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Speaker 1: outrageously Dependable. My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host
Speaker 1: of the Bear Hunting Magazine Podcast. I'll also be your
Speaker 1: host into the world of hunting, the icon of North
Speaker 1: American wilderness and bear. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation.
Speaker 1: Will also bring you into some of the wildest country
Speaker 1: on the planet. Chasing bar. Welcome to the Bear Hunting
Speaker 1: Magazine Podcast. It's October the first, and if you hear
Speaker 1: the hum of a Silverado Motors Altra entires, it's because
Speaker 1: I'm recording this podcast alone in my truck. I'm headed
Speaker 1: to Southeast Oklahoma today. Is uh Is it almost a
Speaker 1: sacred day for me? October one has been the Oklahoma
Speaker 1: opener for several years now, and I look forward to
Speaker 1: it as much as any date on the calendar. I
Speaker 1: truly do so. I'm I'm heading to the red Neck Blind.
Speaker 1: Some of you may have been watching the watching the
Speaker 1: Bare Hunting Magazine YouTube channel and seeing our vlogs. But
Speaker 1: back in August, we put up a red neck blind
Speaker 1: in southeast Oklahoma on private land. We can bait bears
Speaker 1: on private land and in Oklahoma in four different counties.
Speaker 1: And I put up this red neck blind on a
Speaker 1: any on a proven property. And now it wasn't new
Speaker 1: actual bait side. I'd never baited in that particular spot,
Speaker 1: but I had baited bears within let's say five yards
Speaker 1: of there, so it was close enough that we knew
Speaker 1: that it would be inconsequential in terms of drawing in bears.
Speaker 1: But it was a new bait site. Put up a
Speaker 1: redneckline because because there this site had this place had
Speaker 1: proven to hold big bears year in and year out.
Speaker 1: There were usually some really big, over mature mail bears
Speaker 1: that would be that would be utilizing the bait. But
Speaker 1: they're always super hard to kill. And usually what happens
Speaker 1: is if they are coming in in the daytime when
Speaker 1: the season rolls around, they just know the system and
Speaker 1: they know to scent check these baits and and and
Speaker 1: basically they'll get down on wind of debait. They'll smell
Speaker 1: a human in there and they won't come in and
Speaker 1: you won't kill them. There's you know, as a white
Speaker 1: tail hunter, sometimes you think, well, why don't you just
Speaker 1: get the wind right? Well, this really is a unique
Speaker 1: situation and you're and you're dealing with an animal that
Speaker 1: I don't want to say the reason more than a
Speaker 1: white tail deer because I don't know that an animal
Speaker 1: really reasons. But you're not dealing with a white tail deer.
Speaker 1: You're dealing with an animal that's coming to a specific spot.
Speaker 1: You're dealing with an animal that knows there's a human involved.
Speaker 1: Like when we come in and bait, we're not trying
Speaker 1: to hide our human presence on this particular bait. We
Speaker 1: drive right up to the bait, we get out, we're sweating,
Speaker 1: we're handling the food that we're feeding these bears. So
Speaker 1: these bears know that there's a human involved. They know it,
Speaker 1: and so the trick is is too on the day
Speaker 1: you hunt, convince them that there is no human there.
Speaker 1: And from a tree stand, that's pretty hard because these
Speaker 1: big bears, they know the city, them their scent, checking
Speaker 1: these baits, and in the mountains of southeast Oklahoma and
Speaker 1: the mountains of Arkansas. I have yet to hunt a
Speaker 1: mountain area where the winds weren't variable. I mean, if
Speaker 1: the wind is predominantly out of the southwest and you've
Speaker 1: got your stand set up accordingly to blow your scent
Speaker 1: away from the bait, well that's just the direction the
Speaker 1: bears come from. They they really play the wind. Well,
Speaker 1: so this red Neck blind, it's a big one. It's
Speaker 1: the Buck Palace. It's been up for two months. The
Speaker 1: bears don't mind it. The bears have not torn it up.
Speaker 1: The bears have climbed up the ladder and they've messed
Speaker 1: with it, but they have not hurt the blind in
Speaker 1: any way, which was a big question going into this
Speaker 1: this hunt, because what the bears just shredded. Bears are
Speaker 1: notorious for shredding anything that is a patrolling based product,
Speaker 1: like a blind that has a rubber on it. If
Speaker 1: you if you left a uh four wheeler set out
Speaker 1: at that bait site, even though they know it's not food,
Speaker 1: there's no calip caloric value inside that seat, they would
Speaker 1: just shred it. And we were uncertain of how they
Speaker 1: would respond to it. But they have not bothered it
Speaker 1: in the least. Now, granted we have not used the blind.
Speaker 1: There's there's no human sent in there, there's no food
Speaker 1: sent in there, there's nothing. We've just been in there
Speaker 1: a very little time. So today I will be entering
Speaker 1: the Redneck blind, and like the ARC, I'm gonna shut
Speaker 1: the door and the hunt will be on. But the
Speaker 1: reason for the Redneck is for scent containment. The Redneck
Speaker 1: is not one hundred percent sent free because it it's
Speaker 1: not an airtight box. I mean, you've got to breathe
Speaker 1: inside of there. But I do believe that it reduces
Speaker 1: your scent dramatically, dramatically. All the windows on that blind
Speaker 1: are sealed with rubber gaskets. There is one small air
Speaker 1: filter hole in the blind that's designed let it air
Speaker 1: in and out. Uh. But I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: it's gonna be enough two to alarm the bears. And
Speaker 1: you remember this bait site already. These bears, no, I mean,
Speaker 1: these big old mature males. I mean they know the system,
Speaker 1: they know those are human involved. They just want to
Speaker 1: come in there when that human scent is dissipated enough
Speaker 1: that they think that we're nowhere to be found. So
Speaker 1: it I'm running a little bit late. It's currently about noon.
Speaker 1: These bears are typically not coming in until the last
Speaker 1: hour of daylight. And we're on a once in a
Speaker 1: decade pattern right out with these bears in Oklahoma. We've
Speaker 1: been hunting this property since so let's see, we hunted
Speaker 1: it fifteen sixteen, seventeen eighteen, so this is the fourth
Speaker 1: year that we've hunted it and the first year that
Speaker 1: we hunted it. These two bears that are coming in
Speaker 1: right now were there. We call them yellow Tag and Batman.
Speaker 1: Yellow Tag was a big, big bear with two yellow
Speaker 1: air tags. And the other bear his ears curled out
Speaker 1: in a unique way and he looked like Batman. To
Speaker 1: meat called him Batman. Both these bears big males. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna tell you what I think they weigh and
Speaker 1: felt just a little bit later, But that first year
Speaker 1: we baited it was almost like the honeymoon phase of
Speaker 1: this property. And the bears didn't They just kind of
Speaker 1: felt like they found a bird nest on the ground
Speaker 1: when they found our bait, and they treated it very,
Speaker 1: very haphazardly. And any way, I actually let a friend
Speaker 1: hunted that year and he he he wounded the Batman
Speaker 1: bear to what I believe was batman bear shot him
Speaker 1: lowing the brisket. The animal did not die, it was
Speaker 1: just a flesh wound and he missed. Yellow Tag. Yep,
Speaker 1: veteran bow hunter guy, have a ton of respect for
Speaker 1: had never hunted bears, and both of these bears came
Speaker 1: in the first day we ever hunted the property, and
Speaker 1: at the time they were probably three fifty two four
Speaker 1: hundred and over a little over four hundred, you know,
Speaker 1: both these bears. Well, these bears have become like characters
Speaker 1: at this bait side, and that's the cool thing about hunting,
Speaker 1: these hunting bears over bait cameras out and bears are
Speaker 1: quite distinguishable by many many things, coloration, muzzle color, body shape, um,
Speaker 1: white patches on their chests, just their different features, just
Speaker 1: like humans, they just all are a little bit different.
