Speaker 1: Yeah, my name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production
Speaker 1: of the Bear Grease podcast called the bear Grease Render
Speaker 1: where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f
Speaker 1: HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear
Speaker 1: that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore.
Speaker 1: All right, man, this is uh, this is like groundbreaking stuff.
Speaker 1: This has never happened before in the in the bear
Speaker 1: Grease podcast. We're all doing a live podcast. So we're
Speaker 1: in um just outside of Bentonville, our console at the
Speaker 1: Black Bear Bonanzas. So for all the people that are
Speaker 1: here live, we're gonna be, We're gonna be. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: we go. We got we got a pretty good crowd here,
Speaker 1: way way more people than we thought we'd had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we love you all. Yeah. So we uh this this
Speaker 1: podcast will go out on the bear Grease platform here
Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks, assuming that these guys don't
Speaker 1: just say like ridiculous stuff that makes me just like
Speaker 1: cancel the whole thing. So maybe you guys just get
Speaker 1: to hear it all on your own. I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: we this has been so much fun. This is This
Speaker 1: event has been in the making for several years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were, we were just about to pull the trigger
Speaker 1: on it two years ago. And uh, I know most
Speaker 1: of you hill Billies don't get out much, but there
Speaker 1: was a global pandemic. We didn't hear about it much here,
Speaker 1: but there was a global pandemic that, uh kind of
Speaker 1: shut the world down. And I think the event was
Speaker 1: planned for March. Was the end of March? It was, yeah,
Speaker 1: And where were you then? Yeah? Yeah, So we have
Speaker 1: this like identical event plan. Myron was gonna come and
Speaker 1: we were gonna have a live recording of what at
Speaker 1: that time was the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. So maybe
Speaker 1: I think it's better. I think we're all probably better
Speaker 1: than we were two years ago, hopefully. Yeah. Um, I
Speaker 1: want to introduce my guests, and each one of them
Speaker 1: are here for very particular reason, and that reason will
Speaker 1: become clear maybe as we go further. Um. This is
Speaker 1: James Brandenburg. James is the lead man for the Arkansas
Speaker 1: chapter of the back Country Hunters and Anglers. Hello, James,
Speaker 1: He's James. Has been MC and today and H. James
Speaker 1: was on the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast with me several times,
Speaker 1: and uh, he always did. I like talking at James,
Speaker 1: Like I don't. I don't know how much that he
Speaker 1: says that it's like really profound, but I find them
Speaker 1: when I'm within arms reach of the guy that like,
Speaker 1: I like talking at him, So that's a big compliment.
Speaker 1: I feel like that basically what I am is just
Speaker 1: there as a wall for you to bounce things off of,
Speaker 1: and you solve most of your own problems without me,
Speaker 1: if I'm being honest with you. The first time we
Speaker 1: said guard the gate in the context of guarding the
Speaker 1: gate and predator hunting being the gate for the anti
Speaker 1: hunting community to step into our space as North American
Speaker 1: hunters was when I was talking to James. And it
Speaker 1: was only after that that I was like, we gotta
Speaker 1: guard the gate, guard the gate. And then since that time,
Speaker 1: you know, we've we've talked more and more on that
Speaker 1: and and built this idea that I think it's catching
Speaker 1: on in the country is that we have an incredible,
Speaker 1: incredible thing in North America that nobody else has with
Speaker 1: just this this this opportunity to hunt wildlife, to hunt
Speaker 1: on public lands, and that we have the most successful
Speaker 1: wildlife management system of anywhere on planet Earth, and the
Speaker 1: history of planet Earth, and the way that those who
Speaker 1: are would be against us for whatever reason. The platform
Speaker 1: that they often target to enter into our beautiful space
Speaker 1: that works so well is through predator hunting and sometimes
Speaker 1: through bear hunting. And so I feel like our job
Speaker 1: is to tell the story of the bear hunter, give
Speaker 1: context to it. You know, why would somebody want to
Speaker 1: shoot a bear? We like bears, and you know our
Speaker 1: messages we love We love bears more than anybody. We
Speaker 1: want bears to thrive more than anybody does. There's nobody
Speaker 1: on planet Earth that wants there to be more bears
Speaker 1: in Arkansas than me and Myron Means and a bunch
Speaker 1: of you guys. And that's the truth and when and
Speaker 1: it's a it's a difficult sell. It's a multi steps
Speaker 1: cell to convin someone with no history, no connection to hunting,
Speaker 1: to say killing a bear is actually a good thing
Speaker 1: for the big picture. I mean, that's a multi step cell.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, yeah, we are taking one individual out,
Speaker 1: but you know, for the habitat that we have, that
Speaker 1: animal needs to be taken out. And there's selective measures
Speaker 1: and the gaming fish is monitoring, you know, multi steps cell.
Speaker 1: It's a very easy sell for someone with no even
Speaker 1: emotional connection to hunting, like most of us here would
Speaker 1: have historical connection to go man killing bear equals bad
Speaker 1: done deal. So here in Arkansas, thank goodness, we do
Speaker 1: not have that problem. And we're here today because we
Speaker 1: plan on never having that problem here. But we live
Speaker 1: in such a world that is so interconnected. UM. In
Speaker 1: my work with Bear Hunting Magazine, I was introduced to
Speaker 1: a world I was absolutely unfamiliar with, which is a
Speaker 1: world that is well just that the hunting community is
Speaker 1: is under attack and other places. Twenty years ago, growing
Speaker 1: up in Arkansas, if you told me that, I would
Speaker 1: have said, man, you're just crying wolf. I mean, who's
Speaker 1: coming to Arkansas telling us we can't hunt? And you
Speaker 1: guys know what the world is changing quickly, And what
Speaker 1: we can do now is build a foundation of understanding
Speaker 1: the context knowledge base. And we're not mad at anybody.
Speaker 1: The people that might be against us, we're not against them.
Speaker 1: We're not trying to be ugly and stomp our feet.
Speaker 1: We're trying to be the smart wise guys. By wise guy,
Speaker 1: Brent's kind of a wise guy in the negative way. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: we're the guy with the most knowledge, the guy with
Speaker 1: the most wisdom, the guy with the most understanding of
Speaker 1: the big picture, I think wins inside of this. And
Speaker 1: so that's what we're trying to do, is just educate
Speaker 1: people and why we're doing we're doing so James Brandenburg,
Speaker 1: when we talked about that make it, did you see
Speaker 1: how that went up? Quiet? He wouldn't welcome I will,
Speaker 1: I will not go in sequential order. Here to my left,
Speaker 1: this is Myron means. Myron means is I've known Myron
Speaker 1: since uh two thousand eight or nine or somewhere somewhere.
Speaker 1: The Myron is the large carnivore lead large carnival biologist
Speaker 1: for the state of Arkansas. Is that the way you
Speaker 1: say that? The only one in them? He leads yourself.
Speaker 1: I have a small to medium sized personnel staff of
Speaker 1: me myself and I. Yeah. So Myron has worked with
Speaker 1: the game fish his whole career out of out of
Speaker 1: college five years agency this year, yeah, twenty seven years
Speaker 1: working with black bears in Arkansas. So Myron is is
Speaker 1: the the resource for knowledge about Arkansas bears. And uh,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get Myron a little bit to give us,
Speaker 1: give us the story of Arkansas all bears, because if
Speaker 1: you're here today, no matter if you're from Oklahoma or Missouri,
Speaker 1: you need to know the story of how bears got here. Um,
Speaker 1: this is my wife, Misty newcom Misty is a is
Speaker 1: a classic on the barg Reas Render. Um because she
Speaker 1: keeps us in line and I get I get more comments,
Speaker 1: she keeps me in line. I get more comments about
Speaker 1: Misty being on the render, and so I just keep
Speaker 1: bringing her on, not because the comments, but because I
Speaker 1: like her. But I hear there is confusion today that
Speaker 1: someone tried to sell themselves as me. Yeah, is that
Speaker 1: that someone trying to steal my identity today? As how
Speaker 1: you tell us a far Britt and I we often
Speaker 1: get mistaken for one another. I don't ever mistaken for
Speaker 1: one another. Um, Brent Reeves. Everybody would know Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: from the Beargrease Render. And uh, Brent and I have
Speaker 1: been friends for a long time, and uh we've been
Speaker 1: hunted a lot together in different places. And uh, Brent
Speaker 1: is here for the Southern wit and charm. So if
Speaker 1: you have a little meter and you're taking the only
Speaker 1: reason I keep him around. Brent says stuff to me
Speaker 1: every single time I'm around him that I say, did
Speaker 1: you just make that up? And did somebody tell you that?
Speaker 1: What I have noticed is the stories are often inconsistent, though,
Speaker 1: because sometimes he's like, my dad told me that, and
Speaker 1: the next time I'll be like, my uncle told me that,
Speaker 1: And the next time I'd be like, I made that up.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. It's hard to know the truth.
Speaker 1: I keep it around a great friend of mine. And
Speaker 1: then final, and definitely not least on the end, here
Speaker 1: is my friend Mo Shephard and Mo is here for
Speaker 1: a various specific reasons. I've got a story I want
Speaker 1: him to tell you, uh later. But mo is Mo
Speaker 1: is like a mountain man. If I think about Arkansas
Speaker 1: guys that are just woodsman, just real deal woodsman. Uh.
Speaker 1: Mo was one of the most accomplished big woods mountain
Speaker 1: hunters that I know, and he and I have corresponded
Speaker 1: a lot with bear hunting when I was really trying
Speaker 1: to learn how to bear hunt in national forest without
Speaker 1: the use of bait, which we can talk about a
Speaker 1: little bit today. Me and Mo. I mean, Mo was
Speaker 1: a resource for me because he spent his whole life
Speaker 1: in the mountains and killed bears on purpose in national forest,
Speaker 1: you know, not an incidental deer kill. Some of them
Speaker 1: were incident. I think he got lucky on you know,
Speaker 1: probably a third of them, but not your opinion. Uh no,
Speaker 1: But I just have a lot of respect for mo
Speaker 1: as a as a woodsman. But uh hey, okay, I
Speaker 1: got a little ahead of myself here, which I tend
Speaker 1: to do sometimes. Do you know what the bear Grease
Speaker 1: render is? We got a lot of not in head.
