Speaker 1: As a guide and hunter. I've spent thousands of days
Speaker 1: in the field. This show is about translating my hard
Speaker 1: won experiences into tips and tactics they'll get you closer
Speaker 1: to your ultimate goal success in the field. I'm Remy Warren.
Speaker 1: This is cutting the distance. Can you hear it? Birds
Speaker 1: whistling in springtime, fresh grass and flowers, butting, and you're
Speaker 1: sitting on the side of a mountain looking for an
Speaker 1: elusive black bear. Now, while that might sound far off,
Speaker 1: as you're probably sitting at home in some form of
Speaker 1: quarantine or social distancing yourself from others. Right now, we're
Speaker 1: in a crazy time, but that doesn't mean that we
Speaker 1: can't look forward to what we've got planned being out
Speaker 1: in the Man Mountains in the near future. I got
Speaker 1: a ton of questions I keep asking every week, send
Speaker 1: me your questions, what do you want to know? And
Speaker 1: a lot of them have been focused around spot and
Speaker 1: stock bear hunting and hunting bears in the spring. Now.
Speaker 1: I believe that that question came up so many times
Speaker 1: because there was a common thing people frustrated had difficulty
Speaker 1: finding bears when they're out hunting, and just an overall
Speaker 1: challenge of it and I think that hits home because
Speaker 1: spring bear hunting were spot and stock type bear hunting,
Speaker 1: I believe is one of the more difficult hunts out west,
Speaker 1: especially to be consistent and successful. Now, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of knowledge and time that goes into that consistency, but
Speaker 1: I think once you figure out a few of the basics,
Speaker 1: you can go from frustration to consistent success year after year.
Speaker 1: Bear hunting really comes down to knowing where to look,
Speaker 1: and that involves understanding bears, how to hone in on
Speaker 1: their appropriate food source for the time of year, and
Speaker 1: then just understanding bear habits in general. From there, you
Speaker 1: need to take it a step further and employ the
Speaker 1: right hunting tactics, which might mean a form of sitting
Speaker 1: and glassing, It might be a form of moving through
Speaker 1: cover in logging roads, or it could even involve some
Speaker 1: tactic like calling. It was asked so much and it
Speaker 1: is such an in depth topic and such a challenging
Speaker 1: animal to be successful at hunting consistently. I'm gonna break
Speaker 1: it into two parts. So the first part this week
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about just understanding bears and knowing
Speaker 1: where to look, and then next week we'll jump into
Speaker 1: the actual hunt tactics once you understand how to get
Speaker 1: into the right spots. Before we go there, I want
Speaker 1: to share a story of one of my favorite backcountry
Speaker 1: bear hunts in one of my favorite canyons. Starting out,
Speaker 1: most of my bear hunting experience took place in the
Speaker 1: state of Montana now Montana. You could get a bear
Speaker 1: tag over the counter and it was good for spring
Speaker 1: and fall season. Montana, unlike some other states, it was
Speaker 1: just spotting stock only for bears. So there are a
Speaker 1: few states where you could bait for bears. There's something
Speaker 1: that you could chase bears with dogs, but Montana has
Speaker 1: always pretty much been spotting stock only or no other
Speaker 1: form of bear hunting as far as bait and dogs go.
Speaker 1: I will be honest. My bear hunting success started out
Speaker 1: very rocky. I had a lot of unfilled tags year
Speaker 1: after year. It really just seemed like finding a bear
Speaker 1: was more a thing of luck. But it was something
Speaker 1: that I would do every spring, every fall. I would
Speaker 1: look and and hope that I would find something. Until
Speaker 1: one year during archery season, I happened to spot a
Speaker 1: bear while actually looking for elk, and that's how I
Speaker 1: took my first black bear. Now after that, it really
Speaker 1: got me think, is this something that I could do consistently?
Speaker 1: And it turns out that I found out ways to
Speaker 1: be consistent at finding bears during the spring. One of
Speaker 1: those ways, and one of my favorite things to do,
Speaker 1: was to just actually head into the back country by
Speaker 1: myself and get up into the areas where the bears
Speaker 1: would first start coming out in some of the areas
Speaker 1: in the steep wilderness canyons in the back countries in Montana.
Speaker 1: Part of that was because I found areas there's no
Speaker 1: one else hunting at the time, and it was just
Speaker 1: kind of an exciting place to be that time of year.
Speaker 1: Early April or mid April through May, I could go
Speaker 1: into the wilderness and just start hunting be by myself
Speaker 1: and just really have a great back country hunting experience. Now,
Speaker 1: this story takes place in one of my favorite remote canyons.
Speaker 1: I like it because the time of year, there's a
Speaker 1: few lakes up there, there's some streams that I could
Speaker 1: fish in. The days were pretty warm and nice, and
Speaker 1: I have what seems like thousands and thousands of acres
Speaker 1: to myself. Not that this particular canyon is any better
Speaker 1: than others, it's just I would go there, I'd park
Speaker 1: at the trailhead, I wouldn't see another truck, and I
Speaker 1: could hunt in there for a week and not see
Speaker 1: a single other person. There weren't a lot of bears,
Speaker 1: but there also wasn't a lot of competition, and I
Speaker 1: really felt like it was an area that just was
Speaker 1: under hunted and I just had it to myself. The
Speaker 1: week started out like many others, just long days. I
Speaker 1: feel like in this particular spot, if I hunt for
Speaker 1: five days, I would average seeing five bears in that
Speaker 1: five days. Now, I might see three on the first
Speaker 1: day and then not see any until toward the last day.
