Speaker 1: Interstate Batteries has been a proud supporter of the Sportsman's
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Speaker 1: them help you find the right batteries for your everyday life. God,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've never seen a bear on my property,
Speaker 1: but it's my dream the one day see a bear
Speaker 1: on the property's walking right through the backyard. Start putting
Speaker 1: some food out for him. He's the one who doesn't
Speaker 1: like he's converted. It didn't take much. Yeah, man, I'm weak.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of people. A lot of people don't
Speaker 1: understand baiting like they have this. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's kind of a you know, it's like is it fair?
Speaker 1: And that's really not the right question, because if the
Speaker 1: macro concern is the health of wildlife and they're how
Speaker 1: they live inside of habitat, then we have to go
Speaker 1: back to what's the best management tool for this reason.
Speaker 1: And then once you actually start baiting bearrass, you realize
Speaker 1: how hard it is. I believe that bears are going
Speaker 1: to be the gateway to the hunting community, and so
Speaker 1: if we guard that gate, they're never gonna get anything else.
Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into
Speaker 1: the world of hunting the icon of the North American
Speaker 1: wilderness bear. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation, but will
Speaker 1: also bring you into some of the wildest country on
Speaker 1: the planet. Chasing Bear. We had the opportunity to sit
Speaker 1: down with James Brandenburg, the Arkansas state chair of the
Speaker 1: Southeast Chapter of the back Country Hunters and Anglers Organization
Speaker 1: at the Global headquarters. We had an incredible conversation about
Speaker 1: some of the tough issues and tough questions related to
Speaker 1: large predator hunting and specifically baiting and using hounds for bear.
Speaker 1: James is a is a newer hunter, and we had
Speaker 1: a really open dialogue about some of the questions that
Speaker 1: he's had and undoubtedly some of the questions that other
Speaker 1: hunters and non hunters might have had. One of the
Speaker 1: iconic phrases that came up inside of this podcast is
Speaker 1: the idea that bear hunting is the gate for the
Speaker 1: anti hunting community to come into the sphere of hunting.
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't we want a strong gate, with a strong narrative,
Speaker 1: with a strong understanding throughout the hunting community of why
Speaker 1: we do the things that we do and how we
Speaker 1: do it. I think sometimes in the broader hunting community
Speaker 1: there's a sense that people would just like us to
Speaker 1: give this to the anti hunting community because they don't
Speaker 1: understand it. And it's probably one of the harder things
Speaker 1: about modern hunting to understand. Well, if bear hunting using
Speaker 1: hounds and bait was not the gate, then the next
Speaker 1: lowest rung on the ladder would be the gate, and
Speaker 1: we'd be in the same problem. So the answer is
Speaker 1: to strengthen the gate. That's what we talked about on
Speaker 1: this podcast is filling in the gaps, building a strong
Speaker 1: narrative that makes sense and shows the rational aspects, also
Speaker 1: the traditional aspects, and all the positive benefits of bear hunting.
Speaker 1: If you're in the Southeastern United States in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: or Florida, Alabama, check out the Southeast chapter of the
Speaker 1: back Country Hunters and Anglers. This group is dedicated to
Speaker 1: the preservation of access for hunters and anglers onto public lands.
Speaker 1: Public lands have typically been an issue that's been related
Speaker 1: to mostly public land in the West, or historically that's
Speaker 1: been where we think about these issues being. But the
Speaker 1: Southeast is full of public lands. A matter of fact, Florida,
Speaker 1: I think has some of the most public land of
Speaker 1: any state in the country. So we've got issues here
Speaker 1: in the Southeast. Check out the back country Hunters and Anglers.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. The day is
Speaker 1: June four. We're at the Bear Hunting Magazine Global head quarters.
Speaker 1: So we've got Jed here, Jed the Plothound, We've got
Speaker 1: Colby the Bear Tech, and our our guest today is
Speaker 1: James Brandenburg. James, I'll give I'll give a short introduction
Speaker 1: of of how I know you, and then I'll turn
Speaker 1: it over to you a little bit to tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about yourself. But so James is a
Speaker 1: native our kans and the way I know you is
Speaker 1: through back country hunters and Anglers. So James is the
Speaker 1: lead here in Arkansas Fort State Chair. Okay, so that's official.
Speaker 1: At the time we got to know each other, there
Speaker 1: really wasn't a state chair. But yeah, so James is
Speaker 1: with a back country Hunters and Anglers aside from being
Speaker 1: a father and husbands and hunter and golfer and you know,
Speaker 1: fisherman fisherman. Yeah, so before we get into you, I
Speaker 1: want to tell people what we're gonna talk about. Just
Speaker 1: catch them right at first, because there may be some
Speaker 1: delay before we talk about this. But so James and
Speaker 1: I have been have been talking, and we thought it
Speaker 1: would be a good idea. Well was the one that
Speaker 1: actually had the idea, but to have a podcast where
Speaker 1: we talked about many of the misconceptions about bear hunting.
Speaker 1: And so James is, I'm not gonna say you're new
Speaker 1: to hunting. I don't know if that would be accurate,
Speaker 1: but you didn't You didn't grow up with specifically bear hunting. Oh,
Speaker 1: definitely not. Yeah, And so there's somebody who's new to
Speaker 1: it doesn't understand it. There are a lot of questions
Speaker 1: that people might have, specifically about running bear with hounds,
Speaker 1: hunting bear over bait. I mean, I'm not afraid to
Speaker 1: say that those things are hard to understand. It's the
Speaker 1: thing that even many hunters don't understand. And so we're
Speaker 1: gonna have a discussion about about these things today. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, from my perspective, my background. Uh, grew up
Speaker 1: northwest Arkansas. As we've talked about, you know, is mostly
Speaker 1: my outdoor activity was golf. Um I did not. You
Speaker 1: will be the first golfer on the show. Excellent, excellent.
Speaker 1: I love being stinked in some way. Um. I didn't
Speaker 1: actually start hunting until I was trying to do the
Speaker 1: math on this on the way down here. Um. I
Speaker 1: think it was eight or nine years ago. So I've
Speaker 1: got three boys. My oldest will turn nineteen, and then
Speaker 1: I have a seventeen year old, and or he'll be
Speaker 1: seventeen and he'll be four. My youngest will be fourteen
Speaker 1: this summer. So um, first one was interested in hunting,
Speaker 1: so I thought, well, I might as well at least
Speaker 1: get my hunter safety card and then I can buy
Speaker 1: a license, I can take him out. Okay, So at
Speaker 1: this time you weren't interested in hunting. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was a little bit curious about it, but not. I
Speaker 1: was much more interested in fishing, you know, and I
Speaker 1: and I started that. Not too long before that, I
Speaker 1: started fly fishing, and I really got hooked on on
Speaker 1: that start. I did not intend to pun I'm very
Speaker 1: sorry about that. No, So I so I started with
Speaker 1: that and and that was kind of my introduction into
Speaker 1: things outside the Yeah, yeah, very opposite everybody else's. UM.
Speaker 1: So I went through all kinds of things with them,
Speaker 1: and I'll and i'll we won't go into all of that,
Speaker 1: but that's how I got started with hunting. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: up in Missouri, you know, I know, down here in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: for example, let's just talk about deer hunting for a minute.
Speaker 1: You can bait down here. Well, in Missouri, you don't bait.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of what informed my early ethics
Speaker 1: around hunting I just had to do with the regulations
Speaker 1: for where I was hunting. So then I then I
Speaker 1: started hearing even though I lived in Arkansas, we hunted
Speaker 1: in Missouri. That's where my in laws. I should I
Speaker 1: should spell that part out too. So we went to
Speaker 1: where my in laws lived and hunted up there. It's
Speaker 1: close to where we live. So those rules are what
Speaker 1: informed my own personal ethics. And so I would kind
Speaker 1: of like, well, why would you, I mean, baiting is bad, right,
Speaker 1: and I hear about it in Arkansas. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I kind of looked down my nose on it little
Speaker 1: bit for why, I don't know, I mean, she's I've
Speaker 1: only been hunting a couple of years. Who am I
Speaker 1: to tell somebody else? Right? But then as I've gotten
Speaker 1: more and more involved in in hunting and and started
Speaker 1: to be exposed to different things. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: I've kind of realized, Okay, there's different ways to do
Speaker 1: it in different places, and maybe one is not necessarily
Speaker 1: worse than the other. But there's also these other things
Speaker 1: that I think I do feel still like a new hunter,
Speaker 1: And so there's these different ideals that I that I
Speaker 1: come to, and I'm like, I think it's worth Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think a lot of people, if you
Speaker 1: don't know bear hunting, for example, you might wonder why
Speaker 1: do they have to use dogs? Why do they have
Speaker 1: to use bait that doesn't seem fair? And and so
Speaker 1: I wanna we're gonna turn the tables, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to ask you those questions, and not my intention
Speaker 1: to to be confrontational, but I'm gonna kind of play
Speaker 1: Devil's advocate for a minute, and um, hopefully we can
Speaker 1: kind of give give people on both sides something to
Speaker 1: think about. I think I think just talking about that
Speaker 1: stuff and discussing it openly is a better way to
Speaker 1: do it, rather than getting on Facebook and arguing about
Speaker 1: it and you don't know somebody on the other side
Speaker 1: of the screen, You have no idea what they're about.
Speaker 1: You know, let's just talk about it openly. And I
Speaker 1: think inside of conversation like this, you really do create
Speaker 1: a the thoughts, the ethics, the narrative, the way that
Speaker 1: you say things kind of gets formulated in a formal
Speaker 1: conversation like this, And so I think we'll probably say
Speaker 1: a lot of things that probably a lot of bear
Speaker 1: hunters that have done this their whole life would understand.
Speaker 1: They'd be like, yeah, that's just the way that um.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it hopefully will I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what you're gonna ask me.
Speaker 1: So I hope we come to some good, good conclusions
Speaker 1: here of of ways to to think about this stuff,
Speaker 1: because there is an answer. I mean, if if the
Speaker 1: if the answer was word just we're just guys that
Speaker 1: are just trying to find the easiest way out to
Speaker 1: kill an animal and we're just lazy and we're we
Speaker 1: don't enjoy chat. I mean, you know, if if like
Speaker 1: all the negative stereotypes are true, then we're just dirt balls.