Speaker 1: And so these bears have become mainstays at the spait.
Speaker 1: But since that time, these bears have been unkillable, absolutely unkillable.
Speaker 1: Nothing we've done has allowed us to to slip their radar.
Speaker 1: Last year, my good buddy James Lawrence, I did not
Speaker 1: hunt Oblama last year. Last year James hunted it and
Speaker 1: he had Yellow Tag come in on the first day
Speaker 1: that he hunted and the yellow tag smelled him and left.
Speaker 1: So these bears are smart. But it is today's October one,
Speaker 1: and as of yesterday, these bears were still pounding this bait.
Speaker 1: These bears ate roughly three pounds of bread in the
Speaker 1: last two days. They've eaten a tremendous amount of food.
Speaker 1: So they're really they're really doing what you want them
Speaker 1: to do, which usually right now they're starting to fade
Speaker 1: off the baits when we start bating in early September,
Speaker 1: these baits are these bears are coming out of a
Speaker 1: stress period, which is the late summer when it's hot.
Speaker 1: Bearris are dried up. It's a it's actually a stress period,
Speaker 1: just like for white tails, and these bears will almost
Speaker 1: need anything. A bear will be coming to bay. He'll
Speaker 1: be there during the daytime. He'll be sleeping in front
Speaker 1: of your barrel. And all these guys are sending me
Speaker 1: pictures saying, man, I got a huge bear, What tax
Speaker 1: german should I use? You know? And I I myself
Speaker 1: have fallen for that trap before, is that man? Just
Speaker 1: because you've got that bear coming in like crazy, even
Speaker 1: in mid September, it doesn't mean a thing. I'll tell you,
Speaker 1: the only thing that counts in baiting bears in Arkansas
Speaker 1: and Oklahoma is when you've got a bear in front
Speaker 1: of you the day season opens. Because in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: well you know what we bought that we've we've been uh,
Speaker 1: we've been bathing that property since fourteen because in Batman
Speaker 1: and Yellow Tag we're coming in and two days before
Speaker 1: season they left famished, never to be seen again. At
Speaker 1: that bait, I ended up taking a lesser bear that
Speaker 1: was I believe a hundred pounds lighter than Yellow Tag
Speaker 1: or Batman. So I actually harvested the bear that was
Speaker 1: the lesser of those two. He weighed three d sixty
Speaker 1: pounds and had a skull score of twenty and eight sixteenths,
Speaker 1: which made him qualify for the Boone and crock At
Speaker 1: All Time awards. I mean a Boone and crock At bear.
Speaker 1: So my biggest bear today has come from southeast Oklahoma
Speaker 1: right here. And the bear, the biggest bear I've ever killed,
Speaker 1: skull size is smaller than these two bears that I'm
Speaker 1: on today. I want to back up, though, because I
Speaker 1: got my dates wrong. My buddy at wounded Batman and
Speaker 1: missed Yellow Tag that would have been. So we've now
Speaker 1: been hunting the space for five years. So these two
Speaker 1: bears are still here. And bears have a much longer
Speaker 1: lifespan than a white tail. These bears can live twenty
Speaker 1: five years. They really can't, and I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know how old these bears are, but there, they're mature animals.
Speaker 1: They've been around because they were big and mature five
Speaker 1: years ago. So this is a tremendous I mean, my
Speaker 1: my emotions almost don't really even know how to respond
Speaker 1: to a day like today. Um, it's it's so exciting
Speaker 1: to me. But at the same time, I don't want
Speaker 1: to get my hopes up too much because these bears
Speaker 1: have given us a slip so many times. But today
Speaker 1: is a great day. And man, I'm just grateful, absolutely
Speaker 1: grateful that we can hunt bears in Oklahoma, that we've
Speaker 1: got bears over there, and that I get to hunt
Speaker 1: them as nonresident So for that I am. I am
Speaker 1: truly grateful. So yesterday I was personally not able to
Speaker 1: go over and bait. I wanted to go over there
Speaker 1: and bait and check the cameras and really know exactly
Speaker 1: what was going on. I wasn't able to do that
Speaker 1: because I'll tell you why. Because we were tracking a
Speaker 1: bear in Arkansas, and I want to tell you a
Speaker 1: heartbreaking story and I just hit the high points. But
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, we gained access to a landlocked piece of
Speaker 1: property that have basically has no roads to it. The
Speaker 1: property has an old trail to it, but there's no
Speaker 1: way to drive a four wheeler. There's no way to
Speaker 1: drive a car now, so there's no roast of this property.
Speaker 1: And it's surrounded by national forests, so you can't drive
Speaker 1: a four wheeler to it. And we have been using
Speaker 1: our rules to pack in bait, gained access. It's about
Speaker 1: an our mule ride, our walk back in to this area,
Speaker 1: and for whatever reason, I just had in my mind
Speaker 1: that that's where I wanted to take my fifteen year
Speaker 1: old daughter River this year. River is River kills a bear.
Speaker 1: Two years ago Rivers killed the buck with her boat.
Speaker 1: The river is really an outdoors won't she truly is?
Speaker 1: She really loves hunting. She gets it. She's tough, there
Speaker 1: is and I mean this, she is tough. There's if
Speaker 1: I were going on like a you know, a five
Speaker 1: mile backpack trip to do something like really hard, I
Speaker 1: can't think of anybody else I'd rather take with me,
Speaker 1: just in terms of bringing someone that wouldn't complain, that
Speaker 1: wouldn't want to go home, that wouldn't get bored. I mean,
Speaker 1: like she's she's a real deal and she loves bear hunting. Anyway,
Speaker 1: about ten days before seasons when we gained access to
Speaker 1: this property, which was pretty late, and we started baiting
Speaker 1: the property. We took two mules in there, and we've
Speaker 1: never been up to the property before. It's been a
Speaker 1: long time since we've been there. I had I was
Speaker 1: there once when I was younger. We get to the property,
Speaker 1: we bade bears to put up our camera. The way down,
Speaker 1: I've got two mules. We've got one riding saddle on Izzie,
Speaker 1: my easie mule, and the river was pretty tired, and
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, you want to ride the mule
Speaker 1: down and I'll lead the other one. Because the other
Speaker 1: one had a had a soft buck on it just
Speaker 1: like pack saddle couldn't ride it. So I said, would
Speaker 1: you like to ride Izzie down the mountain so you
Speaker 1: don't have to walk? And she said yeah, And so
Speaker 1: rivers a river is a pretty good rider. So river
Speaker 1: gets on Izzie, but the River is not used to.
Speaker 1: Is he is he as young? Is he's three years old?
Speaker 1: And is he is now pretty fresh because she's had
Speaker 1: this she's had all this weight on her back all
Speaker 1: day and all of a sudden it's off of her
Speaker 1: and then now rivers on her back. And I felt
Speaker 1: like she was kind of spunky, almost like just fresh
Speaker 1: out of the trailer, and she was acting a little spunky,
Speaker 1: not bad, just spunky. And I was given I was
Speaker 1: instructing River about what she should do. You know, hey,
Speaker 1: don't let her push you around a lot of times.
Speaker 1: For those of you who have not written equine animals much,
Speaker 1: I mean a really just dead broke, old horse or
Speaker 1: old mule might not act like this, but a young one,
Speaker 1: you get on one fresh, they're they're kind of gonna
Speaker 1: want to do what they want to do. They're not
Speaker 1: necessarily gonna want to buck you off. That's not what
Speaker 1: happened at all, but just just wanting to try, wanting
Speaker 1: to go faster, wanting to go their way, and they
Speaker 1: need an experience rider to just tell them and show
Speaker 1: him whose boss. And so River was trying to do that.