Speaker 1: But over the course of the years that I've been
Speaker 1: hunting this particular canyon, it seemed pretty standard to see
Speaker 1: what would amount to a bear a day. I started
Speaker 1: out the hunt high king in and actually on the
Speaker 1: trail in. I was working my way through the timber,
Speaker 1: not really on a trail or anything, but the way
Speaker 1: to get into the canyon, and I ended up spotting
Speaker 1: a really nice brown phase black bear. But I heard something.
Speaker 1: I peeked around the tree and could see the bear,
Speaker 1: but I heard something up higher. I look up, and
Speaker 1: sure enough, here's two little cubs up in the tree,
Speaker 1: and it happened to be a sow with two cubs.
Speaker 1: It was just a really cool encounter, and it got
Speaker 1: me pretty fired up for thinking, Okay, this is gonna
Speaker 1: be a good trip. On the way in, I already
Speaker 1: bumped into a bear. Obviously, it's not a bear that
Speaker 1: I would take one because it's not legal, and two
Speaker 1: you just wouldn't even if it were legal, most I
Speaker 1: wouldn't really see it as ethical. So I just took
Speaker 1: some photos of the bears and thought that was pretty
Speaker 1: sweet encounter and continued on. I ended up getting into
Speaker 1: the basin and it's still pretty early. I was hunting
Speaker 1: toward the beginning of the opener, so there's still a
Speaker 1: lot of snow up high. I ended up encountering quite
Speaker 1: a bit of snow in some of the south faces
Speaker 1: where I was planning on on looking where i'd hunted
Speaker 1: later in the season and they'd been open this time
Speaker 1: of year, they were still snowed in. So I decided
Speaker 1: to just focus on the north faces and kind of
Speaker 1: switch my plan to being on the other side of
Speaker 1: the canyon, glassing into some of the spots that I
Speaker 1: felt like would get some green up where bears would
Speaker 1: be feeding. The first day, I actually, after the encounter
Speaker 1: with a bear on the trail, didn't really see much
Speaker 1: as far as bear sign. I ran into a couple
Speaker 1: of big horn sheep and that was just an awesome,
Speaker 1: awesome experience, And that was just to me the whole
Speaker 1: point of being out in the springtime. It got a
Speaker 1: little bit of the rust out, got me in the outdoors,
Speaker 1: and I encountered so many different animals. Yeah, I'm looking
Speaker 1: for bears, but along the way I had seen at
Speaker 1: this point one day in some big horn rams, elk,
Speaker 1: mule deer, white tails, and already some bears. I decided
Speaker 1: to just go set up a camp in a good
Speaker 1: spot at the top of a ridge above a small
Speaker 1: alpine lake. When down caught some fish that I'd used
Speaker 1: to grill up for some lunch and dinner, and then thought, okay,
Speaker 1: this is great. In the middle of the day, I
Speaker 1: was going to spend some time fishing, maybe catch a
Speaker 1: fish or two, release most of them, keep one for dinner.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have to jump into my mountain house meals.
Speaker 1: So soon. I did bring some seasoning and some little
Speaker 1: butter packs and some other things to fry the fish
Speaker 1: up with and then continue to hunt for bears. And
Speaker 1: that to me was just the whole is still just
Speaker 1: the whole spring bear hunting experience, to just be out
Speaker 1: there in a great time of year. Half the time,
Speaker 1: I pick up a few good sheds, and I'm out
Speaker 1: hunting and looking for bears. It was a pretty slow
Speaker 1: go for most of the week, but a storm started
Speaker 1: to move in and I thought, okay, this, I don't
Speaker 1: know this. About day three or four, I hadn't seen
Speaker 1: a bear that I was looking for. I did spot
Speaker 1: a couple of smaller bears come out for a short
Speaker 1: period of time along some of the avalanche shoots up
Speaker 1: there in this country. You gotta to picture it. It's
Speaker 1: like sheer cliffs on both sides, with a big flowing
Speaker 1: creek in the middle. And as you get higher up
Speaker 1: into the alpine, you're starting to get into snow and
Speaker 1: other stuff. Most the trees, small aspens and other things
Speaker 1: don't really have their leaves yet. It's still pretty cold,
Speaker 1: but there is some grass poking out along the avalanche shoots,
Speaker 1: some some good springs on the on the north faces
Speaker 1: that are getting sun that have melted off, and just
Speaker 1: good grass, water everywhere, lots of waterfalls. So this particular day,
Speaker 1: I decided to go a little bit further back, probably
Speaker 1: about I don't even know, six or seven miles, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe seven or eight miles from the trailhead at this point,
Speaker 1: and I start out early because I want to be
Speaker 1: this one high vantage point where I've seen bears in
Speaker 1: the past, right when the sun starts to come up,
Speaker 1: and then just watch it all day. So my plan
Speaker 1: was to get back there and just kind of pick
Speaker 1: a spot and watch for most of the day. There's
Speaker 1: so many times where I've been just sitting staring at
Speaker 1: the hillside and then all of a sudden, out pops
Speaker 1: a bear or whatever. You know, you just start things
Speaker 1: just start coming alive the longer you sit there, and
Speaker 1: it gets boring for a while. But for the most