Speaker 1: So the bear Grease podcast is our documentary style podcast
Speaker 1: that is not like this. It's where we have you know,
Speaker 1: we have specific topics if you hadn't heard it, specific topics,
Speaker 1: and we really dive in deep and it's a well
Speaker 1: put together, like polished um podcast. This, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: the truth. A lot of it is because we couldn't
Speaker 1: do that every single week. It was just too much work.
Speaker 1: We had to figure out a way to do something else.
Speaker 1: So we put together in the colectic group every week
Speaker 1: on the off weeks typically talk about what the podcast
Speaker 1: topic was about the week before, so you'll understand the format.
Speaker 1: That's what We're not going to do that this week
Speaker 1: because this is a special one. We're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about bears, Marian, why don't you give us a
Speaker 1: rundown of just bears in Arkansas and kind of just
Speaker 1: a historical look. You know how much time we have left.
Speaker 1: You know that's good. I know you can talk this
Speaker 1: real abbreviated, real quick. I'm sure most of you know
Speaker 1: that Arkansas at one time we used to unofficially be
Speaker 1: known as the bear State. Bring it back, yeah, bring
Speaker 1: back before we were the natural state or the land
Speaker 1: of Opportunity. At the time of settlement, we were called
Speaker 1: the bear State. And uh, it was thought at the
Speaker 1: time of settlement in Arkansas that we may have had
Speaker 1: as many as fifty thousand black bears in the state.
Speaker 1: And of course, the landscape was completely different than it
Speaker 1: is now. I mean, we had vast expanses of bottom
Speaker 1: land hardwood, mature forest upland hardwood pine mix, and it's
Speaker 1: just a different different ecosystem than it is today. Uh.
Speaker 1: At the time of settlement, very briefly, bears had one
Speaker 1: very sought after commodity that was plentiful in Arkansas. And
Speaker 1: that's that right there. He's holding up a jar bear grease,
Speaker 1: bar oil, and we all know kind of what happened
Speaker 1: with the uh demise of the whales. You know, the
Speaker 1: whales were sought and hunted for their blubber to rent
Speaker 1: are down the fat for oils. Well, the same thing
Speaker 1: happened with bear of their oil or their fat was
Speaker 1: highly coveted a market hunting wise, So what better place
Speaker 1: to get oil bear fat than in the bear state, right,
Speaker 1: And so at the time of settlement, through settlement into Arkansas,
Speaker 1: it became a you know, a really sought after commodity.
Speaker 1: Bears were market hunted, uh, you know, unceasingly or without
Speaker 1: any regulation or anything, and so uh they were almost
Speaker 1: extirpated from the state completely. In fact, by nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: a man named trust and Holder did a land survey
Speaker 1: of the state of Arkansas, and uh found that the
Speaker 1: only remaining population that he had evidence of was in
Speaker 1: the lower White River drainage scrub Grass Bayou. And it
Speaker 1: was thought that we may have had as many as
Speaker 1: fifty bears left in the entire state. Now, if you're
Speaker 1: a big Clay Newcomb podcast fan, and if you've listened
Speaker 1: to this podcast with Dori Province, UH, some of those
Speaker 1: really old timers that lived in the Washtalls of the Ozarks.
Speaker 1: They'll tell you, Hey, when I was a kid back
Speaker 1: in the thirties or forties, we saw a bear. So
Speaker 1: is it likely that there were some remnants of the
Speaker 1: mountain bear population still out there? Sure? Uh. But nineteen
Speaker 1: Game and Fish embarked what is still to this day
Speaker 1: a historical reintroduction effort. In over a ten year period,
Speaker 1: they reintroduced two hundred and fifty four bears from Minnesota
Speaker 1: and Manitoba, Canada into the Ozarks and wash tolls of
Speaker 1: the state and the forest were grown back up at
Speaker 1: that time, and it was really perfect bear habitat, and
Speaker 1: there wasn't a season on at that time. Interject something.
Speaker 1: I think this is a compelling part of the story
Speaker 1: that gives a little more context. Is that you know,
Speaker 1: from from the time of white European settlement of this
Speaker 1: part of the world world, which would have been you know,
Speaker 1: in the early eighteen hundreds, the first people were getting
Speaker 1: here pretty much and starting to settle by the turn
Speaker 1: of the century. By nineteen hundred, in in and on
Speaker 1: a little bit further, almost all of Arkansas would have
Speaker 1: been cut for timber to build the Eastern US. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were sending timber from here and in marketing back,
Speaker 1: especially after the railroads, they would have done that. But basically,
Speaker 1: by the nineteen fifties and sixties, well go back the
Speaker 1: national forest. Um, the what am I looking for? The
Speaker 1: the federal government protection of national forest started with Teddy Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: I want to say in the teens, uh when was
Speaker 1: before Teddy Roosevelt set up the Forest Service. And so
Speaker 1: they started protecting these big blocks of what became public land.
Speaker 1: And so for sixty years the timber was able to regrow.
Speaker 1: So in the fifties and sixties, for the first time
Speaker 1: a bunch of our habitat all of a sudden had
Speaker 1: this big timber and was good for bear habitats. So
Speaker 1: it was like the right time. Habitat was right. Everything
Speaker 1: was right, and so that's why it was a success.
Speaker 1: That's that's exactly right. And you know, the force were
Speaker 1: coming back, bears were protected, so it was I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just excellent bear habitat. And you know, bears
Speaker 1: have proven one thing, not only here in Arkansas but
Speaker 1: about anywhere else, but giving the opportunity and the right
Speaker 1: kind of habitat and circumstances, their populations will flourish. And
Speaker 1: so the population flourished, and actually flourished to the point
Speaker 1: that by night gaming fish reopened bear season in the state.
Speaker 1: And uh we've had a bear season this last year
Speaker 1: mark the forty one modern day bear season. If you
Speaker 1: look at our bear harvest since nineteen eighty, it's just
Speaker 1: been a steady increase all the way up. We think
Speaker 1: we probably have around six thousand bears in the state now,
Speaker 1: you know, give or take a few hundred or maybe
Speaker 1: even a thousand, But I mean, the probably one of
Speaker 1: the most unique things about bears in Arkansas is we
Speaker 1: seem to be looping through these twenty years cycles. You know,
Speaker 1: the bears are reintroduced back around nineteen sixty, give or
Speaker 1: take a few years. By nineteen eighty, twenty years later,
Speaker 1: we're able to reopen bear season in the state. And
Speaker 1: from nineteen eighty to two thousand, you know, our bear
Speaker 1: population had increased in such a way that we were
Speaker 1: we're not harvesting the number of bears we needed. Incidentally,
Speaker 1: so what do we do in two thousand one to
Speaker 1: increase harvest rates? We had abating to the regime harvest
Speaker 1: strategy or to our regulation strategies, and then uh so
Speaker 1: here we are twenty years later in the same bear
Speaker 1: population in what are we talking about now? Reintroducing a
Speaker 1: bare season to the Gulf coastal plaine of Arkansas. That's
Speaker 1: a big deal deal and so I mean it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's just a good testament to great uh conservation efforts
Speaker 1: by game and fish. Uh and you know, land use
Speaker 1: patterns change, uh, everything changes, you know, over time. But uh,
Speaker 1: it's something that I've certainly feel privileged to be a
Speaker 1: part of, to be in a state that has done
Speaker 1: this so successfully, reintroduced bear so successfully. You may have
Speaker 1: said it, but in the biological community, the reintroduction, which
Speaker 1: a reintroduction is different than a uh that that's specific
Speaker 1: terminology to describe taking adult wild animals and relocating them
Speaker 1: in turn and loose. But that is it's considered the
Speaker 1: most successful reintroduction of large carnivores in the world. That
Speaker 1: still stands. That's right, it still stands. I mean, no
Speaker 1: other natural resource agency anywhere in the world has done
Speaker 1: what Arkansas has done so successfully with a large carnivore.
Speaker 1: That's something to be proud of, it really is. And
Speaker 1: to put it into context too, when you look at
Speaker 1: a you top in your phone and for a for
Speaker 1: like a heat map of the of North America for
Speaker 1: where our bear populations are, and you'll see a bunch
Speaker 1: of red in the eastern United States, I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the strongholds of the black bear is in the east,
Speaker 1: you know, the southern Appalachians, all the way up in
Speaker 1: the UH, up in the main into Canada, all the
Speaker 1: way down to Florida. I mean, the eastern US has
Speaker 1: some incredible bear populations more than US. I mean, you
Speaker 1: go into West Virginia, North Carolina, Uh Virginia, Man, they
Speaker 1: have some incredible bear populations. Okay, So imagine all these
Speaker 1: bears here, and then all of Canada is just Canada
Speaker 1: is bear central, I mean, Canada is The wilderness that
Speaker 1: they actually have in Canada is just remarkable in terms
Speaker 1: of actual definition of wilderness being places where people in
Speaker 1: civilization and roads are not. So Canada still has very
Speaker 1: much a strong bearer population. And then it loops into
Speaker 1: the Rocky Mountain West. And remember I'm painting a picture
Speaker 1: of a heat map. The Rocky Mountain West all the
Speaker 1: way down to Old Mexico has black bears, and all
Speaker 1: the Western states, a lot of them have pretty good
Speaker 1: bear populations, very good bear populations in the northwest, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana.