Speaker 1: We get a little ways down the trail and the
Speaker 1: trail is brushed in, there's limbs, and so limbs are
Speaker 1: whacking river and and there. That's really not a problem.
Speaker 1: But there was a limb about as big as your
Speaker 1: wrist that was hanging out that was gonna hit her
Speaker 1: about in the chest when the mule was going under it.
Speaker 1: And so when she saw it coming, she ducked off
Speaker 1: to the side, grabbed the saddle horn with her hands,
Speaker 1: dropped the reins and was just gonna go under the
Speaker 1: limb and then pop back up and grab the reins. Well.
Speaker 1: When she went unto the limb, I believe what happened
Speaker 1: is she squeezed her legs to stay on the animal.
Speaker 1: When she squeezed her legs, that's the cue that I've
Speaker 1: taught Izzie to to go faster. So as soon as
Speaker 1: she kind of leans off the mule going to this limb,
Speaker 1: the mule starts to trot well, River starts to lose
Speaker 1: her balance. River squeezes her legs even harder. The mule
Speaker 1: starts to lope. They're going downhill in the woods. River
Speaker 1: no longer has the reins in her hand, and she
Speaker 1: is She never really regained her balance from stepping under
Speaker 1: the limb and so I see all this happening, and
Speaker 1: basically Ellie is running loping down a pretty steep incline
Speaker 1: with the river just barely hanging on, and they basically
Speaker 1: run out of sight, and I'm hollering and I run
Speaker 1: after river. And as a as a father, this is
Speaker 1: as it was happening. I knew this was the moment
Speaker 1: that I thought would someday happen, but I prayed that
Speaker 1: when it did, that God would be merciful to us.
Speaker 1: And it was happening right before my eyes, almost as
Speaker 1: slow motion. I mean, the river was totally out of control,
Speaker 1: the mule was out of control, and this mountain is
Speaker 1: littered in boulders, steep, rugged, rough, and it was, it was,
Speaker 1: it was frightening. I run down the mountain and and
Speaker 1: the last I had seen Izzy was kind of dropping
Speaker 1: over the horizon at the slope of this mountain. You
Speaker 1: could probably see fifty yards before the mountain just kind
Speaker 1: of crested down, and I see the mule running, and
Speaker 1: I see river coming off the side. I mean, I
Speaker 1: see her just start to fall off the animal, remember
Speaker 1: at like a full almost at a full gallop, I
Speaker 1: I don't know, And I crest over the hill, and
Speaker 1: I see the mule turned back towards me, looking up
Speaker 1: towards me, where their ears perked up, and no river.
Speaker 1: And then I run a little bit further and I
Speaker 1: see Rivers sprawled out in the woods on her back,
Speaker 1: with her feet up the mountain, her head down the mountain,
Speaker 1: and man, it scared me. She was obviously crying. I
Speaker 1: run up to her. I tell her not to move.
Speaker 1: I touch her neck, I touched her shoulders, I touch
Speaker 1: all around on her legs. I knew that if I
Speaker 1: if I touched something that was broken, that she would
Speaker 1: be really that should be really sensitive to it. I
Speaker 1: could not find anything that I believed was broken on her.
Speaker 1: The only thing is when I ran my head my
Speaker 1: hand on the top of her head. My my hand
Speaker 1: was covered in blood. So I just raised her head
Speaker 1: ever so slightly, and she had just smashed her head
Speaker 1: into a rock man. We who we sat there on
Speaker 1: the ground. I got that, I got the mules tied
Speaker 1: up and caught, and I just told her to lay there.
Speaker 1: And we she laid there for probably solid ten, maybe
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. I'll tell you exactly what we did. We prayed.
Speaker 1: I just asked God to help her. I thank God
Speaker 1: that she was alive, and uh, and I just kind
Speaker 1: of lamented the decision that I had made as a
Speaker 1: father to let her ride down that mountain. And anyway
Speaker 1: off the mountain we came. We still had another hour
Speaker 1: to the truck. River said, was you know, she was
Speaker 1: bleeding all down her head and all down her neck.
Speaker 1: So we go to the emergency room and the little
Speaker 1: rural town we were near and spend a ton of
Speaker 1: time at the e are a ridiculous amount of time actually,
Speaker 1: and uh, she had eight staples in her head and
Speaker 1: for not to be too gruesome, but the cut was
Speaker 1: about two inches long on the back of her head
Speaker 1: that you could actually see her skull. So River had
Speaker 1: a pretty major crash. They did a CT scan on
Speaker 1: her and there was no there was no cracking the skull,
Speaker 1: there was no damage done to the actual brain. So
Speaker 1: River River really took it, took it in the face
Speaker 1: on that one. So that was day one of our
Speaker 1: bear baiting on the mountain. We'll call it the pack
Speaker 1: End Bait. So that was day one of our bear
Speaker 1: baiting at the pack End Bait. Well season against to
Speaker 1: roll around. I make it one other time up to
Speaker 1: the mountain debait by myself. We had several bears coming
Speaker 1: in there and opening day comes, which opening day in
Speaker 1: Arkansas was September. We had ter ricial rains come through
Speaker 1: on September twenty one and two. To get to the
Speaker 1: place where we had to across the river to hunt,
Speaker 1: or to get to where we needed to park to hunt,
Speaker 1: we had to cross a a stream. Well, the water
Speaker 1: had risen so much that we could not cross the stream.
Speaker 1: So on day one we couldn't even hunt our bait,
Speaker 1: and so the river and I said, you know, on
Speaker 1: the first day when she banked up her head, we
Speaker 1: said the mountain one Newcomb's ze Road. On day on
Speaker 1: the first day of the Arkansas season, when we were
Speaker 1: unable to even get to the bait, we said mountain
Speaker 1: to Newcomb's z Ro. On the on the second day
Speaker 1: of the season where we were able to cross the
Speaker 1: creek and go hunt on the mountain, and we went
Speaker 1: up there check the camera. There was a big bear
Speaker 1: that had been coming in at night at a time
Speaker 1: or two late in the evening, and it was a
Speaker 1: big bear, I mean like a four hundred four fifty
Speaker 1: maybe even bigger type four and river decided that she
Speaker 1: wanted to wait for that bear, and so she did,
Speaker 1: and she passed seven bears on opening day at that
Speaker 1: bait site, and not a single one of those bears
Speaker 1: was over about a hundred and eighty pounds. So she
Speaker 1: passed all those bears, and it was an amazing day
Speaker 1: in the stand when there was hardly a ten minutes
Speaker 1: section where we weren't watching bears. You'll, you'll, you'll have
Speaker 1: hunts like that in Canada. You rarely have hunts like
Speaker 1: that down here. Most of are hunting over bait. Here
Speaker 1: in Arkansas is you're seeing one or two bears, and
Speaker 1: you're usually seeing them at last life. You usually don't
Speaker 1: just get the viewing opportunity like you would and Canada.
Speaker 1: I mean, you go to Canada on a really good high,
Speaker 1: you're gonna see a lot of bears. You gonna watch
Speaker 1: a lot of bears. But not so here. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're we are usually by open day, we are usually
Speaker 1: hunting the juvenile stragglers because our season dates are set
Speaker 1: up such that older mature mails are typically gone from
Speaker 1: the bates or they're nocturnal by the time season opens.