Speaker 1: part this day, I was like, all right, it's getting
Speaker 1: close to the end, and I wanna I want to
Speaker 1: just spend the day glassing and looking. So I started
Speaker 1: my way back there. On the way back, it's just
Speaker 1: really kind of a bad weather day, lots of fog,
Speaker 1: lots of rain. I'm quite a ways from my camp,
Speaker 1: but I look up on the hillside and through the fog,
Speaker 1: the clouds clear, and I see this big chocolate colored
Speaker 1: bear up on the slide. Oh shoot, it's maybe a
Speaker 1: mile from where I'm at. So I start working up
Speaker 1: the canyon. Have to cross the stream a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and the streams raging at this point because all the
Speaker 1: water smelting the snow coming off the mountains. So I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to find really safe places that cross, maybe
Speaker 1: some logs that I can cross across. Actually, some of
Speaker 1: those crossings were pretty hairy. To be honest, I don't
Speaker 1: think that now I would really want to do many
Speaker 1: of those crossings again. But I thought to myself, Wow, okay,
Speaker 1: there's a bear up there. We will make it. We'll
Speaker 1: make it work. So I get up to where I
Speaker 1: last saw the bear and it's gone and a lot
Speaker 1: of the mountains now fogged in, so I just sit
Speaker 1: back and wait. I get set up underneath the big
Speaker 1: tree in hopes that it's gonna come back again. I
Speaker 1: can't see anything very well, and then sure enough, the
Speaker 1: clouds lift and the bear comes back out feeding. I
Speaker 1: set up my scope and double check that it looks
Speaker 1: like a good mature boar, make sure that there's no
Speaker 1: cubs around, and just wait and watch it for a
Speaker 1: little bit, just make sure no other bears are there,
Speaker 1: and make sure that it's the exact bear that I want.
Speaker 1: Once I decide that yep, that's a boar, there's no
Speaker 1: cubs around, we're good to go. I load up my rifle,
Speaker 1: I get it set on the pack, I range, I
Speaker 1: set my scope. As the bear gets broadside, I slowly
Speaker 1: squeezed the trigger and I hear the hit report, but
Speaker 1: I couldn't actually see it because the way I was
Speaker 1: laying I was shooting pretty steep uphill, and I lost
Speaker 1: sight of the bear at that point. But now the
Speaker 1: bear wasn't there, so I knew that it sounded like
Speaker 1: a good hit, and I just had to figure out
Speaker 1: a way to cross the stream and get up to
Speaker 1: where the bear should be. After about I would say,
Speaker 1: an hour of figuring out a good spot to cross,
Speaker 1: because at this point I moved pretty high up in
Speaker 1: the water was just like nearly a waterfall going down
Speaker 1: that canyon. It was just ripping, and I just needed
Speaker 1: to find one good safe place to cross. So I
Speaker 1: actually had to go about a half a mile up
Speaker 1: to where it flattened out, cross and then come back
Speaker 1: down and find the spot. At this point, I'm climbing
Speaker 1: up steep cliffs and avalanche shoots that are wet and slippery.
Speaker 1: It just kept raining and raining and raining. I've got
Speaker 1: my rain gear on and I left most of my
Speaker 1: other stuff down at the bottom by where I had
Speaker 1: shot from, just so if I found the bear, I
Speaker 1: could just put it my pack and pack it out
Speaker 1: and then go grab my stuff later. I got to
Speaker 1: the point where I found where the bear was, looked
Speaker 1: down and there he was laying just right below where
Speaker 1: I had shot from, skinned him out, quartered it up,
Speaker 1: put all the meat and game bags, loaded up everything,
Speaker 1: just soaking wet, and worked my way back down to
Speaker 1: camp and back to the trailhead. If you want to
Speaker 1: be a consistently successful bear hunter, you really just have
Speaker 1: to think like a bear. Now, if we're talking about
Speaker 1: other big game species, that might be a little more difficult,
Speaker 1: but for bears, it's pretty easy to know what they're thinking,
Speaker 1: and most of them are all thinking the same thing. Food.
Speaker 1: You have to really understand what drives a bear, and
Speaker 1: that is bulking up for hibernation and then re bulking
Speaker 1: up after hibernation. Bears hyper phage in the fall. So
Speaker 1: what that means is they just constantly feed, they double
Speaker 1: in size, and they just store fat. So then through
Speaker 1: the winter they can essentially hibernate. It's not a true
Speaker 1: hibernation where they're sleeping the whole time, but they aren't
Speaker 1: moving much. They're sleeping. They are using their stored fat
Speaker 1: to get them through the winter, and then in the springtime,
Speaker 1: when food is plentiful again, they come back out and
Speaker 1: rebulk up and continue to feed. That's often why there's
Speaker 1: two seasons in many states, a spring season in a
Speaker 1: fall season. Now, to successfully target bears, you really have
Speaker 1: to understand the food sources that they're targeting and the
Speaker 1: way that a bear thinks and operates. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about what i'll call the dinner bell effect. Really, before
Speaker 1: we even think about what a bear is eating, we
Speaker 1: have to understand how they eat. So a bear's digestive
Speaker 1: system is a little bit different than most other animals.
