Speaker 1: M. My name is Clay and Nukeleman. This is a
Speaker 1: production of the bear Grease podcast called The bear Grease Render,
Speaker 1: where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the
Speaker 1: scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast presented by f
Speaker 1: HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear
Speaker 1: that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the bear Grease Render Podcast. My oh my,
Speaker 1: do we have an incredible show for you today. So
Speaker 1: I am. We're sitting around a nice white oak wood
Speaker 1: campfire in the in the mountains of Arkansas and we've
Speaker 1: got an eclectic group of guests today Today is gonna
Speaker 1: be a little bit different. So for those of you
Speaker 1: who might not be super familiar with what we do,
Speaker 1: the bargar Rease Podcast is what justin, I don't know
Speaker 1: how you describe. The barg Rease Podcast is a documentary
Speaker 1: stole podcast. We have multiple guests, very polished and produced
Speaker 1: that tells a story about a specific topic of person
Speaker 1: whatever we're talking about. The bargar Rease Render is this
Speaker 1: which what is this? Justin? This is a discussion about
Speaker 1: the polished podcast, right, and it's a random group of people,
Speaker 1: but today, it's not so random. So typically on the
Speaker 1: render we would discuss the previous week's podcast, and we're
Speaker 1: we're not gonna do that today though, We're gonna do
Speaker 1: something a little bit different because we've had some pretty
Speaker 1: wild stuff happen, and I've got a pretty wild group
Speaker 1: of men here that I will introduce from left to right.
Speaker 1: To my left is Justin Michow. Justin, Welcome brother. Than
Speaker 1: you tell us, tell everybody what you do. I am
Speaker 1: a photographer and videographer. Who do you work for you?
Speaker 1: That's right? Different brands across Can you tell us some
Speaker 1: of the brands? We eat our first light, lacrosse dinner
Speaker 1: or text? So your professional videographer, professional photographer. You live
Speaker 1: in the great state of New York, Western New York.
Speaker 1: You told me that your kids the first day of school.
Speaker 1: The other day I had to like tell about themselves.
Speaker 1: What would you say about yourself? If you were in
Speaker 1: the second grade and your teacher said, okay, right, five
Speaker 1: things about yourself that make you special? What would you say?
Speaker 1: Do I need Do I have to name five? Well?
Speaker 1: Just I like biscuits and gravy because from South Carolina,
Speaker 1: Well you knew that would come up your deer hunter.
Speaker 1: I'm a deer hunter. Love coffee, love what I do
Speaker 1: for a job doesn't feel like quirk. I love my wife.
Speaker 1: Is my anniversary? Oh wow? Yeah? How many? How many years? Two? Congratulations? Man?
Speaker 1: You know that's big. That is big commitments. Good. She
Speaker 1: makes it real easy. Good. Well to Justin's left is
Speaker 1: a man who needs no introduction. On the Beargrease Podcast.
Speaker 1: I just let James know yesterday Dad that he is
Speaker 1: a member of the Beargrease Hall of Fame. So, James
Speaker 1: Lawrence and an original inductee in the Beargrease Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: How you doing, James? Good? Well, we're proud to be inducted. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I told him, I said, uh. I explained to
Speaker 1: him what the Beargrease Hall of Fame was, and I said, James,
Speaker 1: here are the people that are in it, James Lawrence,
Speaker 1: Daniel Boone. And he got a chuckle when Daniel Boone
Speaker 1: was the second one. But it's quite serious, very serious.
Speaker 1: And then you know the other guy. It's Warner Glenn
Speaker 1: Roy Clark in Tennessee. What you've just heard is a
Speaker 1: white oak acorn following about thirty feet out of a
Speaker 1: big tree hitting a tin roof. If you've heard that,
Speaker 1: sud James Lawrence, Daniel Boone, Warner Glenn eight probably eighty
Speaker 1: seven now, uh, cowboy in Arizona, Roy Clark plot man
Speaker 1: extraordinaire in East Tennessee. Frederick Gerstalker who was in was
Speaker 1: a hunter in early Arkansas history. And then George mcjunkin,
Speaker 1: who was the former slave that found the Falsome archaeological site.
Speaker 1: So you're you're amongst quite the company. Brother, I feel privileged.
Speaker 1: James were like in your home turf down here, man,
Speaker 1: we're right in the cradle of Lawrenceville. It's good to
Speaker 1: see you. It's good good to be here. Hey, I
Speaker 1: especially listen to this. I probably never said this. In
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, when I started my career in
Speaker 1: the outdoor space, we we were pioneering and starting a
Speaker 1: regional man magazine and do you know who was in
Speaker 1: the very first issue of that magazine James Lawrence. I
Speaker 1: went to James because he had a story of the
Speaker 1: biggest buck you ever killed when you were held. So
Speaker 1: you've been hunting for how many years? Now years? I'd
Speaker 1: hunted three or four years before killed that one too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've probably nine and so to this day. The biggest
Speaker 1: buck you ever killed was when you were twelve, and
Speaker 1: it was a really unique story. And you'd found the
Speaker 1: shed horns of this deer back during the time when
Speaker 1: there weren't a lot of deer. You'd found three years
Speaker 1: the shed horns killed this deer. It scored about one
Speaker 1: sixty Just an incredible story. So I went to James
Speaker 1: and wrote an article about him, and there's a picture
Speaker 1: me and James in that magazine holding those shed horns
Speaker 1: in that buck. Well. When I went to work for
Speaker 1: Meat Eater and they said, Clay, you gotta start a podcast.
Speaker 1: You know who, the first person I went to was
Speaker 1: Dad's point to James, James Lawrence. I went to James's
Speaker 1: house and I said, I'm gonna do a podcast on
Speaker 1: the shed hornbuck of nineteen sixty two. So thanks James,
Speaker 1: Thank you. He pretty much chose his career. Hey, for real,
Speaker 1: what I've made what what what I love about what
Speaker 1: I do is finding people that didn't get the attention
Speaker 1: of the outdoor channel, you know. And when I when
Speaker 1: I learned of James's story and got to know him,
Speaker 1: I was like, this is cool stuff, and nobody knows
Speaker 1: this story nobody, and and there's people like that all around.
Speaker 1: I forgot one guy that's in the Hall of Fame,
Speaker 1: or a Lee Province. I was telling James about or
Speaker 1: a Lee. They live in different parts of the States,
Speaker 1: so James never knew or a Lee, but like or Province,
Speaker 1: you know, nobody would have ever known that story. But
Speaker 1: so James Lawrence is here, Hey, let me say something
Speaker 1: about James. Clay came to me about that same time
Speaker 1: and said, who who would be the best hunter in
Speaker 1: Polk County. Of course I don't gun hunt, and but
Speaker 1: I knew James would be up there. But I said,
Speaker 1: go ahead and called Joe Lyles. I mean, he'll tell
Speaker 1: you for sure who the best hunter is. And we
Speaker 1: kind of suspicioned it's gonna be James, but he said,
Speaker 1: no question, James Lawrence, he's the man. So yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's I think that's how you originally you went up
Speaker 1: and knocked on his door and said he yeah, you
Speaker 1: got a pretty high reference. Yep. Yeah, Joe Lyles, he's
Speaker 1: the one who said go go talk to James. I
Speaker 1: went and knocked on his door and we've been best
Speaker 1: buddies ever since. That's right. I remember that day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you knocked on the door and stuck out your hand,
Speaker 1: introduced yourself and we went out and garage sat down
Speaker 1: and talk dear stories. Did you know him before then?
Speaker 1: I met him when he knocked on the door. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was writing a story about hunting, hunting big woods,
Speaker 1: white tails. To James's left is our star guest who
Speaker 1: has not been on the Burgary podcast at all before.
Speaker 1: Who's good and smoke in the Who's getting some smoke
Speaker 1: at his eyes? Gerald Brewer? Gerald, great, too great to
Speaker 1: have you a man, Good to see you, Gerald. How older?
Speaker 1: You eighty two years old? And you got a you
Speaker 1: got a head full of hair like a like a
Speaker 1: movie star. Man. I don't know about that, Gerald. What
Speaker 1: what kind of work did you do? I was in
Speaker 1: an autoparts business before I retired. Yeah, how long did
Speaker 1: you do that? I did that for thirty five years,
Speaker 1: autoparts business, small town, Arkansas. But you're a lifelong hunter,
Speaker 1: I am. Yeah. Yeah. So tell us. So we're at
Speaker 1: your camp and now don't tell us, don't tell anybody
Speaker 1: where it's at, but tell us about your camp and
Speaker 1: kind of the history of this property. We can tell
Speaker 1: you mountains, we've said that. Okay, yeah, okay, this where
Speaker 1: we're at here is part of a one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty acre homestead. Then uh, local people homestated back in
Speaker 1: the day. It's a few miles on either in any
Speaker 1: either direction, any direction. But before you the more private property.
Speaker 1: So this is sort of unique that we're where we're
Speaker 1: at here. We were have two sides of the national forest.
Speaker 1: Good place to haunt. So how long have you had
Speaker 1: this property? I've had this Uh, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: the last night or this morning, trying to figure it up.
Speaker 1: I think about thirty five years. Okay, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you originally had You've got a big metal um metal
Speaker 1: covering over an area where you back to your camper
Speaker 1: trailer in for years, is that right? Right? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you had deer camp out here with a camper trailer.
Speaker 1: But then when did you win? Was this cabin built?
Speaker 1: James built the cabin, uh twenty nineteen. It's not it's
Speaker 1: not that old. Yeah, but yes, this uh where worst
Speaker 1: they did not here star typical. A lot of building
Speaker 1: around here evolved, you know that on a little every year.
Speaker 1: And uh, originally when we when my brother and I
Speaker 1: was harder this we didn't we weren't really thinking about
Speaker 1: a cabin. We just wanted to shed to get out
Speaker 1: of the rain. And then we put a wood stove
Speaker 1: in and build a shed for a trailer, and then
Speaker 1: we enclosed all of this with a siding. And uh.
