Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to
Speaker 1: you by Lacrosse Boots. Now, if you haven't heard yet, uh,
Speaker 1: this is me telling you you need to take a
Speaker 1: look at the new boots from Lacrosse and they fall
Speaker 1: under the Navigator series. Now, what they've done is they've
Speaker 1: taken the best parts of a rubber boot and the
Speaker 1: best parts of your traditional hiking and hunting boot, and
Speaker 1: they've mashed them together to come up with this new
Speaker 1: line of boots from Lacrosse, and that is the Navigator series.
Speaker 1: Now they have the women's wind rows, they have the
Speaker 1: men's wind rows, and then they have the atlast the
Speaker 1: Atlas series within that as well. So go to Lacrosse
Speaker 1: Footwear dot com and check out this new line of
Speaker 1: boots that they have. I've been using mind for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks now and I am very impressed with
Speaker 1: the the fit in the field and I can't wait
Speaker 1: to get them in the woods this hunting season and
Speaker 1: give him a trial run. So Lacrosse Footwear dot Com
Speaker 1: check them out. My name is Clay Nukelem and I'm
Speaker 1: the host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also
Speaker 1: be your host into the world of hunting the icon
Speaker 1: of North American wilderness bear. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation,
Speaker 1: but we'll also bring you into some of the wildest
Speaker 1: country on the planet Chasing the Bay. We're taking a
Speaker 1: new turn on the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast this week
Speaker 1: is we're talking about elk hunting. I think it'll be
Speaker 1: relevant to you because we are not elk hunters, or
Speaker 1: we weren't before this trip. This is our first elk hunt.
Speaker 1: About three or four weeks ago, I decided that I'd
Speaker 1: take my son out of school bear Nukem, that we'd
Speaker 1: go to and over the counter unit in Colorado take
Speaker 1: the mule go hunting. So we record this podcast on
Speaker 1: the way home from that incredible hunt. Also already out
Speaker 1: right now is a video about our hunt. It's called
Speaker 1: Elk Pedition. Let's play on words for the word expedition,
Speaker 1: because buddy, when you're hauling stock across the country and
Speaker 1: you're going on to do it yourself hunt, it is
Speaker 1: an expedition. And so on the Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: go check out this video. It's about six minutes long.
Speaker 1: It's a ton of fun and you'll get to hear
Speaker 1: us talk about it, but in six minutes you can
Speaker 1: see it too, and you'll really have a great story,
Speaker 1: which is a lot of fun. We are starting right
Speaker 1: now to bait bears in Arkansas. In Oklahoma, we've been
Speaker 1: baiting them for a few weeks, but one place in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: I mean as we speak, I mean, my my truck
Speaker 1: is island in the parking lot of the Bear Hunting
Speaker 1: Magazine Global headquarters, and I am headed to bait bears
Speaker 1: in this one place for the first time where we
Speaker 1: pack in with mules into UH into a remote region
Speaker 1: that you can't access by truck. So we're gonna pack
Speaker 1: in with mules. We've got the mules loaded and we're
Speaker 1: headed there right now. I want to draw your attention
Speaker 1: to a product that we're gonna be using this very day,
Speaker 1: and that is north Woods Bear Products. Hey, when you're
Speaker 1: starting a bear bait, it doesn't make any sense to
Speaker 1: not use this scent, this incredible stuff. My favorite stuff
Speaker 1: is a gold Rush. But they've also got powder sense,
Speaker 1: they've got big spray bottle sense, they've got all kinds
Speaker 1: of scent attractants. I talked to a coon hunter today
Speaker 1: that was asking me about UH using gold rushing uh
Speaker 1: potential coon traps to draw coon's debate sites for starting
Speaker 1: young guards. It would do an incredible job at that.
Speaker 1: So check out our friends at Northwood's Bear Products dot Net.
Speaker 1: You're gonna enjoy this podcast and go check out our
Speaker 1: video for Bear Honey Magazine YouTube channel. Today is September
Speaker 1: the eleven, and we are on the road. We are
Speaker 1: recording right now in my truck. We're pulling our nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties two horse trailer that's been refurbished. We've got two
Speaker 1: mules in the back, one exceptionally flashy mule and one
Speaker 1: really nice black mule named Ace. Flashy mules named Izzy.
Speaker 1: And I have a very special guest on the podcast today,
Speaker 1: my son, Bear John Newcomb. That's not my middle name.
Speaker 1: Introduce yourself, Bear. My name is Bear. I'm thirteen and
Speaker 1: I got out of school this week to go oh
Speaker 1: cunning in Colorado. Right on, So tell him your full name, Bear, Jo, Bear, Josiah.
Speaker 1: We've always called him Bear John on but yeah, so
Speaker 1: we are. We're on the tail end of a not
Speaker 1: just a hunting trip, but we've called it an elk
Speaker 1: how do we call it? Expedition? This isn't just an
Speaker 1: elk cunt. This is an expedition, so we're trying to
Speaker 1: we're trying to call it an elk expedition, and so
Speaker 1: on this we want to describe all that we've done.
Speaker 1: We want to tell some stories, we want to talk
Speaker 1: about the process that guide us here, and we're just
Speaker 1: gonna describe our hunt. Let me start by saying that
Speaker 1: I have never hunted elk in my life, never in
Speaker 1: my life, and I've all I've been invited on elk hunts.
Speaker 1: I've known people that have gone, and I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's such a iconic hunt that I knew that
Speaker 1: one day I would probably do up. But I never have,
Speaker 1: and almost intentionally, I've stayed away from it. I've I've
Speaker 1: kind of been a specialist in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: in my hunting, and I've focused on certain things, never elk.
Speaker 1: Kind of this year, Bear John, two things happened. Two things.
Speaker 1: Number one, while we were spring bear hunting in Montana
Speaker 1: this spring, I found an elk shed out in Montana
Speaker 1: and I brought it home, and your mama loved that
Speaker 1: elk shed so much that she wanted me to put
Speaker 1: it as the core in our living room and she
Speaker 1: said that she would like an elk head in our
Speaker 1: living room, which is pretty significant. And uh, so that
Speaker 1: that was one thing. The second thing that happened was
Speaker 1: I spent some time up in bos in Montana this summer,
Speaker 1: just a few days with my friend Kevin Harlander from
Speaker 1: First Light and Joe Ferronado from Meat Eater, And it's
Speaker 1: been just an evening with those guys, and they were
Speaker 1: talking about elk hunting, and uh they both invited me
Speaker 1: to go elk hunting with them next year. Basically, you know,
Speaker 1: they are everybody's plans already made for this year, and
Speaker 1: so I spoiled their plans of getting to you know,
Speaker 1: of getting to take me on my first elk hunt
Speaker 1: because we just said, man, you know what, We're just
Speaker 1: gonna load up the mules. We're gonna drive to an
Speaker 1: over the counter area of Colorado and we're gonna hunt
Speaker 1: elk ourselves. You know, how hard can it be? Right,
Speaker 1: I've been saying that to everybody, How hard can it be?