Speaker 1: Where deer browsers, elker grazers, bears are on divorce. They
Speaker 1: can eat both meat and plant based foods. I will
Speaker 1: say that probably I would guess of a bears diet
Speaker 1: comes from plants, but bears have an extremely inefficient digestive
Speaker 1: system when it comes to breaking down plants. So this
Speaker 1: really makes them animals that are driven to just constantly eat.
Speaker 1: Like bears, majority of the day is spent finding food
Speaker 1: and eating that food, and they want to use as
Speaker 1: little energy as possible. Now, because they're trying to put
Speaker 1: on weight in the most efficient manner, they're gonna find
Speaker 1: things that are the most efficient for gaining weight. So
Speaker 1: they have a very inefficient digestive system, yet they put
Speaker 1: on a lot of weight, and that's just because they're
Speaker 1: constantly eating. But they are very selective eaters. I think
Speaker 1: people think bears will eat anything. Well, bears will eat anything,
Speaker 1: but they will eat the things that give them the
Speaker 1: most energy or calories or whatever they can gain the
Speaker 1: most fat of for without having to move very much
Speaker 1: and in the most efficient way possible. So in the fall,
Speaker 1: bears will pick the berries off the plant one by one.
Speaker 1: That seems like it might take a little bit, but
Speaker 1: they're they're targeting the most nutritious part of the plant.
Speaker 1: In the springtime is the same fresh buds, new grasses
Speaker 1: green up. All that stuff has way more nutrients than
Speaker 1: older plants. So in the springtime, especially early in the spring,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be focusing on the emergence of new plants, buds,
Speaker 1: new growth, because that's where the majority of the nutrients
Speaker 1: of the plant are. And you'll see you can watch
Speaker 1: a black bear feed on a plant and you'll think, oh,
Speaker 1: he's just eating that plant, and when you really zoom
Speaker 1: in and look, he's actually just eating the buds off
Speaker 1: of that plant. He's targeting the most nutritious and optimum
Speaker 1: food sources for where he's at. Now. If I'm gonna
Speaker 1: name a couple of things that I just off the
Speaker 1: top of my head, some of the first foods that
Speaker 1: I tend to see bears hit would be stuff like clover,
Speaker 1: even dan lions seem to be pretty popular with bears.
Speaker 1: Any kind of green grasses along uh snow melts, or
Speaker 1: fresh buds off of willows and other plants. They're really
Speaker 1: just targeting that green growth, that new stuff right out
Speaker 1: of the gate. If we're gonna talk about food sources,
Speaker 1: we really have to break it down on the months
Speaker 1: and then kind of hone in on what the bears
Speaker 1: doing and maybe what food sources are available. So let's
Speaker 1: start in April that you know, mid April might be
Speaker 1: when most bear seasons across the West open up. Bears
Speaker 1: are just starting to come out of hibernation. Now a
Speaker 1: lot of bears will go den up at higher elevation,
Speaker 1: so they move up high in canyons. They necessarily won't
Speaker 1: be in caves or something like that, as most people think,
Speaker 1: but a lot of times they just kind of lay
Speaker 1: by a log or whatever, let the snow cover them,
Speaker 1: and they call that a den. Some find other forms,
Speaker 1: maybe in crevices of rocks or behind a big rock.
Speaker 1: I've seen bear den's just on a ledge underneath a
Speaker 1: big line that's growing. Just places where bears are going
Speaker 1: to be secure from other predators and even other bears,
Speaker 1: especially the females, will find try to go to places
Speaker 1: that seems safe from maybe boars digging up their young
Speaker 1: in the springtime. But for the most part, they're gonna
Speaker 1: be in an area that's completely covered in snow. They're
Speaker 1: gonna merge from their dens, and they're gonna be seeking
Speaker 1: food sources. So what they want is they want food
Speaker 1: that's close, nutritious, and nearby. Early in the bear season,
Speaker 1: especially the spring season, I'm looking for places that have
Speaker 1: a lot of green up a lot of nutrients close by,
Speaker 1: but also provide shelter. When you think about spotting for bears,
Speaker 1: bears it's very difficult to find because they aren't like
Speaker 1: deer and elk. They don't herd up. They're very solitary
Speaker 1: and nature. They're an elusive animal because they're fairly low
Speaker 1: to the ground. If you think about by mid spring,
Speaker 1: the height of the grass, it would cover up where
Speaker 1: most bears stand. You're looking for a single animal in
Speaker 1: a large area that is heavily timbered, and the grass
Speaker 1: or cover around them is taller than them. It's not
Speaker 1: that there's not a lot of bears where you're looking.
Speaker 1: The reason you don't see bears is because they're hard
Speaker 1: to spot. They're elusive, they're solitary, and much of the
Speaker 1: places that they inhabit have a lot of cover. So
Speaker 1: in order to effectively hunt bears via spot in stock,
Speaker 1: you know, not by baiting, not by using dogs. You
Speaker 1: have to hone in on those places where they provide
Speaker 1: a weakness where it gives you a little bit of
Speaker 1: an advantage, and that is finding places where they're going
Speaker 1: to be out in the open feeding and honing in
Speaker 1: on those food sources where you're most likely to run
Speaker 1: into a bear or spot a bear active where you
Speaker 1: could actually visually see them, so early in the spring,
Speaker 1: I'm going to focus on things like avalanche shoots. Now,
Speaker 1: avalanche shoots are great because the rocks and if you
Speaker 1: get a north facing slope, it's gonna burn off on
Speaker 1: the edge of the snow as the snow starts to recede.