Speaker 1: And it's what it's done in Arkansas has it's it's
Speaker 1: created a culture where a guys shoot the first bearer
Speaker 1: that they see. I really wish the game departments would
Speaker 1: move our seasons back to where they originally were. Originally
Speaker 1: they opened on September for many many years, and it
Speaker 1: really doesn't make sense. The numbers don't add up. I
Speaker 1: think it's an issue of convenience, but we need to
Speaker 1: get that earlier opener in order to harvest older, mature
Speaker 1: mails because we're building the hanging culture where we're just
Speaker 1: killing juveniles. And uh, I mean I haven't seen the
Speaker 1: staff in a few years, but most of the bears
Speaker 1: killed in Arkansas are two and three year old bears.
Speaker 1: I would like to see us manage for I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no wildlife that you really want to manage in
Speaker 1: that way, But for some reason, that's the way we're
Speaker 1: managing our bearers here in Arkansas. And there's more to it.
Speaker 1: It's complex, but there's not much more to it. And uh,
Speaker 1: I would like to see that change in Arkansas. That
Speaker 1: would that would help us, and it would also help
Speaker 1: it would also help if we had an earlier season
Speaker 1: date to begin to educate the public about how did
Speaker 1: not shoot the first animal that comes to the barrel.
Speaker 1: Don't shoot juveniles. Don't shoot juvenile females. Don't if you
Speaker 1: know it's a sou do your best and not shoot that.
Speaker 1: Soal now, right now, guys to shoot the first animal
Speaker 1: to the barrel. And there's kind of a there's kind
Speaker 1: of a a group of guys in the state that
Speaker 1: are really targeting these older mature males, and we're frustrated
Speaker 1: as we can be, but there's no shortage of them,
Speaker 1: but they're very, very difficult to kill. So day one
Speaker 1: and the packing bait comes and goes, and the river
Speaker 1: didn't fire an era. We had to go to school
Speaker 1: the whole week. But on Saturday, the next Saturday, which
Speaker 1: I believe would have been September, we went back to
Speaker 1: the packing bait. I had been able to go in
Speaker 1: there one other time in bait, and when I did,
Speaker 1: the bears have been pound on the bait. So i'd
Speaker 1: September twenty seven. River Izzy and I go to the
Speaker 1: top of the mountain and we get there and we
Speaker 1: checked the card and what happened is one of the
Speaker 1: most exciting things that can happen in hunting. It truly
Speaker 1: is I mean, this is why I hunt part of
Speaker 1: it aside from wildlife related commodities that we that we
Speaker 1: get that we used throughout the year. But we checked
Speaker 1: the camera and there had been a whopper bear in
Speaker 1: there that day, that morning, and it had found the
Speaker 1: bait that morning, and it was a four plus pound
Speaker 1: mail bear, and the evening before a second four pound
Speaker 1: plus color phase bear, and this bear maybe four fifty
Speaker 1: had been in there in the daylight. So basically what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is there were two four pound plus males,
Speaker 1: different bears that had been to that bait in the
Speaker 1: daylight in the last twenty four hours that the first
Speaker 1: bear at the bear we'll call him number one, We'll
Speaker 1: call him Hippo bear. He had a big, old, saggy
Speaker 1: belly and sway back. He had been in there through night.
Speaker 1: At at like almost ten o'clock that morning, he was
Speaker 1: still feeding at the bait. We get there at one o'clock,
Speaker 1: so I mean just three hours before he had been there.
Speaker 1: We knew he was close, We knew that he had
Speaker 1: found the bay and he liked it. He hadn't been
Speaker 1: spooked off by anything, and this was his first time
Speaker 1: to the bait. Was that morning when you roll into
Speaker 1: a situation like that. That is a very favorable situation
Speaker 1: for that bear to return that evening. I mean, we
Speaker 1: just knew it was gonna happen. Climb up in the tree,
Speaker 1: was running an osonics, two of us in the tree.
Speaker 1: Not much we can do for scent control, and that
Speaker 1: particular situation, the winds were light, invariable, winds would go
Speaker 1: on from many different directions. We had also hiked an
Speaker 1: hour in eighty degree temperatures, so we were sweating. And
Speaker 1: long story short, the hippo bear comes in at four o'clock.
Speaker 1: Broad daylight comes in at four o'clock, comes down window us.
Speaker 1: Those onyx was blowing perfectly. It was a light light
Speaker 1: probably three to four mile per hour wind coming out
Speaker 1: of the west. Ozis was set up perfectly, and the
Speaker 1: bear smelled us. And I is in the knock on osonics.
Speaker 1: I've still got in my bag right now. But I mean,
Speaker 1: if it, if it reduced our scent, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: that it did, it did not reduce enough for that
Speaker 1: bear to smell us. And it was truly the perfect
Speaker 1: situation for it to really work. And the bear was
Speaker 1: intolerant of us, and the hippo bear through his nose
Speaker 1: in the air and probably thirty five before the yards
Speaker 1: turned his nose up and left and we never saw
Speaker 1: him again the rest of the evening. So we're sitting
Speaker 1: here and we actually see a sow with this year's
Speaker 1: cubs come into the bait and watch these little bears.
Speaker 1: Is the first time I believe I've been on a
Speaker 1: in in that close proximity to a soal with little cubs.
Speaker 1: Super fun to watch. She was not aggressive towards us
Speaker 1: at all. Every bear that came into that bait knew
Speaker 1: exactly where we were, and they make made eye contact
Speaker 1: with us. They knew were there, but they really didn't
Speaker 1: seem to care. So the sal comes in. There's another
Speaker 1: smaller bear that came in, you know, probably a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty pounds four that came in. It was eating
Speaker 1: quite a bit, and so we got there. We mayna
Speaker 1: start hunting to two o'clock. At four o'clock, pipple bear
Speaker 1: came in. It's dark about seven fifteen ish, and we
Speaker 1: knew that this uh, big color face bear had been
Speaker 1: in there the day before, and I'll be done if
Speaker 1: that bear didn't show up. At about six thirty. The
Speaker 1: bear we see him come within you know, forty yards,
Speaker 1: we see him out there, we immediately recognize him as
Speaker 1: the big color face from the camera. I mean it
Speaker 1: says sometimes it's man, it's it's tough. You see, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, four in a fifty pound bear. And and
Speaker 1: you'll probably see this footage at some point through bear
Speaker 1: horizon of the vog you see this big bear and
Speaker 1: you're like, yeah, these guys see big bears all the time.
Speaker 1: I want to put that into perspective. I have not
Speaker 1: seen a four d plound four hunder pound plus bear
Speaker 1: from the tree stand while hunting over bait in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Let me think about this before I said it's true. Ever,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say that. Ever, I have killed a five
Speaker 1: hunder pound bear in Arkansas, but I killed in the
Speaker 1: National Forest without bait. Um. I have put people on
Speaker 1: big bears. There was about a four year period there
Speaker 1: when I was basically auctioning off my best stand for
Speaker 1: the Arkansas Black Bear Association, and we put some people
Speaker 1: on some good bears. But killing a big bear over
Speaker 1: bait is no joke. It is no joke at all.
Speaker 1: And so here comes this bear and so, I mean
Speaker 1: one of the biggest the biggest bear I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in my life over bait in Arkansas that was killable.
Speaker 1: Was coming in shooting light and rivers shoes, forty three
Speaker 1: pound bow. She had a hundred and fifty grain iron
Speaker 1: wheel broad head. It was a light set up. But
Speaker 1: river killed the bear two years ago about a tune
Speaker 1: or twenty five pound mail passed all the way through
Speaker 1: the bear. I mean the the forty at that time
Speaker 1: it was. It was a forty pound boat. Forty pound
Speaker 1: boat shot an arrow through the bear. I mean the
Speaker 1: arrow is laying on the ground under the side of
Speaker 1: the bear. So I know this is a totally different
Speaker 1: animal animal that's twice as big. But still I felt
Speaker 1: like the arrow, the bow had the energy. We had
Speaker 1: a cut on impact broadhead, we had some weight on
Speaker 1: the arrow. It felt like everything was right. I truly
Speaker 1: was not worried about the river not being able to
Speaker 1: or not. I wouldn't worry about the boat. Well, the
Speaker 1: bear smells us. It was really interesting. The bear smelled us.