Speaker 1: So there's there's got to be a way of looking
Speaker 1: at it that makes sense. And and the way that
Speaker 1: I've always said it is that I believe that if
Speaker 1: we were in if we could remove ourselves from this
Speaker 1: planet and go to another place that was just in
Speaker 1: some standard of you know, just nous, and you could
Speaker 1: present the case for hunting large predators based upon the
Speaker 1: world that we'd come from, because we're not there anymore,
Speaker 1: I think we'd win. I mean, it's it's rational, it
Speaker 1: makes sense, that's sustainable, it's uh, there's all these positive things,
Speaker 1: and then the negative things oftentimes are not as rational.
Speaker 1: They're emotional, and there really aren't totally based in fact.
Speaker 1: That being said, nothing's perfect there. There there's bad they're
Speaker 1: bad things that have They are bad people at bait
Speaker 1: bears and run hounds. Well, there's bad people and everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, bad people that play tennis. Yeah, and golf.
Speaker 1: O'm gonna say that one. You know what, we keep
Speaker 1: going back this golfing. I kind of I told I've
Speaker 1: told you this. I despised golf as a kid. My
Speaker 1: dad pushed me to be a golfer and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not a golfer. Don't bring up golf. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good introduction just for people that
Speaker 1: listen to like the first six or seven minutes of
Speaker 1: the podcast. Let's talk before we dive into all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Let's let's talk about let's talk about back country hunters
Speaker 1: and anglers. Let's just give a I mean, even if
Speaker 1: we even if we just talked for a short period
Speaker 1: of time here about it, like, uh, describe what back
Speaker 1: country Hunters and Anglers is from even just like a
Speaker 1: national perspective, and then what's happening here in Arkansas. B
Speaker 1: h A is the uh, the voice for wild public land,
Speaker 1: public water, and wildlife in North America. That's the tagline.
Speaker 1: And um, you know when we think about public land,
Speaker 1: public water, places where people go to hunt, or they
Speaker 1: go to hike, or they go to fish or bird
Speaker 1: watch whatever it is. You know, so much of that
Speaker 1: activity takes place in publicly held land and water. But
Speaker 1: b h A you know, got started I want to say,
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, you know something roughly its evidentially the
Speaker 1: last two three years, you know. Um, And so originally
Speaker 1: you think about public land and and we're here sitting
Speaker 1: in northwest Arkansas, were blessed to have national forest. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're basically sitting in the middle of it, but law
Speaker 1: out of a lot of parts of the country don't
Speaker 1: have that. Of course, public land was a big deal
Speaker 1: out west. There's so many millions of acres of it
Speaker 1: out there, and when they're started to become threats to that,
Speaker 1: to you know, getting rid of that public land, I
Speaker 1: think that's when the movement really started to to take
Speaker 1: hold and people started to pay attention to it. Now
Speaker 1: you think about it, there's public land exists for a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons and recreation. It certainly is great for recreation,
Speaker 1: and it's there for other uses as well, and b
Speaker 1: h A recognizes those uses. But the part of the
Speaker 1: b h A steps up for is is the wildlife
Speaker 1: that's on it and and the people who use public
Speaker 1: lands and public waters for that purpose, to give them
Speaker 1: a voice at the table um now here in in
Speaker 1: in the Southeast. You know, Arkansas right now is part
Speaker 1: of the Southeast chapter of b h A. We have
Speaker 1: of six states. Now Tennessee is just just ready to
Speaker 1: break off and become their own state chapter. So we'll
Speaker 1: be six states Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida
Speaker 1: and um, so we're kind of a regional chapter. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit of an experiment within b h A.
Speaker 1: But within each state, you know, we we've got a
Speaker 1: leadership structure and and we focus on the issues that
Speaker 1: are particular to that area. So Arkansas, it might be
Speaker 1: the Buffalo River, it might be um you know, the
Speaker 1: Ozark National Forest, might be something different in Louisiana. It's
Speaker 1: something different in every one of the states. But the
Speaker 1: great thing that we have, and I don't think most
Speaker 1: of the rest of the country understands this, we've all
Speaker 1: got that that Southern camaraderie, you know, the Southeast Conference mentality.
Speaker 1: You know, it's us against everybody else. It just matters
Speaker 1: more here. So um, but here in Arkansas, what we're
Speaker 1: specifically doing right now is building out leadership structure. We've
Speaker 1: recruited some just awesome guys that stepped up at first
Speaker 1: and said they want to be involved in helping. And
Speaker 1: we're not doing anything super formal with that right now
Speaker 1: other than you know, take advantage of their skills and
Speaker 1: their talents and desires and then you know, over the
Speaker 1: next I don't know, let's say six or eight months,
Speaker 1: we will start identifying the we'll name the seats on
Speaker 1: the bus, We'll start putting people in those seats on
Speaker 1: the bus, and we're gonna figure out where to drive
Speaker 1: the bus. That's the analogy that I like to use UM.
Speaker 1: And we don't have any formal goals around you know,
Speaker 1: being being the next state to break out of the
Speaker 1: chapter or anything like that right now. But but what
Speaker 1: we do have is we want to get that leadership
Speaker 1: structure in place so that we can benefit from the
Speaker 1: rest of the Southeast Chapters leadership. And then UM bring
Speaker 1: BHAs message here to Arkansas. And what does that mean
Speaker 1: for Arkansas? That's another question we get all the time,
Speaker 1: like why do I need to join b h A
Speaker 1: UM what's important in public lands and waters here in Arkansas?
Speaker 1: Think about where does a lot of our duck hunting happen,
Speaker 1: public land, public water. UM. You know, we've got world
Speaker 1: class trout fisheries, striper fisheries, we've got UM, you know,
Speaker 1: just just all these different resources in the state that
Speaker 1: we've got that heritage of taking advantage of those here
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. And yeah, we're not maybe under direct threat
Speaker 1: right now. Let's hope we never get there. But but
Speaker 1: let's let's have something in place for if it ever
Speaker 1: did happen. Exactly right, and I think you said it,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the Western issues revolve around public
Speaker 1: lands actually being sold back to the state. That a
Speaker 1: pretty big deal. Like there's just keep you know, public
Speaker 1: public lands and public hands and that's pretty much what
Speaker 1: that is referring back to. And and in super Layman's
Speaker 1: short terms, is that it doesn't sound so bad for
Speaker 1: public land to be sold back to the state, except
Speaker 1: the history of that transaction usually means that once it
Speaker 1: sold to the state, they don't have enough money to
Speaker 1: maintain it, and they shut stuff down, and they potentially
Speaker 1: even ended up setting it into private hands. So it's
Speaker 1: like what what b h A from what I understand,
Speaker 1: and I'm a member of b h A, is that
Speaker 1: you know, no net loss of public land anywhere in
Speaker 1: the country, and an expansion of public lands and just
Speaker 1: the rights of who gets to go there, and and
Speaker 1: a lot of those issues are more Western stuff, but
Speaker 1: there's plenty of stuff here in Arkansas that I'm sure
Speaker 1: that you guys will get involved with. C w D
Speaker 1: is another one just to briefly touch on, you know,
Speaker 1: that was something that was passed at Rendezvous just back
Speaker 1: in early May. And um, we'll be we'll be advocating
Speaker 1: for more money for research and things like that. You know,
Speaker 1: obviously here in Arkansas there's parts of area that's a
Speaker 1: big deal. Yeah, you know, I think the biggest thing
Speaker 1: that b h A has done on a national scale
Speaker 1: has brought attention to public lands and and seeing and
Speaker 1: and they've made it They've made it cool to appreciate
Speaker 1: public lands, and that is a I mean, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a no brainer. But I mean I think it myself.
Speaker 1: I've been influenced by it. I mean, I'm in public
Speaker 1: land my whole life, and it's kind of like you
Speaker 1: just it's just your right and seeing. That's where like
Speaker 1: a difference of how how you and I grew up.
Speaker 1: Because in twenty I think it was ten, we were
Speaker 1: on vacation, maybe it's even twenty sixteen. We're on vacation
Speaker 1: in Colorado and we're driving through National Forest and BLM
Speaker 1: Land and I'm I'm on my phone, like the kids are,
Speaker 1: so what's public land mean? Dad? I'm like, man, I
Speaker 1: don't quite understand that. So, I mean I'm googling what's
Speaker 1: the difference between BLM and for a service land and
Speaker 1: what is that. And we actually took I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: much to my wife's chagrin, we just turned off the
Speaker 1: highway in one place and just took off, took the
Speaker 1: took the gate down, drove across, put the gate back up,
Speaker 1: and just drove out into this, into this rolling pasture,
Speaker 1: you know, public land, and just went driving around, took pictures,
Speaker 1: you know, until it was my wife was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is enough, let's go back to the road. And
Speaker 1: uh that's when that's for me, when it started to
Speaker 1: become real that like, okay, this is what it means,
Speaker 1: like this is a place we can go and just
Speaker 1: go do stuff. But I didn't have that experience growing up,
Speaker 1: so I had to physically experience it to get it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's and I think just the knowledge of
Speaker 1: the knowledge of the history of public lands and so
Speaker 1: powerful too. And I mean this is something that I
Speaker 1: would have known before. But it's like I can't can't
Speaker 1: be denied that b h A has brought it to
Speaker 1: the forefront and that this experiment with public lands in
Speaker 1: North America is a very unique thing to the world,
Speaker 1: very unique thing for man the history of mankind that
Speaker 1: a government would say this land is for everybody, because
Speaker 1: typically kings and monarchs took stuff for themselves, Like for real,
Speaker 1: like the that's the king's forest, you can't go in there.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's typically how the world has worked for
Speaker 1: a thousand years. And that's the that's what money does.