Speaker 1: It's generally near areas with thick cover, but it's open,
Speaker 1: and that open provides sunlight for new growth, and new
Speaker 1: grasses will grow at the bottoms of those near water seeps.
Speaker 1: There should be plenty of water this time of year.
Speaker 1: As the snow line recedes, you're gonna start getting green
Speaker 1: up right along that edge of the snow. And those
Speaker 1: avalanche shoots have cleared out patches of thick country that
Speaker 1: now is visible. So when you're sitting there glassing and spotting,
Speaker 1: you have a spot where it's likely that you'll see
Speaker 1: a bear because it's open enough that it doesn't obscure
Speaker 1: the bear, and it has a great nutrient food source nearby. Now,
Speaker 1: outside of avalanche shoots, anything like steep hillsides, meadows, high country,
Speaker 1: alpine basins, stuff where you don't have as much cover
Speaker 1: and the cover hasn't really started to spring up early.
Speaker 1: That's a great spot to start looking now. As the
Speaker 1: season progresses, food sources and the areas that you're looking
Speaker 1: at are going to start to change. Once they've emerged
Speaker 1: from their dens, it's not going to be long before
Speaker 1: they start making their way to different areas, probably more
Speaker 1: cover where they can remain hidden, remain out of sight,
Speaker 1: but also close to food. So they're gonna be moving
Speaker 1: into more pine forest regions, but there's still gonna need
Speaker 1: that nutrient grass. So we're going from early to mid
Speaker 1: April to now late April mid May. I feel like
Speaker 1: bears at this time, although they will still be up high,
Speaker 1: and that can be a great place to target bears
Speaker 1: because you might find a little bit more open, have
Speaker 1: more visibility of some meadows and some parks and some
Speaker 1: other things. As it gets later on, you're gonna start
Speaker 1: finding bears in that mid or lower elevation, and I
Speaker 1: start focusing toward other food sources. What's really starting to
Speaker 1: spring up now now you're starting to get more grasses
Speaker 1: and clover in the conifers or in open areas. A
Speaker 1: lot of that will be logging roads where a part
Speaker 1: of the timber has been logged, or even just logging
Speaker 1: areas where it's clear it's in the middle of the trees,
Speaker 1: but most of the new growth. The snow started to melt,
Speaker 1: and you're getting a lot of new growth and a
Speaker 1: lot of clover, a lot of dandelion, a lot of
Speaker 1: other high protein grasses in those areas in a concentration.
Speaker 1: That's a magnet to bears. Now, as we move on
Speaker 1: later in the spring, bears tend to first start on
Speaker 1: finding different plants to eat, you know, high nutrient plants.
Speaker 1: But what's another thing that happens in the spring deer
Speaker 1: fawning and elk caving and later on and say like
Speaker 1: late May to early June. I really like to focus
Speaker 1: on elk calving areas. If there's elk ground, if it's
Speaker 1: not an elk area, then deer fawning areas, places that
Speaker 1: deer feel secure. But that provides an ease, a super
Speaker 1: easy snack and meal for a bear. It's nothing for
Speaker 1: a bear to use. It's excellent sense of smell to
Speaker 1: find calves and fawns. They're pretty defenseless. They're generally in
Speaker 1: a concentrated area and they put off a pretty good
Speaker 1: scent that is easy for the bears to find those areas.
Speaker 1: So if i have areas that I'm glassing and I'm
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of elk, and now those same areas
Speaker 1: will also probably be more open meadows with good feed
Speaker 1: close to where they have some kind of cover and
Speaker 1: security and water nearby everything a bear needs in one location.
Speaker 1: I'll often glass those because you might catch a bear
Speaker 1: that's coming out to eat some more late spring crops,
Speaker 1: like even balsam root is a good one that time
Speaker 1: of year, or it depends on where in the country
Speaker 1: you are, but there's a lot of different plants, different
Speaker 1: kind of sun chokes, different kind of flowers that come
Speaker 1: out that bears will focus in on. And then you
Speaker 1: also have the option of looking into elk calving and
Speaker 1: deer fawning areas. Now as a as a big game hunter,
Speaker 1: I also like hunting bears and predators in those kind
Speaker 1: of areas because you can kind of help protect some
Speaker 1: of the fawns and next year's crop of elk and
Speaker 1: deer by hunting predators in those areas where they're fawning,
Speaker 1: because that's where most undulants get hit The hardest is
Speaker 1: in that late early spring when the fawns and calfs
Speaker 1: don't have as much natural defense. But if we're focusing
Speaker 1: on bears, that's an excellent food source to focus in on.
Speaker 1: When I think about finding bear spots, I like to
Speaker 1: think of it as as the snow decreases, I start
Speaker 1: trying to find spots where the foliage is the lowest
Speaker 1: and I have the best of you at the optimal
Speaker 1: time of growth. So I I generally start high and
Speaker 1: follow the bears down. So I'll start my season high,
Speaker 1: looking at high open meadows, high parks, and then as
Speaker 1: the season progresses, all kind of change that same philosophy
Speaker 1: to lower open areas, mid mountain open areas, while still
Speaker 1: paying attention to some of that high stuff. But as
Speaker 1: the snow starts to go away, the bears are gonna
Speaker 1: start leaving those areas, and they might even still be there,
Speaker 1: but the grasses begin to get too tall to where
Speaker 1: I can't spot the bears. So I go to more
Speaker 1: open meadow areas on the edge of thick cover or
Speaker 1: elk calving areas, and just start following the food source
Speaker 1: as the season progresses. Now that we've talked about food.