Speaker 1: So there's a big hole in our map though in
Speaker 1: the central US, from about middle Kentucky over to the
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountains and the Great Lakes have bears too. So
Speaker 1: from like Michigan down the whole mid South and South,
Speaker 1: no bears except for this one little red dot about
Speaker 1: that big which is the Arkansas bear population. So I
Speaker 1: mean think about that. I mean, when you're looking at
Speaker 1: this as a as a as a continental resource, it's
Speaker 1: pretty wild that we've got bears here and now. And
Speaker 1: what Myron could tell you better than me is that
Speaker 1: from the reintroduction of those two and fifty four bears
Speaker 1: now Missouri, these bears are moving into Missouri such that
Speaker 1: Missouri has had their first bear season. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk I believe Laura Connley will be here later right
Speaker 1: here now, Um, they're going into Missouri. They they've moved
Speaker 1: over into Oklahoma just this week. Did you hear about
Speaker 1: the legislation where in Louisiana they're proposing the bear season
Speaker 1: in northern Louisiana. I kind of got wind of that
Speaker 1: a few months ago talking to Louisiana's bear ball just
Speaker 1: but she thought it might be coming so well, they
Speaker 1: put it out as an official composal. But I mean,
Speaker 1: that's massive conservation success in two when we live in
Speaker 1: such an urbanized world and whatever is this is what
Speaker 1: I always say, whatever is happening ecologically in North America
Speaker 1: for some wild reason has been beneficial to black bears,
Speaker 1: I mean, And so to me, it's kind of it's
Speaker 1: kind of poetic in a sense that the you know,
Speaker 1: the American frontier truly was fueled by bear meat and
Speaker 1: bear grease. That that is not that is not hyperbolic.
Speaker 1: I mean people used to not eat dear meat, just
Speaker 1: keep their hides, and they killed bears for their meat
Speaker 1: and for their hide. Well they use their hides too,
Speaker 1: but for their oil. I mean, so this bear was
Speaker 1: so important. And then there was a time when the
Speaker 1: bears were extrapated, just like you know, Arkansas is a
Speaker 1: great a small microcosm of what happened in bigger places too.
Speaker 1: The bears were gone. People forgot, I mean literally in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: people forgot. I mean it's like bears weren't here basically
Speaker 1: in a functional way for seventy years, sixty years, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden in the eighties it was like,
Speaker 1: holy cow, we got bears. And then while Myron walked
Speaker 1: through from us having a bear season in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: until two thousand one. And I'm about to make a
Speaker 1: claim here that if somebody can dispute me, they will, uh,
Speaker 1: I'll give them jar beargers. So during that period of time,
Speaker 1: Arkansas was probably killing less than a hundred fifty bears
Speaker 1: a year. Maybe there was no baiting, so from around
Speaker 1: and there, I think it was harvest was yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was just pretty amnemic. I mean, because most people
Speaker 1: had to do it. It was most of the harvest
Speaker 1: at that time was incidental to deer honting. Deer season
Speaker 1: and bear seasons ranking current, and so you know, most
Speaker 1: people didn't actively hunt bears. They were out deer hunting.
Speaker 1: I see a bears, shoot a bear. Uh so bear
Speaker 1: seasons open. So really, up until two thousand one, I
Speaker 1: would say the majority of the bear harvest was incident.
Speaker 1: And that's that's exactly my point is that guys, there
Speaker 1: were some, but there weren't a lot of people really
Speaker 1: targeting bears. Two thousand one, they decide I'm building to
Speaker 1: a point here that I want everybody to hear is
Speaker 1: that in two thousand one, they said, we have so
Speaker 1: many bears in Arkansas. We need an effective way to
Speaker 1: manage these bears because to take out typically in bear management,
Speaker 1: to take out ten percent of the bear population per
Speaker 1: year is gonna equate to that population remaining stable for
Speaker 1: the most part. And Myron could tell us a spot
Speaker 1: about that in general, that would be a true statement.
Speaker 1: And so they said, we cannot harvest the number of
Speaker 1: bears that we need for the habitat that we have
Speaker 1: using incidental deer harvest to kill these bears. Did you
Speaker 1: ever kill a bear in the nineties? Yeah, nine ninety
Speaker 1: I killed my first bears nine? Did it on purpose
Speaker 1: or was this there weren't many for real? Um? I
Speaker 1: thought you'd kill them st that. Did you hunt the
Speaker 1: first first year in that eight Yeah? And I hunted
Speaker 1: each year up till nine ninety and I killed my
Speaker 1: first bear in that team ninety. So I'm curious to
Speaker 1: see how many here did hunt bear prior to two
Speaker 1: thousand in Arkansas. Yeah, that's why you're up here. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so what they had to do, and it was a
Speaker 1: management decision that the game and fish did as they said,
Speaker 1: we're going to manage our bears with bow hunters. And
Speaker 1: I'm putting words kind of in the I mean, this
Speaker 1: is what I've heard. We're gonna manage bears with bow
Speaker 1: hunters on private land over bait. And that that was
Speaker 1: an extremely critical and I think brilliant move for the
Speaker 1: state because all of a sudden it opened up a
Speaker 1: real possibility for people to tap into this resource. I mean,
Speaker 1: it kind of opened the floodgates for hunters to really
Speaker 1: be able to kill one. It really did allowed people
Speaker 1: to kind of get bear, so to speak. And after
Speaker 1: that point, you know, once people learned how to bait
Speaker 1: bears and how to go about it, you know, there
Speaker 1: was a learning curve associated with it. But after a
Speaker 1: few years when the culture became not acceptable, but when
Speaker 1: people started learning how to do it, that's when you
Speaker 1: saw our harvest in the state really take. This is
Speaker 1: a principle too inside of wildlife. And I saw this
Speaker 1: as a kid growing up in a part of Arkansas
Speaker 1: that was a really good bear area. Is that because
Speaker 1: it was really difficult to target bears, they held little value.
Speaker 1: I would say, I mean for real like cultural value,
Speaker 1: like my dad would tell you. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: kind of like, man, you don't want to bear anywhere
Speaker 1: around where you're hunting. They'll tear up your deer stands,
Speaker 1: they'll tear up your deer feeders. Their trouble. And I
Speaker 1: saw people killing bears and just kind of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I mean, almost like a trash animal, that
Speaker 1: kind of a vermin mentality, and that that is not
Speaker 1: a blanket statement. There were people that were killing them
Speaker 1: and loving them like mo. But in general, I stand
Speaker 1: by that that there wasn't a great incentive for someone
Speaker 1: to be a bear hunter because it was so difficult.
Speaker 1: And when they liberalized that season, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: we started hunting and we were like, holy cow, we
Speaker 1: can actually go kill a bear. And we learned how
Speaker 1: to bear hunt, we learned about bear meat, we learned
Speaker 1: how to you know, we're still learning just kind of
Speaker 1: this this how unique this wildlife commodity is. But I
Speaker 1: I refused to let anybody tell me that bait and
Speaker 1: bears is a negative thing, and you shouldn't either. Bear
Speaker 1: It's a management tool for game agencies to harvest the
Speaker 1: number of bears that they need to. And I'm on
Speaker 1: the national platform a little bit. So people sometimes give
Speaker 1: me a hard time, and I absolutely will run someone
Speaker 1: into the ground if they say that hunting a bear
Speaker 1: over bait isn't hard, isn't fair chase, or as a
Speaker 1: lazy man's way to hunt. And I'm preaching to all
Speaker 1: y'all hunting bears over bait is good, and don't ever
Speaker 1: let anybody come in this state and say that it's
Speaker 1: not and that and that's what they're doing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it sounds like I'm preaching to acquire. That's like we
Speaker 1: already know we're in the church. But a man in Maine,
Speaker 1: the Humane Society United States, comes in and says, man,
Speaker 1: baiting bears is you know, they come up with all
Speaker 1: the reasons why that you shouldn't do it, and it's
Speaker 1: so there there, it's there is a time when we
Speaker 1: may have to be like, well, if we built it
Speaker 1: strong enough, they won't ever you know, won't ever happen here.
Speaker 1: But my point is from the day at the first
Speaker 1: bear ever killed over bait, I was like, this is
Speaker 1: a real deal. This is cool, and you don't have
Speaker 1: to have access to private land and huntover bait to
Speaker 1: kill a bear in Arkansas and we've proved that, and
Speaker 1: guys like James has proved that. So they're definitely somebody
Speaker 1: that has private land in Arkansas and some of the
Speaker 1: key bear areas. Yeah, you got a leg up on us.
Speaker 1: And I mean I'm one of those guys. I just
Speaker 1: you know, there's some guys that were born in Stuck
Speaker 1: Guard and have access to the world's best duck hunting.
Speaker 1: There's some guys that were born in Iowa and have
Speaker 1: the world's best white tail deer hunting. And then you
Speaker 1: know so because I do hear that sometimes like guys
Speaker 1: are like, well, private land guys get all the bears,
Speaker 1: and it's like, man, it's just either to find fine
Speaker 1: private land that you can hunt, which you can do,
Speaker 1: or learn to hunt him a national forest, which you're
Speaker 1: hearing me preach about hunting bears over bait and how
Speaker 1: much I absolutely love it because you can be selective
Speaker 1: and we can preach that because we are selective. I
Speaker 1: hadn't killed the bear over bait in Arkansas since two
Speaker 1: thousand six. Last year, I killed the first bear overbait
Speaker 1: since two thousand and six in Arkansas, just because I'm
Speaker 1: waiting on a five pound bear in a big male.
Speaker 1: That's the truth. And if we're if we use the
Speaker 1: system right and as bear hunters, we actually use baiting
Speaker 1: as a method to be selective. And Mayer and I
Speaker 1: have talked about this a lot. Letting the juveniles and
Speaker 1: females go and actually being selective, we can we can
Speaker 1: do a whole lot more than if we have a
Speaker 1: harvest with a bunch of Souths. But I said all
Speaker 1: that to say, um, hunting a bear in the national
Speaker 1: forest on purpose, hunting them like deer is by far
Speaker 1: the hardest hunt that I do in North America. Really,
Speaker 1: I love it. And uh, and that's what Mo is
Speaker 1: so good at and has done over the years. I've
Speaker 1: taught him a lot of what he knows. But wait
Speaker 1: a minute, the story is story change since earlier? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I was just a kid. I was in diapers,
Speaker 1: know so, And I know there would be a mixed
Speaker 1: group of people here. Some people to have access would
Speaker 1: be really interested in baiting bears, and then another group
Speaker 1: that might be interested in hunting bears and in in
Speaker 1: big national forests. But Marn, do you have anything to
Speaker 1: add to that. I kind of want to talk to
Speaker 1: me about hunting bears and no, just that. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, in the in the in the world of
Speaker 1: natural resource agencies, you know, I mean, if you're a
Speaker 1: araftsman or tradesman or something, you just have a bag
Speaker 1: of tools and you have you know, baiting. It's just
Speaker 1: a it's a management tool, you know, for us to
Speaker 1: get the objectives that we want out of our bear harvest.