Speaker 1: How hard can it be? And obviously it's a joke
Speaker 1: because Elk County is extremely difficult. Non residents success rates
Speaker 1: in Colorado are about ten and and we just decided
Speaker 1: to do this about four weeks ago. So you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: most people planning elk hunts like a year in advance.
Speaker 1: And Man, about the tenth of August, I was like, man,
Speaker 1: we need to go elk hunting. And so I talked
Speaker 1: to your mama and I said, what do you think
Speaker 1: about me taking Bear out of school for a week
Speaker 1: and us going elk hunton and uh? And she was
Speaker 1: off for it. And you're gonna do a presentation at
Speaker 1: your school about what you've done. That's one of the
Speaker 1: prerequisites for them getting excused absences. They gotta come back
Speaker 1: and tell what kind of activity they did. And so
Speaker 1: Bear is going to do that. But there's actually a
Speaker 1: third reason that we went elk hunting this year is
Speaker 1: because in the spring was the first time that I
Speaker 1: trailered my mules long distance to hunt the west by myself.
Speaker 1: I had I had hunted the west for Bear uh
Speaker 1: with gym sessions once with his mules and horses, and
Speaker 1: learned a ton from him about back country equine hunting.
Speaker 1: On the spring, me and Colby Moorehead went and and
Speaker 1: did it ourselves and we learned. We just learned a
Speaker 1: ton there. It's extremely complicated to haul mules across the country.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's just a lot of things you gotta
Speaker 1: plan for. And aside from that, we were we we
Speaker 1: learned how to We learned a good system for camping
Speaker 1: and hunting off these mules, not using any pack horses
Speaker 1: or pack mules. A lot of guys bear when they
Speaker 1: hunt the West, they'll ride one animal and they'll use
Speaker 1: one animal as a pack animal. But I didn't want
Speaker 1: to do that. I wanted to stay lean and mean,
Speaker 1: as they say. And so we pretty much have an
Speaker 1: ultra light gear set up and we're applying that to
Speaker 1: our mules. Because even though mules and equine animals are
Speaker 1: super strong and carry a ton of weight, when you're
Speaker 1: putting a rider on them and try and to pack
Speaker 1: all your gear, you know, they can get overloaded pretty quick.
Speaker 1: It's they're not invincible, you know. And so I've we
Speaker 1: learned a lot. So it was like, yeah, we can,
Speaker 1: we can go to Colorado. Colorado is closer than Montana.
Speaker 1: Montana was a twenty four hour drive for us. Colorado
Speaker 1: was about a fourteen hour drive. I got some intel
Speaker 1: from a good friend of mine. You won't mind me saying,
Speaker 1: his name Jason Bossman. Jason gave me some intel on
Speaker 1: a region that he thought would be good for finding
Speaker 1: some milk. So we did have that outside input because
Speaker 1: that was my first question and probably the limiting factor
Speaker 1: and hardest part of this hunt, Bear, was just where
Speaker 1: do you go and if you go there, are you
Speaker 1: gonna find elk? And so Jason was like, hey, if
Speaker 1: you go here, he said, and you put in your
Speaker 1: time and get back in there. You know, he gave
Speaker 1: me a lot of great pointers. He was like, you'll
Speaker 1: find some milk. So the objective of this hunt, though,
Speaker 1: knowing that we were up against like some pretty serious
Speaker 1: odds of not not killing an elk. Really we were
Speaker 1: just trying to get our feet wet, right Bear. Um.
Speaker 1: I wanted Bear to have in his repertoire of experiences
Speaker 1: as a young man. I wanted him to be able
Speaker 1: to say, yeah, we took our mules and we went
Speaker 1: elk hunton, and I knew that after and we we
Speaker 1: ended up hunting about five days. Okay, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: as long as some hunts, but we hunted for five days,
Speaker 1: and I knew that after five days in the back
Speaker 1: country that riding mules that Bear number one would become
Speaker 1: a really qualified equine mule man. There's a ton of
Speaker 1: stuff that goes on about handling animals in the back country,
Speaker 1: and you can't mess up, you know, even even down
Speaker 1: to like tie how do you tie up your mules
Speaker 1: at night? How do you let them feed and graze
Speaker 1: during the day, Because if you lose your mules when
Speaker 1: you're twelve miles back in and they will absolutely run
Speaker 1: away from you if you let them, then you're in
Speaker 1: big trouble. And so you know, I taught Bear about that.
Speaker 1: We we we in in a five days span road
Speaker 1: forty miles on these mules. Isn't that what we figured Bear?
Speaker 1: Maybe more? Maybe more? And so I knew that after
Speaker 1: that much time in the saddle and that kind of
Speaker 1: difficult country, that Bear would be a muleman. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just knew it. If he survived, did you survive?
Speaker 1: So there was a lot of objectives. Really my only,
Speaker 1: my only goal, which obviously I wanted to kill an elk,
Speaker 1: But deep down I almost knew that that was an
Speaker 1: unrealistic just absolute goal, Like I wasn't gonna say the
Speaker 1: success of the trip sip on whether we bring home
Speaker 1: elk meet or not. I never said that, even though
Speaker 1: I've always got the end goal in mind and everything
Speaker 1: that I do. But success was gonna be us being safe,
Speaker 1: hunting hard, camping well, handling the mules well, and us
Speaker 1: finding elk and having a good hunt and giving them heck. Okay,
Speaker 1: giving the elk heck? Do you think we gave the
Speaker 1: elk heck? Bear? Hey, why don't you describe the first
Speaker 1: day of the hunt and where we went? You don't
Speaker 1: name any names, now, but like where, like what we did,
Speaker 1: and why don't you describe a little bit of that? Like,
Speaker 1: So we'll start with day one. So day one, we
Speaker 1: arrived in Colorado, what do we do? We went and
Speaker 1: we got the overly counter elk tag, and we went
Speaker 1: to a trailhead. Don't well, yeah, we don't want to
Speaker 1: say the name of the trailhead. And then we rode
Speaker 1: ten miles up the trail and then we camped in
Speaker 1: a spot and we hunted a little bit. That afternoon
Speaker 1: we mostly just glassed and cold a little bit. And
Speaker 1: the next day, well, yeah, so we we went in
Speaker 1: ten miles on the first day, and we had in
Speaker 1: mind a lake that we were trying to get to
Speaker 1: and We had no idea really what this country looked like.