Speaker 1: I mean, he he was out there, ozonics was blowing
Speaker 1: just right, and man, that bear has his nose in
Speaker 1: the air and he pinned us. But this bear had
Speaker 1: been using the bait for the last week to ten days.
Speaker 1: This bear had actually come in twenty minutes after we
Speaker 1: left on the second day, well, the first day that
Speaker 1: we hunted, the second day of the season. This bear
Speaker 1: had been standing where we were standing twenty minutes after
Speaker 1: we were there. So this bear in inevitably knew there
Speaker 1: were humans involved. He had smelled us before, and when
Speaker 1: he smelled us this time, it didn't bother him that
Speaker 1: much because despite his nose telling him that we were there,
Speaker 1: he walked right in, actually looking at us. This particular area,
Speaker 1: we weren't able to get very high in the trees.
Speaker 1: There weren't very many big trees, so we were only
Speaker 1: about my thirteen probably thirteen feet high, and basically this
Speaker 1: big four was just on foreigner plus found bear colored face,
Speaker 1: kind of a chocolate he tinge comes walking in, just
Speaker 1: making eye contact with us, looking as looking at us
Speaker 1: up in the stand the river standing up. She's got
Speaker 1: her bow in hand, and the bear comes into like
Speaker 1: eight yards, turns broadside, river, draws her bow, river shoots,
Speaker 1: and she hit the bear slightly high. We think maybe
Speaker 1: it caught the back tip of the scapula, which is
Speaker 1: his shoulder blade, and the Arab penetrated about five inches.
Speaker 1: The bear ran off. The next day, we trailed up
Speaker 1: for over a half a mile off of blood that
Speaker 1: was being basically rubbed off high on bushes, and we
Speaker 1: never recovered the bear, never recovered the bear. I felt terrible.
Speaker 1: I truly felt terrible the shot. The shot was just
Speaker 1: inches away from right where you wanted to be, and
Speaker 1: it was it was a tough one. It's a tough
Speaker 1: one for River, she worked so hard, so resilient, and
Speaker 1: it was tough one for me. I mean, I hated
Speaker 1: to to see that bear get away from us. But
Speaker 1: you know, we tracked that bear on our hands and
Speaker 1: knees through Paul Paul Thicket all morning yesterday. And I
Speaker 1: really just had this sense that part of the human
Speaker 1: experience is dealing with disappointment, and a lot of who
Speaker 1: we are as men and how we respond to life
Speaker 1: it has to do with how we deal with disappointment.
Speaker 1: And I truely I was more disappointed than that than
Speaker 1: probably any animal that I personally have ever not recovered,
Speaker 1: you know, And it was partially maybe it was a
Speaker 1: selfish thing, you know, like my daughter taking a spare
Speaker 1: on film. You know, it would have been good for me.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just wanted her to I just
Speaker 1: wanted her to get it. She worked so hard she
Speaker 1: passed nine bears, and I'll tell you the bear hunting
Speaker 1: culture in Arkansas, there's not many grown men that would
Speaker 1: have passed these nine bears that she did waiting for
Speaker 1: the big one. And the big one shows she does
Speaker 1: everything right, just a little bit high and and we
Speaker 1: don't recover the bears. So man, the pain and the agony,
Speaker 1: the choys, in the agony of hunting, it's really what
Speaker 1: makes it what. It is, really a complex, complex deal
Speaker 1: because it's a high stakes game. If you win, the
Speaker 1: rewards are high, found in the commodities given to us
Speaker 1: by God from wildlife, meat, hide, fanging for but the
Speaker 1: consequences are significant when we do not capitalize on an opportunity.
Speaker 1: And this is two days after and I'm really still
Speaker 1: not really over it, And to be honest with you,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm headed to Oklahoma to potentially one of the
Speaker 1: best hunts I've ever been on in terms of just
Speaker 1: gathering the data going into the hunt. The conditions are favorable,
Speaker 1: got to giant bears on bait, and uh, man, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm almost not even excited to be honest with him. So, hey,
Speaker 1: we're thirty eight minutes in this podcast, and this is
Speaker 1: what I want to do. I'm gonna kind of take
Speaker 1: his step by step through my afternoon. I'm gonna bring
Speaker 1: the gonna bring. I'm gonna bring you into the blind
Speaker 1: with me and give you some commentary as we as
Speaker 1: as this hunting fold. So I'm about an hour out
Speaker 1: from getting out of the truck walking to the stand.
Speaker 1: It's twelve forty one on October one. Got my non
Speaker 1: resident Oklahoma bear tag in my pocket, and man, what
Speaker 1: great day to be a bear hunter. I just got
Speaker 1: to the property here or baiting bears. I'm parking, probably
Speaker 1: close to half a mile from where I'm hunting. I
Speaker 1: don't trust these big old bears one lick and I
Speaker 1: don't want to get close to him. I want them
Speaker 1: to think there's nobody in the country. I just did
Speaker 1: my I'm kind of doing my pre hunt ritual. I
Speaker 1: just took a bath in the creek, getting all my
Speaker 1: stuff together. If I do not kill a bear this evening,
Speaker 1: my plan is to spend the night in Redneck blind.
Speaker 1: So I've got food, I've got equipment to stay the night. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm just making my final preparations here. I hadn't told
Speaker 1: anybody this um there, hadn't made a big deal about it.
Speaker 1: But I was gonna shoot the traditional bow on this hunt.
Speaker 1: And uh, I couldn't shoot the tread bow out of
Speaker 1: the Redneck blind. It's a pretty big well, it's a
Speaker 1: big blind, and I probably could have done it, but
Speaker 1: did not want the weapon to be the limiting factor.
Speaker 1: I actually borrowed a bow, Halen thirty two from my
Speaker 1: good buddy Aaron Wiss down Outdoor America in Springdale, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: He set this bow up for me like two days ago.
Speaker 1: I'm shooting great with it, shooting some two d and
Speaker 1: fifty grain iron Well broadheads, and uh, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of I'm kind of geared up for like a big
Speaker 1: game hunt. You know that these are big critters. So
Speaker 1: I'm about to walk up the hill to the stand.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to give you a play by play
Speaker 1: when I'm in the blind. I feel like I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be able to talk some because those blinds are pretty
Speaker 1: sound proof. But uh, all right, it's four three pm.
Speaker 1: I've been in blind an hour and a half, just
Speaker 1: kind of getting everything situated. This is my first time
Speaker 1: in the blind with the compound boo, with the cameras,
Speaker 1: so I'm trying to figure out exactly how I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do this. I think I've got a system that works.
Speaker 1: I'm planning to shoot out of one of these long
Speaker 1: corner windows made for bowl hunting, so I'll be shooting down.
Speaker 1: I've got a camera filming out of the long or
Speaker 1: the standard shooting window to my left. I have a
Speaker 1: camera to my back, and I've got to go prow
Speaker 1: out in front of me. My buddy, James Lawrence, came
Speaker 1: in here yesterday and baited several with several hundred pounds
Speaker 1: of bait. They have eaten almost all of it. They're
Speaker 1: not a lot of bears on this bait, but the
Speaker 1: two giant bears that are on here are eating a ton.