Speaker 1: You know, if if something happened by the wayside, I mean,
Speaker 1: we would have to have a on baiting, we'd hey,
Speaker 1: we'd certainly have to have another tool in the bag
Speaker 1: that we could use to offer up the same type
Speaker 1: of harvest numbers that we have today. So it's it's
Speaker 1: a tool. Yeah, it's a tool. I can add to
Speaker 1: that what you said earlier about the bears in the eighties,
Speaker 1: through the early seasons and even into the nineties, until
Speaker 1: they started baiting. I don't know how many people, friends, families,
Speaker 1: people that I didn't even really know would come to
Speaker 1: me when they knew I was bear hunting, you know,
Speaker 1: just after bears. Of course I love the deer hunt too,
Speaker 1: but I would take specific days I just bear hunt
Speaker 1: during the season. They said, why are you wasting time
Speaker 1: after them bears? The same thing Gary new But I
Speaker 1: heard that from a lot of different people, in different
Speaker 1: styles of people and everything. You know, why are you
Speaker 1: wasting time hunting bear when you could be deer hunting?
Speaker 1: I said, because I'm intrigued by it, you know, And
Speaker 1: a lot of those people when I got my first
Speaker 1: and nineteen ninety, I rubbed it in on them. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's no doubt in my mind that baiting has
Speaker 1: spawned a quote bear hunting culture in Arkansas, no doubt
Speaker 1: about it. And we do have a bear hunting culture
Speaker 1: in the state and its thriving. Yeah, I want I
Speaker 1: want Moe to tell us a story of you know,
Speaker 1: as a bear hunter. People that don't know a lot
Speaker 1: about bear hunting and they hear you bear hunt, they're like,
Speaker 1: have you ever been attacked by a bear? Have you
Speaker 1: ever been in a sticky situation? And the truth of
Speaker 1: it is, many minute times we're talking about bears, Brent,
Speaker 1: they rely in Arkansas are bears. I mean it would
Speaker 1: be if you said, Claire, I'll give you fifty thou
Speaker 1: dollars if you can go out in the next ten
Speaker 1: days and have a bear attack you. I don't think
Speaker 1: I could do it. I mean, like you. You have
Speaker 1: to Our bears typically are not aggressive, and very few
Speaker 1: incidentss of human bear direct conflict and my right, Myron,
Speaker 1: I mean it happens occasionally, But this story is one
Speaker 1: of the closest that I've heard from around these parts.
Speaker 1: But MO, tell us tell us your story of getting
Speaker 1: kind of just scared version of it. So whatever version
Speaker 1: you got to make a long story short. I left
Speaker 1: my house one day. At the time, I was living
Speaker 1: out in in the middle of national forest land, so
Speaker 1: I could just hunt from my house. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: early both season, and I just took off late morning.
Speaker 1: I didn't even get up early to go that day.
Speaker 1: I was just going to do scouting, mainly for deer bear.
Speaker 1: It was early and I grabbed one of my recurve
Speaker 1: bows and I took off from the house. And I
Speaker 1: are so into my slip hunt, slipping around looking for sign.
Speaker 1: I come up on a little bench there where there's
Speaker 1: a lot of pop all bushes. People from marks don't
Speaker 1: know what they are and what they look like. They
Speaker 1: they're there real thick, they're not very big and you
Speaker 1: can't see very far and when they got green leaves
Speaker 1: on them. Anyway, I've seen some deer deer scat there,
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, this might be a good place
Speaker 1: to come back and bring a stand in deer hunt,
Speaker 1: you know. And where was that? Uh, that's kind of
Speaker 1: a secret I don't like. Hey, y'all, remember Mo was
Speaker 1: on my secret podcast? Did did y'all hear that he
Speaker 1: keeps secrets? Anyway? I don't, you don't need to know. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I was going through and I thought this might be
Speaker 1: a good place to come back and bow hunt, you know,
Speaker 1: and bring a stand. And then about the time some
Speaker 1: movement caught my eyes, got very far from me, and
Speaker 1: I kind of looked in front of me of the
Speaker 1: Papa bushes, and I saw a small bear cup. I thought,
Speaker 1: there's a little bear cup. That's pretty cool. Mama. The
Speaker 1: cub was just had been born that during the winter
Speaker 1: that year. It was probably twenty pounds or something other,
Speaker 1: maybe twenty five and not very big, but a small dog.
Speaker 1: And I thought where man probably handled that cub before,
Speaker 1: handled about every cub, and especially in that secret spot up.
Speaker 1: I know he's been up there. But anyway, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: Mama was round here somewhere. I need to find where
Speaker 1: she's at because I need to if she shows up,
Speaker 1: I need to let her know where I'm here and
Speaker 1: just ease my way out of here, because I'd run
Speaker 1: across thousand cups of numerous times over the years, and
Speaker 1: I I was smoking for her. And about that time,
Speaker 1: I've seen movement where this and come from this small
Speaker 1: bear and there's another cup. I thought, well, that's cool,
Speaker 1: there's two cup. But I still haven't seen Mama yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the bear factory was generating right there, and anyway, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'll just let him pass on by it. I'll just
Speaker 1: keep it out for her. And they keep going around
Speaker 1: the hill, but you know they won't be no problem
Speaker 1: or nothing. Well, about that time, the two little peckerwood
Speaker 1: bears here, they come right towards me to start mos
Speaker 1: and playing and pushing on each other. And they come
Speaker 1: towards me, get closer. They get with probably ten fifteen yards.
Speaker 1: I mean, that ain't good. They're gonna get way too close.
Speaker 1: And I still haven't found Mama yet, so I don't
Speaker 1: care if I talked to him or motion myself, but
Speaker 1: I got their attention, and they both just stopped and looked,
Speaker 1: and I think I'm even kind of waved my bow
Speaker 1: at him. Or something other maybe said something real light.
Speaker 1: They just jumped into the bushes out of sight. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's good, but I thought I still haven't seen Mom yet,
Speaker 1: So I went to just back up and get out there,
Speaker 1: but I kept looking because I didn't know if she
Speaker 1: might be behind me or where she was at. And
Speaker 1: about that time I see movement. Here comes MoMA out
Speaker 1: right where the cubs did out there, about twenty five yards,
Speaker 1: and she had her nose down to sniffing the like
Speaker 1: mama's dooce. He was following her cubs around, just staying
Speaker 1: where there is at And I thought, well, I need
Speaker 1: to let her know I'm here or to see what happens.
Speaker 1: So I think I just sat there for a few seconds,
Speaker 1: and then she turned sniffing and started coming the same
Speaker 1: way they did towards me. I thought, this ain't good,
Speaker 1: This is not good. How big would you say she was?
Speaker 1: She was your average salth bear out in the mountains.
Speaker 1: I would say she was a hundred and fifty hundred
Speaker 1: senty pounds. This is honest, man. You think you can
Speaker 1: buy that, can't you? And looked like she was not
Speaker 1: that old bear. I figured that might even been her
Speaker 1: first cubs she'd ever had, you know. But oh, now
Speaker 1: we're speculating. I'm speculating like you do all the time.
Speaker 1: So anyway, anyway, she started that same direction, I thought,
Speaker 1: I gotta do something, so I think I just in
Speaker 1: a soft voice, said hey bear, hey bear, hey bear,
Speaker 1: And she looked at me and raise her head up
Speaker 1: and looked at me on all fours. I thought, I
Speaker 1: gotta get out here. So I knew where she was
Speaker 1: at then, so I'm gonna start backing up. Well, I'll
Speaker 1: start backing up and just talking to her, and she
Speaker 1: just stand there looking at me. And then I don't
Speaker 1: know exactly what happened. I remember all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: one of those cubs made a little balls and I
Speaker 1: looked at my left and he climbed a pop off
Speaker 1: bush right beside me. Right, No, I mean like for
Speaker 1: me to you just right there, and I'm like, this
Speaker 1: is not good. And when he done that, you could
Speaker 1: see her demean your chains. Her hair bristled up, she
Speaker 1: puffed up, you know. I just I don't know. I
Speaker 1: know you've probably seen him do that. And when she'd
Speaker 1: done that, I thought, well, I gotta do something, so
Speaker 1: I went to back up and before I even knew
Speaker 1: what happened, she made it kind of a dust them
Speaker 1: like that, and she was on me before I could
Speaker 1: even move. I mean, just bam right on my face,
Speaker 1: snapping her teeth, and I stuck my bowl up in
Speaker 1: her face like that between me and her, and just
Speaker 1: started holler at her, backing up. She was biting, snapping
Speaker 1: at my bow. And once I remember she swatted at me,
Speaker 1: but I think she was trying to scare me by
Speaker 1: swatting leaves off the ground or whatever. And uh, but
Speaker 1: then she made a big lunge at me, and I
Speaker 1: don't even know if I was at he or what caused,
Speaker 1: but she loaned to me like she was gonna try
Speaker 1: to knock me down or bite me or something other.
Speaker 1: And I just remember raising up and I kicked her
Speaker 1: out in the face with my boot and it just stoner.
Speaker 1: She just froze like that, and I really got loud
Speaker 1: in I won't repeat some of the things I was
Speaker 1: probably saying, but I just kept backing up and hollering
Speaker 1: at her and hollering at her, and I guess I
Speaker 1: got far enough that that she didn't I think there
Speaker 1: was any danger, and I don't remember if the cub
Speaker 1: made another ball sound or what. But then she acted
Speaker 1: to gress again. She started towards me again, and I
Speaker 1: got real loud that time, and I even poked at
Speaker 1: her with my bow. She stopped again. I just kept
Speaker 1: backing up, hollering real loud, I mean really loud, and
Speaker 1: I finally got knock plumb out of side of her.