Speaker 1: I mean you can see it on your on X maps,
Speaker 1: which we used, but honestly, I had no idea what
Speaker 1: it was gonna look like. Once we got up there,
Speaker 1: we got ten miles back in and uh and it
Speaker 1: started to rain. Um And I learned a few things
Speaker 1: on that first night, Bear, I learned a few things
Speaker 1: about you know, Jim Sessions. He Jim. Let's let me
Speaker 1: tell you something about Jim Sessions. Okay, Jim Sessions Sessions
Speaker 1: at Husk the Mall. Jim is a veteran Western hunter.
Speaker 1: Jim Sessions packs in on mules and horses thirty miles
Speaker 1: into the Wyoming back country to elk hunt, to sheep hunt,
Speaker 1: and they're going in places that there are not trails.
Speaker 1: And he doesn't even bring as much as a GPS.
Speaker 1: I mean, he navigates that country just like the old
Speaker 1: timers did before there were GPS is. I think he
Speaker 1: probably uses some paper maps. But Jim, you ask him,
Speaker 1: why did you you know what kind of GPS you running?
Speaker 1: And he said, I've never heard of her. That's funny, Bear,
Speaker 1: never heard of her. I mean so, but Jim, Jim
Speaker 1: tells me. And when he says it, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like it's sinks in as he says, he said, Clay,
Speaker 1: when you're thirty miles back in, and he didn't even
Speaker 1: carry an ind reach, so there's no communication. His only
Speaker 1: communication if something went wrong back there would just be
Speaker 1: to have somebody right out and tell somebody once they
Speaker 1: got a cell phone range. And he said, when you're
Speaker 1: that far back in, he said, you really begin to
Speaker 1: have to watch yourself. You have to pay attention to
Speaker 1: every single thing that you do, because if you make
Speaker 1: a mistake, and if you get hurt, or if you
Speaker 1: lose an animal, or if you know your your your
Speaker 1: pack animal runs off and he's got your supplies on
Speaker 1: his back and you can't catch him, or he runs
Speaker 1: back to the truck, or you get thrown off and
Speaker 1: break a leg or whatever. Have you cut yourself with
Speaker 1: a broad head, and you start, you know, in in
Speaker 1: a bad spot. You know, he said, you're you're basically
Speaker 1: two to three days away from help. Think about that,
Speaker 1: because it's taking a day and a half to get
Speaker 1: back in there, and so if you get hurt, it's
Speaker 1: a day and a half out for somebody to tell,
Speaker 1: you know, to recruit help. And it's a day and
Speaker 1: a half ride back in and anyway, I was thinking
Speaker 1: about that Bear. Well, we were back in there. Well,
Speaker 1: the first night we were ten miles and the next
Speaker 1: day we went another three. So at one point we
Speaker 1: were thirteen miles in the back country. And Bear, were
Speaker 1: you Did that make you nervous at all? Not really? Okay?
Speaker 1: We talked about this earlier and I told him, I
Speaker 1: said I was nervous. Uh. I think, I think when
Speaker 1: you're that far back in you you really have to
Speaker 1: have the fear of God in you. And uh. And
Speaker 1: I made a few mistakes. It was the first day
Speaker 1: at a hunt. Number one, I forgot my pistol in
Speaker 1: the truck. That wasn't a big deal. We weren't in
Speaker 1: grizzly country. I didn't even have bear spray, so, um,
Speaker 1: you know, if we were in grizzly country, I probably
Speaker 1: would have turned around and we would have come out
Speaker 1: of there if I didn't have any kind of bear protection.
Speaker 1: But there's no grizzlies in Colorado, So that was a
Speaker 1: mistake number one. Mistake Number two, Bear, if you remember, Um,
Speaker 1: about five miles in I turned around and look at
Speaker 1: my backpack, and what did I do? You dropped your arrows.
Speaker 1: I was scared. My arrows in my Kafaru shape charge
Speaker 1: backpack and I didn't have them strapped in there, right.
Speaker 1: I just thought they would ride okay the way I
Speaker 1: had them. And I turned around and I don't have
Speaker 1: any arrows. I'm carrying my bow in a custom bow
Speaker 1: holder that hangs off the side of the saddle protects
Speaker 1: the bow really well, really like the setup. And I
Speaker 1: turned around and I don't have any arrows. And so
Speaker 1: we turned around and start heading back down the trail
Speaker 1: and I'm hoping that they didn't fall off, you know,
Speaker 1: three miles back in, we backtrack a mile and pick
Speaker 1: and finally find the arrows. That was mistake number two.
Speaker 1: But think about it, if we had got all the
Speaker 1: way to the top ten miles in and I realized
Speaker 1: I didn't have any arrows. I mean, you know, little
Speaker 1: mistakes cost you big. If you were three yards from
Speaker 1: the truck, it wouldn't have made any difference. You just
Speaker 1: walk back and get them. Number three, What was the
Speaker 1: third mistake that I made? Um? You broke broke so
Speaker 1: we uh, we were using the first light Nemo collaboration
Speaker 1: tent called a recurve, which is an incredible little tent,
Speaker 1: super lightweight, ultra lightweight. I think it weighs less than
Speaker 1: I bet. I bet it weighs just a little bit
Speaker 1: over a pound, maybe pound and a half two pounds.
Speaker 1: Tiny tent, I mean light tent. It's a two man tent.
Speaker 1: So all the components are ultra light and so a
Speaker 1: couple of the rods on the tent are fiberglass and
Speaker 1: small fiberglass, like as big around as like a match
Speaker 1: stick almost, you know. And I stepped on one of
Speaker 1: them while we're up there, didn't I first night broke
Speaker 1: it snapped in half. It wasn't that big of a deal.
Speaker 1: We were able to carve a stick out that took
Speaker 1: the place of that tent pole. But it was a mistake.
Speaker 1: You know. If we had been back there for a
Speaker 1: week and that was our only tent and there came
Speaker 1: a big windstorm or something, I mean, that would have
Speaker 1: been the weak point of the tent. What was the
Speaker 1: other mistake that I made back there? Both sites, man,
Speaker 1: we had a lot of mistakes. Yeah. So this new
Speaker 1: saddle or this new uh this new boat case that
Speaker 1: I was using, I had never used it before. And
Speaker 1: I was using a compound boom, and we got all
Speaker 1: the way to the top and my sights were loose
Speaker 1: on that bow and we were able to get it
Speaker 1: back together and was confident in its shooting ability. But
Speaker 1: at the time there was we were in a pretty
Speaker 1: bad fix. So we were able to navigate through that.
Speaker 1: But I was able to re situate the bow case
Speaker 1: so that there wasn't any pressure on those sites any longer.
Speaker 1: But that was a weak point in my system, okay,
Speaker 1: And I don't have any trouble talking about the things
Speaker 1: that we learned about bear because you know that strength
Speaker 1: is actually found inside of humility, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: it'd be awesome to come out of this and say
Speaker 1: we did everything right, but we didn't. And uh, but
Speaker 1: you know this that a wise man learns from his
Speaker 1: mistakes and he'll be wiser yet on the other side
Speaker 1: of it. So we learned from that. And then the
Speaker 1: fifth thing. This all happened on like the first date.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what the other one was? No, I
Speaker 1: burned a hole in my air mattress, so we we
Speaker 1: brought an air mattress. And this was a minor thing.