Speaker 1: I mean literally they ate. I don't know the weight
Speaker 1: of bait he put out yesterday, but I would venture
Speaker 1: to say easily two hundred pounds of bait and it's
Speaker 1: five gone. That's exactly what you want to see as
Speaker 1: a bear hunter when you come into the bait, he said,
Speaker 1: just be demolished. So again we put up this redneck
Speaker 1: blind for the sole purpose of scent control, which if
Speaker 1: it doesn't backfire on us, is going to be ingenious.
Speaker 1: But the negative side of it is I am roasting
Speaker 1: in this blind right now, got all the windows shut,
Speaker 1: and it's eighty six degrees outside. Let me let me
Speaker 1: put it to you this way. When I opened the windows,
Speaker 1: which I have opened wine just to look outside, it
Speaker 1: feels like it's thirty degrees outside as the cold air
Speaker 1: rushes in. I don't know how hot it is in here,
Speaker 1: but it's hot. But it's a small price to pay
Speaker 1: for almost scent control. When hunting trophy black bear over bait.
Speaker 1: Like I said earlier, I've been hunting these bears, these
Speaker 1: particular bears for five years. I have never been able
Speaker 1: to catch up with him. And this part of what
Speaker 1: I part of to me, what makes a successful hunter
Speaker 1: successful is he's able to identify the limiting factors of
Speaker 1: his hunting and improve those things. So here's an example.
Speaker 1: I shoot my Matthews Halant two right now. I can
Speaker 1: shoot it so well that it is not the limiting
Speaker 1: factor of my hunting. If I have ten kills and
Speaker 1: those kills are successful ten PC or failures, it's never
Speaker 1: gonna be because I can't hit a dot at yards.
Speaker 1: And now it might be panic in the field, it
Speaker 1: might be making a bad decision in the field for shot,
Speaker 1: the shot placement or whatever. But my point is is
Speaker 1: you got to focus on what is the thing that's
Speaker 1: keeping you from being unsuccessful, And for me in this situation,
Speaker 1: it was scent. I do not believe in any other
Speaker 1: type of scent control. I just I had bear smell
Speaker 1: me um running some all kinds of products. I don't
Speaker 1: want to name any names, but I just there's nothing
Speaker 1: that you could do in an open tree stand to
Speaker 1: fully contain your scent against the bear. So this red
Speaker 1: nick blind is the best solution that I've got. However,
Speaker 1: I am cooking in here, so I mean literally, my
Speaker 1: clothes are almost soaked, so I do smell worse than normal.
Speaker 1: So for some reason the scent is leaking. It's gonna leak,
Speaker 1: It's gonna leak good, but I don't think it will.
Speaker 1: I'm able to whisper in the splind because these red
Speaker 1: neck blinds are insulated. They've got foam insulation all around them.
Speaker 1: I have no doubt that then the ways I'm making
Speaker 1: right now is not um I'm gonna impact these bears.
Speaker 1: There was a bear here when I arrived. It was
Speaker 1: a younger bear there, just a smaller bear of sow.
Speaker 1: I kind of snuck up on it, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I could wait until the bear leaves and not disturb it.
Speaker 1: But the wind was kind of swirling, and I thought,
Speaker 1: I'm out here in the open. I know these big
Speaker 1: bears are close. They really are. I mean I I
Speaker 1: have a good feeling they aren't beded more than a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty yards from the space. And so the
Speaker 1: longer time I spent out of the blind, there was
Speaker 1: a better chance that the big bears were gonna smell me.
Speaker 1: So what I did is I chunked rock kind of
Speaker 1: on the back side of this bear down the woods
Speaker 1: and spooked it off, and I climbed up in the
Speaker 1: pop blind and went and checked my cap or grabbed
Speaker 1: the card out of the camera quickly came back, and
Speaker 1: I've been unable to read the card because of a
Speaker 1: I just bought a brand new little SD card reader
Speaker 1: that plugs into your phone, and it it godidly. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: You got a download a app and do all kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, and I still cannot get it to read pictures.
Speaker 1: I am highly frustrated with that. But I am in
Speaker 1: the blind looking too. Let's see. In the north, I'm
Speaker 1: looking back at about a quarter acre of food plot.
Speaker 1: To my south, i'm looking at about a twenty acre
Speaker 1: I'm excuse me, twenty year old replanted pine what used
Speaker 1: to be just like a clear cut. This property was
Speaker 1: cut about fifteen twenty years ago, and so I'm looking
Speaker 1: at a big stand at pine timber. We came in
Speaker 1: here and hung this red neck blind back in August,
Speaker 1: and UH cut some shooting lanes, and these bears don't
Speaker 1: want to be out in the open. They don't want
Speaker 1: to be in a food plot. They want to be
Speaker 1: in the shade. Their black animal they're designed to live
Speaker 1: in the shadows, and so they want to be in
Speaker 1: the timber. That's where they feel comfortable. So my bait
Speaker 1: is off in the woods. I placed the bait close
Speaker 1: to the stand in case I was shooting a traditional
Speaker 1: bow of s blind. So the barrels are no more
Speaker 1: than probably eight yards for me, which is close. I
Speaker 1: have to watch myself on shot angle. But here I
Speaker 1: am just waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. It's four fifty two
Speaker 1: and I've seen my first bear from the red nick blind.
Speaker 1: I've got a bear out here at about forty five
Speaker 1: yards that's lounging on the west side of the food blood.
Speaker 1: It appears to be a smoiler bear. It's just only
Speaker 1: because of the food plot I man am I able
Speaker 1: to see it because there's not a thick vegetation around.
Speaker 1: But it kind of confirms what you feel like these
Speaker 1: bears are doing. You feel like they're they're eating and
Speaker 1: then they're just going out sight and laying down where
Speaker 1: they can smell and listen to the bait side. And
Speaker 1: this bear, I see it bobbing its head up and down,
Speaker 1: kind of smelling. It's panting, and uh so that's the
Speaker 1: first bear. I figure it's waiting for to hear the
Speaker 1: barrels clank, or to smell another bear, or to smell
Speaker 1: a human coming in here. So first bear of the
Speaker 1: evening four two p m. One. I just had to
Speaker 1: year old cubs, a year and a half old cubs
Speaker 1: show up to just get black little guys came in.
Speaker 1: I was watching this other bear that was bitted down
Speaker 1: the food plot, and it jumped up and ran off,
Speaker 1: and then minutes later here came these uh, two little cubs.
Speaker 1: They probably weigh sixties seventy pounds apiece. I do not
Speaker 1: see their mama because I was unable to read the card.
Speaker 1: I don't recall seeing cubs on the card on Thursday,
Speaker 1: So perhaps a sound two cubs have showed up? Were they?
Speaker 1: Indeed have? They keep looking back behind. I figured their
Speaker 1: mama's not far. One thing that's interesting about a hunted
Speaker 1: bear population is that it actually grows faster than an
Speaker 1: unhunted population. So there the bears in this part of
Speaker 1: the world, Arkansas, Oklahoma are fairly rapidly increasing their range
Speaker 1: because the hub of the bear population in Arkansas, Oklahoma
Speaker 1: is in the Ozark and Washingtaw Mountains. These rugged mountains
Speaker 1: between a thousand and three thousand feet okanackree Forest climax,
Speaker 1: and this this was historic range of the bear, lots
Speaker 1: of national forests, lots of big open country, lots of
Speaker 1: perfect bear habitat. Well, what's happening is the bears have
Speaker 1: saturated that habitat and now they're beginning to bleed out
Speaker 1: in every direction on the Ozark and Washtall mountains down
Speaker 1: into areas that typically wouldn't be great bear habitat like
Speaker 1: the pine plantations of southern Arkansas, pine swamp plantation, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like just timberland. They're starting to get a
Speaker 1: lot of bears, the timberland and deeper southeast Oklahoma is
Speaker 1: starting to get a lot of bears. Bears are moving
Speaker 1: north into the northern Ozarks of Missouri, which that's a
Speaker 1: good bear country. Bears are moving into northern Louisiana, they're
Speaker 1: moving into western Mississippi, and it's because we're hunting them.