Speaker 1: But she finally just stood there and froze when she did.
Speaker 1: While I was backing up, she turned and went over
Speaker 1: into the bushes where the cubs were, and she kind
Speaker 1: of I don't remember she ballard at him or whether
Speaker 1: she swat him. Anyway, she got that one off the
Speaker 1: tree and it was still the ground, and I seen
Speaker 1: him move off into the pop up bushes. So I
Speaker 1: just kept backing up fast and got quite a ways
Speaker 1: from him, and I caught my earth and then I
Speaker 1: think there was actually a log, and I sat down
Speaker 1: on just the rest. I was probably two yards where
Speaker 1: the bears was that thinking about what had just happened,
Speaker 1: and then I realized the I carry a quiver on
Speaker 1: my side, and I had an arrow with a broad
Speaker 1: head in my hand, and I never remembered getting it
Speaker 1: out of my quiver. I don't know if I was
Speaker 1: thinking in my mind that she was gonna get me
Speaker 1: down to what. I don't know, but I had it
Speaker 1: in my hand and I thought, I don't even remember
Speaker 1: doing this, and then I got up and went home
Speaker 1: and and that was a story for sure. That's that's amazing.
Speaker 1: What what year about? What year would that have been?
Speaker 1: That was probably two thousands six, two thousand seven, So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: not old like I am, so wow, you know, I
Speaker 1: I've only heard I've only heard one other story that
Speaker 1: kind of rivals that, and I can only tell it
Speaker 1: second hand, and I'll do it real quickly. And it's
Speaker 1: an Arkansas based story. Now, you can go a lot
Speaker 1: of different places and get bear stories, and and you know,
Speaker 1: grizzly bears out west is a whole different ball game.
Speaker 1: Like you know, our black bears are just not that aggressive.
Speaker 1: Typically grizzly bears are for real, they'll eat you and
Speaker 1: hurt you. You know. So if you're in the in
Speaker 1: the greater Yellowstone region where there are grizzly bears in
Speaker 1: the lower forty A, it's a different story. But for here,
Speaker 1: that story right there is pretty pretty wild coming from
Speaker 1: you know, coming from somebody that's that that is reputable.
Speaker 1: Like Mr mo Um, I had a I had a friend,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling his story second hand. He was he
Speaker 1: was bow hunting and used a climber tree stand in
Speaker 1: the wash dolls and setting up in a big pine tree,
Speaker 1: way up a pine tree. And he had walked in
Speaker 1: that morning in the dark, well just after daylight, whatever time.
Speaker 1: He sees a bear and he has no interest in
Speaker 1: shooting a bear. He could have his bow season. And
Speaker 1: this bear has his nose on the ground like a
Speaker 1: hound and it's trailing him, just walking right there. He
Speaker 1: walked and he was just like, huh, that's kind of
Speaker 1: odd and uh. And the bear just comes right up
Speaker 1: under his tree stand, sniffs up the tree and just
Speaker 1: look straight up at him. And he, as I remember
Speaker 1: the story being told, you know, he talked to the
Speaker 1: bear just like hey, eat at here, you know, and
Speaker 1: the bear started copping its teeth at him and kind
Speaker 1: of getting bristly. And the bear walked off and kind
Speaker 1: of did it they when they get aggressive, they kind
Speaker 1: of bristle up and kind of kind of strut almost
Speaker 1: like a turkey. But he walked out there and then
Speaker 1: he he whether he ran back, but basically a cycle
Speaker 1: of three or four times that bear would run to
Speaker 1: the base of his tree and it would run up
Speaker 1: like two or two or three jumps, and then he
Speaker 1: was like, hey, you know he his intensity went up
Speaker 1: and it came up like halfway up the tree. It
Speaker 1: went down and before you know it, that bear, he said,
Speaker 1: was coming over the top of his his his tree stand,
Speaker 1: and he had a bow and he was trying to
Speaker 1: shoot it when it was coming up the tree. But
Speaker 1: every time he leaned out, his arab came off the rest.
Speaker 1: If you're a bow hunter, you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: You're trying to shoot straight down. And he could not
Speaker 1: shoot that bear until he was able to be about
Speaker 1: like this, and he shot that bear right in the
Speaker 1: throat when it was even with him. Yep. And uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that that that story was told to me boy, and
Speaker 1: I know the guy that happened to and um anyway,
Speaker 1: why that's a wild story too. It was well, he
Speaker 1: never recovered the bear. The bear dropped out of the tree,
Speaker 1: ran off and never found it. He believed it to
Speaker 1: be a juvenile male, which makes sense, doesn't it really?
Speaker 1: Do you do you know any wild stories? My man
Speaker 1: in the tree today. He never came down. He texted
Speaker 1: me that battery ran out. I mean, uh, Moses, probably
Speaker 1: about the craziest one that I've heard. But I mean
Speaker 1: I can working with bears as many years as I have,
Speaker 1: I can absolutely see what happened to you as being, yeah,
Speaker 1: a legitimate deal. And you know, I mean doing all
Speaker 1: the den work that I've done over the years and
Speaker 1: everything else, having females with cubs and all that, I mean,
Speaker 1: sure they can be protective every you know, the adage
Speaker 1: mama bear, I mean, you know that's saying came about
Speaker 1: because of a reason, because mama bears can be so
Speaker 1: protective of their cubs. But you know, outside of that
Speaker 1: particular scenario, I mean, black bears just inherently aren't known
Speaker 1: to exhibit predatory behavior like a grizzly bearriers or something
Speaker 1: like that. They have had black bear attacks in British
Speaker 1: Columbia is some places up north, you know, predatory black
Speaker 1: bear attacks, but we probably have a standard. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: predatory attack would be a bear seeking you, actually stalking,
Speaker 1: walking you down and sizing you up. And it's a
Speaker 1: very distinct behavior pattern. And uh so it's uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know bears or bears. Yeah, yeah, nun we ever
Speaker 1: had any tough bearon counts usually make you talk. Well.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking your story kind of reminded me
Speaker 1: and your story of last week. My son was playing
Speaker 1: basketball and someone fold them and I kind of felt
Speaker 1: some of those same urges of that mama stabbing my teeth,
Speaker 1: you know. But I thought what Maron was talking about,
Speaker 1: the how the old timers in Arkansas will talk about
Speaker 1: how they saw bears in the thirties and forties, and
Speaker 1: Clay knows this story. But my great grandpa was uh
Speaker 1: kind of a legendary man in our little tiny town
Speaker 1: of four hundred my brothers here, and he could he
Speaker 1: could attest to if when people found out that that
Speaker 1: was our great grandpa, they'd be like, oh, lose Joplin.
Speaker 1: Strongest man I ever knew. At one time he killed
Speaker 1: a bear with his bear hands, and that was like
Speaker 1: an actual thing. We heard he killed a bear with
Speaker 1: his bear hands. When when when we do that? Well,
Speaker 1: well I was going to tell him is that? And
Speaker 1: so when I started dating Clay, um, I told him
Speaker 1: like he's he was interested in grandall with his hands
Speaker 1: and we would hear stories about him like that he
Speaker 1: caught logs. You know, you kind of just don't believe
Speaker 1: stories like that, like I saw a truck, a whole
Speaker 1: truck of logs. He caught him with his own back.
Speaker 1: We kind of, you know, try to get him to
Speaker 1: talk about it. He was a pretty humble guy, and
Speaker 1: sometimes he would be like, oh yeah, and he would
Speaker 1: just real mildly be like, basically, no, no arrogance whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Tell us, yeah, I did catch an entire the thing
Speaker 1: of log So we you hear these stories enough. And
Speaker 1: I told play when we started dating. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's true, but everyone in town tells me he
Speaker 1: killed the bell. I do he researched it. I went
Speaker 1: and asked him. He was eighty nine at the time,
Speaker 1: so this would We've been married for years, so it
Speaker 1: would have been Yeah, it was while we were dating,
Speaker 1: so it would have been, you know, right at the
Speaker 1: end of his life. And uh. And I asked him,
Speaker 1: I said, did you kill a bear with your bare hands?
Speaker 1: And he said, he said no, but I killed one
Speaker 1: with a rock. And what happened when he was it
Speaker 1: was I think we figured it to be. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties in in Polk County. So this is a
Speaker 1: real deal. He he lived right around Hatfield, Arkansas, on
Speaker 1: Polk County, and he said he was walking home from school.
Speaker 1: One maybe not school, I don't know. He was just
Speaker 1: under twenty. You know, he was a kid. So do
Speaker 1: the math when it would have been. It probably it
Speaker 1: may have even been in the twenties. I think it
Speaker 1: was in the twenties, and I think he was It's
Speaker 1: been a long time, so we've done the math um.
Speaker 1: But he said that he was walking home and he
Speaker 1: saw a bear cub a cross the road in front
Speaker 1: of him and run up a sapling and he just
Speaker 1: picked up I mean, just what would a kid do
Speaker 1: back in those days. He picks up a rock and
Speaker 1: starts chunking rocks at this bear. And you know at
Speaker 1: that time, I mean, you can't amen, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a vermin. I mean, these people were trying to
Speaker 1: make a living off the land. And what I thought
Speaker 1: he was scared? Yeah, he anyway, and he he knocked
Speaker 1: it out of that tree and killed it. And uh.
Speaker 1: But why that story is unique, and what we've talked
Speaker 1: about is that I have to go back and do
Speaker 1: the actual math of how old he was when he
Speaker 1: died and when it all happened, But it would have
Speaker 1: been probably in the nineteen twenties, which we're not supposed
Speaker 1: to be bears in western Arkansas during exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no doubt in my mind there was rainnant bears
Speaker 1: running around, you know. Yeah. Yeah, Paball believed there shouldn't
Speaker 1: be anything. Yeah, if I see a bear, I'm like
Speaker 1: killing Yeah, yeah he did. That's what happened to the dinosaurs. Yeah. Um, hey,
Speaker 1: we're we're gonna I want to transition to talking a
Speaker 1: little bit about like how to kill a bear. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's a thousand different things we could talk about.