Speaker 1: But if we'd been on a seven day hunt, it
Speaker 1: would have ended up being sort of significant. So I
Speaker 1: have this little Cabella's blow up air mattress, and uh,
Speaker 1: the first night, I pulled it out and we had
Speaker 1: a little fire going. It was pretty moist. We were
Speaker 1: able to make a fire up Worrid about eleven thousand feet.
Speaker 1: I think we made a fire just outside of the tent,
Speaker 1: and I flopped this air mattress out to blow it up,
Speaker 1: and the tail of it drags through a couple of
Speaker 1: embers and puts a hole in the stinking air mattress.
Speaker 1: Didn't it It wouldn't hold air. So hey, those were
Speaker 1: the mistakes that we made on the very first day
Speaker 1: and it kind of put us on our a game
Speaker 1: after that. And aside from all those things, these things
Speaker 1: were pretty minor. We were able to navigate through them all.
Speaker 1: But the rest of the trip we were very conscious
Speaker 1: about everything that we did. We talked about it, we
Speaker 1: talked about being being aware. So that was day one
Speaker 1: and day two. Day two, we left from our campit
Speaker 1: eleven thousand feet and went up to over twelve thousand feet,
Speaker 1: which was way above the tree line and is it
Speaker 1: was in some of the most incredible country that a
Speaker 1: human has ever laid eyes on? Would you agree? Bear,
Speaker 1: Tell me about it, describe it to me. Well, we
Speaker 1: got to the top and we kind of came over
Speaker 1: with this little peak and we looked down. There's this
Speaker 1: big blue lake that had like fish in it, like
Speaker 1: you could see him eating bugs off the top of
Speaker 1: the water and they were just like it was sort
Speaker 1: of like a prairie, but it was like really high
Speaker 1: up because there were no trees. And then if you
Speaker 1: looked the other way, there was like this really big
Speaker 1: view of all the mountains. Yeah, it was incredible. I
Speaker 1: I said that it would have shamed Rocky Mountain National Park,
Speaker 1: which we've been to right, which is a beautiful park.
Speaker 1: But I mean, this was some incredible country. Mhm. And
Speaker 1: by now we're thirteen miles from the truck and our
Speaker 1: tents broke. We don't have a pistol. You know, we've
Speaker 1: we've we've made a few blunders. And we could have
Speaker 1: stayed back in there and hunted if we'd have found elk.
Speaker 1: But we went back in there and looked around, looked around,
Speaker 1: looked around, looked around, and found no sign of elk.
Speaker 1: Didn't And so after an assessment and and and Honestly, Bear,
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure that I wanted to kill an elkin
Speaker 1: back that far, even with mules, because the truth be known,
Speaker 1: our mules are untested when it comes to elk. Now,
Speaker 1: we know that izzie'll carry out meat and she seems
Speaker 1: to do fine with that. Ace is untested. Ace is
Speaker 1: sixteen years old, the southern mule that we got, but
Speaker 1: we didn't really know what he would do with an elk.
Speaker 1: And so you know, we get a eight hundred pound
Speaker 1: bull elk on the ground twelve miles back in and
Speaker 1: what if we have problems even getting it on the mule.
Speaker 1: These were things that I was thinking about. So after
Speaker 1: not finding any elk sign, we say, what do we say?
Speaker 1: We said, let's get out of here, didn't we Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just said, let's go, let's try something else. We
Speaker 1: didn't find out. We didn't find any fresh elk sign
Speaker 1: in the thirteen miles and never never heard of Bugle,
Speaker 1: never heard anything. Anyway. We come out of there and uh,
Speaker 1: we we see an outfitters camp off the trail and
Speaker 1: we go down and we talked to the outfitter, real
Speaker 1: nice guy. Uh. He had two clients from Texas there
Speaker 1: with him. And we gave him our report. We told
Speaker 1: him everything that we knew. We told him that we'd
Speaker 1: been all the way back in there, thirteen miles we
Speaker 1: didn't see any elk sign. We told him we were
Speaker 1: rookie elk hunters, so not to take what we said
Speaker 1: too serious. But we did not see any fresh elk sign.
Speaker 1: We talked to him a little bit, and he gave
Speaker 1: us some good intel about the region. He said that
Speaker 1: there's pockets of these mountains, in these mountains that hold out.
Speaker 1: Do you remember him saying that bear, because that was
Speaker 1: a big question to me inside Elk Counties. Is you
Speaker 1: step into the Colorado Wilderness and you know, are the
Speaker 1: elk everywhere? I mean, are there elk on that ridge
Speaker 1: and on that ridge and it's just a matter of
Speaker 1: getting back in there and getting close enough to him
Speaker 1: and calling to him. Or is that ridge and that
Speaker 1: mountain and that slope right there totally void of elk?
Speaker 1: I mean? Is it like fishing where you know ten
Speaker 1: percent of the ground holds of the fish. You know,
Speaker 1: that's what they say in fishing, is ten percent of
Speaker 1: the water holds the fish. That makes sense. So I
Speaker 1: honestly didn't know those answers, and so I talked to
Speaker 1: this out, this elk guy, and uh he was a
Speaker 1: good guy. We talked about mules. He was a mule man.
Speaker 1: He critiqued the shoe and the front shoes on my
Speaker 1: mule and um, anyway, told him about is he being
Speaker 1: four year old? And he liked her. He's riding a
Speaker 1: four year old mule too, and uh so that was
Speaker 1: pretty cool talking to that guy. Well, we come out
Speaker 1: of there. So by day two we have we had
Speaker 1: ridden twenty six miles. Mhm Is that right? Yeah, because
Speaker 1: we went thirteen Yeah, where you sore? Yes, definitely? Where
Speaker 1: are you really sore? Ye? Well, I wouldn't have known it.
Speaker 1: You never complained. Well, so we end up back at
Speaker 1: the truck about mid afternoon on the second day, and
Speaker 1: we had another area that we were gonna go try out,
Speaker 1: and so because of the day was kind of shot
Speaker 1: and we needed a few things, we ended up going
Speaker 1: back into town and we actually ate dinner in town
Speaker 1: and then we went back and slept in the truck.
Speaker 1: On the night of day two, we slept in the truck. Okay,
Speaker 1: you slept most of the night in a hammock, which, well,
Speaker 1: we'll have to tell them about the bears at some point. Okay,
Speaker 1: but bear, we had bear sleeping outside in a hammock
Speaker 1: right by the truck. I was sleeping in the truck. Well.