Speaker 1: We're hunting this population of bears, which this hub is
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, and these bears are expanding. So there's tons
Speaker 1: of cubs. We saw cubs two days ago in Arkansas
Speaker 1: on Rivers hunt. So really great to see a thriving
Speaker 1: barren population because that's what we want as hunters and conservationists.
Speaker 1: We don't want to kill them all. We want to
Speaker 1: keep all of them, and we're gonna cherry pick some
Speaker 1: off the top, cherry picked the surplus. We're the good guys.
Speaker 1: It's five one and that the South finally came in.
Speaker 1: She let these cubs feed at this bait for Paul
Speaker 1: twenty minutes. Without her, she isn't untagged, good sized south,
Speaker 1: probably over two hundred pounds. We see a lot of
Speaker 1: tagged bears in this part of Oklahoma. They estimate the
Speaker 1: bear population here to be about two thousand bears, and
Speaker 1: they have captured and tagged or collared roughly two hundred,
Speaker 1: so ken percent of the bears they believe that are
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma have actually laid their hands on, and that
Speaker 1: they ire tagged the bears and mark them just so
Speaker 1: they can say, you know, we we caught this bear
Speaker 1: here and he was harvested over here, he was hit
Speaker 1: by a car here, or we never heard from again.
Speaker 1: But they also have some number of sows, probably fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenty sous collar that they go in and do
Speaker 1: den studies on. So any bear that's caught is tagged.
Speaker 1: This bear has not been caught, so this is one
Speaker 1: of the of the free bears. One of the big
Speaker 1: bears that I'm after tonight, that I believe is probably
Speaker 1: close to six hundred pounds, is a tag bear. He
Speaker 1: had two yellow ear tags back in so he's been
Speaker 1: tagged for a long time. He does not have a collar,
Speaker 1: but he's a whopper. You know. I meant to say
Speaker 1: earlier that the two bears that I'm hunting. One of
Speaker 1: them I believe is five fifty to six hundred plus
Speaker 1: and we call yellow tags. He's got two yellow tags.
Speaker 1: The other one is probably four fifty to five, and
Speaker 1: I call him Batman. I will shoot either bear that
Speaker 1: shows up tonight and be as happy as I could be.
Speaker 1: I figured both of them are potentially putting crooked animals.
Speaker 1: It is nearing six o'clock, the magic hour for bears,
Speaker 1: and I'm staring out the window this red neck blind,
Speaker 1: a big sound two cubs at about eight yards six,
Speaker 1: and the sound cubs just threw up their head and
Speaker 1: ran off, huffing. For sure, there's another bear coming in.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it yet, which gives me even more
Speaker 1: reason to believe it may be the big one. A
Speaker 1: big one has come in, and it's just kind of
Speaker 1: skirtain out there. It's Batman. H oh Man, just shot Batman.
Speaker 1: Just shot Batman. Holy cow, just shot Batman. I just
Speaker 1: shot Batman. I can't believe it. It It was about six fifteen,
Speaker 1: full daylight, just great, great light. He came in. He towered,
Speaker 1: towered above the barrel, a bear whose shoulders are over
Speaker 1: thirty six inches. It's a that's a big bear, big bear,
Speaker 1: and this bear towered over the barrel, filled out, big legs,
Speaker 1: huge head, big old curled ears, looks like Batman. That's
Speaker 1: why we call him Batman. This bear is uh oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, I can't I can't believe that. I'm almost speechless.
Speaker 1: There's so much work that goes into this hunt. I mean,
Speaker 1: we for months have been working on this redneck blind
Speaker 1: We've we've had this access to this property for for
Speaker 1: five years. We had this bear on the camera five
Speaker 1: years ago and he was big then we've got The
Speaker 1: crazy part is that he's not even the big bear.
Speaker 1: This is a lesser of two bears. There's another bear
Speaker 1: in here that's got two yellow tags that I believe
Speaker 1: is pounds bigger than Batman. And just off the cuff.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna step out on a limb, and if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be happy that i'm wrong. If I'm right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be happy that I'm right. Um, I don't care.
Speaker 1: I think the bears is five pounds now, he could
Speaker 1: be fifty pounds on either side of that. But folks,
Speaker 1: he is the lesser of two bears on the spate,
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about the implication of that.
Speaker 1: So we've got these big bears on bait that we're hunting, well,
Speaker 1: the implication is that or what you can imply from
Speaker 1: this is that bears are thriving in this part of
Speaker 1: the country. This is a testament to wildlife conservation. It's
Speaker 1: a testament to the reintroduction of black bears in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties and sixties back into Arkansas and their movement
Speaker 1: into south st Oklahoma where their native range was at
Speaker 1: one time. Where you've got older mature males, it indicates
Speaker 1: that the population is stable. It indicates that the population
Speaker 1: is well balanced. It indicates a healthy population. And older
Speaker 1: mature male is an indicator animal. You know, in a
Speaker 1: deer herd, we have no mature bucks. You know that
Speaker 1: something's out of whack. Uh, either the hunting culture, you know,
Speaker 1: the management, or the habitat or um or or for
Speaker 1: some reason, those older males aren't making it to maturity.
Speaker 1: Where older males make it to maturity, everything beneath them
Speaker 1: is in perfect order. And so, man, this is a
Speaker 1: testament to conservations, a testament to hunting. And man, I'm thrilled.
Speaker 1: Man if I never kill a bear. The rest of
Speaker 1: my life. I'm I will feel like I have experienced
Speaker 1: the the top of the mountain of bear hunting, that
Speaker 1: I conic animal of North American wilderness right here within
Speaker 1: driving distance in my house. What an amazing place that
Speaker 1: we live in, What an amazing country that we live in. God,
Speaker 1: long live the Hunter's, Long live the beast. Oh man,
Speaker 1: My dad is on his way with a tractor. James
Speaker 1: Lawrence is on his way. Ryan flint faced Grab is
Speaker 1: on his way. Ryan Grab is the master big bear
Speaker 1: hunter of Arkansas. No doubt he's coming. And uh, we've
Speaker 1: got a long night of work in front of us.
Speaker 1: But hey, man, that's what we that's what we that's
Speaker 1: what we do it for. I'm drenched in sweat. This
Speaker 1: red nick blind with the window shut is hot. But man,
Speaker 1: I tell you, I attribute this kill to that, to this,
Speaker 1: to this blind. He couldn't smell me. He had no
Speaker 1: idea that I was here. If I had been in
Speaker 1: a tree stand, the winds are swirling, the thermals are changing.
Speaker 1: He came from downhill. I mean, if I would have
Speaker 1: killed the bear in an open tree stamp, it would
Speaker 1: have been just happenstance. I mean, probably of the time
Speaker 1: I would have killed it, sixty percent of the time
Speaker 1: the bear would have smelled me and not come in.
Speaker 1: So this, this blind scent is limiting factor. This blind
Speaker 1: has remedied that scent factor the limiting factor, and it
Speaker 1: worked just like we thought it would. James Lawrence has
Speaker 1: an Oklahoma bear tag and man James has done nothing
Speaker 1: but helped me and be a great friend for a
Speaker 1: long time. And he will be hunting the yellow tag
Speaker 1: bear and we'll see what Batman weighs. But I believe
Speaker 1: that yellow tag is uh dred pounds bigger than this
Speaker 1: bear that I just took. So the troops are on
Speaker 1: their way. They're all about an hour hour and a
Speaker 1: half away, so I may get down and go track
Speaker 1: this bear. Um if he's dead. Oh, I just found
Speaker 1: the bear. He ran about fifty yards from where I
Speaker 1: shot him, and he is a giant. I do not
Speaker 1: know what he weighs, but we are going to find out.