Speaker 1: Then in twenty nineteen we built uh the new cabin
Speaker 1: here and then we kept the old one and just
Speaker 1: took all the walls off and that way having outside
Speaker 1: and prevail you yeah, with an outside kitchen and so forth.
Speaker 1: Well it's a it's a beautiful spot. And then the
Speaker 1: cabin that and you said that James Lawrence built this
Speaker 1: cabin right and uh runs off solar where I f
Speaker 1: agreed out here and uh man James, me and me
Speaker 1: and uh justin we're admiring your your trim work inside there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: really nice. Enjoyed doing that. Y'all built. Y'all did every
Speaker 1: part of this high built everything but siding and another
Speaker 1: guy built put the siding on. Yeh. But other than that, yeah,
Speaker 1: did it all. We're proud of it. Yeah. So we've
Speaker 1: had our bear camp out here in the last several years,
Speaker 1: were or four years or the fourth year? Yeah, probably?
Speaker 1: So Yeah, so we'll come back to Gerald. But to
Speaker 1: Gerald's left, Gary nucle the believer himself. Yeah, I got
Speaker 1: my believer hate y'all see his hat? I like that.
Speaker 1: Do y'all know what that means? Ok? It's got a
Speaker 1: black panther on it. So the first one of the
Speaker 1: first Barris podcasts, I was interviewing Dad about mountain lions
Speaker 1: because he had seen the mountain line in Arkansas and Uh,
Speaker 1: I asked him, he said something about black panthers, and Uh, anyway,
Speaker 1: long story short, he believes in black panthers. Gerald, do
Speaker 1: you have any mountain lion stories? I saw on the
Speaker 1: on the mountain here behind us back. I can't remember
Speaker 1: how many years it is, probably about ten years ago.
Speaker 1: I was stark hunting right on top of the mountain
Speaker 1: and Uh, when I first saw it, I thought it
Speaker 1: was a deer. But then when it started jumping from
Speaker 1: one rock to another, that I knew it was a cat.
Speaker 1: But what was ironic about all that? Just within days
Speaker 1: there was an article in the local paper that's some
Speaker 1: I'm thinking if I recall, it was some biologist to
Speaker 1: sit and if anyone saw any mountain lions and cougars
Speaker 1: to uh had a phone number or whatever to a
Speaker 1: police call that number. Do you call them? Don't recall
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't recall if I did or not.
Speaker 1: I may have, but I really thought this a little bit.
Speaker 1: They had seen some or knew about something. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: would you be would you fall into the category of
Speaker 1: someone that believed that there were mountain lions here before
Speaker 1: you saw one? Like when you saw what? Did it
Speaker 1: confirm what you already knew? Or did it surprise you?
Speaker 1: It's not a surprise me, but not a great law
Speaker 1: because I won't be surprised to any type. I don't
Speaker 1: allow the while. I mean, it might surprise me initially,
Speaker 1: but I guess what I'm getting at is like, growing
Speaker 1: up in these mountains, did people believe there were mountain
Speaker 1: lions out here? Well, when we're talking about mountain lion
Speaker 1: and talking about what we also call it cougar cougar,
Speaker 1: I don't think they believed that. But now we had panthers,
Speaker 1: the smaller black cats. Okay, yeah, really, here's my man.
Speaker 1: Tell me tell me about that, because that's that's what
Speaker 1: Dad's had. It's all about that. Why do you where
Speaker 1: have you heard that? Tell me the origin of that?
Speaker 1: James gave a thumbs up too, So he's on board
Speaker 1: the black the black cats, the panthers. Well, where lived
Speaker 1: then was m down't in Montgommer County. Still don't watched
Speaker 1: all mountains, but in the uh late summertime, maybe around
Speaker 1: August whatever, when it will be dry. Well, for some
Speaker 1: reason the cats would come down or thought, I said,
Speaker 1: the cats and maybe it was just one and uh
Speaker 1: start there screaming and it was spooked the horses and
Speaker 1: things like that, you know, but it really spooked that.
Speaker 1: You never seen one though, I never have seen one myself,
Speaker 1: but now people, uh other people saw them and people
Speaker 1: that see yeah, and I believed yeah, absolutely, yeah. Uh James,
Speaker 1: what do you think about? Well? Number one, have you
Speaker 1: ever seen a mountain lion like a tan? Have you
Speaker 1: really tell me about that? I d can I start
Speaker 1: back with the panthers. First, I live with my grandparents, uh,
Speaker 1: and we'd go to town once the week Saturday. Which
Speaker 1: is it? I mean the paved road now, but it
Speaker 1: was just dirt road. Do you get over the mountain
Speaker 1: toward the Dallas and on that mountain At different times
Speaker 1: we've seen him across the road. Sometimes we won, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times they're two and they were black,
Speaker 1: beautiful animals, but it just gives you child months to
Speaker 1: see one, and always down to see them across the road,
Speaker 1: you know, head where they're going off the mountain or
Speaker 1: coming up the mountain. With several times I was the
Speaker 1: best sources I've heard. I mean, we're gonna have to
Speaker 1: get these guys, some believers had we might need to
Speaker 1: get them to church to repair their sins. That could
Speaker 1: be stretching the truth. Well, I'm the only survivor my
Speaker 1: grandmother and my granddad. Uh. But I won't say regular bases,
Speaker 1: but pretty frequent so and it's on Saturday, because we
Speaker 1: always went down on Saturday, parked with the same spot
Speaker 1: that grocery shop. We'd come back home on the gravel
Speaker 1: road over the mountain that paved now and we'd see
Speaker 1: him on top crossing the road. Several times, uh mountain
Speaker 1: last to tan ones would crowd. No, I was su
Speaker 1: I was grown before. I've seen them, the cougar. They
Speaker 1: always just called these panthers. Pretty pretty pretty animals if
Speaker 1: you look at it that way, kind of give your
Speaker 1: Chillbut from the saying, um, I've seen him across the roads,
Speaker 1: the cougars, Uh, I was hunting them down the road
Speaker 1: in Montgomery County and my son and uh, there in
Speaker 1: the rut, don't come by, buck come by. I shot
Speaker 1: the buck and then another buck come back. So my
Speaker 1: boy was further down the mountains. So I got got
Speaker 1: him and brought him back up, and then I was
Speaker 1: going to move my bronco around where the access would
Speaker 1: be easier to get it off. I get back up
Speaker 1: there and he said, you miss something. What do you
Speaker 1: mean he's should go down there and look at your
Speaker 1: deer that panthered come up the holler. And he said
Speaker 1: it was just an all but calling sneaking up on
Speaker 1: that deer and it grab grab What I mean, it's
Speaker 1: done major damage to the deer trying to drag it
Speaker 1: back down the hollar. Huh uh, give me anything. We've
Speaker 1: had a camera phones in, but that's been twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. Yeah. Uh, but I've seen him. I've
Speaker 1: seen him. Oh over them deer hunting, seen him come
Speaker 1: through and that there's a lot of dog hunters back then,
Speaker 1: and I had them a cougar to come by with
Speaker 1: a dog there him. M hm. Really, so you've seen
Speaker 1: the deer dogs running a mountain with the cougar come through,
Speaker 1: and then I could hear the dogs coming and they
Speaker 1: they brought it onto I mean the dogs obviously catching it.
Speaker 1: Um big black, No, this was cougar. Big. Of course
Speaker 1: you're probably play but all dogs will not run a cat,
Speaker 1: just I mean, like your deer dogs. You might out
Speaker 1: of four or five, you might have one that would
Speaker 1: run a cat, but the rest someone will follow, follow
Speaker 1: the lead dog, but they don't pursue it very fast.
Speaker 1: Did you grew up hunting deer with dogs? Yes, that
Speaker 1: was the only way we knew. I think that was
Speaker 1: more or less out of it, well, abstually the culture then,
Speaker 1: and uh, probably out of necessity because they were so
Speaker 1: few deer that you almost had to have a dog
Speaker 1: to locate them. When I started hunting, it's probably about
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, but we had two deer seasons then. The
Speaker 1: first one was the second week, and November started on
Speaker 1: a Monday. I went through a Saturday. You did not
Speaker 1: hunt on Sunday because it was illegal or because your
Speaker 1: family wouldn't let you. Well, no, it was an illegal
Speaker 1: There was no season, so it goes Monday through Saturday. James,
Speaker 1: did you ever hunt on Sunday? When you weren't supposed to,
Speaker 1: don't killing was thinking, that's a loaded question. He said
Speaker 1: that this did not help to be truthful before If no,
Speaker 1: I never hunted him, I have and I man, yeah,
Speaker 1: But anyway, the back to the hunting with dogs, and
Speaker 1: that was just the culture. You know, we knew we
Speaker 1: didn't know any other way to hunt. But I guess
Speaker 1: I saw my first turkeys and uh, somewhere in early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, and I had no idea, and it was raining,
Speaker 1: and we were driving around during deer season deer hunting,
Speaker 1: and I didn't really know what there were. I saw him.
Speaker 1: They just in there, you know, in the rain. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I started turkey hunting and I started seeing deer. I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, a person could deer hunt this way. You
Speaker 1: don't need dogs, you know. Okay, you know that's sitting
Speaker 1: around sitting our turkey hunting. And I started seeing deer.
Speaker 1: So anyway, my brother and not hunting together then, and
Speaker 1: we had started hunting. Are okay, our dogs is getting old,
Speaker 1: and we decided we're going to not have dogs anymore.
Speaker 1: A lot or a lot of trouble if you're never
Speaker 1: on hunting dogs. Uh, yeah, it's a it's a but anyway,
Speaker 1: so after we didn't have dogs any longer, we started
Speaker 1: hunting over in this area here because this homestead here
Speaker 1: I'm talking about part of it hadn't been abandoned then
Speaker 1: there were still some old fields and you know, old
Speaker 1: deer hanging out in there. And uh so we started
Speaker 1: we just counted up on top of the mount or
Speaker 1: we had a another place up here and pull out
Speaker 1: with company or try, you know, and and would come
Speaker 1: down and hunting this hunt off the ground, hunting terrain
Speaker 1: features and stuff. And that was just new. Huh, that
Speaker 1: was it is new because we had we've been hunting
Speaker 1: from dollars all the time. We didn't know and uh
Speaker 1: of course that was a little bit before any type
Speaker 1: of climbing stands or anything. But on top of the
Speaker 1: mountain here there were remains of some old wooden platform.