Speaker 1: The next day we packed back into another section of
Speaker 1: ground that you know, we've never been to. Uh, we
Speaker 1: didn't really even have in mind exactly where we wanted
Speaker 1: to go in here. I guess I did have in
Speaker 1: mind one little region, but I'm still trying to figure out, like,
Speaker 1: why are the elk using certain parts of the landscape?
Speaker 1: And thirdly, there were elk hunters behind every spruce tree?
Speaker 1: Am I a correct? Bear? It was? It was crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is an over the counter region of Colorado,
Speaker 1: so I mean what can you expect, But I mean
Speaker 1: it was almost like a circus, and they were just
Speaker 1: people camped out, just waiting to get in. And uh
Speaker 1: that was I wouldn't say it was disheartening, but but
Speaker 1: it was just a real thing, is that there were
Speaker 1: hunters everywhere, and uh, we just had to deal with that.
Speaker 1: But we were We did feel like that we were
Speaker 1: able to get back in there further than a lot
Speaker 1: of these guys that were on foot, which ended up
Speaker 1: being true. Well, at on day. Let's see, the morning
Speaker 1: of day three, we set out and we're riding and
Speaker 1: we get back in about three and a half to
Speaker 1: four miles from the trailhead, and we come start coming
Speaker 1: through these big meadows at about feet okay, big meadows,
Speaker 1: and we look on on X and sure enough, there's
Speaker 1: some bigger meadows that are up above us that are
Speaker 1: way off the trail that you couldn't see from the trail.
Speaker 1: And what do we do, Bear, we go to the meadows. Yes,
Speaker 1: we said, let's go to the meadows, right, So we
Speaker 1: start riding up and it's pretty steep, and we get
Speaker 1: about a half mile off the trail and we have
Speaker 1: yet to see any fresh elk sign at all, and
Speaker 1: so we're just still just trying to find out. We
Speaker 1: get to the we start going up this steep section
Speaker 1: and I see what I believe as a fairly fresh
Speaker 1: pile of elk droppings, and I go, hey, look right there,
Speaker 1: I think that's elk droppings. Well, we keep riding. We
Speaker 1: go about another hundred yards up the mountain and I
Speaker 1: see two fresh elk rubs on a tree, and that
Speaker 1: is all I needed to see. I said, Bear, look
Speaker 1: right there there, elk rubs. I said, those are fresh.
Speaker 1: We've seen a fresh pile of droppings and elk. Rubs.
Speaker 1: I said, we are in the elk officially, and what
Speaker 1: do we do? We take the mules out of that
Speaker 1: part and we go and we set up camp. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: what we did was we didn't we didn't want to
Speaker 1: bust them, right, We didn't want to just ride the
Speaker 1: mules right up into this area we were having elk sign.
Speaker 1: So we were like, hey, let's back out of here
Speaker 1: and go back in on foot and see what we
Speaker 1: can see. Right, So we backed the mules off the mountain,
Speaker 1: we tether them up, and then me and you at
Speaker 1: about eleven o'clock head up the mountain and we start
Speaker 1: finding more and more elk sign every step. Would you agree?
Speaker 1: What what kind of sign did we see? We saw
Speaker 1: really beat down elk trails. We saw lots of elk
Speaker 1: droppings Rubs. Yeah, um yeah, I mean we were seeing
Speaker 1: like smoking hot elk scot. I mean stuff that was
Speaker 1: like made that day. And I knew that that we
Speaker 1: were in the elk. Yeah, And so the wind was right,
Speaker 1: we knew we didn't need to pressure this spot. We
Speaker 1: stayed in there for about an hour, and we actually
Speaker 1: did a little bit of calling right at noon. Didn't
Speaker 1: do anything aggressive, didn't even a bugle. All we did
Speaker 1: with some cow calls, and uh about noon, we knew
Speaker 1: that we weren't probably gonna just sit in there all day.
Speaker 1: We didn't think it'd be that productive. So we backed
Speaker 1: off the mountain and we went down to where the
Speaker 1: mules were, which is about a quarter mile away down
Speaker 1: the mountain, and we we set up our camp and
Speaker 1: then at about three thirty four o'clock we went back
Speaker 1: up the mountain to where we found the elk. Am
Speaker 1: I right? Am I right? Or am I right? Okay,
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna let you take it from here about
Speaker 1: what happened, walk us through what we did, okay, and
Speaker 1: try to be as dramatic as possible. All right. Um,
Speaker 1: So we got up there and we saw this little
Speaker 1: knob that was right next to the a pretty big meadow,
Speaker 1: and it was right it was right above where and
Speaker 1: all the elkshim. So we decided to go up to
Speaker 1: the top of that and we were gonna just coult
Speaker 1: call a little bit and see what we could see,
Speaker 1: what would happen. And so we're testing the wind, the
Speaker 1: whole time. The wind was great, it was blowing back
Speaker 1: the way we came from. And then so we got
Speaker 1: up there to this little clear spot and we started
Speaker 1: cow calling and we heard something probably a hundred yards away,
Speaker 1: like a limb crack or like somebody something stepped on
Speaker 1: a stick and it broke, and so we set the
Speaker 1: camera up. Both of us looked at each other like
Speaker 1: did you hear that? And we were like, yeah, we
Speaker 1: heard that, and so we set up the camera and
Speaker 1: then we heard it coming in and even closer we heard.
Speaker 1: We heard it again and then we saw it and
Speaker 1: it was it was a bull elk. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: a giant one, but it was. We think it might
Speaker 1: have been legal. We couldn't tell. It was at least
Speaker 1: at three right three, and we thought that we saw
Speaker 1: a fourth one, but we also realized that there was
Speaker 1: another one behind it, and so we didn't want to
Speaker 1: so we passed up the shot on that one because
Speaker 1: we didn't want to shoot a little one and then
Speaker 1: see a big one coming in. Well, so we we see,
Speaker 1: you know, we hear a pop, which wasn't unusual, but
Speaker 1: we were like, huh, I think that, you know, it's
Speaker 1: possible that that was an elk. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we see an elk out there at fifty yards, I mean,
Speaker 1: just coming right towards us, and I see it's a bull.
Speaker 1: I immediately go to trying to count time, which is
Speaker 1: very difficult in thick brush. I've learned, especially with a
Speaker 1: marginal animal, and in Colorado, bull's gotta have four points
Speaker 1: on one side or have a nine inch brow time.
Speaker 1: And I mean, this thing is coming in hard, and
Speaker 1: I see at least three on one's I see for
Speaker 1: sure three on one side, and on his right side,
Speaker 1: which was closest to us, I believe that I see
Speaker 1: four points, but it wasn't I wasn't certain. And you know,
Speaker 1: you just have to be certain, you know, you you
Speaker 1: never pull the trigger on anything unless you're a certain.
Speaker 1: And so I come to full draw when they're out
Speaker 1: there at forty yards, and I mean, I'm I am ready,
Speaker 1: and there's a big opening about probably fifteen yards in
Speaker 1: front of me that this elk is just coming right through.