Speaker 1: And he's beautiful. All four canines are wore down. He's tall,
Speaker 1: he's long, he's fat. I could barely get him turned over.
Speaker 1: Holy cow, this is probably the biggest bear I've ever killed.
Speaker 1: The scales will tell we've got an eight hundred pounds
Speaker 1: scale by Dad. I can hear my dad coming up
Speaker 1: the mountain with the tractor he was on on hall.
Speaker 1: James Lawrence is on his way. Ryan Grabs on his way.
Speaker 1: We are gonna know the way to this bear. But
Speaker 1: I am I don't care what he ways. I'm just
Speaker 1: grateful to partake in such a sacred event as to
Speaker 1: harvest a big, old, giant Oklahoma black bear like this.
Speaker 1: What a testament to conservation, What a testament to hunters
Speaker 1: that we've got bears like this here? Man, you the
Speaker 1: joy but also the agony of hunting. Two days ago,
Speaker 1: I was in just the agony as we lost Rivers bear.
Speaker 1: I FaceTime River a minute ago, and she is ecstatic,
Speaker 1: truly is. She wanted to play by play, she wanted
Speaker 1: me to FaceTime or when I got the bear. I
Speaker 1: wish so bad she could be here. But this is
Speaker 1: what makes it all worth it. And uh and to
Speaker 1: share it with Dad's as in the creek, to share
Speaker 1: it with special people, my dad, James Lawrence, my buddy
Speaker 1: Ryan Grab. It's a phenomenal, phenomenal day. I hit this
Speaker 1: bear just right in the boiler room. I don't think
Speaker 1: I got an exit wound. I could have swore that
Speaker 1: I got a total passed through, but I don't think
Speaker 1: that I did. I hit him about probably four inches
Speaker 1: behind the shoulder mid body, I mean, you know, midway
Speaker 1: from the top to the bottom. Um it just I
Speaker 1: mean the bear ran fifty yards. He was done before
Speaker 1: before he left, and I knew that he would be.
Speaker 1: I didn't even trail blood. I just walked back here
Speaker 1: and saw him piled up, and it took me about
Speaker 1: twenty minutes to get him rolled over. I didn't even
Speaker 1: blood trail him, Dad, I just walked back here and
Speaker 1: found him. Hey, so the arrow disappear into the bear, Okay,
Speaker 1: just gone? I think complete passed through. Let it never
Speaker 1: passed through the bear? I think, well, surely not. But
Speaker 1: I think the entire arrow is inside and or it
Speaker 1: broke off. But look at this sucker. Look at those ears. Man,
Speaker 1: hear him fall? No, I just heard him bust off
Speaker 1: through the brush, and I mean just plowing over trees.
Speaker 1: He kind of growled when I shot. BA didn't death
Speaker 1: moan of all the bears I've killed about the death Moon.
Speaker 1: Everybody's like, man, you gotta hear the death Moon. One man,
Speaker 1: I don't. I just don't hear it that often. Now
Speaker 1: was he? Uh? Was that era going in towards his
Speaker 1: other should little back? Yeah, it was just like this,
Speaker 1: so you got both longs just what you did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just a tin ring double lung. But look
Speaker 1: look at that angle right there, hand right on his neck.
Speaker 1: I mean he's wide. You know, his head might be small,
Speaker 1: it's not small, I guarantee. I bet my truck it's
Speaker 1: over twenty. I mean, I'm serious, I bet my truck.
Speaker 1: And now I might eat my words, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be well. The only reason I say that his neck
Speaker 1: is so stinking big. But man, that's a long ways
Speaker 1: from ear to ear. I mean it's a long ways
Speaker 1: across there. Yeah, I don't know what. But hey, the
Speaker 1: way this is how you know that he's gonna be
Speaker 1: big is look at those teeth. Those He does not
Speaker 1: have a single canine. He needed to be killed, didn't he.
Speaker 1: He'd already contributed to the gene pool. I mean, we
Speaker 1: had this bear on camera, and I am not sure
Speaker 1: that this is not the bear that are good buddy shot.
Speaker 1: And we've never found the bear we tracked. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that this is not him. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I'm gonna look for a scar down low on his brisket.
Speaker 1: But you know, and the thing is is that this
Speaker 1: as far as body size, is the lesser of those
Speaker 1: two bears. But now they've worked there three big bears.
Speaker 1: Well there there is another board that's in the three
Speaker 1: hundred pound range, which he's this is the second largest bear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is a bear that is bigger body size than
Speaker 1: this one. I mean it, it's just unbelievable. But I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, when this animal walks up, you can't pass
Speaker 1: it easily. It'd be crazy. I thought about it. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that other bear at waigs this thing out
Speaker 1: bed maybe so. And see, that's what's gonna be so
Speaker 1: cool to find out what the spare ways. I mean,
Speaker 1: if it weighs foreign pounds, then we go, oh that's
Speaker 1: a five that's a other one's five hundred. But if
Speaker 1: this one weighs five hundred, then we know we've got
Speaker 1: a six pound bear, you know. So that's what's gonna
Speaker 1: be interesting. Hey. You the other thing I learned about
Speaker 1: this bait side is I could hear you driving up
Speaker 1: the road before you got to the creek. I heard
Speaker 1: your truck a long time, and then I heard you
Speaker 1: across the creek. So that tells me, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I figured you could well at least when I crossed
Speaker 1: the creek. We'll see when I could you hear all
Speaker 1: the banging manute drug worseness ever drug? Yeah, yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 1: When I'm coming in here to hunt, I'm thinking about,
Speaker 1: what are these bears here? And and they're here, and
Speaker 1: it's a long ways away, so it's good that I
Speaker 1: parked on the other side of the creek. Is extremely
Speaker 1: loud now that I've taken it. Oh, looks like the
Speaker 1: boys are here. Yeah, he's just right down there. That's angle.
Speaker 1: Hey there, David, all right, right, man, that's a big step. Yeah. Hey,
Speaker 1: look at these teeth. Yep, it's not gonna be wrong.
Speaker 1: We need five, tracker, let me give five four pready
Speaker 1: seven holy smokes, Hey wait, go play. We were gonna
Speaker 1: put you up for adoption. What is ridiculous is that
Speaker 1: when he walked up and I didn't see those double
Speaker 1: yell air tags, I thought, man, oh just wait, just
Speaker 1: wait and see. I had a good bear. Remember, Nickel
Speaker 1: would have passed the spar up five forty nine point
Speaker 1: four five is not exactly man and the money and
Speaker 1: you know that they say those skills are are accurate.
Speaker 1: That's what the even get a picture? I won't read
Speaker 1: it alright, what's he looks like? He's scot Man. That
Speaker 1: is awesome. Congratulations, Thank you very dad, Thanks for all
Speaker 1: your help. Man. Yeah, hey, it's a lot bigger than
Speaker 1: this bear. Look at the hit of that sucker. Hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. Hey,
Speaker 1: while I'm standing over this bear, I want to ask
Speaker 1: you to subscribe to our magazine. When you subscribe to
Speaker 1: our magazine, you're supporting our cause you're supporting our brand,
Speaker 1: and you get an awesome magazine six times a year.
Speaker 1: I also want to ask you check out our YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: You'll be able to see this hunt on our YouTube
Speaker 1: channel at some point really soon. And more than anything,
Speaker 1: let's keep the wild places wild because that's where the
Speaker 1: bears live.