probably
Speaker 1: get eighty twenty eighty percent oil twenty percent solid crack ones, right,
Speaker 1: and that's a decent yield. You will get probably close
Speaker 1: to ninety percent yield when you grind it.
Speaker 2: So what you find grind yeah, ideal?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And what you would do is you would
Speaker 1: you would you would get your bear fat, the chunks
Speaker 1: of it cold or even put it in a freezer
Speaker 1: and just like almost get it frozen and then cube
Speaker 1: it up and then put it in a grinder and
Speaker 1: then render that. And you know, there is no it's
Speaker 1: kind of like making sorghum. You're just heating the fat
Speaker 1: like there's no recipe, and you get the water that.
Speaker 2: You put in there just evaporate out.
Speaker 1: That's right. That's just uh, that's just to keep it
Speaker 1: from burning and scalding at first. It's just something that
Speaker 1: we do. Just put a little water down there. But
Speaker 1: you can render bear fat with any heat source. You know.
Speaker 1: I've done it in a fried daddy, I've done it
Speaker 1: over fire and cast iron like a Dutch oven, done
Speaker 1: it into jet boil. I've done it in these like
Speaker 1: turkey cookers with propane. I've done it on the on
Speaker 1: an elect stove with just a like a saucepan.
Speaker 2: And you're using like medium heat.
Speaker 1: Well, so that's that's the only variable inside the whole process.
Speaker 1: You could just barely turn it up, you know, to
Speaker 1: one eighty and let it cook down for longer periods
Speaker 1: of time.
Speaker 2: I've retically you could do it in a crock pot.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, people do. That's what that was my next
Speaker 1: time my list was a crockpot. There's people that really
Speaker 1: love cooking it in a cruck pot. What you can
Speaker 1: do and it doesn't completely ruin it, but it's not
Speaker 1: ideal is that you can burn it like if it
Speaker 1: gets to like three hundred degrees, it's going to be dark,
Speaker 1: and it's not unusable. It's still usable, but it does
Speaker 1: have a stronger odor and it's uh, it just kind
Speaker 1: of has a little bit of a burnt taste. But
Speaker 1: much of the barrel oil that I have rendered has
Speaker 1: had a little bit of a burnt taste because it's
Speaker 1: easy for it to get too hot and so low slow.
Speaker 1: The two twenty five for forty five minutes is just
Speaker 1: a generalization. Probably, I say that because it's just easy
Speaker 1: to cite those numbers. Probably it would be more like
Speaker 1: two ten, two fifteen for a little under an hour.
Speaker 1: It would probably be ideal. But you just don't ever
Speaker 1: want it to get like really dark and really hot.
Speaker 2: Right, So, what are some of your favorite modern uses
Speaker 2: for bear grease?
Speaker 1: Well, I've got We've got bear grease on my face
Speaker 1: right now. Oh really, I've I've for several years have
Speaker 1: been putting bear grease on my face after after we
Speaker 1: had bear grease chemically analyzed by one of the top
Speaker 1: lipid labs in the country that we report in our
Speaker 1: book what we find. But what we found made me
Speaker 1: want to put it on my face every day. Okay,
Speaker 1: so but we cook with it. Frying with it is
Speaker 1: the best thing that I do.
Speaker 2: I mean, you use it to to oil your saddles,
Speaker 2: use it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could use it, I mean to soften leather.
Speaker 1: But the to me, the premium use is for pan
Speaker 1: frying either fish or meat. You can use barre oil
Speaker 1: and substitution for anything that calls for oil. So any
Speaker 1: cake recipe, any biscuit recipe that calls for crisco or
Speaker 1: oil you can substitute in barrel crust and it if
Speaker 1: you if you cook it too long, it does it
Speaker 1: can't have a burnt flavor. If you cook it just right,
Speaker 1: it really doesn't have a flat You can make you
Speaker 1: can make barre oil chocolate chip cookies that just it's
Speaker 1: like it's like using shortening. Basically before before these processed
Speaker 1: oils and shortening, animal fat oils were used for all
Speaker 1: this stuff. And uh and so historically, oh man, I
Speaker 1: could go, I could go on and on. But the
Speaker 1: first time the word bear grease shows up in the
Speaker 1: literature in the Record of America was in fifteen forty
Speaker 1: one July fifth, Hernando de Soto, his scribe, a guy
Speaker 1: named Elva, wrote when they encountered Native Americans in East Tennessee.
Speaker 1: He writes, they have what they call bear grease stored
Speaker 1: in gourds, which is like olive oil and butter. And
Speaker 1: that's the way he described it, like olive oil and butter.
Speaker 1: And what we foundally did the chemical analysis of black
Speaker 1: bear fat, was that it actually is very similar to
Speaker 1: olive oil and chemical composition.
Speaker 2: That's really would they not have been doing this like
Speaker 2: in Europe and Bavaria and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Black bears are only in North America.
Speaker 2: Oh really, yeah, I don't think I realized that what
Speaker 2: bears did they have in Europe Us americanas baby I
Speaker 2: guess americanas now.
Speaker 1: They would have been rendering asiatic black bear fat in
Speaker 1: Asia in the places, but Ursus americans is the only
Speaker 1: I mean, it's only here. It's endemic to North America
Speaker 1: and only on the North American continent. An asiatic black
Speaker 1: bear is looks similar to a black bear, but they're
Speaker 1: not completely different species.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to read the book.
Speaker 1: Black bears are actually genetically more kin to grizzly bears
Speaker 1: and polar bears than asiatic black bears.