Speaker 1: And uh when he comes through that opening, and I
Speaker 1: still have not been able to decide if if he is,
Speaker 1: if he's a legal bull or not. Well, he he
Speaker 1: comes through the opening and I think I see if
Speaker 1: I mean, we gotta look at the video, because we
Speaker 1: did video, but I'm confidently. I mean, I was pretty
Speaker 1: confident that it had a fourth point, but I needed
Speaker 1: to confirm. And the bull comes into like eight yards
Speaker 1: down the wind of us, but in thick, thick brush
Speaker 1: and the bullet and there were two bulls and the
Speaker 1: one behind it was for sure of three by three,
Speaker 1: and so he was not legal. But this one that
Speaker 1: I think is legal is at eight yards in the
Speaker 1: brush and I'm at full draw, and he stops as
Speaker 1: soon as he gets down wind, and I you know,
Speaker 1: we're just at a stalemate. He's looking at us, he's
Speaker 1: winding us, and I know that this thing is about
Speaker 1: to explode. I mean, I was hoping he would turn
Speaker 1: and walk out the way that he came. He didn't
Speaker 1: do that. He busted out of there. You know, after
Speaker 1: probably ten fifteen seconds of us just staring down each other,
Speaker 1: he busts out of there and the deals done. And um,
Speaker 1: you know, if it had been a bull that I
Speaker 1: knew was a legal bull, I could have killed him
Speaker 1: when he walked through that opening. But that opening was
Speaker 1: the first chance that I had to see his rack
Speaker 1: and I just needed to get a better look. So anyway,
Speaker 1: here we are. We've found these elk. We've slipped in
Speaker 1: on him. We made a few cow calls, and we
Speaker 1: have stinking called in two bull elk. And I mean
Speaker 1: we were pumped, were we not? Day three and we
Speaker 1: just had we were at full draw. I mean we
Speaker 1: were in the we were in the chips. We were
Speaker 1: in the game, am I right? So that was super
Speaker 1: exciting and not to be labor the hunt. But we
Speaker 1: stayed on those elk for another two days and pretty
Speaker 1: much never got on any elk again. Yeah, and that
Speaker 1: was pretty disheartening. We Uh, right after we called those
Speaker 1: bulls in, we ended up moving a little bit further
Speaker 1: down the ridge and we bumped a cow and you know,
Speaker 1: who knows if we bumped more than that that we
Speaker 1: didn't know about. But basically, I feel like that one
Speaker 1: encounter was our one chance at those elk. And we
Speaker 1: hunted in there for the next two days. Never heard
Speaker 1: a bugle, never never heard anything, never saw another elk.
Speaker 1: I mean it was done, and uh, we didn't have
Speaker 1: a long time to hunt. Bear was out of school. Uh,
Speaker 1: we kind of ran out of supplies. We we we
Speaker 1: ended up uh eating a little bit more food than
Speaker 1: I had planned, and uh we ended up coming out
Speaker 1: of there on on day five, and uh we covered
Speaker 1: a lot of ground on two days. One day we
Speaker 1: walked four and a half miles and next day we
Speaker 1: walked about five miles. We bugled, we cal called, we
Speaker 1: found some more areas with some pretty fresh sign but
Speaker 1: never ever got on ELK again. Did we no? Um?
Speaker 1: But we basically we we felt like that the trip
Speaker 1: had been a success though, and we were happy when
Speaker 1: we came out of there on the evening of the the
Speaker 1: day five because we'd accomplished our goal, which our goal
Speaker 1: was just to get our feet wet inside the elk
Speaker 1: counting world. We I knew that the biggest hurdle would
Speaker 1: be finding ELK. I didn't feel like Colin would be
Speaker 1: that big of a deal bear, because you know, I
Speaker 1: blew my first ELK call three week ago, maybe four
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and I'm a I'm a proficient diaphragm turkey
Speaker 1: caller and have been since I was a kid, and
Speaker 1: so blowing on an ELK call is not much different
Speaker 1: than blowing on a turkey call. And so I feel
Speaker 1: like we were decent enough callers that that was not
Speaker 1: a limiting factor at all inside the hunt, and I
Speaker 1: felt like we were prepared for how to manage these
Speaker 1: elk because it's so much like turkey hunting. I mean
Speaker 1: we we were in the back country for five days
Speaker 1: and never heard a single bugle, never heard a single bugle,
Speaker 1: and so I knew that it wasn't gonna do us
Speaker 1: much good to be bugling. It's just like in turkey hunting,
Speaker 1: if the turkeys aren't goblin and not calling very much
Speaker 1: and not responding to calls, you know, you don't call much.
Speaker 1: You do what the turkeys are doing. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we were trying to do what the elk we're doing,
Speaker 1: which wasn't much, but we were were primarily you in
Speaker 1: elk calls, I mean cal calls, and uh. Even though
Speaker 1: the further we got into the hunt, the more and
Speaker 1: more aggressive that we got, because we were just like, man,
Speaker 1: we gotta we gotta crack a bugle out of an
Speaker 1: elk so we can find them. And so we started
Speaker 1: bugling more and more as the days progressed. We started
Speaker 1: out very conservative and then got more liberal, and after
Speaker 1: five days we never heard an elk bugle. So I
Speaker 1: have still after five days of hunting, I've never in
Speaker 1: my life heard an elk bugle, but I almost killed
Speaker 1: an elk. Pretty wild huh. So well, Bear, what would
Speaker 1: you say what was the most exciting part of the
Speaker 1: hunt for you? Probably whenever we called in the bulls,
Speaker 1: because I've never seen a bull elk that close. I've
Speaker 1: seen like so, but they were just like in a
Speaker 1: national park from a distance. Yeah, but that was pretty cool,
Speaker 1: especially because we were hunting them. Yeah, it's different, isn't that.
Speaker 1: I mean, just to see an elkina and yellowstone, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a cool experience. But to see an
Speaker 1: elk when you're carrying a bow wanting to pack one
Speaker 1: out on a mule, that's exciting stuff, isn't it. Bart? What? Okay?
Speaker 1: So what what would you say? The challenges of the
Speaker 1: hunt were, um, probably finding the elk and then walking
Speaker 1: so far. Yeah, we covered a lot of ground, didn't
Speaker 1: we Yeah, up and down and and we were at
Speaker 1: different time, you know, between ten and twelve thousand feet,
Speaker 1: which compromises your your respiratory system as especially being from
Speaker 1: the lowlands of Arkanas well, Arkansas highlands, but not high enough.