Speaker 1: You know, money, Money buys you exclusion in a lot
Speaker 1: of cases. And so it was a happy accident. I
Speaker 1: think it was just an experiment. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: Roosevelt and a bunch of other people that were just like, hey,
Speaker 1: these these places are worth protecting. Let's make this eternally
Speaker 1: the land, uh, you know, the land owned by the
Speaker 1: people and citizens the United States. And what we can't
Speaker 1: forget and we can't forget inside that narrative is that
Speaker 1: Roosevelt most of those guys that were influential inside of that,
Speaker 1: did it because they loved hunting. I mean for real,
Speaker 1: I mean obviously the purpose of it was bigger than that,
Speaker 1: and Roosevelt knew that. I mean, like this is you know,
Speaker 1: not everybody's gonna just come here to hunt, and there's
Speaker 1: some places that you couldn't hunt. I mean, the national
Speaker 1: parks and stuff, but in general that they were. Roosevelt
Speaker 1: loved land because he loved to hunt. I'm reading a
Speaker 1: book by Roosevelt right now called Tales of the Grizzly.
Speaker 1: I think he spelled grizzly with an S rather than
Speaker 1: Z like we do today. And it was his his
Speaker 1: book that he wrote about all his bear hunting. And
Speaker 1: I'm actually pretty amazed at the knowledge that he had
Speaker 1: chapters and chapters on on bear, uh just bear related,
Speaker 1: not biology really, but just his observations anyway. I mean,
Speaker 1: the guy was in love with wild place is because
Speaker 1: of wildlife and because he loved to hunt and and
Speaker 1: and it's an interesting thing to think about how people
Speaker 1: who love to go out and and hunt that wildlife.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I get it people, some people want
Speaker 1: to go look at it. But the ones spending the
Speaker 1: money on it and contributing to it are the hunters
Speaker 1: and anglers who are out there pursuing it for their
Speaker 1: recreational purpose. And uh, we can't beat that drum loud enough.
Speaker 1: Where where where wildlife has cultural value, deep cultural value,
Speaker 1: specifically through hunting it is it is protected. And where
Speaker 1: wildlife is protected, the other way to protect wildlife. Wildlife
Speaker 1: is through game but regulations, but primarily through habitat preservation.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can't have bear and deer and turkeys
Speaker 1: and elk unless we got a place for him to live.
Speaker 1: So if you love wildlife, want to protect it, you
Speaker 1: protect habitat. And I mean that is the drum. That's
Speaker 1: the drum. And and them back to even jumping into
Speaker 1: what we're gonna talk about. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: important that we understand the foundational the foundational ethics for
Speaker 1: why we're not just justified, but why it is right
Speaker 1: that we have the right to hunt, you know, and
Speaker 1: and and the main thing too is that it's worked.
Speaker 1: This it's no longer an experiment, you know, seventy five
Speaker 1: years ago, it was kind of an experiment, you know.
Speaker 1: Roosevelt them in eight eighty nine, I think eight seven
Speaker 1: maybe was when they created the Boot and Crockett Club,
Speaker 1: and that was kind of the beginning point of coming
Speaker 1: from this century of mass degradation of wildlife. And then
Speaker 1: all these guys were like, wait a minute, all this
Speaker 1: big game is gonna die off. We gotta do something.
Speaker 1: So I mean that's that's kind of like a point
Speaker 1: when you could say something started then forty or fifty
Speaker 1: years later, uh Aldo Leopold, a bunch other guys started,
Speaker 1: you know, it just it just kind of built on
Speaker 1: and this idea of wildlife management, that we can manage
Speaker 1: this wildlife strategically and manage land. And and it's like
Speaker 1: back then it was kind of an experiment, Let's see
Speaker 1: if this works. And then now here we are hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty years later, hundred and thirty years later in
Speaker 1: the North American midle of wildlife conservation, and what we've
Speaker 1: done with habitat is created a continent that has more
Speaker 1: big game than any place on the Earth. I tell
Speaker 1: people that on YouTube almost daily. I'm pointing my finger
Speaker 1: for all those of you listening, I'm pointing at Kolbe
Speaker 1: for emphasis. Now, I'm serious because on our YouTube channel
Speaker 1: we get a lot of interaction from people from other countries.
Speaker 1: They see shoot a bear and they they it just
Speaker 1: makes the well for them. It is they think it's
Speaker 1: the last one on the earth. Yeah for real. I
Speaker 1: mean they're like these are endangered. It's always in broken English,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's like these are in dangerous. How
Speaker 1: could you do this? I hope your family dies. We
Speaker 1: have to do today. I translated a comment I didn't
Speaker 1: know what it was, and it was actually a good comment.
Speaker 1: But and and I'm always and I have the same
Speaker 1: banter that always go back. It's just like we have
Speaker 1: more big game than any place on the earth. Most
Speaker 1: places killed out their big game a thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: or they put it, you know, it's held in reserve somewhere,
Speaker 1: you know, by the barons or you know, the kings
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. And you can't you can't go
Speaker 1: over there and do that. Don't don't shoot the king's
Speaker 1: deer or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, well, so, I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's the thing that's so powerful to me,
Speaker 1: is that what we're doing is not an experiment. It's
Speaker 1: it's working. And uh, and it's the hunters that have
Speaker 1: primarily done it, and that's just hard to deny. And uh,
Speaker 1: that doesn't give us a right to just do whatever
Speaker 1: we want. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't. But but
Speaker 1: it is well, and it's still we still can't always
Speaker 1: agree on what that means. Is hunters right there, And
Speaker 1: that's that's a good maybe that's a good lead into
Speaker 1: even the conversation at hand. Just yeah, so Bear hunting.
Speaker 1: If we're gonna if we're gonna open up that that
Speaker 1: can you know, hunting large predators in general is a
Speaker 1: it's a hot button topic. It's a controversial topic amongst
Speaker 1: people that have no concept of hunting or rural lifestyle
Speaker 1: or tradition or scientific base wildlife management. It's a hot
Speaker 1: button with them, but it's also a hot button with
Speaker 1: people hunters are our allies that don't understand. Um So,
Speaker 1: and when we say large predators in North America, what
Speaker 1: we're talking about is grizzly bearris, black bears, and mountain lions. Basically,
Speaker 1: those would be the large pred polar You can hunt
Speaker 1: polar bears in a few places. Um but those are
Speaker 1: those are the primary targets that that's that's what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. Um So, what would what would you say
Speaker 1: or where would you like to start with? Just just
Speaker 1: kind of something and if you if you wanted even
Speaker 1: to just pick a certain a certain method of honey, Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's because I brought it up before, So let's
Speaker 1: talk about baiting a little bit. I knew you were
Speaker 1: going to bring it up. Yeah, you were ready, um
Speaker 1: baited yourself into that one. Wow. So so, you've walked
Speaker 1: into my trap. Uh exactly, so ensnared another another form call.
Speaker 1: But you gotta you gotta jump in here too. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna help me. I'm gonna dial them back now, all right. So,
Speaker 1: so when it comes to baiting, obviously some places in
Speaker 1: the u S you can, in some places you can't.
Speaker 1: So as I came so first of all, you know,
Speaker 1: my first introduction to big game hunting was obviously white tail,
Speaker 1: as it is for most people. And that's about all
Speaker 1: I did, and that's about all I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: And then um started to get a little bit more
Speaker 1: interested in maybe a western hunt. I went on a
Speaker 1: prong horn hunt last fall, and that was fun. You know,
Speaker 1: I would say that equating it to something in the
Speaker 1: fishing world, that's like taking your kid out and going
Speaker 1: blue yeo fishing you know, some worms and going to
Speaker 1: the dock. And I mean it's not quite that easy.
Speaker 1: It's it's a little more difficult than that. But lots
Speaker 1: of things to see, lots of game. You get to
Speaker 1: see it moving around all over the place. Okay, so
Speaker 1: I've crossed that bridge. I'm like, Okay, now stuff's getting
Speaker 1: a little more interesting to me. Um, but like when
Speaker 1: it comes to hunting bears, Um, why why would you
Speaker 1: use bait? Why? And and I even only just took
Speaker 1: up archery hunting last fall and never wasn't successful at all,
Speaker 1: didn't really get a shot at anything. But um, why
Speaker 1: would you why would you need bait to to to
Speaker 1: hunt a bear? Well? Can I ask you a question first?
Speaker 1: We'll see, let me put it back now, like, would
Speaker 1: you like from a new hunter coming into this, would
Speaker 1: you have ethical issues like if you were to go
Speaker 1: do it? Yeah? Yeah, I think that's what would you
Speaker 1: would what would be what would be the thing that
Speaker 1: would be like this could be bad? See, I would
Speaker 1: I feel a little uneasy about it from the standpoint
Speaker 1: of altering the natural habit of the natural habit of
Speaker 1: the bear exactly take an advantage of it. And that's
Speaker 1: I think that's just something that's formed in me over time.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily you know, I'm not repeating. I mean
Speaker 1: I've heard that said before, but I think from the
Speaker 1: standpoint of, um, if I wanted to try to be
Speaker 1: as natural of environment as I could, then the use
Speaker 1: of bait to me feels like I'm altering that in
Speaker 1: a way. That's unfair to the animal. Okay, no, that's good.
Speaker 1: You know. I think the baseline understanding that a lot
Speaker 1: of people don't have about bear is that bears are
Speaker 1: so widely geographically distributed from the I say this all
Speaker 1: the time, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean,
Speaker 1: from the northern boreal forest all the way down to
Speaker 1: Old Mexico as the native black bear range. And we're
Speaker 1: talking about black bears, I'm talking about baiting. Let's just
Speaker 1: say that and and that. Why is that? Why is
Speaker 1: it only black bears on that you're talking about that?
Speaker 1: Just because we know pretty baiting grizzlies would be like
Speaker 1: a pretty rare thing. It's legal in Alaska kind a
Speaker 1: few places, because just not that it's they just feel
Speaker 1: like it's more relevant to talk about baiting black bears.
Speaker 1: Why isn't it legal though, Well, because they don't have
Speaker 1: any trouble. Well, that's a great question. Because they don't
Speaker 1: have any trouble managing the populations with other methods. So
Speaker 1: that is ultimately so if you understand this, why geographic
Speaker 1: distribution of black bear in these wide varieties of habitats
Speaker 1: eastern deciduous forests basically from where we're at right now
Speaker 1: in western Arkansas all the way to the Atlantic Ocean
Speaker 1: for the most part today is heavily forested eastern deciduous forest.
Speaker 1: Most places in Arkansas the visibility is about fifty yards.