Speaker 1: They were probably James people people had been when he
Speaker 1: had it on Sunday. Yeah, he never did safe many
Speaker 1: black panther. But anyway, that's when I started to just
Speaker 1: uh staying hunting or still hunting for deer. It was
Speaker 1: when I started turk hunting, and uh and we never
Speaker 1: looked back, never looked back, and so what we started
Speaker 1: doing after that, my brother and UH and those guys
Speaker 1: hunting with us, We would wouldn't build ground blinds into
Speaker 1: a little saddles and divides and here, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, just whatever is on the ground, you know,
Speaker 1: and sometimes wouldn't be car you know, And so I
Speaker 1: wouldn't use those year after year. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about two things. I don't know if we can
Speaker 1: cover it all. Um. I want to tell people about
Speaker 1: my moose hunt because last the last Barger's Render, like
Speaker 1: I've been on every single Barger's podcast except for the
Speaker 1: last one because I was in Alaska and my wife
Speaker 1: Misty ran the podcast and they told everybody that I
Speaker 1: was in Alaska moose hunting. So I want to give
Speaker 1: an update. But so much has happened since then. I
Speaker 1: don't know that we can cover it all. Because me
Speaker 1: and justin yesterday had a pretty big adventure in the
Speaker 1: mountains here in Arkansas that ended up with a bear
Speaker 1: getting a ride out of the woods on the back
Speaker 1: of a mule. So I want to tell about that too,
Speaker 1: and all you guys were involved in that. Where should
Speaker 1: I start that? And then bears bear, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that was phenomenal. Why don't you tell us about that?
Speaker 1: Tell us about and tell who Bear is? Bear John
Speaker 1: ncom my son. Yeah, yeah, Well, you know he's a
Speaker 1: sixteen year old kid and Clay has raised him where
Speaker 1: he's kind of like a man. I mean, he he
Speaker 1: drove that truck. Judy couldn't my wife couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: She said, I can't believe they let let Bear drive
Speaker 1: it truck with a mule trailer down here by himself
Speaker 1: in several hours. Yeah yeah, I mean three it's three
Speaker 1: hour drive with that truck, you know on mules. So anyway,
Speaker 1: he drove down here from Fayetteville, and uh, you know
Speaker 1: he went to stand in the first morning. Um, he
Speaker 1: had a big bear coming in and you know he's
Speaker 1: in the saddle, tethered tree saddle. Okay, that's what kind
Speaker 1: of was. It's pretty good climbing, isn't it. Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And uh sure enough. I think so much about when
Speaker 1: y'all hunted in Oklahoma. In in in there were two
Speaker 1: big bears. They eventually ended up being five fifty and
Speaker 1: I'd say a minimum of six fifty two bears coming
Speaker 1: in and I don't care where are you hunted. I mean,
Speaker 1: they had two or three different locations best I remember,
Speaker 1: And the first morning it seemed like every time those
Speaker 1: bear would come in and show themselves and turn around
Speaker 1: the leave. So the big bears they don't like any
Speaker 1: hint of human odor. And so bear goes in there
Speaker 1: and course he's he climbs up in his tree and
Speaker 1: his bear comes in three forty pounds fill dress, so
Speaker 1: you know, weighs four ten big bear. And uh, the
Speaker 1: bear comes in, turns around and leaves, smells him. Can
Speaker 1: I tell you what he did? Oh? I know what
Speaker 1: he did? Tell us? Well, you know, Clay and I
Speaker 1: have this argument about sin control. Bear, tell you what
Speaker 1: he did? Oh? I know, I know control. So so anyway,
Speaker 1: but I've got I could we can have a little
Speaker 1: conversation about what I think happened to Okay, so tell
Speaker 1: your side of say. Okay, so he's wearing a believer bear.
Speaker 1: Bear and I are talking, and I said, Bear, I know,
Speaker 1: I said, you can't tell you dead this. We're sitting
Speaker 1: out here. I think, were you here? Gerald told on you?
Speaker 1: Gerald said they were talking. I said, your dad's not
Speaker 1: gonna prove this. So anyway, I said, Okay, Bear if
Speaker 1: you really want to kill that bear. Of course, you
Speaker 1: never know if it's just or not. But I believe it.
Speaker 1: I mean absolutely no question. Yeah, that bear was not
Speaker 1: gonna come in without sinking. So I said, bear, you
Speaker 1: come by the house in the morning. He told me
Speaker 1: what time he could be there. And I've got a
Speaker 1: cent locked box where I just keep my main hunting gear.
Speaker 1: And I took that stuff and dried it, and then
Speaker 1: I went and got some of my the product, the
Speaker 1: product of the carbon activated yeah, yeah, the hood, yeah,
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Uh, and rubber boots. So I got
Speaker 1: him to real good pair of rubber boots. I got
Speaker 1: all my sent stuff out, and I got some of
Speaker 1: my scent control spray, and I said that now, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna do this, you're gonna do it right. And
Speaker 1: this is keep this in mind. I said, this is
Speaker 1: something you don't do for every hunt. This is something
Speaker 1: you do maybe once a year, maybe once every two years.
Speaker 1: But if you got a really big buck, you got
Speaker 1: a really big bear, it's not gonna cost you but
Speaker 1: about an hour's worth of work. And I said, you
Speaker 1: walk to that stand in about a hundred yards or
Speaker 1: whatever you feel comfortable with. You you stripped down. I
Speaker 1: gave him underwear. I said, you stripped down but naked,
Speaker 1: and you take this big old bottle of spray and
Speaker 1: you bathe in it. And when you walk to your staying,
Speaker 1: you either walk in your underwear or you put your
Speaker 1: pants on, but don't put shirts and stuff on. I
Speaker 1: gave him two pair of gloves. And you guys out
Speaker 1: there in radio land can laugh at this, but I'm
Speaker 1: telling you you're wrong, Steve Ronnella, You're wrong. So anyway,
Speaker 1: so uh, he I asked him later, I said, did
Speaker 1: you do everything I told you to? He said, I
Speaker 1: did it almost to the teeth. So I said, when
Speaker 1: you get to that stand, don't put your tops on
Speaker 1: and stuff, you know, either at the base of the
Speaker 1: tree if it's not too hot, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: put it at the base. And I said, when you
Speaker 1: go up that ladder, don't be using your hands. Use
Speaker 1: this pair of sink gloves. You go up to stand
Speaker 1: and you got your you got your spray in your
Speaker 1: pocket and it was a big bottle. And uh. And
Speaker 1: I said, once you get up there, you put all
Speaker 1: you spray down again everywhere, and you tell I got
Speaker 1: him the odor, I said, you you do your arms,
Speaker 1: the back of your neck, your stirringham, back of your legs,
Speaker 1: whatever you you know, there's places. And I said, once
Speaker 1: you get up there, you just drench yourself again and
Speaker 1: then spray your boots. I had him a good pair
Speaker 1: of lacrosse boots that didn't have the phone on them,
Speaker 1: you know, which is that's not a big deal. But
Speaker 1: if you're gonna go this much trouble, do right. So
Speaker 1: he had to lacrosse boots and and uh the birdie
Speaker 1: And so he gets up and the stand sprays down,
Speaker 1: and I said, about every five or ten minutes, shoot
Speaker 1: that stuff around, and and sure enough that sucker came
Speaker 1: in and he killed hey. And you know what those
Speaker 1: big bear I mean. I heard so many stories of
Speaker 1: y'all having those big bear come in. And when did
Speaker 1: you kill that five? When you got sent free? But
Speaker 1: instead of spending three hundred dollars on this stuff I gave,
Speaker 1: I just gave him that stuff. I said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: you kill that bear, you can just keep all that stuff.
Speaker 1: And so that bear that you killed, you did not
Speaker 1: kill it until you were sent free. And how did
Speaker 1: you get sent free? You spent about seven thousand dollars
Speaker 1: that I sent free blind. That's what the first time
Speaker 1: I hunted out of a red neck blind for this
Speaker 1: big bear, where after I killed him the first time hunt.
Speaker 1: So sent is a hundred percent the limiting factor on
Speaker 1: big bears. So I've got nothing to refute. But you know,
Speaker 1: I sitting there, looked bear. If that wind even what
Speaker 1: you're doing, If if that bear, if you got the
Speaker 1: wind to your back and it's blowing to that bear,
Speaker 1: you're probably still going to get detected. But if that
Speaker 1: you know, if the wind is anywhere, you know, thermal's
Speaker 1: going up. If there's no wind at all, that bear
Speaker 1: will come right under your stand. Yeah, and that's exactly
Speaker 1: what happened. Man, in my world is just spending backwards
Speaker 1: today between the black Panthers sent control and I'm just
Speaker 1: ready to just be like, well, yeah, Clay. When we
Speaker 1: were in Canada, Clay was barking about sent control and
Speaker 1: you know, uh, yesterday we were like drowned rats in
Speaker 1: that blind because every ten fifteen minutes he'd be like,
Speaker 1: can I spray you can spread? Yeah? I was hoping
Speaker 1: you were doing that, and I wanted to tell you
Speaker 1: we we did and it it Uh you know, we're
Speaker 1: we're hiking in a mile and a half and so,
Speaker 1: I mean we were covered in sweat and it was
Speaker 1: just I just didn't know how to not do that.
Speaker 1: But once we got in there, we had some sense
Speaker 1: sent shield spray and I mean we just bade their
Speaker 1: said we had sent free wipes that we wiped down.