Speaker 1: I think one of the main overlooked things about bear
Speaker 1: hunting is their pattern ability. A lot of people don't
Speaker 1: really understand a bear's pattern And I say that because
Speaker 1: it's one of the most easily exploitable facets to to
Speaker 1: spot and stock bear hunting, but because it's on such
Speaker 1: a large scale, we don't really hone in on it
Speaker 1: like I think other hunters do. If you're if you're
Speaker 1: a white tail hunter, you'll really understand this this concept
Speaker 1: because white tail hunters. White tails just have a smaller
Speaker 1: home range than bears, but bears have a very predictable
Speaker 1: and patternable nature. Now, I've been too places um in
Speaker 1: in southeast Alaska, even in Montana and and in Nevada
Speaker 1: and California where you'll see what we call a bear trail.
Speaker 1: One of the craziest bear trails I've ever seen was
Speaker 1: actually from brown bears in Kodiak, where the bears actually,
Speaker 1: year after year walk the same path and over years,
Speaker 1: bear generations of bears have been walking these same trails.
Speaker 1: He's seen passed and they're putting their feet in the
Speaker 1: exact same places year after year. One particular one on Kodiak.
Speaker 1: It's in the granite you can actually it's worn down
Speaker 1: bear tracks on this granite ridge that I I saw.
Speaker 1: But I've seen these bear trails other places where year
Speaker 1: after year, bears are are walking the same route the
Speaker 1: same way, pretty much, putting their feet in the same spots,
Speaker 1: and other bears tend to follow suit. Now that's not
Speaker 1: to say that if you sit on that particular bear
Speaker 1: trail you're going to see a bear, because who knows
Speaker 1: when they're using those trails or what they're using them for,
Speaker 1: But many of them will follow some sort of pattern
Speaker 1: every year. There's one particular canyon that I hunted in
Speaker 1: and I spotted this bear that was pretty identifiable, just
Speaker 1: a It was a young boar. He had like this
Speaker 1: weird split ripped year and just kind of a weird
Speaker 1: marking on his neck as well, and I just noticed
Speaker 1: and we passed him up. This was on the Saturday
Speaker 1: of Memorial Weekend. The following year, I went up there
Speaker 1: the Saturday of Memorial Weekend whatever. It maybe a different date,
Speaker 1: but pretty much around the same exact time. At three
Speaker 1: thirty in the afternoon, I looked up in the same
Speaker 1: hillside and saw that same bear. Okay, that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: The following year, I went back the same day, uh,
Speaker 1: not the calendar day, but the same Saturday of Memorial
Speaker 1: weekend whatever, the same time of day, mid day that
Speaker 1: morning I glassed that spot. That evening I glassed that spot,
Speaker 1: but midday on that particular day, that bear was out
Speaker 1: feeding at three o'clock in the afternoon. Three years in
Speaker 1: a row. Now, not all bears will be exactly that patternable,
Speaker 1: but it just really went to prove how predictable bears
Speaker 1: can be. When you find a spot where you're seeing
Speaker 1: bears a certain time of year, key into that. Now,
Speaker 1: some of it might be seeing a Memorial Days a
Speaker 1: little bit later in the season, So maybe it has
Speaker 1: more to do with the way the snow is melted
Speaker 1: and why it's in that area. And it happened to
Speaker 1: be three similar years. But if you're in a certain
Speaker 1: spot one year with a certain amount of snow and
Speaker 1: you start seeing bears, make a note of that and
Speaker 1: go back and hunt those same areas year after year,
Speaker 1: because the bears are gonna do quite a bit of
Speaker 1: the same thing. They're denning in the same canyons. Maybe
Speaker 1: not exactly the same den but they're they're following the
Speaker 1: same patterns year after years, some of them following the
Speaker 1: same trails year after year in generation after generation. Because
Speaker 1: of a bear secretive nature, the way that they live,
Speaker 1: and how difficult they can be to spot. The real
Speaker 1: question comes into how long do I stay in an
Speaker 1: area and how do I know that a bear is there?
Speaker 1: That is one of the hardest questions to answer. So
Speaker 1: outside of seeing a bear, instead of when I go
Speaker 1: into a new area, I like to look for bear
Speaker 1: sign as opposed to just looking for bears. It's a
Speaker 1: lot easier to find the sign of bears in many
Speaker 1: instances than it is to actually find a bear. So
Speaker 1: if I go to a spot and I glass it
Speaker 1: and it looks like it's got everything. I'm up in
Speaker 1: a high alpine base and I sat there glassing. I've
Speaker 1: sat there for a day and didn't really see anything.
Speaker 1: I think to myself, Okay, is this an area bears
Speaker 1: are using. If I if I look at the mountain
Speaker 1: and realize there's a lot of cover on this mountain,
Speaker 1: it's I can see ten percent of it. I've got
Speaker 1: ten percent of the mountain that I can actually see
Speaker 1: in the nine of it is in in cover of
Speaker 1: some kind where it would be very difficult to spot
Speaker 1: a bear. What portion of my time should I spend there?