Speaker 1: So what I'm getting at, and I can describe in
Speaker 1: more detail, is that the only places that you can
Speaker 1: bait bears, it is used as a management tool to
Speaker 1: harvest the amount of bears that they need harvested out
Speaker 1: of a certain region. So it's more of a scientific
Speaker 1: approach rather than a convenience. I mean that that is,
Speaker 1: that's not even like doctored up theory, that that is
Speaker 1: the truth. You don't have to go to your like
Speaker 1: bear hunter manual and this is what you say, that's
Speaker 1: actually that's what the biologist would say exactly. No, I'm
Speaker 1: being serious. I mean sometimes people we we spend things.
Speaker 1: And when I say we, I'm just telling like mankind
Speaker 1: in general can spend something to make it feel like
Speaker 1: it's in his favor. But I mean, uh, like a
Speaker 1: lot of Western states if they can harvest, because what
Speaker 1: what states do state biologists. The ethic of wildlife management
Speaker 1: organizations run by the federal government of the state government
Speaker 1: is that we want to utilize wildlife for the people,
Speaker 1: but also for the greatest good of that particular species
Speaker 1: of animals in general. I mean, that's the ethic of it.
Speaker 1: And so wildlife managers say, we have this amount of habitat,
Speaker 1: we have this number of animals, This amount of habitat
Speaker 1: will hold this number of animals. We that population of
Speaker 1: animals expands by this mathematical percentage every year, and for
Speaker 1: bear that's ten percent per year. So if you have
Speaker 1: a population of a thousand animals next year, you're gonna
Speaker 1: have animals. The next year you're gonna have yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: And and so just so what they say is to
Speaker 1: stabilize the pon So once that population fills up the habitat,
Speaker 1: then they have to take out the surplus animals every year.
Speaker 1: And so they find ways to do that through management tools,
Speaker 1: which would either be through spot and stock hunting. Where
Speaker 1: there's no can't bait, can't run hounds. All you can
Speaker 1: do is just go out in the woods and try
Speaker 1: to kill a bear. Um they did that in Arkansas
Speaker 1: for twenty one years from night to two thousand one,
Speaker 1: and we killed about five two maybe the maximum amount
Speaker 1: of bears we ever killed was fifty in the entire
Speaker 1: state in a given year. Well, the population began to
Speaker 1: expand so much that the game and Fish said, we
Speaker 1: have to have a way to manage these bears through hunters.
Speaker 1: And so they said, we're going to open up baiting
Speaker 1: bears on public land, and we're gonna manage these bears
Speaker 1: through Arkansas's bow hunters. I mean, so, so baiting was
Speaker 1: the only way that it could be done. And the
Speaker 1: private land in Arkansas private land in certain zones in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and so baiting is a management tool. And that was
Speaker 1: the That was the foundational point, James, that I was
Speaker 1: gonna say that has to be understood is that we
Speaker 1: take these things and we turn them into and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna air quotes sport. I mean, because we enjoy hunting.
Speaker 1: We do, and I didn't enjoy it, we wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: And and so what what somebody might see as sport,
Speaker 1: But actually we're killing two birds with one beautiful stone,
Speaker 1: and that beautiful stone is is that we're managing high
Speaker 1: life based upon science, based upon things that have worked
Speaker 1: in the past and are working extremely well. But we're
Speaker 1: also enjoying, enjoying the resource. We're enjoying hunting. We're enjoying
Speaker 1: bear meat, we're enjoying the challenge. We're enjoying these things
Speaker 1: and so um, so that would be like the foundational thing.
Speaker 1: This is a management tool. Let me go on? Shall
Speaker 1: I go on? Please? Please do the the management tools.
Speaker 1: The more effective management tool is, the more selective that
Speaker 1: hunters can be. So like in bating, I can be
Speaker 1: highly selective on which animal I take out, and the
Speaker 1: hunting culture of a certain region dictates kind of how
Speaker 1: that plays out. What we're what we're trying to do
Speaker 1: in Arkansas is to build and this is this is
Speaker 1: gonna throw people off. But well, I won't use the
Speaker 1: catch phrase I'll throw people off. We are I'm we're
Speaker 1: trying to tell people shoot older mature males over bait. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the target animal. The T word. Don't say it,
Speaker 1: no for real? Um. And so if there's a reason
Speaker 1: for that, there's a biological reason for that, right absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean to an older mature males already contributed to
Speaker 1: the gene pool and he is, there is no net
Speaker 1: loss on the population when he is extracted. So by
Speaker 1: targeting older mature males, we we give preference to juveniles
Speaker 1: and females and let them grow up and do what
Speaker 1: they do. So I mean like hunting older mature males
Speaker 1: is the best thing to do in almost any type
Speaker 1: of population. And so when I say the most effective,
Speaker 1: like we could go out here on private land and
Speaker 1: good bear country in Arkansas and get seven or eight
Speaker 1: ten bears coming into our bait. Now, could you go
Speaker 1: in there with a bow and kill one on any
Speaker 1: given day? Man, you you've got your work cut out
Speaker 1: for you. And a lot of people wouldn't understand that,
Speaker 1: and that didn't necessarily what this conversation is about. But
Speaker 1: you can be selective when I go into the national
Speaker 1: forest to hunt bears. Let me just stop right there
Speaker 1: and say, are those points clear? Yeah? I'm not a
Speaker 1: selective And it's a management I think the management tool
Speaker 1: piece of it is. That's like a uh, like a
Speaker 1: lightning strike kind of thing. Um when we when we
Speaker 1: talk about hunting a conservation, and and most hunters will
Speaker 1: use that as a justification hunting his conservation. Okay, So
Speaker 1: if we're gonna use hunting a conservation, then we want it,
Speaker 1: we need to be effective with it. And so in
Speaker 1: bear hunting, you know, even though I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: do that right now, and I don't didn't. Let's say
Speaker 1: I don't understand it. If that's the best way to
Speaker 1: manage that population for a conservation, then I that's a gateway,
Speaker 1: like I can I can step over that chasm that
Speaker 1: I had. Now I have a bridge to get from
Speaker 1: one side to the other, and I can say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can respect that. I can understand that now, I
Speaker 1: mean I could. I I could say, maybe baiting isn't
Speaker 1: the right way to go about other species, and we
Speaker 1: don't have to get into that. But but for bears, Okay,
Speaker 1: I get it. And that's a good point. Probably for
Speaker 1: white tailed deer, we could kill all the white tailed
Speaker 1: deer we needed without baiting in Arkansas. Probably, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but we might have to sharpen our skills a little bit.
Speaker 1: But but I know what you're saying. I'm picking up. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's here's the Here's I think the term would be.
Speaker 1: The counter factual is what if there was no baiting.
Speaker 1: Let's look at that world. Let's look at the world
Speaker 1: of Arkansas where you know, people just said you can't
Speaker 1: bait bears, that's wrong. Well, this is what would happen
Speaker 1: is that. And I know this because I have tracked
Speaker 1: Arkansas bear hunting for the last twenty years. And I
Speaker 1: mean there are very few people in state of Arkansas
Speaker 1: that are consistently going out and killing bears in the
Speaker 1: National Forest, just without bait, without hounds, just like going
Speaker 1: out and just hunting them like deer. Very few people now. Granted,
Speaker 1: if that was the only thing we could do, there
Speaker 1: would be more people doing it, and people would find
Speaker 1: ways to be successful maybe, but you'd also lose some
Speaker 1: people because you can only go out and beat your
Speaker 1: head against the rock for so long before you give up. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. So here's what would happen. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can guarantee it. This is what would happen. Is
Speaker 1: we would maybe get to a point where we killed
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty bears a year, where and and
Speaker 1: and we have got to take out four hundred bears
Speaker 1: a year for this bear population not to just explode. Well,
Speaker 1: and so I think that's a good segue into something
Speaker 1: else I wanted to ask you about, which is what
Speaker 1: happens when the bear population explodes? Good question. So, so
Speaker 1: bear hunting as um it's a management tool obviously you've
Speaker 1: got if you get too many bears, you get too
Speaker 1: many of any animal on the landscape, you know, that
Speaker 1: causes problems with what they eat and the habitat they
Speaker 1: you know, they destroy the habitat um. But but what
Speaker 1: else goes on? Well, there's a there's a phrase that
Speaker 1: biologists used called cultural tolerance. So what is the cultural
Speaker 1: tolerance of this region for people to have bears walking
Speaker 1: through their yard and people bears walking up on their
Speaker 1: porch eating their bird feeders, stuff like this. But here,
Speaker 1: here's here's a version of what would happen, is that
Speaker 1: bears would begin to saturate into places that people don't
Speaker 1: want them. There would be bears, you know, on I
Speaker 1: live kind of in the city limits of a rural
Speaker 1: town in northwest Arkansas. I mean, if there were bears
Speaker 1: walking through this town every day, rummaging through people's we'd
Speaker 1: have all kinds of problems that would put pressure on
Speaker 1: the game and fish. Game and fish would have to
Speaker 1: trap foward to five hundred problem bears a year, massive
Speaker 1: amount of money, massive amount of energy that had problem bears,
Speaker 1: and ultimately bears would die. Ultimately, ultimately they would euthanize
Speaker 1: the amount of bears that they would have to. I mean,
Speaker 1: it would be a good experiment to just let this
Speaker 1: thing go for fifty years and see how many bears
Speaker 1: they had to euthanize in order to stabilize the population
Speaker 1: with grizzlies. Now exactly. We did a we did a
Speaker 1: podcast with Joe ondellas Yellostone Bear Country Association, Western Bear Foundation. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: there the state officials killed forty four grizzly bears last year,
Speaker 1: euthanized forty four problem grizzly bears that they had, and
Speaker 1: you know out there they have they don't want to
Speaker 1: kill those things like there, this is like last resort
Speaker 1: they harvest. They killed euthanized forty four bears. What we're
Speaker 1: fighting for out there is a twenty bear hunter quota
Speaker 1: for bears. All we're saying is those have twenty bear
Speaker 1: tags a year that we can utilize, and uh, they're
Speaker 1: killing more, they're killing more. Inside of that, what happens
Speaker 1: when you start to hunt a predator like that man
Speaker 1: that we talked a little bit about this on the
Speaker 1: podcast that that just came out. But when you have
Speaker 1: an unhunted population of of top predators apex predators. They
Speaker 1: just get bold and it changes them. They get bold
Speaker 1: and it changes them and they become dangerous. The most
Speaker 1: dangerous grizzly bears on the planet are out there in
Speaker 1: the Yellowstone Region, um and what and so you know,
Speaker 1: I've thought, well, what good is it gonna do to
Speaker 1: kill twenty bears out in these places, because you're not
Speaker 1: gonna hunt them like in the city limits of Cody, Wyoming,
Speaker 1: where they're actually causing problems. Do you understand I'm saying,
Speaker 1: we're we're hunting. We'd be hunting these bears in the
Speaker 1: national forest, out in the wilderness. But if they're out there,
Speaker 1: if you hunt them out there and leave enough space
Speaker 1: out there for them to live, they don't have to
Speaker 1: go to Joe described it that it's like a bucket.