Speaker 1: But James a couple of years ago killed a bear
Speaker 1: and National for Us on purpose, non incidental kill, like
Speaker 1: very much so on purpose. And uh, I think sometimes
Speaker 1: that's the most accessible way for somebody to haunts, just
Speaker 1: go out in national forest. That being said, I think
Speaker 1: you should go somewhere else. You shouldn't hunt here. Um
Speaker 1: they're not laughing. Um, now, it's no no stretch to
Speaker 1: say that killing a bear National Forest in Arkansas or
Speaker 1: Oklahoma or Missouri is a very difficult hunt, but a
Speaker 1: doable hunt. And uh, James did it. The first year
Speaker 1: he tried, which don't be encouraged by that, and you
Speaker 1: probably can't. Um I tried it for the Daniel Boone
Speaker 1: when Daniel Boone went into Kentucky, crossed the Cumberland Gap
Speaker 1: and came back after just like my life. Okay, we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about something like you know that reminds me
Speaker 1: of Daniel Boone. I like to talk it misty to
Speaker 1: talk at James, James, you're talking, Listen to talk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess so so Daniel bo when he
Speaker 1: went into Kentucky and for two years went on the
Speaker 1: Big trap Line, and I mean there was nobody there
Speaker 1: except you know, some few bands and Native Americans, and
Speaker 1: he was torn his whole life of telling people about
Speaker 1: it because by him telling him about it, he ruined it.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's the story of us. And
Speaker 1: it's in a way because but like we want to
Speaker 1: share what we know and it doesn't do any good
Speaker 1: to hold stuff back. But I will say Georgia in Tennessee,
Speaker 1: West Virginia are way better bear hunting. It's actually not
Speaker 1: a joke. You can take more bears in Georgia, that's
Speaker 1: for sure. They have they have bigger bear populations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's other options you have. Yeah, definitely if you
Speaker 1: if you think you want to get into the game
Speaker 1: and fish, say that that's me because I hunt out.
Speaker 1: So I hunted last year and the year before that
Speaker 1: is the only time that I've ever bear hunted. Um,
Speaker 1: I've seen two bears. One of them is dead and
Speaker 1: the other one ran across the road in front of
Speaker 1: me before the season was open. So, uh, it's hard,
Speaker 1: and if you haven't done it before, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. You just kind of have to set your
Speaker 1: mind to what you're gonna encounter, how how you want
Speaker 1: to go about it, and you measure your success more
Speaker 1: by I think how long you can stay out there
Speaker 1: and keep after it. You know. Uh, I scouted a
Speaker 1: couple of days before the season open. I scouted before that,
Speaker 1: but went in earnest a couple of days before the
Speaker 1: season and hunted, uh to three days into the season.
Speaker 1: Uh during archery season, you know, so put five to
Speaker 1: seven days into it, and um, that was about all
Speaker 1: I needed, I mean because I was done, Like I
Speaker 1: didn't want to do it anymore. Bears are a low
Speaker 1: density animal, so if you think about it like a
Speaker 1: high population whitetail deer might be forty deer per square
Speaker 1: mile in good bear habitat. How many bears per square
Speaker 1: mile would we have, myron? Huh, fifteen to twenty bears
Speaker 1: maybe per hundred square kilometers? Conversion Maric, Come on, what's
Speaker 1: a kilometer someone converted for me? Real quick? Give me
Speaker 1: an anecdote, like a bear per square mile? Two bears?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, okay, I'll land base. I'll convert it for you.
Speaker 1: Land base sto square miles square miles sixty two. So
Speaker 1: twenty five bears per sixty two square miles. Man, that's
Speaker 1: some really about half a bear about point six bears
Speaker 1: per square miles. So there's our number. So you know,
Speaker 1: forty deer per square mile point six bears. Those are
Speaker 1: the size bears. These guys kill point six. No, that's
Speaker 1: that's good info. Yeah, And so I mean that's like
Speaker 1: prime bear density. So to say, to qualify what James
Speaker 1: was saying, you can't be validated by seeing game. I
Speaker 1: mean we're used to deer hunting and like the golden
Speaker 1: era of white tail deer hunting in North America, and
Speaker 1: we go out and we don't see deer. We're like
Speaker 1: what's wrong man? When you bear hunt. That's why I
Speaker 1: love about it. You can't be validated by seeing game.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll go seasons without seeing a bear in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and I mean we're doing stuff very much so on
Speaker 1: purpose and don't see a bear the whole season doing
Speaker 1: what we So what you're saying is I'm as good
Speaker 1: of a bear hunter as you guys are. Apparently even
Speaker 1: a blind South Wilkins over there Jonathan Race. Jonathan did
Speaker 1: the same thing James did. Jonathan set out several years
Speaker 1: ago and he didn't even live over here, but traveled
Speaker 1: into the mountains in western Arkansas, hunted a couple of
Speaker 1: years all on his own, and kill the bear last year,
Speaker 1: didn't you, Jonathan? Yeah, So I mean this is this
Speaker 1: is a this is a doable thing. Yeah, but you shouldn't.
Speaker 1: You probably shouldn't treat You should try to do it
Speaker 1: in Georgia or in Georgia somewhere else. More bears over there,
Speaker 1: and definitely not at that place that Myron mentioned. I
Speaker 1: don't either one of them. Yeah, you know, I give
Speaker 1: bear hunting seminars around the state usually before better season
Speaker 1: comes about it, before you can bait. And I really
Speaker 1: tell people. I mean there's you know, there's two different
Speaker 1: avenues to bear hunt. You can bear hunt on private
Speaker 1: land or you can bear hunt on public land. And
Speaker 1: of course private land. You know, there's certain techniques that
Speaker 1: can benefit you and establishing a bait station. And I
Speaker 1: tell people all the time, you know, I kind of
Speaker 1: go through the processes of finding natural bait stations on
Speaker 1: public land, and uh, I can I can attest to
Speaker 1: you everyone here that a natural bait site can be
Speaker 1: every bit as effective as you know a man made
Speaker 1: bait site even better better. You'll find a natural food source.
Speaker 1: You find that one particular white oak on a bench
Speaker 1: that's throwing acorn acorns like crazy, right you almost boat.
Speaker 1: Or you find that one particular black gum tree that's
Speaker 1: throwing you know, berries like crazy right at the front
Speaker 1: of the season. So I mean I tell everybody, or
Speaker 1: hickory nuts if picker nuts as we call them mostly
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, Yeah, picker nuts. So I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I really kind of harp on that point to people.
Speaker 1: If you don't have access to private land and to
Speaker 1: do all that, a natural bait site can be every
Speaker 1: bit as effective. Let's just run through that, just a
Speaker 1: little bit like in the eastern deciduous forest. Really, that's
Speaker 1: what apply and Georgia and any anywhere you can hunt
Speaker 1: bears over here in the fall. We don't have spring
Speaker 1: bear seasons in the South, very few spring bear seasons
Speaker 1: in the lower forty eight. Um Maine has some bear
Speaker 1: spring bear seasons on some tribal lands, and Idaho, Montana, Wyoming,
Speaker 1: Washington has a limited anyway we hunt bears in the fall,
Speaker 1: and um hard masks is gonna be probably the main
Speaker 1: thing you're gonna key in on. That's what the bears
Speaker 1: are keying in on. And that would be acrens, whether
Speaker 1: it be red oakacres, white oakacerings, whatever kind of acren
Speaker 1: there is. They it would be possible bear food. But
Speaker 1: just like white tailed deer, they're gonna be selective. They're
Speaker 1: gonna high grade their food, just like you or I would.
Speaker 1: If there was a buffet out here, we'd go through.
Speaker 1: We'd say I want that, I don't want that, I
Speaker 1: do want that. But if there was a limited amount
Speaker 1: of food and there was only one or two options
Speaker 1: and we had to eat, we'd eat a lesser desirable food,
Speaker 1: the number one desirable food. I mean, we can just
Speaker 1: almost say without question, is is gonna be white oak
Speaker 1: acorns during the time we're hunting. It's just a small
Speaker 1: window of time that that really that we're keen on
Speaker 1: these bears. Other times of the year they're eating berries,
Speaker 1: they're eating soft mask. We're not as heat in on
Speaker 1: them during that time. Mayron mentioned black gum um. That's
Speaker 1: something that you don't hear a lot about, but I
Speaker 1: have a couple of years ago I found a black
Speaker 1: gum tree. It was about eighteen inches in diameter at
Speaker 1: the base and it looked like it looked like a
Speaker 1: telephone pole that they had been climbing for years. Just
Speaker 1: I mean claw marks, branches all over the ground, and
Speaker 1: there were eight piles of bears scout under that single tree.
Speaker 1: Bears were just climbing. It's probably one or two bears.
Speaker 1: They were climbing that tree, breaking the branches out of
Speaker 1: that black gum. And black gum has a little soft
Speaker 1: berry about that looks like a raisin. And uh, boy,
Speaker 1: at the right time, when they hit, they're loaded with hit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, so acorns, uh you know black gum.
Speaker 1: You might find a persymmetry that the bears are hitting
Speaker 1: per simmons are pretty there's just little windows when they're
Speaker 1: when they're using those hickory nuts, beech nuts. Parts of
Speaker 1: Arkansas are gonna have some beach timber, you know, few
Speaker 1: parts of Arkansas. But when beech nuts make they're gonna
Speaker 1: eat They're gonna eat those hard and heavy. Um, that's
Speaker 1: primarily what they're eating in the fall. You guys agree, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd say acorns and then black gun berries and then
Speaker 1: the hickory nuts. Is what I found myself. But if
Speaker 1: you're intellect she said, and where the beech nuts are,
Speaker 1: those are half protein content mass. When they do hit,
Speaker 1: they just don't hit very often. They will sure go
Speaker 1: to them then. And what always, what I've found is
Speaker 1: that bears will use natural food very similar to the
Speaker 1: use of bait site. I mean just that's what Myron's
Speaker 1: point was, is that a bear is extremely habitual. If
Speaker 1: you can find where he's been, he's probably gonna come back.