Speaker 1: You know, that help and it you know, we had
Speaker 1: we still had bears smelling us. But well, and I
Speaker 1: can just a little bit more about bears bear and
Speaker 1: then we'll tell our story. But so bear kills this
Speaker 1: big bear, you know, probably close to foreign pounds actually,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to take away weight from
Speaker 1: bears bear. But they say that a field dress bear
Speaker 1: his gut's only way about thirteen percent of his field dress. Really,
Speaker 1: I was thinking low, Well, I know it seems low,
Speaker 1: and I've never really verified it with like that number.
Speaker 1: Just every he says it and nobody verified. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe some guy who didn't know was the one that
Speaker 1: said that. I want to hear a real bear. Biologists
Speaker 1: say I have weighed a hundred and eighty different bears
Speaker 1: and they all come into the thirteent range. I've never
Speaker 1: heard that. Just that's what people repeat that forty pounds.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so it's usually the guts are potentially a
Speaker 1: lot less than what you might think. And his his bear,
Speaker 1: by the way, had very little fat, right James, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it wasn't a fat bear. This bear was
Speaker 1: lean and mean I mean if he would have had
Speaker 1: what two or three inches of fat all, you know,
Speaker 1: he he would have been a really really monster. So
Speaker 1: you know he shot this bear and kill it with
Speaker 1: his bow. It killed it with his bow, and I
Speaker 1: mean it it did the moan and it just went
Speaker 1: what thirty five yards probably maybe thirty probably thirty and
Speaker 1: uh so, And this is something that I've come to
Speaker 1: believe on the bear moan is that you know you
Speaker 1: hear guys, well, you know mine didn't moan. You know. Well,
Speaker 1: what I've noticed is if you kill that bear on
Speaker 1: the spot, he's dead, he's running dead, he's gonna moan.
Speaker 1: So if you get if you get a marginal shot
Speaker 1: where the bear is gonna die, but he's gonna run
Speaker 1: a hundred yards. I mean, he might bear moan out
Speaker 1: there as he's dying, but you're not gonna hear it.
Speaker 1: But these bear that you've killed it I've been around
Speaker 1: and bears bear and when I hear guys tell stories,
Speaker 1: this one you kill yesterday. It did a little moaned,
Speaker 1: but it felt fell real quick. And so you got
Speaker 1: to seventy four year old guys out there helping bear
Speaker 1: get that bear out of the woods. And uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know what James thought. You know, I was thinking
Speaker 1: James wouldn't he'd have a better way of doing it.
Speaker 1: But I had a hundred foot rope and you hadt
Speaker 1: of strap in there, and we just backed the truck
Speaker 1: in as close as we could tie it on. It
Speaker 1: a little bit bear out and uh, you know, how
Speaker 1: did y'all get it in the truck? How do we do?
Speaker 1: What James had is back up where the tailgate was
Speaker 1: almost flat with a side of just kind of rolled
Speaker 1: it in. Yeah, well they're hard to move when they're
Speaker 1: that big. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We had bear too, I
Speaker 1: mean a little bear man that agrees. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we got he just right up to the truck and
Speaker 1: he fell out. We actually, okay, I gotta say. Brent
Speaker 1: Reeves claims He claims that he was totally out of
Speaker 1: the loop on because Brent was over there and he
Speaker 1: he showed me the text messages he had with Bear
Speaker 1: about how anyway Brent wasn't there, So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we can't count on Brent. Brent blamed, Brent blamed the
Speaker 1: communication skills of the nucoms on him not being there. Uh,
Speaker 1: since Brent as a here, Uh, I will say, there's
Speaker 1: a few other ideas that I had about that. I
Speaker 1: called him talking to him and he said he ain't
Speaker 1: coming up there. Yeah, uh no, not really, No, he
Speaker 1: had a good he it was just miscommunication and there
Speaker 1: was there. Brent was out of cell range and we
Speaker 1: were or y'all were in I was in Alaska. What
Speaker 1: was wild is that I am on my end reach
Speaker 1: in Alaska on trying to navigate flying out and people
Speaker 1: are tech misty saying have you heard from Bear? And
Speaker 1: I'm like no, and Brent I think Brent even texted me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm right in the middle of it, man,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling the whole meat eat or crew what's
Speaker 1: going on? All week while we were in Alaska. I
Speaker 1: was talking about, you know that while I was missing
Speaker 1: bear hunting, and I was talking to him about my
Speaker 1: bear pit and uh oh, everybody was rooting for Bear
Speaker 1: and Steve Ron Ella and Sam Bates and Dirt myth
Speaker 1: my cameraman. I mean they were like getting played by plays.
Speaker 1: He's in the stand wins out of the East, you know, bears.
Speaker 1: It bears message in me from his cell phone to
Speaker 1: my end reach in Alaska, and uh oh, I couldn't
Speaker 1: really mose hunt for and I it. I told Mr.
Speaker 1: I said, it stressed me out when he killed it
Speaker 1: because I knew that Dad and James were the only
Speaker 1: ones there to help him get it out. And I
Speaker 1: was I was worried about you guys man. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: if that bear had gone a hundred yards tunerd yards,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess you. We just quartered it up,
Speaker 1: and well, hey, that's what I was gonna say. You know,
Speaker 1: as good as bear is that skin and stuff. I
Speaker 1: told him he should have just quartered it up right
Speaker 1: there in the spot. That's what I would have done
Speaker 1: rather than because it just increases the work so much,
Speaker 1: you know, to move him. I just quartered him up.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's pretty good. We had to tie it
Speaker 1: to a tree, just get it. Yeah, I get his
Speaker 1: legs up. Oh, it was steep, steep. Yeah. We tried,
Speaker 1: he tried to hold it. Finally we just tied it
Speaker 1: to trade to feel dress. Yeah, and I took a
Speaker 1: lot of weight off. It was. It was quite the ordeal,
Speaker 1: and I really was proud of Bear. He Bear is
Speaker 1: not a man of many words. Humble kid and uh.
Speaker 1: When I was going to Alaska, my Alaska trip overlapped
Speaker 1: the intense time period before opening day when you were
Speaker 1: baiting bears. And and anybody that's never bated bears welcome
Speaker 1: to not being in the know of how much work
Speaker 1: goes into the most work of anything I do is
Speaker 1: baiting bears. You know, people think baiting bears for lazy
Speaker 1: guys that don't want to get out in the woods.
Speaker 1: Ha ha ha. Most work I do is baby bears.
Speaker 1: And so I wasn't gonna be here for most of it,
Speaker 1: and so Bear he's going to school during the week.
Speaker 1: But there were two saturdays that I said, Bear, I
Speaker 1: need you to go bait my bears in the place
Speaker 1: I'm baiting. We can't drive into it, there's no vehicular access,
Speaker 1: and so you gotta take the mules and we haul
Speaker 1: bait in on the mules, and it it is an
Speaker 1: expedition to leave where we live drive there. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's an all day deal. You gotta catch mules. You
Speaker 1: gotta pack the right tack, You gotta pack the right
Speaker 1: bear bait. You gotta know how to handle those mules
Speaker 1: and not hurt yourself. I mean there's just a you
Speaker 1: gotta driving to the access point. I mean you're in
Speaker 1: and out of four wheel drive and crossing creeks and
Speaker 1: navigating rough terrain and and uh, just in even in
Speaker 1: the truck, halling the trailer, and uh, so I knew
Speaker 1: Bear could do it. And uh he took one of
Speaker 1: his buddies one one Saturday, and uh and they went
Speaker 1: in there and took in probably five pounds of bait
Speaker 1: on those mules and baited it. He said, they were
Speaker 1: in there like twelve minutes. You know, I said, I told,
Speaker 1: I gave him real specific I said, I don't want
Speaker 1: you in there in the morning. I don't want you
Speaker 1: in there in the afternoon. I want you in there
Speaker 1: between eleven and one o'clock. So that means you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to leave our house at six o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I really gave him some specifics, and
Speaker 1: he did it. And then the next time he went
Speaker 1: in by himself. The next Saturday, he didn't have help
Speaker 1: because it was the day he was hunting and he
Speaker 1: went in there by himself. So anyway, I was real
Speaker 1: proud of him. He did good. You know, I think
Speaker 1: about me being that age, I would be telling my grandfather.
Speaker 1: I mean, I drove as thinking truck down with those mules,
Speaker 1: I passed cars, you know what I mean. I'd be
Speaker 1: bragging about it. He never said a word even no
Speaker 1: big deal, man. He just came down here and did
Speaker 1: what he had to do. And it's pretty it's pretty cool. Really. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I was proud of him just for executing and and
Speaker 1: getting a good shot on the bear. You know. That's
Speaker 1: what I was coaching him on end reach. I was saying,
Speaker 1: don't take anything but a broadside shot of a standing bear.
Speaker 1: Don't get too high, you know. I didn't want him
Speaker 1: to get up twenty five ft and have a real
Speaker 1: sharp shot angle. He was wanting to get back like
Speaker 1: twenty five yards from the bat, and I told him
Speaker 1: that's too far. I said, you don't want to take
Speaker 1: a twenty five yard shot, Get into about eighteen yards,
Speaker 1: get up about eighteen ft and uh, you know he
Speaker 1: could have got up higher for cent, but boy, when
Speaker 1: you started getting a super steep shot angle. You just
Speaker 1: it's tough. And so he did everything right. You know,
Speaker 1: the bear bait was where he had some limbs in
Speaker 1: the way, so he positioned some of that bait where
Speaker 1: the bear would move just a little out so he'd
Speaker 1: have a shot. And that bear walked up exactly where
Speaker 1: he wanted it to and stuck one arm in the
Speaker 1: bait barrel, which opened up his vital cavity. And man,
Speaker 1: he just stuck at broadhead slick trick right right in
Speaker 1: there in the heart. Gerald, you told me something you
Speaker 1: heard bear do, which was a sixteen Yeah, okay. I
Speaker 1: thought this was rather mature of him. He mentioned to
Speaker 1: your dad when they were having this conversation here about
Speaker 1: the scent control and everything, and uh, okay, this is
Speaker 1: the first evening he was there hunting and he saw
Speaker 1: the bear, but he thought it scented him in it
Speaker 1: her beard away. But he left something either in the
Speaker 1: tree or in his stand, and I assumed it was
Speaker 1: a piece of clothing mm hmm, because he said the
Speaker 1: bear would uh on the camera it was showing he
Speaker 1: was in there, the bearer than there three or four
Speaker 1: hours every night. So he left that so that the
Speaker 1: bearer will get used to his sin. I'm assuming that.