Speaker 1: You know, there's only so much volume in that bucket
Speaker 1: for bears. The bucket is full, and now water is
Speaker 1: flowing over the top. And so these grizzly bears are
Speaker 1: in a bunch of places they were never even naturally before.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, that's the way I understood Gym Sessions
Speaker 1: and Joe to say it is that there are grizzly
Speaker 1: bears now today in that region, inhabiting places that historically
Speaker 1: grizzlies didn't even live, like plane, you know, like and so.
Speaker 1: And it's because there's this bucket that's a really good bucket.
Speaker 1: It's full spilling out. So if you killed, if you
Speaker 1: harvested some of those bears out of the main bucket,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be having to flow out. Isn't part of
Speaker 1: the argument um in the courts around grizzly bears, this
Speaker 1: argument about connecting populations together, and you would have to
Speaker 1: have a certain number of I mean, you would have
Speaker 1: to overflow that bucket to force those populations to go together.
Speaker 1: So it seems like there's this I mean, it's not counterintuitive,
Speaker 1: but it's like the two ideas clash with each other,
Speaker 1: Like we we we must have these bears connect with
Speaker 1: the other populations. But when they overflow the bucket, it's
Speaker 1: you know, broader water takes the easiest course downhill. And
Speaker 1: so that's Cody Wyoming, let's say, or wherever it is
Speaker 1: that they think. Some of those arguments are probably just
Speaker 1: a good way for them to stall this thing inside
Speaker 1: of court. I mean, would it be ideal for these
Speaker 1: like the Cellway bitter Root population of grizzlies and this other.
Speaker 1: And I'm not an expert really on the geography there,
Speaker 1: but I mean, would it be ideal that all these
Speaker 1: populations inner bread and their bears moving back and forth.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it would be, But is it essential? No,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's from what I have filtered, But
Speaker 1: it is a I mean, the anti hunting groups are
Speaker 1: just concerned about keeping this in court for eternity. They
Speaker 1: would keep it in court for the next seven years. Good,
Speaker 1: it's good business for them to make money off. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: but but to get back to our Arkansas analogy, Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's essentially what would happen. We would so
Speaker 1: we would deal with those same kind of bear issues.
Speaker 1: For example, if I'm vacation out in Colorado, you know,
Speaker 1: when you roll into town, they're they're trying to educate
Speaker 1: every tourist do not feed the bears. We do not
Speaker 1: want the bears coming into town. And everybody's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to see a bear, Well that's we don't.
Speaker 1: We don't want to see bears in town. And we
Speaker 1: would deal with that same kind of thing in Arkansas, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and you know a hundred pot here's here is
Speaker 1: something that a lot of hunters wouldn't know and actually
Speaker 1: kind of owes against in some ways. Our Our message
Speaker 1: is that a hunted population of bears grows and expands
Speaker 1: faster than an unhunted population. Why isn't about that? What
Speaker 1: it's just a proven it's just a bare fact, because
Speaker 1: that is it. Because they tend to stay in the areas,
Speaker 1: they'll get more relis. It's even more mysterious than that.
Speaker 1: And I don't I've never heard anybody give a real
Speaker 1: good explanation of it. But basically it's an increase in
Speaker 1: litter size. I mean, it's like, think about it, like
Speaker 1: a sow bear out in the mountains here in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: Somehow her body perceives that animals are being extracted from
Speaker 1: the population, and so she rears three cubs rather than two.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is essentially the way it works. That's
Speaker 1: what's happening in Oklahoma. Like there there. We opened up
Speaker 1: season in Oklahoma ten years ago, I think, um. And
Speaker 1: so they they're currently inside of a research project where
Speaker 1: they're trying to understand the impact of harvesting forty or
Speaker 1: fifty bears out of a population, because that's all they
Speaker 1: kill in Oklahoma between forty and seventy bears a year,
Speaker 1: and uh, and what they're seeing is increasing litter sized already.
Speaker 1: And so but so again, like as a as a
Speaker 1: as a hunter that's wanting to hunt, you know, we say, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to control the population through hunting. It's true,
Speaker 1: but you actually have to begin. It creates a beautiful,
Speaker 1: wonderful cycle because it creates more bears. But but it
Speaker 1: also like if you were just a staunch anti hunter
Speaker 1: and you said, we want bears on the landscape, I
Speaker 1: want bears crawling in my windows at night, then we'd say, good,
Speaker 1: let us hunt them. I mean yeah, because we'll have
Speaker 1: more of them. Okay, you think think about it. This
Speaker 1: way to Arkansas has had a we've been able basically
Speaker 1: the floodgates of Arkansas bear hunting opened in two thousand
Speaker 1: one when we were allowed to hunt bear over bait.
Speaker 1: For twenty one years from nineteen eight to two thousand one,
Speaker 1: all it was was just spotting stock bear hunting in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and we killed between five and I can't remember, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean and honestly I don't even know if we
Speaker 1: ever killed fifty two thousand one, we started killing bears.
Speaker 1: We started killing between two hundred and five hundred bears
Speaker 1: a year. Let's just say twenty years, we killed three
Speaker 1: hundred bears a year. Math for me, how many bears?
Speaker 1: Is that? Six thousand bears? We've killed six thousand bears
Speaker 1: in the last twenty years in Arkansas, and we have
Speaker 1: more bears today than we've ever had, and more people,
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly more people than we've ever had. You
Speaker 1: talked to Myron Means, the bear biologist for Arkansas Game
Speaker 1: and Fish Commission, to verify that statement. I just said,
Speaker 1: I promise you I could text him right now, do
Speaker 1: we have more bears in Arkansas than we've had in
Speaker 1: the last hundred years? And he would say yes. Someday.
Speaker 1: I would love to see in Arkansas bear in the wild.
Speaker 1: Never seen one? Yeah, you know a lot of people haven't. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know experience what swimming across Beaver Lake the other day?
Speaker 1: Do you see that? I did? Yeah? But there was
Speaker 1: a bear and there was a bear in this town,
Speaker 1: uh a few weeks ago, like right over here, which
Speaker 1: is pretty I mean, there's a bear habitat here close.
Speaker 1: There's been I've seen bearside in this hollow across the
Speaker 1: road from me, because I mean, I've never seen a
Speaker 1: bear on my property, but this is my dream to
Speaker 1: one day see a bear on the properties walking right
Speaker 1: through the backyard and should start putting some food out
Speaker 1: for him. He's the one who doesn't like he's converted.
Speaker 1: It didn't take much. Yeah, man, I I'm weak. No,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of people. A lot of people don't
Speaker 1: understand baiting like they have this. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's kind of a you know, it's like is it fair?
Speaker 1: And that's really not the right question because if the
Speaker 1: macro concern is the health of wildlife and they're how
Speaker 1: they live inside of habitat, then we have to go
Speaker 1: back to what's the best management tool for this reasons?
Speaker 1: And then once you actually start baiting bears, you realize
Speaker 1: how hard it is. Yeah, which is true, and I've
Speaker 1: heard you mentioned that before. I mean success right in
Speaker 1: Arkansas for bears, they don't really have a statistic, but
Speaker 1: I bet it would be like it's hard to get
Speaker 1: a statistic because we all get a bear tag right
Speaker 1: exactly right, so um, And then they also leave the
Speaker 1: bait to go to natural foods really quick, and that's
Speaker 1: That's the thing that makes it tough here is that
Speaker 1: they leave bait to go to natural foods. Um so
Speaker 1: you can. A bear would rather eat a white oakacre
Speaker 1: and as he would a donut or anything you can
Speaker 1: put out for him. The most animals are like that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of odd how they figure that out. It's
Speaker 1: better to eat the natural stuff than whatever it is
Speaker 1: we put out for him. Yeah, we're the only species
Speaker 1: that hadn't figured that out. We'd rather eat cheetos, I'd
Speaker 1: rather eat venison. Yes, yes, let's talk about that. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: there there's another point that I think is a massive
Speaker 1: stumbling block for people is that they say, are you
Speaker 1: gonna eat it? Do you eat bear? Well? I want to.
Speaker 1: I want to. I want to come at it from
Speaker 1: a little bit different angle if if that's okay with you.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I think has always
Speaker 1: been a roadblock, well, I use always loosely a roadblock
Speaker 1: for me. I heard somebody say once that when you
Speaker 1: get down and you start skinning out a bear, man,
Speaker 1: it really looks like a person when you get all
Speaker 1: the fur off. Is that true? I mean, it looks
Speaker 1: more like a person than a skin deer. Looks like.
Speaker 1: I mean, so I can see somebody saying, yeah, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's just something you have to get over then,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I guess i'd like in that too.
Speaker 1: The first few times I killed a deer, I had,
Speaker 1: but I struggled with gutting it and doing all that.
Speaker 1: And now it's just like, you know, last year was
Speaker 1: the first year because because at my inn lost place,
Speaker 1: it was like, up, bring the four wheeler. We got
Speaker 1: one down, and we take it back up to the house,
Speaker 1: string it up, do all the stuff. Last year was
Speaker 1: the first year that I was like, I'm gonna do
Speaker 1: this right there. I killed it right there. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: just do it right here in the field. It was
Speaker 1: way easier to do it that way than stringing it
Speaker 1: up and having it, you know, guts flopping out of
Speaker 1: it and blood running down on my shoes and everything.