Speaker 1: And this is like the dream scenario that I would
Speaker 1: have only found. I mean, I talked about scenarios like this,
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, heck, he must find a spot
Speaker 1: like that every year. Not true. I mean I probably
Speaker 1: found this three or four times in my life. But
Speaker 1: this is what you're after, so like to talk about
Speaker 1: what you're after. What you're after is to walk onto
Speaker 1: a bench or on the top of a ridge or
Speaker 1: wherever the acrons would be, and find a significant amount
Speaker 1: of your food source and then a significant amount of
Speaker 1: bear scat. I mean, I've been in places where you
Speaker 1: walk up there and it looks like hogs have been
Speaker 1: in there and there's bear. You know, find ten or
Speaker 1: twelve piles of bear scout in a hundred square yard area,
Speaker 1: some of it very fresh, some of it old acrons
Speaker 1: on the ground. I mean, it's just if you can
Speaker 1: find that you're in the chips, and then you just
Speaker 1: hunt it smart like you would hunt a deer. You know,
Speaker 1: you gotta watch the smarter smarter there there. So when
Speaker 1: you find that, you treat it just like a deer spot.
Speaker 1: You know, you gotta get the wind right. But what
Speaker 1: I found, and what I didn't I didn't know until
Speaker 1: I did it, is that you can kill a bear
Speaker 1: on the ground. I can't believe I'm telling people this stuff.
Speaker 1: Gunning you can kill. You can stalk a bear and
Speaker 1: dry leaves on the ground when he's got his face
Speaker 1: eating akrons, and that's what I was unsure of. And
Speaker 1: ten years ago when I was kind of just like
Speaker 1: trying to kill one in National forest, I'd be out
Speaker 1: and the leaves would be dry, and I'm sitting here
Speaker 1: with a traditional bow, and I'm like, how the heck
Speaker 1: am I gonna get within eighteen yards of a bear?
Speaker 1: And what I found? And I have the I have
Speaker 1: a video on Bear Honey Magazine YouTube channel of a
Speaker 1: bear that I first spotted about sixty yards away and
Speaker 1: I filmed them for eighteen minutes. I know it because
Speaker 1: it was on the camera. I filmed them for eighteen minutes,
Speaker 1: just circling the white oak tree, just circling. Never looked
Speaker 1: up one time, Maron and I just started walking towards
Speaker 1: him in the broad there was nothing to hide behind,
Speaker 1: and I walked to where I could hear him crunching acrons,
Speaker 1: and then I was like, this is close enough, and
Speaker 1: I just kind of crouched down in the wide open,
Speaker 1: and that bear, you know, eventually just kind of made
Speaker 1: his way my direction and I killed him at fourteen yards.
Speaker 1: But the leaves were crunchy. Dry. Point is you can
Speaker 1: stalk them if they're eating. Now, if they're moving. If
Speaker 1: you're like going through the mountains and you see one
Speaker 1: that coming across the ridge, he'll be as I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say as spooky as a deer, but
Speaker 1: that bear is going to be alert. If you can
Speaker 1: catch them, feed them feeding. You could about walk up
Speaker 1: to him and slap them in the rear, as long
Speaker 1: as they don't smell yep, I mean yeah, absolutely common
Speaker 1: to them. The dominator in that is the wind was
Speaker 1: at your face. Bears do not see. They're kind of nearsighted,
Speaker 1: don't see probably well as most people. They don't have
Speaker 1: a little small fuzzy ears, not bi great our ears
Speaker 1: like a deer, so they don't really hear that well.
Speaker 1: But the bear has the strongest snows of any land animal,
Speaker 1: and they use it. They live or die by it.
Speaker 1: So if you want to be a successful bear hunter,
Speaker 1: that is probably the most important factor that you can
Speaker 1: never ever leave out his wind how third normals play,
Speaker 1: how down drafts, play, what your wind is doing, because
Speaker 1: you will never ever stalk a bear with the wind
Speaker 1: nod in your favor. That's right. They noticed he didn't
Speaker 1: say use sent control products. He said play the wind
Speaker 1: like a real man, that's a whole other Yeah, kidding
Speaker 1: yet how much time? Uh we're walking? It all kind
Speaker 1: of inside jokes for Beargary surrender yeah, um yeah, so um.
Speaker 1: I wanted to touch on that. And that's all the
Speaker 1: secrets I've got. I mean, like people talk to me
Speaker 1: about how do you kill a bear? And National Forest,
Speaker 1: I've told you everything I know right there. Really it's
Speaker 1: literally get out and pound the dirt, looking for places
Speaker 1: and hunt. And now James and Jonathan they have taken
Speaker 1: my advice and gone out and done it, so it'd
Speaker 1: be interesting to see it. Yeah, hunt too. No, I
Speaker 1: will say that the why I got into it is
Speaker 1: because it was an adventure and a challenge. Is something
Speaker 1: new to do, something you could do here in Arkansas
Speaker 1: happened to be. I was planning to do it anyway,
Speaker 1: and then we had COVID so we weren't gonna travel anywhere. Um,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to become a better woodsman. I wanted
Speaker 1: to just get out and see more of the state.
Speaker 1: And and if you choose to do this in the
Speaker 1: National Forest, you're gonna see parts of the state that
Speaker 1: you didn't know existed. We live in a beautiful, beautiful place.
Speaker 1: As pretty as Georgia, not as pretty as Georgia, tex Place. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh, you will. You will challenge yourself in many
Speaker 1: many ways to go out and do that. But that's
Speaker 1: what I wanted out of that particular adventure, and I
Speaker 1: thought there was a lot of value in that for
Speaker 1: me as a just on my journey as a hunter.
Speaker 1: And I'm kind of thoughtful about that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Not everybody is. I mean, I'm glad I brought a
Speaker 1: bear home and and had all the stuff from it too.
Speaker 1: But it was a very fun adventure to go on.
Speaker 1: And and that's what I would sell anybody. If you're
Speaker 1: looking for an adventure, take up bear hunting. Yeah, on
Speaker 1: national you know, national forest, on public land, because it's tough,
Speaker 1: it's real tough. Yeah. I want to talk real quickly
Speaker 1: about baiting bears. Just kind of give the high points
Speaker 1: of baiting bearers. I'm trying to just get a swath
Speaker 1: of what people might be interested in. Does that sound
Speaker 1: fair to all? Yepnom Is that fair? Yes, it's very
Speaker 1: fair question to say about baiting barriers. Well, I'll say
Speaker 1: two things. There's bear bait around here. I can smell it. Well,
Speaker 1: what you smell is uh yeah, Northwoods. It smells like
Speaker 1: bear bait. Yo. She didn't know I brought this. This
Speaker 1: is uh yeah, this is some stuff I like to
Speaker 1: use this north Woods bear products. I'm going to give
Speaker 1: some of the away that smells like fall. And then
Speaker 1: in the we also Clay always fine, you know, places
Speaker 1: to go get just junk foods, stuff that we wouldn't
Speaker 1: let our kids eat, and fills the back of his trunk.
Speaker 1: And when our kids were little, one of them came
Speaker 1: toddling new and expired honey bun in their hands just
Speaker 1: now and down. I was like, what do you eat? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And my kids, Mike, whenever we see certain items in
Speaker 1: the grocery store, they're like, oh, look there's some bear
Speaker 1: baits that. So when you're when you're baiting bear, always
Speaker 1: tell people it's all about location, location, location. Most people
Speaker 1: they say, well, I got property in this county, We
Speaker 1: saw a bear there once or twice. You know, is
Speaker 1: it gonna be good for baiting bears? And what I've
Speaker 1: seen is that even on a micro scale, like if
Speaker 1: you took like half of a county, there are gonna
Speaker 1: be even inside like even let's say it's the best
Speaker 1: bear county around, and you took even just a quarter
Speaker 1: of that best bear county around, there's gonna be fringe
Speaker 1: bear habitat, and that there's place, there's property in that
Speaker 1: best county that you probably couldn't kill a bear on.
Speaker 1: Bears are very selective about where they're gonna go and
Speaker 1: where they want to be in the daytime. And so
Speaker 1: the short version is when you're baiting bears, you want
Speaker 1: to be in you want to be where the bears
Speaker 1: want to be in the fall. So it's possible that
Speaker 1: somebody's got bears, and Miron can tell you this, got
Speaker 1: bears on their place during the summer, but they're like,
Speaker 1: but when we put out bear bait in the fall,
Speaker 1: we don't get bears up. Bears have big ranges. They're
Speaker 1: moving around, they do. They typically have a summer range
Speaker 1: and a fall range, and that fall range, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe two miles away. But in the home range of
Speaker 1: a bear, they will have seasonal ranges within that whole
Speaker 1: home range, and they definitely, I mean some bears have
Speaker 1: their summer forage area in very close proximity to maybe
Speaker 1: where their fall range would be. But in other bears,
Speaker 1: you know, they may be three or four miles apart,
Speaker 1: and you're not as a hunter, You're not like trying
Speaker 1: to map out home ranges of different bears. But if
Speaker 1: you can, if you can, if you have access to
Speaker 1: private land that you have permission to hunt in very secluded,
Speaker 1: remote areas that are typically connected to big blocks of
Speaker 1: national forests. In our state, the bears, the bears are
Speaker 1: on national forest. I mean, that's just the truth of
Speaker 1: it there there. But the bears want big, unfragmented not
Speaker 1: true wilderness like Capital w federal wilderness, but they want
Speaker 1: to be in big, unfragmented blocks. That's not exclusive. Bears
Speaker 1: can adapt and can be living, you know, in your
Speaker 1: backyard in general, though the bigger blocks, a big public land, rugged, rough,
Speaker 1: nasty stuff, that's where bears are gonna want to be.
Speaker 1: And you'll learn over time. Like there was a time
Speaker 1: years ago where I was baiting like eleven different spots
Speaker 1: in a good county in Arkansas, and of those eleven spots,
Speaker 1: by the time season came around, we would usually have
Speaker 1: three spots that you could kill a decent bear at
Speaker 1: that whole time we baited it. Though in September we'd
Speaker 1: have had bears at every one of those spots, and
Speaker 1: as the as the as the calendar turns in September,
Speaker 1: coming to October, the white oak acrens, all the acrens
Speaker 1: start getting ripe, falling bears start to transition. You know,
Speaker 1: during that time, Um, there's just a big transition in
Speaker 1: the natural world from summer to fall, and bears start
Speaker 1: to move around, and you can basically you can hold
Speaker 1: bears early, it's hard to hold them late. Everybody's beaded bears.