Speaker 1: I thought that real smart of him. Yeah, well that's good.
Speaker 1: He just blew my sink control deal forget it, guys,
Speaker 1: that's why I did it. Yeah, I was gonna say that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but i've I've always thought what he
Speaker 1: did was very smart. And I thought about, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I've madeed bard here at my place and you and
Speaker 1: I know y'all have done this too. I would i'd
Speaker 1: meet him coming back. You know, they would be heading
Speaker 1: up there. I don't know if they're smelling me, if
Speaker 1: they heard me or hot, you know, but until they
Speaker 1: got used to my presents their somewhat, yeah, they can sometimes. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: uh what should we do here? Justin? Should we talk
Speaker 1: about the moose? Are bear? That's up to you? Well,
Speaker 1: what's in your heart? Justin? You're my cameraman. Uh, well
Speaker 1: I could tell the moose story because this would be
Speaker 1: number six every person. So Justin guy to Arkansas within
Speaker 1: an hour of me coming back to Arkansas from Alaska.
Speaker 1: So basically I went from that trip to this one
Speaker 1: and so every so Justin has been with me ever
Speaker 1: since I got home with Alaska, like every minute of
Speaker 1: every day basically, and every time I come to somebody new,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell him the Alaska story. So I told
Speaker 1: Misty and the kids. He heard me tell Dad, You
Speaker 1: heard me tell James. So anyway, you've heard the story
Speaker 1: many times. It's a good one. I think you should
Speaker 1: go with that one, go with Alaska. Well. So when
Speaker 1: I we left for Alaska on September seven, and I
Speaker 1: went with Steve Ronnella and we filmed an episode of
Speaker 1: Meat Eaters. So everybody will be able to watch this
Speaker 1: at some point on on Meat Eater season eleven. It's
Speaker 1: undisclosed where it's gonna be Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: kind of like the Black Panther, that's right. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: much mystique around this. So what we did. What we
Speaker 1: did was what they call a ridge hunt, which it's
Speaker 1: a fly in camp where we and it was a
Speaker 1: do it yourself hunt. So we were with what they
Speaker 1: call a transporter, so there was no guide, no outfitter.
Speaker 1: But basically you hire bush planes to take you into
Speaker 1: a spot and uh and kind of the what you
Speaker 1: know is that they're taking you into a spot that's
Speaker 1: gonna be decent and have moose. But they don't tell
Speaker 1: you anything. They legally can't. They just drop you off
Speaker 1: and uh, you know they don't. They don't say, hey,
Speaker 1: you should camp over there, and the moose are gonna
Speaker 1: come from here. You know. It's it's it's uh, do
Speaker 1: it yourself. It's it's called a ridge hunt because it's
Speaker 1: the area we were in was rolling hills, with the
Speaker 1: highest mountains in the area being about four four the
Speaker 1: four hundred feet or so in the river bottoms being
Speaker 1: about three thousand. Now often the distance, you know, sixty
Speaker 1: miles away, you could see white capped mountains, big big
Speaker 1: Alaskan mountains. But basically these airplanes can land in certain
Speaker 1: areas on these ridges. They can't land down in the tundra.
Speaker 1: And the area consists of big spruce thickets, which would
Speaker 1: just be big green patches of woods, and then willow thickets,
Speaker 1: which you're gonna be smaller trees but thick, super thick,
Speaker 1: and then there's tundra. So I mean, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a general description of the type of terrain. You either
Speaker 1: gonna have spruce, willow and aspen or tundra. And the
Speaker 1: tundra can have blueberries, cranberries and crowberries in it a
Speaker 1: lot of it. You wouldn't believe the amount of blueberries
Speaker 1: cranberries that were I mean everywhere, we all were covered
Speaker 1: in stains of berries and just random places just because
Speaker 1: you know, you sit on the ground every where you go,
Speaker 1: so I mean you you just sit on blueberries. You
Speaker 1: everybody had blueberry stains on their knees and had a
Speaker 1: blueberries blueberry stains on my backpack where I leaned down
Speaker 1: on the ground. Um, we ate black blueberries the whole time,
Speaker 1: you know, But but when they drop you in these camps. Basically,
Speaker 1: when you're moose hunting, you're limited to how far you
Speaker 1: can go after a moose based upon how easily you
Speaker 1: can get it back to your camp, because this thing
Speaker 1: is gonna weigh between you know, a thousand and fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred pounds um, and so it's an incredible amount of
Speaker 1: work to get the meat back to the airstrip because
Speaker 1: that's where you gotta get it. So basically, it's not
Speaker 1: like elk hunting. When your elk hunt, you might walk
Speaker 1: fifteen miles and you're looking for one and an elk
Speaker 1: because just enough smaller that you know, you might have
Speaker 1: a big, heavy pack out, but you can pretty much
Speaker 1: get one out a couple of guys of about anywhere. Um,
Speaker 1: a moose is just enough bigger than an elk that
Speaker 1: most moose hunters would say they're not going to shoot
Speaker 1: a moose much past a mile beyond their camp. So
Speaker 1: you're out in this huge wilderness and you can't go
Speaker 1: to a lot of moose that you can see because
Speaker 1: you're you're the best spot that we had for glassing.
Speaker 1: So you have your camp tucked away somewhere where it's secluded.
Speaker 1: And we were kind of out of the wind behind
Speaker 1: a little bluff, and we would walk out every day
Speaker 1: from our camp and go to one of two glassing spots.
Speaker 1: One of the glass and spots was about a mile
Speaker 1: from our camp, but you could see it from our camp.
Speaker 1: It was a big gravelly knob about a mile away
Speaker 1: through open tundra. It looked like you could just walk
Speaker 1: over there in ten minutes, but it was took forever
Speaker 1: to get there. The other one was just over the ridge,
Speaker 1: and from these glass and spots you could see for
Speaker 1: miles and I mean that, uh, you could you could
Speaker 1: see across this river. We were overlooking a river that
Speaker 1: was one point nine miles away and you could see
Speaker 1: all the mountains clear as a bell on the other
Speaker 1: side of the river, and you could glass him. You know,
Speaker 1: we had good optics, you know, spotting scopes and binos
Speaker 1: on tripods, and so you just sat there for hours
Speaker 1: every day, literally all day, and just glass and you
Speaker 1: just you just learned every nuance of the land. We saw.
Speaker 1: The first night we were there, we saw a pack
Speaker 1: of fourteen black wolves across the river, jet black, fourteen
Speaker 1: of them. Wow. I'd asked Steve if he had ever
Speaker 1: seen anything. I mean, it's the first night we were there.
Speaker 1: It was a first animals that we saw. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: Steve was on the other side of the mountain and
Speaker 1: I was glassing and saw him and I said wolves.
Speaker 1: And there were five of them and I was like one, two,
Speaker 1: three for five black wolves. Wow, I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: And they were going through open tundra and they just
Speaker 1: kept coming just more more more more, Brobably, they were
Speaker 1: fourteen in the line. Every one of them looked the
Speaker 1: exact same. And Steve came over and looked at him.
Speaker 1: And Steve has a vast amount of experience in Alaska
Speaker 1: and the West and the wolf country, and asked him
Speaker 1: if he'd ever seen anything like that, and he said no,
Speaker 1: he said he's seen you know, usually you see three
Speaker 1: or five. You know, five would be pretty decent sized.
Speaker 1: But and we saw them multiple times and they played
Speaker 1: like German shepherds out in that tundra. They just wrestled
Speaker 1: and wagged their tails and fight and then you'd you'd
Speaker 1: you'd see one sitting down on his haunches and throw
Speaker 1: his head back and how. And then about five seconds
Speaker 1: later you'd hear, oh, you hear him how, and you'd
Speaker 1: be watching him. I mean, it isn't eat. We watched
Speaker 1: him for We saw him at least three different times,
Speaker 1: and they stayed right in that area. But so back
Speaker 1: to moose. When you're moose hunting, you're hunting the rut,
Speaker 1: you're hunting the moose rut, and basically you're trying to
Speaker 1: call these moose to you. And when it's just like
Speaker 1: any it's just like turkey hunting. It's in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways and just like the elk hunters say, and
Speaker 1: I'm not a big I'm not a good elk hunter,
Speaker 1: but you're hoping that the moose are doing what they're
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing. And responding to calls, and sometimes
Speaker 1: they do and sometimes they don't. And basically, during our
Speaker 1: time there, the moose weren't responding to calls that good,
Speaker 1: and uh, the moose weren't moving around. We kind of
Speaker 1: had these local moose that we were watching that just
Speaker 1: kind of were living there and they were there when
Speaker 1: we got there. And what when you know it's really
Speaker 1: good is when every day you wake up and there's
Speaker 1: new moose in your area, or you see a moose
Speaker 1: two miles away that's moving and he just they're you know,
Speaker 1: they're just on the prowl. And and we did not
Speaker 1: see that until the last day. Basically, we messed around
Speaker 1: with these local moose that didn't want to come to
Speaker 1: our calls for for eight days and we uh, it
Speaker 1: was so cool because you'd be looking at a moose
Speaker 1: like one point two miles away one one of our
Speaker 1: best spots where we watched what I believed was a
Speaker 1: sixty inch moose, watched him for five days but couldn't
Speaker 1: didn't want to move in on him because we thought
Speaker 1: we could call him to us. You would, you'd be
Speaker 1: looking at him and you would call moose, call just
Speaker 1: with your mouth, you know, just a loud and he'd
Speaker 1: be looking a different way, and then a few seconds afterwards, he'd,
Speaker 1: you know, he'd he'd look at you and just he'd
Speaker 1: you know, acknowledge it and that he could hear you
Speaker 1: from that far, which is pretty wild. But finally on
Speaker 1: the last day, day number nine, we woke up and
Speaker 1: there were we saw several moves. We tried to work
Speaker 1: some moose. Nothing happened, and we had to leave the
Speaker 1: next day. We had to leave the next day. Um oh,
Speaker 1: we're getting some more fire here or wood on the
Speaker 1: fire with the airplanes were coming at seven thirty the
Speaker 1: next day. This is day number nine. We are at
Speaker 1: at noon on day number nine, we were basically done.