Speaker 1: I mean, yes, okay, you get into it a little
Speaker 1: bit more in your elbows and stuff, but uh, you
Speaker 1: get over it. And if you being desensitized to a
Speaker 1: really natural and normal process, taking it, taking all the
Speaker 1: way from from the field to your table helps a
Speaker 1: lot with that. Definitely. I just realized what I should
Speaker 1: have said when you said, does a bear look like
Speaker 1: a human when it's skinned? What I should have said,
Speaker 1: I never skinned the human. Okay, that's what I should
Speaker 1: have said. I get to stay for a little while longer.
Speaker 1: Oh man, we're just pounding away here, um on time. No,
Speaker 1: so well, let's stay on this just a minute. Like
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't understand that a bear's diet.
Speaker 1: A lot of people would say, well, eating a bear's
Speaker 1: like eating a coyote. You know. They would think, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of the old mosaic law of
Speaker 1: like don't eat anything without a what is it a
Speaker 1: cloven hoof? I mean like cow, sheep, deer? Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean like and so you know, certainly something that
Speaker 1: doesn't have hoofs you wouldn't eat, you know, but a
Speaker 1: bear pretty much has a diet not much different than
Speaker 1: a wild turkey when you actually realize it's a lot more. Well,
Speaker 1: this is this is that analogy only works in this
Speaker 1: scenario of the bears diet is is plant matter is
Speaker 1: protein from animal protein of that like cent of that
Speaker 1: typically for Arkansas bears anyway, is insects. No, kid, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're grubbing fools cants. I mean they
Speaker 1: roll logs and need ants. I mean that's basic essentially,
Speaker 1: like what turkey eats. I mean, but will they catch
Speaker 1: a fawn if they see one? Heck yeah, but that's
Speaker 1: only going to be for a few weeks. And now
Speaker 1: you get into you get into bears that are influenced
Speaker 1: by salmon streams and stuff, and you're in a totally
Speaker 1: different category. There's gonna be periods of time that they're
Speaker 1: gonna be eating a lot of fish based proteins, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to eat those bears. Right Well, there,
Speaker 1: I just can't say that I have ever eaten a
Speaker 1: black bear that was like just pounding salmon. I've heard
Speaker 1: people say it's not bad. I've heard people say it's terrible.
Speaker 1: It's just all over the board. Well, end of the day,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna kill it and not try to do
Speaker 1: something productive with it. You know, you're gonna try it
Speaker 1: one way or the other. It may not be you know,
Speaker 1: just like you go to the store and buy beef.
Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes you get a steak that's really good
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's not really good. So I guess you
Speaker 1: just kind of have to take what you get. But
Speaker 1: it's good. So so what you're you're working on just
Speaker 1: it's it's good. I mean, like I could feed you
Speaker 1: bear in my house and you would think it was beef.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just really believe that. Like if you
Speaker 1: had no idea who I was, and you were just
Speaker 1: sent to my house to eat dinner and you walked
Speaker 1: to my house, I could feed you something and you'd
Speaker 1: just be like, that's good. It's good meat. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's good, had an interesting rub on it, little sweetness
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah yeah, maybe so maybe um so cold.
Speaker 1: He's got a product, he's working on it, and it's
Speaker 1: in historically, you know, I think a lot of it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's really a place for this,
Speaker 1: but you know, in in today's society, everybody is so
Speaker 1: interested in preserving traditions and traditions of their people. Men,
Speaker 1: our people eight bear on this continent for a long time.
Speaker 1: I mean, and I guess when I say are people,
Speaker 1: I mean people who moved here. Even a lot of
Speaker 1: us have some Native American probably somewhere way back there.
Speaker 1: But but that's what I'm talking about. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the there's there's historical literature here in Arkansas
Speaker 1: that said, if you you know, in the early eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: set down at the dinner table in the Ozark Mountains
Speaker 1: of Arkansas and had red meat, it's about an eighty
Speaker 1: percent chance it was black bear, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just there's a lot of historical usage. And here's
Speaker 1: what happened in Arkansas is that for seventy five years
Speaker 1: we didn't hardly have bears because they were extra pated
Speaker 1: by habitat loss and market hunting, which is very different
Speaker 1: from what we do today. There's a big misunderstanding there
Speaker 1: with just the general public as they think, well, hunters
Speaker 1: are the ones that killed all the wildlife at the
Speaker 1: turn of century. Man, they were they were basically like farmers,
Speaker 1: I mean they were they were going out to reap
Speaker 1: a harvest for to market it. You know. It's that's
Speaker 1: nothing like what we do. You know, we kill one
Speaker 1: barrier year and they're happy. Market hunter might kill you know,
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone kill the hundred and fifty bears in one winter,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So it's like very different.
Speaker 1: But so it's it's it's historical usage. Um, it's a
Speaker 1: good meat and uh, you know you do have to
Speaker 1: cook it. Thoroughly. It can't carry trickadilla. That that's just
Speaker 1: a non issue. Trickadilla dies. I believe that just over
Speaker 1: a hundred forty five degrees or something, which is we
Speaker 1: don't cook hardly anything that other than like a rare steak.
Speaker 1: You just want to cook it and they'll be totally fine.
Speaker 1: They say, does it die if you freeze it for
Speaker 1: a certain moment? Heard, there's different strains of it, and
Speaker 1: some strains die and when it's frozen, some strains. So
Speaker 1: it's better just cook it, Just cook it, just cook it,
Speaker 1: and then you have the fat. Yeah, So tell me,
Speaker 1: like what what all do you do with the fat.
Speaker 1: But this is intriguing to me because obviously white tail
Speaker 1: it's like get rid of the fat, you know, And
Speaker 1: I know there's some people that are kind of kind
Speaker 1: of trying to break that stigma now. But tell me
Speaker 1: about bear fat. Well, we've actually I've actually got about
Speaker 1: thirty pounds of bear fat thawing out in my freezer
Speaker 1: and my refrigerator as we speak, because we're gonna render
Speaker 1: some bear fat this week. And uh, I've got three
Speaker 1: different types of bear fat. I've got some bear fat
Speaker 1: from Manitoba. Canada, from Montana and from Oklahoma, and all
Speaker 1: these bears were eating different things in different parts of
Speaker 1: the country. We're gonna render them down, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: try a couple of different methods for rendering them. But
Speaker 1: basically bear fat is uh you know, it's just like
Speaker 1: pig lard of white lard, and you cook it down
Speaker 1: and it turns into oil. And there's all kinds of
Speaker 1: traditional uses and not even I say traditional and just
Speaker 1: in that that used to be the only thing that
Speaker 1: people had. But uh kolbe Or ordered a oil burning
Speaker 1: lamp for the office here that we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: use uh bar oil in that lamp. It burns a
Speaker 1: smokeless flame. So we'll have this glass. And that's why
Speaker 1: people use it for I mean, think about being a
Speaker 1: pioneer here in the Ozarks in the early eight hundreds.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever dreamed of electricity. And man, it gets dark
Speaker 1: at six o'clock in the wintertime, and you know, candles
Speaker 1: only burned for so long. But you killed the bear
Speaker 1: last fall that in you rendered, you know, three gallons
Speaker 1: of bar oil. Man, that stuff burns, I mean, so
Speaker 1: you can use it for burning oil lamps, burning oil lamps,
Speaker 1: but you use it for cooking. I mean, um, well
Speaker 1: that squirrel video we did that was at the BH Deal.
Speaker 1: We cooked that that squirrel meat and just straight bear fat,
Speaker 1: and uh it does not have a wild taste. I
Speaker 1: mean you would just think like bear fat would just
Speaker 1: be like this, like it's just it's just oil. It
Speaker 1: didn't even have a flavor. It's just it's just large. Um,
Speaker 1: So you cook with it. That what bear fat is
Speaker 1: renowned for is for baking any any any baking product
Speaker 1: that you would use oil, like for pie crusts primarily. Uh.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about that. I made that turkey
Speaker 1: that I shot this spring. I made turkey schnitzel last night.
Speaker 1: And then I have a family recipe that goes way back.
Speaker 1: My family is originally from Germany. There's some recipe that
Speaker 1: was handed down. We call it miro Shan. It's basically
Speaker 1: just like an apple pastry. So I made homemade dough
Speaker 1: and made my ro shan, you know, with just some
Speaker 1: you know, I had to cut some crist go into
Speaker 1: it and give you some barroil when we get it
Speaker 1: rendered down. Oh that's like a parting gift for being
Speaker 1: on the show. That's that's great. We gotta we gotta
Speaker 1: render it down first. But for l I'll give you something,
Speaker 1: even if it's just a as a keepsake. Um. The
Speaker 1: other it's it's people used it for oil and knobs
Speaker 1: and guns and stuff, for leather conditioner, I mean pretty
Speaker 1: much anything. There's only so many things you can do
Speaker 1: with oil bait, you know, animal fat and and uh,
Speaker 1: you can anything you can do with anything else, you
Speaker 1: can do with bear fatum. Except there's one thing you
Speaker 1: can do with bear fat that you can't do with
Speaker 1: anything else, and that is forecast of weather. No kidding,
Speaker 1: I was actually just reading an article. Now there's there's
Speaker 1: like legitimate There was a guy named George wimsat Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: back in New Mexico. He died in like ninety five
Speaker 1: or something, and he you are agreed about him. Phenomenal
Speaker 1: guy that was covered on all these different news stations
Speaker 1: and he spent sixty years. Um. Native there was a
Speaker 1: Native American like folklore that you could forecast the weather
Speaker 1: looking at barre oil. They used to put bar oil
Speaker 1: in deer gall bladder or bladders. They would preserve the
Speaker 1: oil by putting it in a bladder and when it
Speaker 1: dried it was clear and you could see through the oil.
Speaker 1: And so they would store this barrel oil and these
Speaker 1: bladders and the oil would change and it would bubble
Speaker 1: and it would change colors, which it does barrel oil
Speaker 1: does that changes atmospheric pressure and temperature, atmospheric pressure um.
Speaker 1: And so this guy began to study it and kept
Speaker 1: detailed records for sixty years and was like predicting weather
Speaker 1: with like great certainty. Well, we got some folks you
Speaker 1: probably you know, learn a thing or two from that. Then, yeah,
Speaker 1: we need to get him out in the woods and
Speaker 1: and get a bear for some of these meteorologists and
Speaker 1: then maybe they could correlate. And uh. Actually the story
Speaker 1: where in his in his hometown that the local meteorologists
Speaker 1: and him kind of for like a publicity stunt, did
Speaker 1: a deal where they both forecasted and saw who was right.