Speaker 2: Fascinating, isn't that wild? It is wild?
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely wild. But the black bear was the premium
Speaker 1: bear on planet Earth for fat because of their diet.
Speaker 1: So in Europe they would have had some bear fat,
Speaker 1: but it would have been brown bear fat. And so
Speaker 1: when these Europeans came over here and in the Roanoke,
Speaker 1: some of the first correspondents that they had with England,
Speaker 1: I mean, like the first guys that came over and
Speaker 1: set up a colony, and they were doing it to
Speaker 1: make money to like export stuff back to Britain. Bear
Speaker 1: grease was in their list of stuff that hey, there's
Speaker 1: some pretty wild bear grease over here, different than anything
Speaker 1: that we have that became a commodity stuff. In the
Speaker 1: mid seventeen hundreds, fourteen percent of the exports coming out
Speaker 1: of New Orleans was American black bear grease. Going to Europe.
Speaker 1: Fourteen percent all the exports out of New Orleans was
Speaker 1: black bear fat, much of it stored in skin hides
Speaker 1: and what they called a deer of oil. When oh,
Speaker 1: wait till you read the book when they killed a deer.
Speaker 1: There's this historical accounts of when these guys would kill
Speaker 1: a deer and they would describe what would happen, what
Speaker 1: Native Americans would do. If you killed a bear, you
Speaker 1: immediately went and tried to kill a deer. Oh, you
Speaker 1: would skin it and skin tube, skin it and basically
Speaker 1: tie off the legs and the neck. The neck would
Speaker 1: be the spout of this bag, this deer skin bag,
Speaker 1: and you would completely fill it with oil and then
Speaker 1: seal it off and that would be what you what
Speaker 1: you called a deer of oil.
Speaker 2: Deer.
Speaker 1: Some of the first travel riders that ever came to
Speaker 1: the Ozarks described that he described what he thought was bizarre,
Speaker 1: but a deer of oil hanging on someone's house that
Speaker 1: he he was like, they had a I mean he
Speaker 1: described that, so wild wild history of bear grease in
Speaker 1: this country. Bizarre and wild history. And we we documented
Speaker 1: it in a really thorough fashion.
Speaker 2: So no bears killed, No bears were killed, quoted the
Speaker 2: baits go cold. But still this film was like satisfying
Speaker 2: in your opinion? Can you have a successful hunt without
Speaker 2: harvesting an animal?
Speaker 1: No, it's all Did you write these questions? Wait? Did
Speaker 1: my hero producer Mustache Icon wrote best friend of guy?
Speaker 1: Could ever have? Josh filmmaker write that? I don't know
Speaker 1: who wrote that question.
Speaker 2: I don't know who wrote that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like that, I mean, I think kind of
Speaker 1: like click bait social media question of the ages.
Speaker 2: You know, what does a successful hunt look like to you?
Speaker 1: Then when you kill something? No, you know, I'm kidding,
Speaker 1: you know, you just you're just not always going to kill?
Speaker 1: Now where we disappointed massively? Was that surprised? Yes? Was
Speaker 1: I pretty confident we're going to get a bear?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: I was, And we did have an opportunity, right, you know,
Speaker 1: and and I passed a bear that was legal to
Speaker 1: have killed. Yeah, I only saw one bear in five days.
Speaker 1: That first after noon had about one hundred pound bore
Speaker 1: come in, And I mean technically that would have been
Speaker 1: a legal animal to take.
Speaker 2: Brent was hunting on some property that he had secured
Speaker 2: and heat his arrow deflected on a little tiny branch of.
Speaker 1: The shot up. Yeah, Brent actually had a pretty nice
Speaker 1: bore come in the first day that he missed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we didn't, you know, just limitations of making a film.
Speaker 1: We we didn't have a cameraman with Brent, which we
Speaker 1: should have. We should have, We should have learned that.
Speaker 1: Always have a cameraman with Brent.
Speaker 2: Right, if someone has who's who's never hunted, watches this film,
Speaker 2: what do you want to be their takeaway?
Speaker 1: Just to see the the history, the culture, the bigger
Speaker 1: picture of hunting. It's it's not just about harvesting an animal,
Speaker 1: but it's it's a lifestyle, a regional lifestyle. Great, So
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us on this companion podcast.
Speaker 1: Meat Eaters twelve and twenty six film. If you haven't
Speaker 1: seen our Arkansas Bear Camp film, go to the meat
Speaker 1: Eater YouTube channel. And check it out. You can leave
Speaker 1: your questions and comments there. Hey, it's not lost on
Speaker 1: us that all of you watch this content and it's
Speaker 1: really great. It's one of the one of the joys
Speaker 1: inside of my life is to be able to make content.
Speaker 1: And man, I recognize what a privilege it is to
Speaker 1: get to document this stuff because I know so many
Speaker 1: of these people out there are doing stuff cooler, better, faster, stronger,
Speaker 1: and more compelling than what we're doing. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the truth. I think there's a inside of society, there's
Speaker 1: sometimes this idea that the guys that are on TV
Speaker 1: are the best. We are not. Is that elevant to me?
Speaker 1: It's relevant. I'm just I just want to say thank you,
Speaker 1: and and so many of you are the people that
Speaker 1: I look up to. Uh and and our our teach
Speaker 1: me so much about hunting. I mean, we're we're not
Speaker 1: the best. We just love it. I do think I
Speaker 1: do think I love it as much as anybody not
Speaker 1: the best. So it's a it's a privilege to just
Speaker 1: document them, you know, So thanks, everybody watching really appreciate it.