Speaker 1: We had to be done. And uh. We we basically
Speaker 1: shot the final scene of the video where Steve and
Speaker 1: I were frustrated and just kind of like, man, we tried,
Speaker 1: we had all this and there were a couple of
Speaker 1: stocks that were almost killed one one day four, Steve
Speaker 1: had a couple of close calls but nothing ever happened.
Speaker 1: And so we we shot the Indian scene of the film,
Speaker 1: and I mean, we're just bummed that we had uh
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a strange feeling. I mean, you
Speaker 1: guys know it when you invest that much time and energy.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't just go to Alaska and be
Speaker 1: gone five days. I mean, this is like a thirteen
Speaker 1: day trip, which is the biggest commitment of my year.
Speaker 1: And uh, and you know, I mean I didn't really
Speaker 1: expect to kill a moose, So it's not like I
Speaker 1: was disappointed that since, but this sense of you just
Speaker 1: worked so hard and you don't really have much to
Speaker 1: show for it other than just an experience, which is
Speaker 1: a good I mean, we're all used to that and
Speaker 1: okay with that, but it's still kind of a bummer. Well,
Speaker 1: that afternoon, one of the producers of the show said, hey,
Speaker 1: we really can't kill him moose, Like we're done because
Speaker 1: if we killed one, we don't have time to get
Speaker 1: it out before we got to leave. And Steve looked
Speaker 1: at his name is Chester, my friend Chester. Steve looked
Speaker 1: at Chester with kind of a grimace and said, we'll
Speaker 1: figure that if it happens. And uh, after the morning
Speaker 1: hunt and we're done, the whole crew is sitting in
Speaker 1: a tent with a wood stove in it, just talking about,
Speaker 1: you know, how we're gonna go home without a moose.
Speaker 1: And Steve walked in at four sixteen and said, Clay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna walk up to the porcupine. And we named
Speaker 1: the out of this big Holla porcupine because they've seen
Speaker 1: a porcupine there. Of all things, he was he wasn't
Speaker 1: saying Clay, come with me, cameramen, come with me. He
Speaker 1: was just gonna go on a walk. And I said
Speaker 1: I'll go with you, Steve, and so I jump up
Speaker 1: and so here's our two hunters walking out and we
Speaker 1: weren't like Steve wasn't even gonna tell the cameraman to come.
Speaker 1: But because they're good guys, Dirt Myth his name is.
Speaker 1: His name is Garrett Smith, but he goes by Dirt Myth.
Speaker 1: Dirt Myth is his name. Um, Dirt goes, well, I'll come,
Speaker 1: and they everybody goes, you're gonna bring a camera, and
Speaker 1: he's like, ah, I guess I might as well. And
Speaker 1: then so when he did that, Laura and the other
Speaker 1: cameraman who was a great guy, said well, I I'll
Speaker 1: go to you're gonna bring a camera, I guess I will.
Speaker 1: And we had unloaded our packs and took all our
Speaker 1: gear out that we needed to process moose. We didn't
Speaker 1: have bags, we didn't didn't have you know, some of
Speaker 1: the guys didn't have headlamps. We didn't have I mean,
Speaker 1: we were just preparing to go. But we took our
Speaker 1: rifles and cameras and went to the porcupine. How far
Speaker 1: is that? Probably a half mile from where we were,
Speaker 1: and uh we got up and sat on porcupine and
Speaker 1: glass and glass and glass, and we had not seen
Speaker 1: a single bull, moose and porcupine in nine days. So
Speaker 1: I why Steve wanted to go there, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, he just probably because we we hadn't been
Speaker 1: there in a day or two. Well, we're sitting there
Speaker 1: and dirt myth goes, what is that way out there?
Speaker 1: And we look across the tundra, probably four miles way
Speaker 1: out in the river flats, and we see a big
Speaker 1: black object moving. You could see it. I actually don't
Speaker 1: know if you could see it with your naked eye,
Speaker 1: but I put the binos up in it looked like
Speaker 1: a It looked like an argo. Steve Ronella pulls his
Speaker 1: bottos up and said, that's an argo. That's not a moose.
Speaker 1: And then I said, no, I think I see horns
Speaker 1: on it, and Lauren said, no, that's the cowboy hat
Speaker 1: of the driver. And when he when he said it,
Speaker 1: he looked at it. You're like, it kind of does
Speaker 1: look like an argo with a man wearing a cowboy
Speaker 1: hat front. Anyway, Steve pulls out the spot and he's going,
Speaker 1: sure enough, it's a big bull moose just hooking it
Speaker 1: across the tundra, and Steve goes, we could call that
Speaker 1: bull moose in if he was over here close. It
Speaker 1: was the first time we'd seen a cruising bull, so
Speaker 1: that that was the indicator. It was the first time
Speaker 1: we just saw one just plowing across the tundra looking
Speaker 1: for the cat. That was fun to see, but way
Speaker 1: out of play. I mean, just as well have been
Speaker 1: on a different planet just started. When you are fixing
Speaker 1: the leaf basically, that's well, not five minutes after we
Speaker 1: saw the Argo bull, one of the caraman sees a
Speaker 1: bull directly below us, like within play, like eight nine
Speaker 1: hundred yards away. Eight. If you're within eight hundred yards
Speaker 1: of a moose out there, you're it's like being within
Speaker 1: thirty yards of a deer here. I mean like eight
Speaker 1: hundred yards is like, wow, we're close. To that thing
Speaker 1: big country. Well, we see a moose and look at it,
Speaker 1: and it's a small moose and the legal moose has
Speaker 1: to be fifty inches wide or have four brow times.
Speaker 1: This bull clearly was not legal, but it was cool
Speaker 1: that we saw a bull. There's a bull. We watched
Speaker 1: him and we called to him. Didn't acknowledge us, but
Speaker 1: the bull just kind of disappears. Well, not three minutes
Speaker 1: later after that, I spotted a single paddle of a
Speaker 1: bull twelve hundred and forty seven yards away, just sticking
Speaker 1: up out of a spruce thicket, and I said, man,
Speaker 1: there's a bull right there. We all look at Steve
Speaker 1: goes Man, that's a big one. That's a legal one.
Speaker 1: We call at it and rake, but would you take
Speaker 1: a stick? And Steve had a an oil can, like
Speaker 1: a plastic oil bottle like from Walmart, cut the butt
Speaker 1: of it out, stuck a stick into the spout, taped
Speaker 1: it and had a little handheld And if you can
Speaker 1: imagine an open ended plastic oil can raking it up
Speaker 1: and down trees sounds incredible. And uh he he started
Speaker 1: raking and I started calling and that we saw that
Speaker 1: bull one time. Acknowledge that it heard our call but disappeared. Well,
Speaker 1: Steve looks at b we've got two hours of daylight left.
Speaker 1: The planes are coming at seven thirty am. And uh
Speaker 1: and and and basically I don't remember exactly who said what,
Speaker 1: but basically we were like, it's the last day of season.
Speaker 1: Let's go. And so we just bailed off the mountain,
Speaker 1: going to him and man, when you bail off a
Speaker 1: mountain over there, it's a commitment. And I'll be honestly,
Speaker 1: I was. The whole time. I was thinking, every step
Speaker 1: we're taking down this mountain, we're gonna have to walk
Speaker 1: back up. And we were moving fast, and we were
Speaker 1: just plowing down the mountain and we gained about three
Speaker 1: hundred yards and so now we're about nine hundred yards
Speaker 1: from where we saw the moose, and Steve climbs up
Speaker 1: a dead spruce tree about twelve ft and his glassing
Speaker 1: over the willows, trying to see if this bull's coming,
Speaker 1: and he can't see it. And we sat there for
Speaker 1: ten fifteen minutes. Call Rake and we think we're gonna
Speaker 1: be able to see this bull if he's coming. We
Speaker 1: see nothing. And so after fifteen minutes we look at
Speaker 1: each other just with our hands up and just go, well,
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess he's just like all the other
Speaker 1: bulls and just didn't gonna come. And directly we heard
Speaker 1: the brush cracking about a hundred yards to our left,
Speaker 1: I mean like big stuff breaking, and all of us
Speaker 1: were like, there's a bull coming, and he's right here.
Speaker 1: So Steve and I kneel down behind a tree or
Speaker 1: behind the fallen log. And about the time we're getting
Speaker 1: out down, we can see the We can see the
Speaker 1: bushes swaying because these bulls, huge animals, big horns coming
Speaker 1: through these willow thickets thick. I mean, they're just pushing
Speaker 1: over brush intentionally making noise. And he's out there by
Speaker 1: a hundred yards and we start seeing the trees move
Speaker 1: and then you start seeing flashes of horn and I
Speaker 1: mean he's coming, and uh, we assume it's the big
Speaker 1: bull that we just saw, and um, as soon as
Speaker 1: it kind of comes into view, we see that it's
Speaker 1: a little moose. It's like that thirty inch moose that
Speaker 1: we probably saw at the beginning. And it comes in
Speaker 1: the nineteen yards and just stares at us, and it's
Speaker 1: still kind of behind the bushes, and we're excited to
Speaker 1: have a mooset close because it's the closest we've been
Speaker 1: to one all week for the most part of bull.
Speaker 1: But we're also kind of bummed because it's not legal.