Speaker 1: And then George was right that week, like he won.
Speaker 1: It was like a contest. I read this today from
Speaker 1: back back in what was his cat's name? I believe
Speaker 1: it's George whim sat sad W I M s A T.
Speaker 1: We can put it in the show notes. There we go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so I've had bear fat on the south facing
Speaker 1: wind still for many years, Um, and I planned to, uh,
Speaker 1: we actually talked about it today. We're gonna, we're gonna,
Speaker 1: we're gonna, we're gonna do some experiments. I've got bear
Speaker 1: fat right there. Actually, you see that jar right there,
Speaker 1: that is about six year olds duh, that is about
Speaker 1: six year old bear fat. So that is not good
Speaker 1: bear fat. Bear fat will stay good in a window
Speaker 1: still like that for about two years at room temperature.
Speaker 1: But that's just been there for years. I've rendered it.
Speaker 1: But hey, let's talk about one more thing. Um, we've
Speaker 1: we've we've pretty much run our gamut here, But did
Speaker 1: you want to talk about hounds? Yeah? Sorry, how to
Speaker 1: wet my whistle there? Yeah, So obviously that's another as
Speaker 1: I get all kinds of love here from from a
Speaker 1: fair dog. Yeah, I'm serious. This dog right here, and
Speaker 1: he himself is not a bear dog, but his entire
Speaker 1: genealogy on both sides goes back to bear and mountain
Speaker 1: lion hounds. That's that's ironic that Jed just like totally
Speaker 1: cuddled up right to James, is just like leaning on
Speaker 1: him and swabber and like he's trying to convert me.
Speaker 1: So so that's the other thing I think that you know,
Speaker 1: again going back to my to my it's crawled in
Speaker 1: his lap. Now to my background is okay, you know,
Speaker 1: if you see dogs running deer, you shoot those dogs,
Speaker 1: right that, I mean, that's what I was told. Now,
Speaker 1: we didn't have a big problem with that, but the
Speaker 1: mindset that it placed in me was Okay, dogs chasing
Speaker 1: game equals bad. So I understood. Now there's other perspectives
Speaker 1: on that, but um just I'm briefly why would you
Speaker 1: need to use dogs for that, Like, what's the what's
Speaker 1: the benefit of that? Is it just the same kind
Speaker 1: of thing as it is with bait. But to go
Speaker 1: back to the very foundational place, it's a management tool.
Speaker 1: I mean, like we could have in Arkansas, they could
Speaker 1: have said we're gonna let hound hunters manage the better
Speaker 1: population and we could have killed as many bears as
Speaker 1: we wanted. I mean, like, you know, you could have
Speaker 1: you could have taken out a better the percentage you needed.
Speaker 1: Let me say that. Um so, the places that have
Speaker 1: hound hunts in North in in the States, and in
Speaker 1: Canada they hunt hounds, and lots of the Canadian provinces
Speaker 1: is it is a management tool just like baiting. So
Speaker 1: I just I'll say that to say it's a scientific
Speaker 1: based management tool to help game agencies gain their objectives
Speaker 1: for harvesting bears. Number one. Number two, what a lot
Speaker 1: of people would say is that, you know, well, isn't
Speaker 1: this kind of you know, I've heard people say it's
Speaker 1: barbaric or it's it's old so old fashioned, like aren't
Speaker 1: we beyond using dogs to like harass game? I mean,
Speaker 1: all the worst of what you could ever imagine have
Speaker 1: been said about this, and the this goes back some
Speaker 1: to tradition, but also too, it's those are the worst
Speaker 1: possible stories they've been We've been running hounds, especially in
Speaker 1: the Eastern United States since Europeans got here and then
Speaker 1: Native Americans started running hounds. To one of my favorite
Speaker 1: books that we're gonna talk about another podcast right here
Speaker 1: in the Ozarks, there's a whole story about Native Americans
Speaker 1: having bear hounds and they ran bears out here at
Speaker 1: White Rock. Yeah. So I mean it's like it's not
Speaker 1: just the white Europeans that were the ones running hounds,
Speaker 1: but I mean they say George Washington brought over hounds
Speaker 1: from Europe. Um, So it's an effective tool to manage
Speaker 1: gaming and catch a lot of game. But I go
Speaker 1: back to that effectiveness for selecting certain species. How honey
Speaker 1: is the only catch and release type of hunting. That's
Speaker 1: a fair point. That's that's what that's That's what we
Speaker 1: say is that you tree an animal and then you decide.
Speaker 1: You got all the time in the world to decide
Speaker 1: if that's an animal that you want to take, and
Speaker 1: so if you decide if it's a mature male or
Speaker 1: or whatever exactly. Let me go ahead and say this
Speaker 1: while I'm thinking about it there, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of people would think that, uh, spotting stock
Speaker 1: would be like the purest, most most ethical form of hunting,
Speaker 1: which I love spotting star hunting like out West. We
Speaker 1: just got back from Montana, probably the least selective way
Speaker 1: because you see it from so far away, you have
Speaker 1: very difficult to tell what it is, and you might
Speaker 1: hunt for a week and see one animal. I mean,
Speaker 1: Clay nucom is a perfect case in point. I was
Speaker 1: going to shoot that blonde bear. You saw the video.
Speaker 1: Did you see some of the Montana video? May? I
Speaker 1: can't remember if you I thought you can't remember? If
Speaker 1: I saw that maybe you just saw the teaser. I
Speaker 1: think I saw the teaser. There was a blonde bear
Speaker 1: in the tea. I didn't mean to put you on
Speaker 1: the spot. You better start watching our stuff. I saw
Speaker 1: that a couple of times. He just said he saw
Speaker 1: something about money. That video just came out. Don't feel bad. Now.
Speaker 1: There was a blonde bear that I didn't really have
Speaker 1: time to judge, and I was going to shoot the bear,
Speaker 1: and and uh boy, after I shot, I was like, man,
Speaker 1: that was a small sow. You were thankful that you
Speaker 1: missed at that I was, I mean, and now if
Speaker 1: I had killed it, I would have just been like,
Speaker 1: you know, I would have been happy. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: this is spotting stock hunting. You know, you just take
Speaker 1: what you can get. And that's true. Um, but so
Speaker 1: like that narrative that spotting stock hunting is the that's
Speaker 1: the pure way, that's the ethical way, that's the sportsman's way.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying you can't be selective in spotstock hunting.
Speaker 1: I mean, somebody could easily combat that and say, well
Speaker 1: you got but it's more than point. You see my point.
Speaker 1: You you go on a hound hunt, you could look
Speaker 1: at I don't know three or four bears in a week.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're hard to treat. That's the other thing.
Speaker 1: It's extremely difficult. Takes an extremely dedicated person and houndsman
Speaker 1: to be good. Um one and twenty bare hounds ends
Speaker 1: up being a real barehound. I mean, like these dogs
Speaker 1: like you know, I mean, like there's a these guys
Speaker 1: to vote their lifetimes to breeding these dogs. And uh,
Speaker 1: and it's very difficult to to tree animals and uh
Speaker 1: but you see my you see, my point is that
Speaker 1: it's another way to be selective. And uh. And here's
Speaker 1: here's the thing, and I'll put this on the table,
Speaker 1: is that people say that it's inhumane, like because absolutely
Speaker 1: there are bears that get caught on the ground. I
Speaker 1: mean we got to say that there there are bay
Speaker 1: ups on the ground. When a dog is looking at
Speaker 1: the face of a bear, and I mean it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, they're being bade up from a I I
Speaker 1: think that in general, most people don't understand the ferociousness
Speaker 1: of the natural world. That bear has been in so
Speaker 1: many bear fights. That bear, I mean, for him to
Speaker 1: swat at those dogs for and I'm just being honest,
Speaker 1: this is just the truth. For that bear to swat
Speaker 1: at those dogs and be running around for however long
Speaker 1: is a small is an easy thing for him to overcome.
Speaker 1: I mean it's like he's his life has spent, he's
Speaker 1: got claws and teeth. And and here's another thing. We
Speaker 1: have hyper emotionalized death so much as a culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if if a bear or a squirrel or a turkey
Speaker 1: is not killed by God, fear and ethical hunter, then
Speaker 1: he will die of very terrible death guaranteed. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: you see a bear walk through my yard out here,
Speaker 1: and you go, what a beautiful animal. How would you
Speaker 1: ever want how would you ever want to kill that thing? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: what's the counterfactual? I don't send my kids out that
Speaker 1: have a tag to go kill it. And let's say
Speaker 1: it's in season they kill that bear. Well, let's say
Speaker 1: they don't kill it. I say, boys, don't do. It's
Speaker 1: a beautiful animal. Let's let it live. What are the
Speaker 1: possibilities for that animal's death? If we're talking about being humane, like,
Speaker 1: if the whole point of a human is just to
Speaker 1: be this pristine, spiritual creature that causes nothing harm and
Speaker 1: just dictates humanenus on every single creature, really, tell me
Speaker 1: what could happen that bear hit by car, hit by
Speaker 1: a car, mauld by another bear, mal mald aer killed
Speaker 1: by another bear, dive dive disease, dive old age change,
Speaker 1: dive starvation. Uh. I mean like, contrast that with being
Speaker 1: shot with an arrow and living for eight seconds. Contrast
Speaker 1: that with being chased by dogs for an hour and
Speaker 1: a half, being treated, setting in a tree and then
Speaker 1: getting killed. Your your your your, the resource of the
Speaker 1: animal to meet hide for fat being utilized in a
Speaker 1: productive way, built towards the scientific goal that's gonna help
Speaker 1: all the other animals thrive because of that bears absence
Speaker 1: with me. I mean so it's like people of hyper
Speaker 1: emotionalized death. That pretty animal that you see out there,
Speaker 1: and Yellowstone is gonna die. Yeah, someday, someday. I mean
Speaker 1: so that and and you know, going back to the
Speaker 1: dog thing, Um, it's it's animal conflict is very natural
Speaker 1: and so and in most cases bears run up trees
Speaker 1: and the bears and dogs never fight, and uh, and
Speaker 1: it's it's a highly selective tool. And what most people
Speaker 1: don't understand if they say it's not fair, Chase, I
Speaker 1: promise you anybody that says that bear anyone hounds is
Speaker 1: not fair. Chase has never done it. I mean maybe
Speaker 1: there's a lot of Chase involved in it, right. Yes,
Speaker 1: some of the toughest people that I know are hound hunters,
Speaker 1: just in terms of like woodsman. It's like woodsman tough,
Speaker 1: and you would you would think that, I mean people
Speaker 1: people think that hunting over bait and hounds is just
Speaker 1: like the lazy fat man sport, you know. And uh,
Speaker 1: but some of the toughest guys in most and they're
Speaker 1: not mountain fit like Instagram boys there there, but they're
Speaker 1: they're tough, they're in their hunters and there they holy care.