Speaker 1: But it looks like great country, So I'll go to
Speaker 1: those open areas where I can and seat, and around
Speaker 1: those areas where they should be feeding, where those food
Speaker 1: sources are concentrated, and I'll look for sign mostly droppings. Also,
Speaker 1: I'll look for bear trails or tracks, especially if there's snow.
Speaker 1: If I can even glass and see maybe some tracks
Speaker 1: going across the snow, I'll go up, investigate and see
Speaker 1: if those are bear tracks. And then I also look
Speaker 1: for scrapings and other markings, and then I use that
Speaker 1: information in a way similar that white tail hunters would
Speaker 1: when planning a way to set up a tree stand.
Speaker 1: It's just on a much larger scale and at a
Speaker 1: in a different distance. If I find a scrape or
Speaker 1: a marking, that's marking its territory. Bears are extremely territorial,
Speaker 1: and as they go into that later into the spring.
Speaker 1: Many states, their seasons go into June. That's when bears
Speaker 1: start to rut. The boars are extremely territorial. They keep
Speaker 1: cruising and checking marking posts. There's many times where I've
Speaker 1: found maybe uh, scraped up tree and some bear hair,
Speaker 1: and then I go, Okay, as it gets closer towards
Speaker 1: the running period, I'm going to get back into this
Speaker 1: area in glass because there's probably multiple bears that will
Speaker 1: check this area. And you know, I'll sit on areas
Speaker 1: and and watch areas where I see a lot of droppings. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe that those bears are using that area at night.
Speaker 1: But as the moon's change and things change with weather
Speaker 1: or whatever, you'll know, Okay, a bear is for sure
Speaker 1: using this area. Now I just have to sit and wait,
Speaker 1: much like a white tail hunter would on a on
Speaker 1: a deer trail or whatever, and know that your time's
Speaker 1: well spent because there's bears in that area. One thing
Speaker 1: that I I've started to think about using more and
Speaker 1: more is something like a trail camera, where I know,
Speaker 1: if it's legal in your state, where you see bear sign,
Speaker 1: put up a camera and see and try to understand
Speaker 1: its patterns. For a long time, I was fairly against
Speaker 1: the use of trail cameras to kind of aid in hunting,
Speaker 1: only because I just kind of felt personally it just
Speaker 1: seemed a little unethical. But I've used them for fun
Speaker 1: in the past. And the amount that I've learned about
Speaker 1: the different species I've used them on is just incredible.
Speaker 1: One thing in particular comes to mind when I'm thinking
Speaker 1: about bears, and it was just an accidental discovery an
Speaker 1: area that I hunted elk a lot, there was a wallow.
Speaker 1: I just put up a trail cam to see what
Speaker 1: kind of activity was in the area, and I ended
Speaker 1: up leaving the trail cam there pretty much year round,
Speaker 1: just to kind of see what was moving through. You know.
Speaker 1: I got some cool stuff with wolves in the winter
Speaker 1: walking through, and some deer and some milk and some moose.
Speaker 1: But the craziest discovery was as it got hot, bears
Speaker 1: were constantly using this wallow. Now I may be seen
Speaker 1: a little bit of bear sign in that area, I've
Speaker 1: never actually laid eyes on a bear, but through the
Speaker 1: course of the pictures, I discovered that there was over
Speaker 1: six different bears using this one small wallow in this
Speaker 1: one canyon. And that really opened my eyes up to
Speaker 1: how many bears are actually in most of these places
Speaker 1: that you never see so exploiting something like a food
Speaker 1: source that they're using, a trail that they're using, a
Speaker 1: rubbing area that they're using and just understanding when and
Speaker 1: where they're going through there. You can kind of take
Speaker 1: some white tail tactics and just put it in a
Speaker 1: large spot in stock frame, if that makes sense. So
Speaker 1: you've got a pattern ability of a bear, and now
Speaker 1: most of the patterns evolve around a food source. So
Speaker 1: you find the food source, you find sign of the bear,
Speaker 1: and then you hunt that area and try to exploit
Speaker 1: and find the pattern that the bear is using and
Speaker 1: use that knowledge to intersect his path. Now you can
Speaker 1: also have multiple areas where you're finding sign, where you're
Speaker 1: finding good food sources and maybe some other a good
Speaker 1: vantage where you have clear openings near thick cover that
Speaker 1: the bear will likely live in, and you can go
Speaker 1: from area to area and then once you figure out
Speaker 1: which one is the best spot for you to be at,
Speaker 1: you position yourself in that spot and then the waiting
Speaker 1: game comes in. You you glass all day, you glass
Speaker 1: evenings and mornings, whatever you decide to do, and try
Speaker 1: to figure out when that bear is coming out and
Speaker 1: intersect your path with where the bears are based on
Speaker 1: your knowledge of food sources and their patterns in the area. Now,
Speaker 1: I hope that that gave you an understanding a little
Speaker 1: bit of focusing on the type of areas where bears
Speaker 1: are going to be, and it really does all revolve
Speaker 1: around food sources and then pattern ability. So next week,
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do is we're gonna take it a
Speaker 1: step further. We're gonna put that knowledge into action in
Speaker 1: hunting application and how to exploit it with hunting tactics.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna talk about glassing and how I would
Speaker 1: set up in a canyon if if I think that
Speaker 1: I've found the spot where they're feeding and have those
Speaker 1: patterns recognized. I'm going to talk about a moving hunting
Speaker 1: bear tactic, which is pretty much walking logging roads, and
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the ways that I kind
Speaker 1: of figure out when the bears are go going in
Speaker 1: which roads to walk and and what times a day
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. And then another tactic
Speaker 1: that I've used a lot in both spring and fall
Speaker 1: is calling for bears. So we're gonna cover all that
Speaker 1: next week, and I think that that will really kind
Speaker 1: of give you the necessary tools to take where do
Speaker 1: I look and then how do I hunt and make
Speaker 1: you more successful. I want to quickly before we get
Speaker 1: out of here, answer a question. I'm gonna pull it
Speaker 1: up right now. This one. You know, last week we
Speaker 1: talked about backcountry food and so um I got a
Speaker 1: question here through Instagram from Jesse right. He says loved
Speaker 1: the food back country pod last week, and this question
Speaker 1: is how are you cooking with your the jet boil
Speaker 1: in the back country? You said you fry up meat
Speaker 1: sometimes with oils. Are you packing a pan with you?