Speaker 1: You know. We'll say, Man, I had bears, but they
Speaker 1: left by the time season came. You know, what can
Speaker 1: I do to keep them? And I told the guy
Speaker 1: earlier today, I said, the best thing you can do
Speaker 1: to keep a bear and be able to kill him
Speaker 1: on opening day is have a spot that you can
Speaker 1: kill bears and keep them until opening day. It works brilliant.
Speaker 1: So what I finally did, after after after what teach
Speaker 1: that Mo and his backwoods wisdom taught me that, what
Speaker 1: what I finally did, after bating eleven spots, as I said,
Speaker 1: why I'm even baiting those other eight, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: bait the three. And so that's what I did. I
Speaker 1: mean pretty much just narrowed it down. I was like,
Speaker 1: I cannot kill a good bear at this spot, so
Speaker 1: we're just chunking it. You know, we we tried it
Speaker 1: for several years. You can't give up on a spot
Speaker 1: after one year. I bait it three years before. I
Speaker 1: was like, ah um. But you know, but a lot
Speaker 1: of you may not have access to that many properties,
Speaker 1: so you may it may be a deal where you
Speaker 1: bait for five years and finally you get a straggler
Speaker 1: that comes in and that's that's okay too, But point
Speaker 1: being secluded land moment. Yeah. And then and the later
Speaker 1: in the season it gets later in the fall, it
Speaker 1: gets the harder it is to get a bear to
Speaker 1: come to bait, Like later muzzloader hunt or the gun hunt.
Speaker 1: It's a lot harder to get them to come to
Speaker 1: those areas. You gotta try to get closer to where
Speaker 1: they want to be in that fall during the mass
Speaker 1: they'll come to bait once they hit the mass hard,
Speaker 1: you know from opening a from the acrons first fall,
Speaker 1: they'll hit it hard. But then as the acrons dispersed
Speaker 1: and get less of them, and they're more apt to
Speaker 1: come back to a bait side. But you need to
Speaker 1: be closer to where they're hanging out hitting that mass
Speaker 1: crop too. So Mo Mo and I kind of work
Speaker 1: together on a bait side one year and he killed
Speaker 1: the bear on November the fifth, over bait, which is
Speaker 1: the latest I've ever It's pretty late what he's trying
Speaker 1: to say. And I have people that are like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna come bear hunt. What if what if I
Speaker 1: came mid October talking about hunting over bait and I
Speaker 1: would just be like, stay home. That's one of the
Speaker 1: worst times to try to the bear season over bait,
Speaker 1: I said I. I kind of had this revelation last year.
Speaker 1: Is sitting over a bear bait in Arkansas? Is that
Speaker 1: it is? It is a an ephemeral window. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like a short window that comes and goes where
Speaker 1: those big bears are using the bait site during the daytime.
Speaker 1: Very short window, and it's always gonna be the as
Speaker 1: early as the season is open. I mean, so like
Speaker 1: when we bear hunt, I mean we pretty much bear
Speaker 1: hunt over bait the first three days of season and
Speaker 1: then our baits just die. It's like they just turned
Speaker 1: the switch. We've done it for twenty years. It's not anecdotal,
Speaker 1: it's everybody. I mean, it's It's like sometimes you hear
Speaker 1: people say stuff and you're like, you haven't done that
Speaker 1: very much. Or if you come to the wrong conclusion, man,
Speaker 1: that bears leave baits. They're hard to hold most years,
Speaker 1: and you better, you better, you better hunt them quick,
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, that that year,
Speaker 1: you remember the reason we talked about it, because I
Speaker 1: told you killed the bear with about every means there
Speaker 1: was other than my pistol. And the only way I
Speaker 1: could do that was during the opening of the gun
Speaker 1: fire bear season. And that year it was when it
Speaker 1: opened just a few days, like five days prior to
Speaker 1: gun deer season. Pretty and and so we we baited
Speaker 1: and and and got got a bear coming in, a
Speaker 1: good material bear. And I was lucky. The first evening
Speaker 1: I sat there. I sat there all day, but the
Speaker 1: first evening I sat there about noon and then had
Speaker 1: to eat. But I'm hungry, you can tell. But you
Speaker 1: look at yeah the bear. The bear came in, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty minutes before dark. And I took it with my
Speaker 1: pistol and called Clay and said, cut it up here.
Speaker 1: I've got a bear down and you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: help me. So we got a lot of fat off
Speaker 1: of that bear too. That bear had a beautiful coat.
Speaker 1: Five you know, the longer you wait in the season there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got made it had a rug made out of it.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful rug. I mean it's thick, lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of fat holding a big filet of fat.
Speaker 1: That was just like you know, like that big yeah.
Speaker 1: But um yeah. And then as far as what debate with,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's basically anything. I mean, there's regulations
Speaker 1: looking looking the red books for what you can bait.
Speaker 1: They have had to kind of get specific, but in general, uh,
Speaker 1: just about anything that will make a human fat, well,
Speaker 1: a bear will eat. That's what I say. We use
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of bread, pastries, dog food, corn.
Speaker 1: I didn't know dog food made people fat. That's a
Speaker 1: good touche. I've never tried to have this trip both fat.
Speaker 1: You know, do you eat dog food? Um? Every opportunity. Now,
Speaker 1: we use a lot of we use a lot of
Speaker 1: used cooking oil. I would say that's a key component. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is not a sales pitch. I got nothing
Speaker 1: tied to these guys, but these these friar grease additives,
Speaker 1: this is this is Northwood's gold rush. It really is
Speaker 1: incredible that you pour this in with your friar grease,
Speaker 1: put it on corn, dog food, bread, whatever, and it
Speaker 1: really attracts. I can smell it right now, misty nose.
Speaker 1: That's the smell of September at our Yeah, we open
Speaker 1: this up. Hey, could you put that in the candle?
Speaker 1: Could you put that in one of those bear grease candles? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know where you north Woods Barger. It smells
Speaker 1: up here right now. Wow, it really does. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of resources. I tell you what, if you want
Speaker 1: to learn how to bear hunt Yata, you ought to
Speaker 1: subscribe to Bear Hunting Magazine. Colby Colby, Moorehead and Joe
Speaker 1: Line run Bear Hunting Magazine. It's the only bear hunting
Speaker 1: magazine in the world. Way about of coy big. I mean,
Speaker 1: people ask me all the time. People message me and
Speaker 1: asked me some real specific question about bears, which I
Speaker 1: don't mind. But I'm like, man, I've spent the last
Speaker 1: ten years writing about that and every issue of Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting magazine, and so the first thing I say is
Speaker 1: you should subscribe to Barretti magazine. And uh, but it's
Speaker 1: not a sales pitch. Just I'm just telling you the truth.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn how to bear hunt and
Speaker 1: see bear hunting on a big national scale, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's handy because I can only talk so much. You've
Speaker 1: got a lot of stories, a lot of different kinds
Speaker 1: of adventures in different ways to do it, and bear
Speaker 1: hunting is pretty diverse. And as a new bear hunter,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm still learning all the different ways to
Speaker 1: do it in different places, and and I like getting
Speaker 1: the magazine to see those different things in different perspectives
Speaker 1: and just add different ideas to what I might do.
Speaker 1: So it's a good resource. Yeah. Yeah, Um, Brent, we
Speaker 1: didn't talked to you yet. Using what you want to
Speaker 1: talk about, I don't know. Closing thoughts, Well, I'm for
Speaker 1: bear hunting, okay, I'm for baiting bears. I'm for doing anything.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate the where the game and fish has
Speaker 1: gone as far as the Gulf Coastal area because that's
Speaker 1: where I'm from. It's a big deal. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: a big deal. And the ground down there is flat.
Speaker 1: What yes, sir, you don't have to it. See like
Speaker 1: I tell you about count, you don't have to con
Speaker 1: ut in the mountains and now maybe we're not gonna
Speaker 1: have to bear hunt. You don't have to walk up
Speaker 1: a mountain exactly. Well, I just it's it's just good.
Speaker 1: And and you know, I've I've got friends that worked
Speaker 1: at at Felsenthal, the guys that I grew up with,
Speaker 1: and they just it's just they see more that's down
Speaker 1: in the southeast part of Arkansas actually goes down into Louisiana,
Speaker 1: and that they see more and more. It used to
Speaker 1: be he would call him a man, I saw a
Speaker 1: bear today. Now now when I talked to him, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, once every month or two, how many bears
Speaker 1: have you seen? He's, oh, gosh, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: couldn't tell you how many. You know, it's just they
Speaker 1: absolutely remarkable. At the place that I grew up and
Speaker 1: there's not many acres down there. I didn't put a
Speaker 1: track on that you never saw a bear, and now
Speaker 1: you see them. It's it's not unlike, it's not uncommon anymore.
Speaker 1: And it's it's an absolute testament. It's a testament to
Speaker 1: the folks that Myron, that Miron, that that Maron works with,
Speaker 1: and all these folks around here that put some value
Speaker 1: on something and see the value in it, and they've
Speaker 1: been working for a long time to get it to
Speaker 1: where it's at now, and it's hats off to you.
Speaker 1: It's a testament to great bear conservation. And it just
Speaker 1: continues to be, you know, flagship species for the agency.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really is continues to be a success story.
Speaker 1: It's good to see that louis Anna is getting a
Speaker 1: little after the whooping we put on them a couple
Speaker 1: of days ago. You're welcome for both of those things.
Speaker 1: Be yeah, now, man, I can't, I can't. I can't
Speaker 1: reiterate enough how special it is that we have bears
Speaker 1: here and that we can hunt them like we can so,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm like super grateful for that. Um hey,
Speaker 1: thank you guys so much for being a part of
Speaker 1: the bear grease surrender