Speaker 1: And so Steve and I are sitting there side beside
Speaker 1: and um, and then directly we hear the brush cracking
Speaker 1: beyond the bull that's standing steel right in front of us.
Speaker 1: And you know, it took a minute to figure out
Speaker 1: what was going on, and somebody said one, and we go, oh, man,
Speaker 1: you're right. Look I see I see the trees moving.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, get ready, and we know this one's a
Speaker 1: big one. Steve Rinella had told me. I mean, Steve
Speaker 1: has been on multiple moose hunts, successful moose hunts, and
Speaker 1: has never killed a great big moose because he's always
Speaker 1: letting somebody else shoot. I mean that not always the story,
Speaker 1: but it and he has killed a moose before, but
Speaker 1: not a great big one. And uh like there's multiple
Speaker 1: mediator episodes where someone else shoots, you know, and uh
Speaker 1: so on this hunt, our agreement was that if a
Speaker 1: big one came in, he was gonna get to shoot it.
Speaker 1: And and I I mean he told me that from
Speaker 1: the beginning, and I was like perfect love it. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm glad to go and be second shooter. I want
Speaker 1: you to kill big moose, Steve. And so this big
Speaker 1: one is coming. We know it's legal, we know it's big.
Speaker 1: And just to clarify, because both of us are sitting
Speaker 1: there with guns, and one time before in the hunt,
Speaker 1: he had said, Clay, you shoot when we thought something
Speaker 1: might pan out. So just to clarify, said Steve, you're
Speaker 1: shooting the bull. I'll back up. And I mean this,
Speaker 1: this bull is is coming. I mean like we can.
Speaker 1: We're now seeing him. He's getting closer, and he looks
Speaker 1: at me and he says, no, you shoot, and I
Speaker 1: go this is all on camera, so you'll be able
Speaker 1: to see it at some point. And and I said,
Speaker 1: I said, no, Steve, that's a big bull. You shoot
Speaker 1: the bull. And now the thing is like probably forty
Speaker 1: yards coming, and and he goes, I'll never forget it.
Speaker 1: I mean it was like he was mad at me.
Speaker 1: He said, Klaite, get out there and kill that bull.
Speaker 1: I mean he stuck a figure up and just just
Speaker 1: I mean something had to have. Somebody had to dictate
Speaker 1: what was gonna happen. And so I mean the bulls
Speaker 1: right there. I wasn't gonna argue a second time, and
Speaker 1: so I said okay, and there was a there was
Speaker 1: a dead spruce, said, falling over about five six ft
Speaker 1: in front of me that had a big fork. The
Speaker 1: roots made the perfect fork, and so the bull couldn't
Speaker 1: see me. But I needed to be a little bit
Speaker 1: more out in the open, so I just snuck out
Speaker 1: and knelt behind this big root ball and laid my
Speaker 1: gun right in that fork. It was just perfect. And man,
Speaker 1: that sucker showed up about the time that I got
Speaker 1: my gun up, and uh it, I can't describe to
Speaker 1: you what it what it's like to see an animal
Speaker 1: that big, that close, pushing over willows, grunting, moving his
Speaker 1: head side to side. I mean it really, it was
Speaker 1: like a dinosas like a stegasaurus. I mean, big old
Speaker 1: time's coming out off of front of his head. And
Speaker 1: uh it was thick though, even though he was nineteen yards,
Speaker 1: it was super thick. And at first I thought he
Speaker 1: might come into a little opening, and I let him
Speaker 1: pass when I could have shot because there were some sticks.
Speaker 1: And then I started looking the way it was going
Speaker 1: and was like, man, I'm gonna have to shoot through
Speaker 1: some stuff to kill this moose. But I'm carrying a
Speaker 1: three wind mag weatherby I know, I got a lot
Speaker 1: of gun. And basically the next time he came into
Speaker 1: an opening, I mean, I just shot through a bunch
Speaker 1: of twigs but as big as your fingers at nineteen
Speaker 1: year words, and I hit him just right behind his
Speaker 1: shoulder and he went down on the back end and
Speaker 1: kind of spun towards us, and I shot him again
Speaker 1: and he just went down right there when he hit
Speaker 1: the ground the earthquake, and uh, and man, it was neat.
Speaker 1: It was neat because Steve, uh let me shoot, Like
Speaker 1: I really. It wasn't one of those deals where it
Speaker 1: was like somebody's like you shoot and they're like, oh no,
Speaker 1: you shoot, and then but you really you want to shoot?
Speaker 1: I literally I wanted. It wasn't like that. I really
Speaker 1: wanted Steve to shoot. And I was gonna be thrilled
Speaker 1: just to be there when it happened, you know. And
Speaker 1: so that was pretty neat the way that all went down.
Speaker 1: And and so we've shot it, and then we had
Speaker 1: we thought we were a long ways from the airstrip,
Speaker 1: but we pull out our on X and do a
Speaker 1: line distance on the on X and we're eight hundred
Speaker 1: yards from airstrip, which is half a mile, So I mean,
Speaker 1: it really wasn't that far. Small ball he live when
Speaker 1: he heard the they were coming, he's they were standing
Speaker 1: side by side. Really, I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to explain it. Standing I would like to say that,
Speaker 1: uh my, I've always like Steve. You can tell he's
Speaker 1: a quality guy. But that just put the ice it
Speaker 1: on the cake. I mean, uh, he probably got a
Speaker 1: real kick out of doing that, but I think it
Speaker 1: just shows what kind of a guy you're working for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one other thing that I would like to have
Speaker 1: people that don't know about moose hunting. I was shocked
Speaker 1: to hear you say that you just don't go even
Speaker 1: you you got this mile perimeter, you don't go out
Speaker 1: in there because once you go out there, they'll never
Speaker 1: come back in there for two or three days. I mean,
Speaker 1: you you take a position and keep it so when
Speaker 1: you guys dropped off that mountain, if you'd had another
Speaker 1: day to go back, they would they would have vacated
Speaker 1: that place, wouldn't. Hey, that's the principle. The principle is
Speaker 1: you try to be have as low impact as as
Speaker 1: as be as low impact as possible and just hunker
Speaker 1: down the guys that are real good at that ridge hunting,
Speaker 1: that have done it year after year after year. Like
Speaker 1: for instance, we talked to a guy at the airport
Speaker 1: before we left that had hunted the same ridge for
Speaker 1: eleven years and they called their ridge um the prison
Speaker 1: because they they don't let you go on walks. They
Speaker 1: there's one place that they call from and they go
Speaker 1: nowhere else other than from their camp to the place
Speaker 1: they call back and forth like they're just trying to
Speaker 1: You're just trying to be in this tight little world,
Speaker 1: you know, and um, yeah, because you can. You go
Speaker 1: beating around and you blow your moose out. Well, one
Speaker 1: other thing I thought was interesting. At one point, when
Speaker 1: it looked like there was not gonna be any success,
Speaker 1: you guys took off after a moose and violated that principle. Uh.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know, there's no set in concrete deals.
Speaker 1: I mean staying that, But yeah, a couple a couple
Speaker 1: of times we it towards later in the week, we
Speaker 1: when they wouldn't respond because the only way that works
Speaker 1: is if they're responding to your calls. And basically they say,
Speaker 1: if you stay there for ten days, eventually they're gonna respond.
Speaker 1: And uh, but you know, about day five six, we
Speaker 1: were like, man, we gotta make something happen because we
Speaker 1: were watching bulls out there. Further that we felt like
Speaker 1: we could stalk. And every single time you left your camp,
Speaker 1: you you're a little eric. Excuse me, every time you
Speaker 1: left your little area, you were gravely disappointed that how
Speaker 1: difficult it is to stalk them because you're you're up
Speaker 1: on ridge looking down into this stuff and you think
Speaker 1: you're gonna be able to see these moves, or you
Speaker 1: feel like it's low bushes and stuff, and you get
Speaker 1: in there and it's fourteen foot willows and it looked
Speaker 1: like it was four ft willows, I mean, and and
Speaker 1: and just over and over. We would go, oh wow,
Speaker 1: that that doesn't look too bad, and you'd get down
Speaker 1: there and it would just be miserable. Alaska is a
Speaker 1: pretty miserable place. One other one other thing on the
Speaker 1: ground on foot. One of the thing that I found
Speaker 1: very interesting is when you're a successful hunter, and I
Speaker 1: feel like you guys will agree with this, it's not
Speaker 1: your skills quite as much is your ability to just
Speaker 1: stay with it, you know, just to be out there.
Speaker 1: And and I've noticed stories. I hear Clay tell how
Speaker 1: you know I went to extra mile? I did you know?
Speaker 1: I just did stuff that just most people wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to fool with. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 1: But Ronnella, after nine days, I mean you were whipped yep,
Speaker 1: whipped down to nothing, and Ronella goes, let's go or
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going yep. I mean that was pretty impressive,
Speaker 1: pretty stinking impressive. So anyway, yeah, I told Dad, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, I it wasn't my idea to go up there.
Speaker 1: I was I was good with the hunt being over,
Speaker 1: which you know usually I'm not. I mean, I really
Speaker 1: was whipped down. And so I owe that's the that
Speaker 1: bowl to Stephen more ways than one. Just even that
Speaker 1: we went up there. I knew you mentioned it, but
Speaker 1: I I just had never comprehended that comprehended the idea
Speaker 1: that if you venture out too far from camp you
Speaker 1: just won't get the meat back. That's just mind blowing.
Speaker 1: Like you said, with you can get you can head
Speaker 1: back in and pull all that meat out. But the
Speaker 1: fact that you might get too far from camp, that
Speaker 1: you can't get all that meat back even before you
Speaker 1: know it spoils or whatever. But yeah, that's it's amazing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well it was an incredible experience. We saw one black
Speaker 1: bear grizzly in the South cub just one. It was
Speaker 1: a bear scat all over the mountain where we're at,
Speaker 1: but never had any grizzlies close to us. Yeah, when
Speaker 1: we killed that moose, we started a big fire right
Speaker 1: beside it, and uh and and we had you know,
Speaker 1: we had a camera crew and we had everybody there,
Speaker 1: so we're making a lot of noise. But the whole
Speaker 1: time we were skinning it in the dark, we were
Speaker 1: hooping and hollering. I mean, just everybody. If somebody hadn't
Speaker 1: hollered in two or three minutes, somebody would just whoo,
Speaker 1: just you know, just hooping, holler, and y'all were scared.