Speaker 1: Bear okay, wild experiences, what was okay? So you rode
Speaker 1: Over the course of those five days, we rode about
Speaker 1: forty miles on the mule. I knew that you were
Speaker 1: either gonna come out of it strong, are you gonna
Speaker 1: come out of it broken. I believe that you came
Speaker 1: out strong. Were there any hairy moments riding the mule? Well,
Speaker 1: with Ace, there wasn't a whole lot. Like every now
Speaker 1: and then there'd be like a steep part and you
Speaker 1: would try to get off the trail and turn around
Speaker 1: and go back to the truck, And like there was
Speaker 1: one part where it was just like I had no
Speaker 1: idea that you could even get in that position. He
Speaker 1: just somehow got in it. And then I don't know
Speaker 1: if he was gonna be able to get off right.
Speaker 1: He kind of took a wrong turn and jumped up
Speaker 1: on a super steep bank and kind of got kind
Speaker 1: of got bewildered a little bit. Yeah, And what do
Speaker 1: I tell you when when stuff like that happens? What
Speaker 1: did I always say to you? Just hang on, just
Speaker 1: ride it like a cowboy. I mean, that's the thing is,
Speaker 1: you can't get scared. That mule is going to take
Speaker 1: care of himself. And that's why we ride mules. You know,
Speaker 1: a horse might have killed himself and flipped off the
Speaker 1: side of the mountain. A mule is not going to
Speaker 1: do that. As long as you stay on that mule,
Speaker 1: you were going to be safe. That's what I tell you.
Speaker 1: And so I mean, just ride him, Just ride him, son.
Speaker 1: Just push your feet down the stirrups and lean back,
Speaker 1: don't lean forward, keep your heels down and cowboy up right.
Speaker 1: There's also another time where we were going to get
Speaker 1: the mules some water down by the creek and there
Speaker 1: was like this really steep rock and Ace got up
Speaker 1: the rock pretty good, but then is he was on
Speaker 1: the side and her feet kind of started to slip thing,
Speaker 1: and then she like just jumped off the rock with
Speaker 1: you on her and went like right under this tree
Speaker 1: with a bunch of branches and it almost took you off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was man. We were just having just a normal day,
Speaker 1: normal ride in this big, wide open country. Wasn't that
Speaker 1: big of a deal. And we came to a slick
Speaker 1: rock and so our our mules are shot on the front.
Speaker 1: Shot means that they have shoes on the front, okay,
Speaker 1: and uh, Ace struggled a little bit getting up this
Speaker 1: slick rock, but it wasn't that big of a deal.
Speaker 1: So I just took easy, actually took easy a different way.
Speaker 1: And she gets up on the side of the slick
Speaker 1: rock and just starts sliding. She starts losing her feet
Speaker 1: and so she's scrambling on the rock and she finally
Speaker 1: slides off the rock, which you know, it's probably six
Speaker 1: or eight feet down into a creek, and she she slides,
Speaker 1: but then down in this creek is like thick. It
Speaker 1: wasn't alders, but some kind of thick bramble, you know,
Speaker 1: with branches about as big as your wrist. And I mean,
Speaker 1: she just she kind of doesn't have anywhere to go
Speaker 1: except right into that stuff. And so I mean just
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, things turned south quick, and so
Speaker 1: she to keep from falling over, jumps into those bushes,
Speaker 1: and um, at that point, I'm like, I'm probably gonna
Speaker 1: end up on the ground. That's what I felt like,
Speaker 1: But I just leaned back. I mean, it probably looked
Speaker 1: like Man from Snowy River stuff. You you've seen that movie, right,
Speaker 1: remember when he rides that that horse down the mountain
Speaker 1: and all those other guys are looking at him. That
Speaker 1: was an awesome scene. I just kind of leaned back
Speaker 1: and rode her out, and uh, man, I came out
Speaker 1: on top of the saddle and we just I took
Speaker 1: her right back up the same way and there we came. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: that's part of the reason I, I I don't know, I
Speaker 1: love riding mules and equine animals. It just, uh there's
Speaker 1: some excitement in it, and uh, things can go bad quick.
Speaker 1: But it also I think makes you stronger, makes you
Speaker 1: more aware. Um it. Uh, you really do have to
Speaker 1: overcome fear. Riding the equine animal is a craft. It's
Speaker 1: not just uh it's not like riding a four wheeler,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean even it takes some skill to
Speaker 1: do that. But you learned to become a good writer.
Speaker 1: You learned to stay on You learn how to handle situations.
Speaker 1: You learned to trust that animal. And I knew that
Speaker 1: Izzy wasn't gonna flip over. I knew that. I knew
Speaker 1: if I could just stay on her, I'd be okay.
Speaker 1: I knew that those limbs might break my hat off
Speaker 1: and my glasses or you know, tear my clothes or something.
Speaker 1: I didn't know, But it's like if I I just
Speaker 1: got to stay on her. But anyway, we had a
Speaker 1: few exciting moments like that across a lot of creeks
Speaker 1: um uh, went through some thick stuff, went through some
Speaker 1: very steep stuff, some very rugged, rocky stuff, but overall
Speaker 1: great experience. Here's the things that I learned, Bear, and
Speaker 1: this is what I want to do next time. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start putting in for draw hunts, probably in Colorado,
Speaker 1: maybe some other places, but I would rather. We got
Speaker 1: to get away from the people, and I think that
Speaker 1: you do that through going on a draw hunt. Okay,
Speaker 1: this was an over the counter unit number two. We
Speaker 1: gotta go later in the year. I mean, hunting turkeys
Speaker 1: is no fun. If the turkeys aren't goblin. You know
Speaker 1: a good turkey. Enter can still kill them, but it's
Speaker 1: just no fun. I mean, you don't you go turkey
Speaker 1: out into here here a turkey gobble and to work him. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a new elk hunter, but you go elk hunting
Speaker 1: to hear them bogle and to work them. And it's
Speaker 1: just no fun when you don't know where they're at.
Speaker 1: They're not responding to calls, they're not bugling, So we
Speaker 1: need to go later in the season when they're bugling. Um,
Speaker 1: those are the two main things. I want to go
Speaker 1: later and I want to get away from the people.
Speaker 1: And uh. But that being said, I felt like it
Speaker 1: was a massive success and that we we learned about
Speaker 1: our gear, We enjoyed the the new first light gear
Speaker 1: that we had. We were totally decked out in first
Speaker 1: light stuff. Uh. You know, we used the Nemo first
Speaker 1: Light tent. I used the Nemo sleeping bag. I was
Speaker 1: using the thirty degree bag called the Scout. Uh. Really
Speaker 1: like that sleeping bag, ultra lightweight, warm, a lot of
Speaker 1: neat features. Um. I wore the Sawbuck pants for I
Speaker 1: believe I've had these pants on for six days? Have you?
Speaker 1: Would you agree? Bear? I put these on in the
Speaker 1: parking lot on the first day and I'm still wearing them.