Speaker 1: I could tell you some stories of being in West
Speaker 1: Virginia and the first time I hunted in West Virginia,
Speaker 1: the dogs tree to bear way off this mountain and
Speaker 1: I was with these guys that were older than me,
Speaker 1: one of I mean like way older than me. Um,
Speaker 1: they weren't didn't exactly look like CrossFit athletes, and they
Speaker 1: were like, all right, let's go to that bear. And
Speaker 1: I looked at him and I said, you mean, we're
Speaker 1: just like going straight to those dogs, and they looked
Speaker 1: at me like I was crazy, Like yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a pretty much the only way to get there, And
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, and I mean we went
Speaker 1: through a holla that. I mean just it blew my
Speaker 1: for real. I was like wow. I mean because the
Speaker 1: hunting we do here in Arkansas, I mean that I
Speaker 1: even do in the back country, I wouldn't have done
Speaker 1: anything like that. I mean, it was just like crazy,
Speaker 1: They just they just do it took him a long time,
Speaker 1: they were fast. But so there's a little bit of that.
Speaker 1: You have any other I mean, like honest questions about
Speaker 1: that or thoughts on that. No, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: I think from the standpoint of understanding the various methods
Speaker 1: of take as a as a as a method of
Speaker 1: management or means of management, and how do we deal
Speaker 1: with the population in a way that balances many competing demands,
Speaker 1: I think that's very helpful. And I think even from
Speaker 1: a standpoint you know, we have our different camps within
Speaker 1: the hunting community, but then obviously we have there's many
Speaker 1: more people in the camp that's outside the hunting community,
Speaker 1: and and I feel like one of the best ways
Speaker 1: that we as hunters can um move the conversation forward
Speaker 1: is to know these things. Even if you don't you know,
Speaker 1: if I never hunt a beer to hunt over hounds,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, But I need to understand why that is.
Speaker 1: Why why do other people do it that way and
Speaker 1: not take shots at other people because they choose to
Speaker 1: do something that way, assuming that the reason that they
Speaker 1: do that is because there's a there's a benefit to
Speaker 1: it to the population of the animal. Like like we,
Speaker 1: like you said, we don't just get out there and
Speaker 1: run them with hounds so we can you know, laugh
Speaker 1: and and have fun. We we do it to be selective, right,
Speaker 1: So I think understanding those things, I think unfortunately and
Speaker 1: a lot of hunters don't don't want to hear this message.
Speaker 1: But we we have to do better. We have to
Speaker 1: understand more about what it is we're trying to do.
Speaker 1: We have to be able to be advocates for what
Speaker 1: we want to do, because our ability to do it
Speaker 1: depends on the majority of people who don't and they'll
Speaker 1: take it away from us. You've said that, and and
Speaker 1: and you just have to look in the in the
Speaker 1: parts of the country where it is happening and whatever
Speaker 1: whatever the small ways that it happens. People who don't
Speaker 1: understand it, you know, they're they're inconvenienced by X, Y
Speaker 1: or Z you know, or or they don't. They don't
Speaker 1: agree with you know, they think it's lazy hunting over bait.
Speaker 1: Whatever it is, it's our job to come together as
Speaker 1: sportsmen and sportswomen and speak facts, to remove that emotional
Speaker 1: component from it um and and just try to first
Speaker 1: do no harm, you know, number one thing. First do
Speaker 1: no harm. Let's don't ruin it for the rest of us.
Speaker 1: But then if you can advocate and even just move
Speaker 1: the needle a little bit on somebody who's neutral, that's
Speaker 1: a right for us. I think a lot of the
Speaker 1: hunting community would like to say, hey, let's just give
Speaker 1: him hounds and bait. Yeah, just give it away and
Speaker 1: then we'll still get to hunt, because it's kind of
Speaker 1: like that's like the redheaded stepchild of hunting in some ways,
Speaker 1: at least that's my perception in some ways is that
Speaker 1: Colby smirking a band retract the redhead to step child,
Speaker 1: and so people might just be like, or that's probably
Speaker 1: why people that don't hunt over bater they don't want
Speaker 1: it because they don't want to fight that battle. Right
Speaker 1: well here, and here's the thing, all right, we've got
Speaker 1: to be quicker sweaking in. But if they don't fight
Speaker 1: that battle with us, we're gonna lose. And then the
Speaker 1: next thing they will get will be something that you're
Speaker 1: interested in. And like, you know, that's kind of like
Speaker 1: a threat, you know, and I don't want it to
Speaker 1: come across as like a threat. Uh. But the truth
Speaker 1: is that in nineteen we have given the anti hunting
Speaker 1: community as much as we can give them and maintain
Speaker 1: this beautiful way of life that is creating great stuff
Speaker 1: for wildlife and habitat all across this continent unlike man
Speaker 1: has ever seen in modern times for amount of civilization
Speaker 1: we have for you know. So it's like if we
Speaker 1: want to maintain our way of life, we don't have
Speaker 1: anything left to give them. And so any legal means
Speaker 1: of hunting in nineteen ought to be supported by every
Speaker 1: person on this continent that owns a hunting license if
Speaker 1: they want to keep even what they have for future
Speaker 1: generations to come. So that that's that's part of our messages,
Speaker 1: like hey, don't fight against us, go ahead and go
Speaker 1: ahead and join with us, even if you're never gonna
Speaker 1: hunt over house, hunt with hounds, or hunt with bait.
Speaker 1: It's like at least understand it, you know, just understand
Speaker 1: it and and know that that is connected to what
Speaker 1: you do and uh that So that's my appeal to
Speaker 1: two people is that, uh, we've got to you know,
Speaker 1: we we we really do have to stand together. And
Speaker 1: I would hope that giving people, uh you know, kind
Speaker 1: of scripting the narrative for why we do these things
Speaker 1: makes sense. You know. Yeah, that's that's what That's what
Speaker 1: my goal was. I was hoping to to provide some
Speaker 1: dialogue for people like me who maybe I don't want
Speaker 1: to be, uh, don't want to be the reason something
Speaker 1: gets taken away because we didn't understand it and we
Speaker 1: didn't fight for it. Yeah. Well, I think we're sit
Speaker 1: in a really unique position as bear hunters, and in
Speaker 1: the modern times. I really do, like, I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's like a call. I believe that bears
Speaker 1: are going to be the gateway to the hunting community,
Speaker 1: and so if we guard that gate, they're never gonna
Speaker 1: get anything else. It's a good it's a good way
Speaker 1: to look at it, like guard the gate, because we
Speaker 1: are at we're at the we are the I mean,
Speaker 1: we're right there and and and we probably see that
Speaker 1: here more than just the average bear hunter right there.
Speaker 1: That's bait and baron Arkansas. He doesn't know that there
Speaker 1: is a massive war going on and it's true, and
Speaker 1: we see it here and we um. I mean there's legislation.
Speaker 1: We've had Sportsman's Alliance on here and I mean there's
Speaker 1: legislation all over the place about bear hunting. Um. And so, man,
Speaker 1: we just have to keep we have to keep creating
Speaker 1: that narrative, educating people, giving people the words to say,
Speaker 1: giving them, given them the information, the knowledge, but also
Speaker 1: the heart posture, Like we're not just saying that we
Speaker 1: have all the answers and that this way is the
Speaker 1: best way, but there's like a human appeal to it
Speaker 1: as well. To me, it's just like, man, this is
Speaker 1: this is a fantastic way of life. You know. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's a lot easier to throw rocks at somebody
Speaker 1: who's on the other side of the wall and you
Speaker 1: can't see him, but you make those personal connections with people.
Speaker 1: It's like, look, I like to hunt bears, I like
Speaker 1: to feed my family. I like, you know, we have
Speaker 1: a lot more in common than we do not in common,
Speaker 1: and so we we have to be that that friendly
Speaker 1: face so to speak. I think you guys are doing
Speaker 1: a great job of it. Well, passionate authenticity, you know,
Speaker 1: the authenticity means I think that we well, I mean,
Speaker 1: we've got to have the knowledge, we've gotta have the science,
Speaker 1: we've gotta have the foundational stuff like we've talked about.
Speaker 1: But we've also got to be doing it for the
Speaker 1: right reasons. You know, I'm not trying to poke a
Speaker 1: stick and some anti hunter's eye or somebody else's eye
Speaker 1: that don't like bear hunting. I mean, it's just like, man,
Speaker 1: this is something that I love. Don't take it away
Speaker 1: from me. I mean, like literally, like I mean to
Speaker 1: think that my sons would not be able to roll
Speaker 1: out here on public land in Arkansas and hunt in
Speaker 1: twenty five years, I mean, that's like, it's like tragedy,
Speaker 1: and so we want to we don't want that to happen.
Speaker 1: But man, we've gone over our hour. Hadn't we, Colvin
Speaker 1: just war, we wouldn't do it. Well, thanks so much
Speaker 1: Jens for coming on. Awesome. Yeah, no, I appreciate it
Speaker 1: very much, and and hopefully we made a few points
Speaker 1: that people hadn't thought about. Yeah, well, everybody check out
Speaker 1: the back country Hunters and Anglers, and also check out Well,
Speaker 1: if you're in Arkansas, check out the Arkansas Chapter. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not SUNS Chapter yet, but you know Southeast Chapter,
Speaker 1: Southeast Chapter. I need to switch over from Texas. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you need to update your mailing address on the website
Speaker 1: and you'll be part of us just like that. Well,
Speaker 1: keep the wild places wild, because that's where the bears live.