Speaker 1: That's a great question. So my standard stove system, I've
Speaker 1: used jet boils. I also really like the msr um reactor.
Speaker 1: It's pretty much just like a jet boil. It's just
Speaker 1: a little bit faster boiling, and I kind of like
Speaker 1: that one a little bit better. But yeah, so I
Speaker 1: do a couple of different things. It depends on how
Speaker 1: far I'm going whether I pack a pan or not.
Speaker 1: It is nice to have a pan, especially um, well,
Speaker 1: if we're talking about spring hunting, I like to bring
Speaker 1: a pan just to fry some fish in. Um, it's
Speaker 1: worth it to maybe just bring a little bit larger
Speaker 1: pot that I could fry stuff in or boil water
Speaker 1: in and just use that one pot. Sometimes I'll just
Speaker 1: bring a really lightweight, small fry pan, or I will
Speaker 1: just cook it right in my jet boiled cup or whatever.
Speaker 1: I've done that many times. I'll use that coconut those
Speaker 1: coconut oil single serve packs, I'll just put it in
Speaker 1: the jet boil cup. The key is they just try
Speaker 1: to turn it down as low as possible and fry
Speaker 1: it up that way. Now, another way to do it
Speaker 1: is use your jet boil and I build like a rock.
Speaker 1: I set like four rocks around the jet boil a
Speaker 1: few inches above the flame, and then whatever pan I bring,
Speaker 1: I set that on top. One thing you should know,
Speaker 1: if you just took like a fry pan, just a
Speaker 1: random fry pan, and you set it on the top
Speaker 1: of your jet boil to fry your food, it will
Speaker 1: actually catch your jet boil on fire and melt all
Speaker 1: the plastic. I know that because I've done it. It's
Speaker 1: just they have like the jet boil cups or even
Speaker 1: the MSR reactor ones that has to have a special
Speaker 1: gap built into the cup. Now, they make some fry
Speaker 1: pans that you could use, but I just feel like
Speaker 1: there's some lighter weight ones that you can take in
Speaker 1: smaller that you can just get on your own outside
Speaker 1: of the ones that they sell. But to use them correctly.
Speaker 1: I actually stack rocks around the jet boil and then
Speaker 1: use that to prop the pan above my flame, And
Speaker 1: that also helps me control the heat because some of
Speaker 1: those you can't turn down that low to fry stuff.
Speaker 1: It ends up just searing and burning the outside, but
Speaker 1: leaving the meat inside fairly raw or rare. UM. So
Speaker 1: if you want to get it like cooked better, I'll
Speaker 1: just add some oil, build up rocks and then put
Speaker 1: a light pan on it. If I'm not going crazy far,
Speaker 1: that little extra weight is just a creature comfort. If
Speaker 1: I am going a little bit deeper, you know, you
Speaker 1: can you could think about getting a bigger pot, like
Speaker 1: a wider pot that's more that also boils water, but
Speaker 1: has a little bit more room for frying up some
Speaker 1: meat and other things. And then you know, you just
Speaker 1: kind of sometimes have to deal with the water a
Speaker 1: little bit tainted flavor water the next time you cook,
Speaker 1: but it's not too bad. So that's that's what I
Speaker 1: do with that. I appreciate you guys listening in, and
Speaker 1: I'm excited to answer all these questions everybody has on
Speaker 1: bear hunting. UM. I hope that between this podcast the
Speaker 1: next week's you really gain a better picture and some
Speaker 1: insight and make it not so frustrating, But just have
Speaker 1: an idea of is what what you're doing gonna work
Speaker 1: and be successful because bear hunting can be long. It
Speaker 1: can be long days, a lot of glassing and not
Speaker 1: seeing a lot in that spot in stock method, depending
Speaker 1: on the type area you're in. So I think just
Speaker 1: understanding that you're doing the right thing is half the
Speaker 1: battle of keeping that persistence and then keeping you successful.
Speaker 1: So until next week, Uh, stay quarantined. You know social
Speaker 1: distance and uh, well, what what are we gonna do.
Speaker 1: We're gonna this is closing the distance. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: open the distance. We're opening the distance. Yeah, have a
Speaker 1: great week and open the distance. See you