Speaker 1: I put them on last. Let's see what Thursday last, right,
Speaker 1: and today is out? Today is Tuesday. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've been wearing them for a while. And uh, I
Speaker 1: used the clammate. I basically wore the Sawbuck pants, a
Speaker 1: wick undershirt, long sleeve, and a clammath hoodie almost the
Speaker 1: entire time. And uh, everything works great. I was wearing
Speaker 1: actually borrowed Kolby's Can't Attract boots, which he had a
Speaker 1: really nice pair of can attracts that he said I
Speaker 1: could try out. And we wear the same size shoes.
Speaker 1: So that's what I wore, and uh Bear was wearing
Speaker 1: uh first light gear two. I liked it, still wearing it.
Speaker 1: So anyway, man, anything we hadn't covered Bear that you'd
Speaker 1: like to say? Not really nothing? You got nothing at
Speaker 1: all for me? Sorry? Well, um man, I wanted Bear
Speaker 1: to have in his repertoire of memories and know how
Speaker 1: um you know, a western back country hunt and he's
Speaker 1: got that now. And you want to go back though, right,
Speaker 1: And what do you want to do when you go back? Um? Well, okay, yes,
Speaker 1: but do you remember what what I'm prying. I'm prying Banjoe.
Speaker 1: Thank Banjo. Next year when we go back, I want
Speaker 1: to take Banjo with us. Tell him who Banjo is?
Speaker 1: Banjo is my mule that I'm training right now. And
Speaker 1: yeah he's not. You can't, we can't write him yet.
Speaker 1: But he's about a year old. He's getting there. He's
Speaker 1: getting there. So it's is he's full blood brother? Is
Speaker 1: that right? Yeah, I'd say he's pretty flashy too. Yeah, alright, guys, Well,
Speaker 1: so that is our That was our l khant. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be producing a video that will be on the
Speaker 1: Bare Hunting Magazine YouTube channel at some point. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it will come out before this or after
Speaker 1: this podcast. But what an incredible adventure an expedition and
Speaker 1: what other place in the stinking world can a man
Speaker 1: just load up his animals or just jump in a
Speaker 1: truck and drive buying over the counter tag no need
Speaker 1: to get permission from the king and go into true
Speaker 1: wilderness and back country that he owns that he has
Speaker 1: every right to be there as much as anybody else,
Speaker 1: and go in there and hunt a majestic beast like
Speaker 1: an elk, my o my, bring home his flesh, feed
Speaker 1: your family for a year, put his horns above your
Speaker 1: fireplace as a memory activator for decades and generations to come.
Speaker 1: What other place can you do that but right here
Speaker 1: where we live. And I think that's the biggest thing
Speaker 1: that stood out to me is that the access that
Speaker 1: we have to adventure as hunters is incredible, incredible, and
Speaker 1: there's something inside of the adventure and the danger and
Speaker 1: the drama and the craft and the skill of being
Speaker 1: able to come out here and execute this that that
Speaker 1: makes you something different that so many humans on the
Speaker 1: planet don't have access to. But we're tapping into something
Speaker 1: that is ancient and inside of our DNA from the
Speaker 1: very beginning, you know, we were we were warriors and
Speaker 1: hunters and gatherers and tamers of horses, long before we
Speaker 1: were office clerks, long before we were insurance men, long
Speaker 1: before we lived sedentary lives. We were this thing and
Speaker 1: hunters are still that today. And I feel like that
Speaker 1: there's a There is a spiritual component to it. There
Speaker 1: is a natural physical challenge component to it. There's a
Speaker 1: mental strength component to it. There's a component of coming
Speaker 1: up against real fear and overcoming it. There's a component
Speaker 1: of the complexities of the planning that exercise muscles that
Speaker 1: are rarely exercised in modern life. When the things that
Speaker 1: you do actually affect your ability to survive, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you wake up and you live in
Speaker 1: a house and you know you forget something, you just
Speaker 1: go to the store and buy it. When you're the
Speaker 1: back country and you forget something, they're real consequences, And
Speaker 1: I think that that makes us more aware, more conscious.
Speaker 1: It makes us kind of into a different kind of
Speaker 1: human And there's a spiritual component as well. The script
Speaker 1: the Bible says that the the heavens declare the glory
Speaker 1: of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork, firmament being
Speaker 1: the earth and man. We looked at such incredible scenery.
Speaker 1: A man would have to be a fool to not
Speaker 1: think that this was created by design on purpose, that
Speaker 1: the intricacies of the ecosystem bear. One night when we
Speaker 1: were sitting over a water hole, he said that he
Speaker 1: saw four different kinds of rodents within about thirty feet
Speaker 1: of him, And we talked about the intricacies of the
Speaker 1: ecosystem and how those all those little critters play a
Speaker 1: very vital role, from the kind of seeds they gather
Speaker 1: and store all the way back to the animals that
Speaker 1: prey on those rodents. And we just talked about the
Speaker 1: the intricacies of the of the natural systems and the
Speaker 1: brilliance and majesty of it, didn't we And I think
Speaker 1: that something really does come alive inside of a person,
Speaker 1: and and and it's in my mind it's got to
Speaker 1: be connected back to a creator for it really to
Speaker 1: have effect inside your life, because you know, you could
Speaker 1: be a hunter and have no you know, just just
Speaker 1: going into back country doesn't change you. To me, when
Speaker 1: you go into back country and then you connect to
Speaker 1: the thing behind the thing, that's when you really begin
Speaker 1: to that's when you begin to see and understand and uh, anyway,
Speaker 1: incredible time and it's it's fun to be able to
Speaker 1: to spend this time with your son and uh bear John,
Speaker 1: this is just the beginning. Oh oh sorry, I have
Speaker 1: like a little thing. Right, Hey, what do we say
Speaker 1: when we close the podcast every week? He's Okay, now,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you one shot at this. But you
Speaker 1: gotta say it with enthusiasm. You can't just you can't
Speaker 1: just say it. You gotta say it. Ready, go keep
Speaker 1: the wild place as wild because that's where the bears live.
Speaker 1: The elk Oh, we gotta tell them about the bear.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh man, fall start. When we get back
Speaker 1: to the truck. The mule feed is scattered all over
Speaker 1: the back of our truck and we have no idea
Speaker 1: what's going on until further inspection reveals bear tracks all
Speaker 1: I mean all over the back window. They were on
Speaker 1: the top of my truck. They were there, Like, we're
Speaker 1: driving down the interstate right now and people are looking
Speaker 1: at us thinking that this truck was attacked by a
Speaker 1: bear and it was. So, while we were in the
Speaker 1: back country, the truck was molested by a bear. It was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were told it was to bear cubs that their
Speaker 1: mother had to be euthanized back during the summer, and
Speaker 1: so these little fifty pound bear cubs are just rummaging
Speaker 1: through this area terrorizing people, right. Yeah. So that's why
Speaker 1: we keep the wild places wild, because that's where the
Speaker 1: bears live and the ill. H m hm