Speaker 1: Man was scared to scared boys. So uh, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: one other thing. I don't want to hug the show here,
Speaker 1: but I found it interesting, especially as a dad, that
Speaker 1: when you get on this plane, Generald, they go, hey,
Speaker 1: you got your parachute with you. I mean it's not
Speaker 1: really a parachute, but they want to make sure you
Speaker 1: gotta sleeping bag, food way to make fire because the
Speaker 1: chances of you crashing, I mean, there is a chance
Speaker 1: that that little plane is gonna have to land on
Speaker 1: top of a tree. Every time you get in one
Speaker 1: of those planes, you have to have with you everything
Speaker 1: you'd need to survive. And and so it was kind
Speaker 1: of interesting because like in our situation there with food bags,
Speaker 1: that that's where all our food was. Well, they flew
Speaker 1: me in and they said do you have food? And
Speaker 1: I was like, no, it's in the food bag. And
Speaker 1: they were like, well you need some food because do
Speaker 1: you have a sleeping bag? Do you have a shelter?
Speaker 1: So basically everywhere you go there's a chance that you're
Speaker 1: gonna get dropped off and not be picked up on
Speaker 1: the way out. I was the last one on the ridge.
Speaker 1: Just the way it laid out, like they flew out,
Speaker 1: the Caraman flew out, Steve flew out everybody, and they
Speaker 1: can only fly people out one by one, even though
Speaker 1: there were multiple super cubs. And when they left me,
Speaker 1: I was the only one on the airstrip and I
Speaker 1: made sure I had a gun some food just because
Speaker 1: they might fly back to town and then a storm
Speaker 1: roll in for three days and cover that mountain and
Speaker 1: they can't come get you. Weather is a major deal. Mean,
Speaker 1: the first day we almost didn't get to even hunt because, uh,
Speaker 1: they couldn't fly us into our ridge because it was
Speaker 1: covered in fog. And that can happen in a matter
Speaker 1: of thirty minutes. They can go from a bluebird day two,
Speaker 1: socked in for three days. And so like when they
Speaker 1: left me, it's like, you're good, and I'm like, yep,
Speaker 1: I'm good, and you know there's a chance they may
Speaker 1: not come back for you, you know. But by the
Speaker 1: day we left it was beautiful weather, so it was
Speaker 1: not an issue. But I did tell him not to
Speaker 1: forget me. I said, yeah, yeah, aren't gonna forget me.
Speaker 1: When y'all get back over there, I'll remember you. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a story though, when when they came and
Speaker 1: picked me up, they took us to a to a
Speaker 1: a like a middle like a middle ground air strip.
Speaker 1: So there was a bigger air strip out in the
Speaker 1: wilderness that they flew the super Cubs too, And then
Speaker 1: we got on a Cessna and flew act While we
Speaker 1: were waiting on our Assessina, my super Cub pilot UM
Speaker 1: told us the story of a guy that was not
Speaker 1: with this company. It was another transport company. Basically a
Speaker 1: guy they couldn't pick him up because of weather and
Speaker 1: he got killed by grizzly bear while he was waiting
Speaker 1: on the airstrip. They couldn't pick him up for two days.
Speaker 1: The guy was like sleeping in trees and basically was
Speaker 1: running from this grizzly bear for two days when they
Speaker 1: couldn't He's community. I don't know the story. I have
Speaker 1: no idea, but the guy got killed in the company
Speaker 1: that he had contracted to transport him actually lost their license.
Speaker 1: That This is the story. I heard him not mentioned
Speaker 1: any names. I don't know. It was not anyone. I know.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the Black Panther. These guys are
Speaker 1: talking about, Oh, that stuff's really serious. No, no, I
Speaker 1: it happen, but I'm just saying I don't want to.
Speaker 1: But it happened two years ago. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: stuff happens. But well, that's my moose story. We didn't
Speaker 1: even get to our bear story. Long story short. We
Speaker 1: killed the bear last night at three yards with a
Speaker 1: stone point three yard? Was that three yards or three ft?
Speaker 1: It was this far gerald one two probably two and
Speaker 1: a half from about here to that red chair. So
Speaker 1: we'll tell you that story another time. Dude, he just happened?
Speaker 1: Was that a normal route? Well? Coming in? So we
Speaker 1: were we were, We were in our bear pit. I
Speaker 1: made a ground blind. Have you seen a picture of it? Gerald?
Speaker 1: You know? Basically we dug a pit. It's about three
Speaker 1: and a half feet deep in the back. It's got
Speaker 1: a wooden uh roof covered in dirt and leaves. We
Speaker 1: thought it might help with our scent. I needed to
Speaker 1: get close because I was hunting with a stone point,
Speaker 1: a traditional bow. The whole idea of the pit was
Speaker 1: to have a very close shot for penetration, for getting
Speaker 1: a low entry wound. I didn't want to be shooting
Speaker 1: out of a tree, and for accuracy. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to be close. So it was really an issue of
Speaker 1: efficacy building this blind and getting that close. I just
Speaker 1: didn't want to miss. I wanted the era to do
Speaker 1: what it was supposed to do. We're making a film.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be on meteor. We filmed it, uh And
Speaker 1: I used a specific style of stone point that hadn't
Speaker 1: been using about ten thousand years. And you're traditional bowl.
Speaker 1: Let's just a recurve. The traditional ball was using as
Speaker 1: a hybrid recurve excuse me, hybrid longbow, the timber Ghost
Speaker 1: hybrid longbow called a smoke For anybody interested, I'll post
Speaker 1: some pictures of it on my social media. The bow
Speaker 1: was nothing was not. I mean, the bow is a
Speaker 1: modern bow. The arrow in the stone point is what
Speaker 1: was super primitive. And basically these bears were coming off
Speaker 1: the top of the mountain and they were my My
Speaker 1: bear pit essentially made a topographic obstacle that they had
Speaker 1: to go around. And so there were two bear trails
Speaker 1: that split right behind the blind and one went to
Speaker 1: the right and one went to the left. There was
Speaker 1: a little hole about as big as a golf ball
Speaker 1: in our blind that we could see out, and we
Speaker 1: would see bears walk past us, no more than five
Speaker 1: feet from us. And my exaggerating, you just see black
Speaker 1: fur cover that golf ball hole, and you know, here
Speaker 1: they come. And we saw a couple of bears. Some
Speaker 1: bears were smelling us, we know for sure. Some bears didn't.
Speaker 1: We had two bears come in yesterday, maybe three that
Speaker 1: didn't smell us, that came in real close. And we're
Speaker 1: you know, we're within five yards. It was multiple times,
Speaker 1: but right last night at last light, we were we
Speaker 1: learned that you had to be super ready because you
Speaker 1: can only see one direction out of this blind, and
Speaker 1: when you see them there in range and you can't
Speaker 1: hear them because it's like you're in a cave, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't hear real good. And basically I was sitting
Speaker 1: there with my bow ready, Justin has camera ready, and
Speaker 1: and when it got to prime time, we were just
Speaker 1: on red alert. We've been sitting there for eight out.
Speaker 1: We've been sitting there since noon, and and we'd let
Speaker 1: a couple of bears come in on us that I
Speaker 1: was like, shoot, if that had been a shooter, he'd
Speaker 1: got away. One bear came in, looked at us, and
Speaker 1: left just that quick. So we knew we had to
Speaker 1: be ready, especially with the big one. And I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know what I was doing, but I didn't
Speaker 1: wasn't looking at the golf ball hole. Justin just goes
Speaker 1: there there is and I grabbed my bow three fingers
Speaker 1: on the knock and I say which side of the blind?
Speaker 1: And he goes that side, right side. Aboy the time
Speaker 1: he said right side. That bear came around that blind,
Speaker 1: and rather than just going straight down in front of it,
Speaker 1: he got to the front of our blind and hung
Speaker 1: the left, which just I mean basically, he just turned
Speaker 1: and I mean just walked right in front and and
Speaker 1: I didn't even aim, James, I'm serious, I just don't
Speaker 1: have to that. And I don't even think I probably
Speaker 1: pulled my bow all the way back. I just went
Speaker 1: and hit him, hit him. He was quartering to me,
Speaker 1: just to touch, but it hit him right behind the
Speaker 1: shoulder and hit the top of his heart. Aera didn't
Speaker 1: penetrate real deep. A lot of the Arab was sticking out.
Speaker 1: He spun the Arab broke off on a tree. He
Speaker 1: ran out there forty five yards and died of penetration
Speaker 1: though from where it broke off. But it went through
Speaker 1: a bunch of meat. If I had hit him in
Speaker 1: the ribs, if he was really broadside, I think it
Speaker 1: would have got a lot more penetration. But it did
Speaker 1: the rick man and it was it. It ended up
Speaker 1: being a pretty good bear. He had a wingspan of
Speaker 1: six ft eleven uh, which is a It was a
Speaker 1: It was a boar, a younger bore, but decent board,
Speaker 1: you know, in the two pound range probably. Uh so
Speaker 1: that's that story. I guess I will tell that story.
Speaker 1: I guess we do have time. You were basically hunting
Speaker 1: out of a foxhole, sod roof on it. That's it.
Speaker 1: That's right. You'll be able to see that video later
Speaker 1: this year. It's gonna come out and and and the
Speaker 1: video is not about bear hunting. The video about it
Speaker 1: is about something else. The bear hunt is just a
Speaker 1: small part of it, right, justin Well, Uh, it'll be
Speaker 1: a good bear in this winter. Hey, we got there
Speaker 1: yesterday after leaving our two chairs, which one was in
Speaker 1: a chair as a crate, but it was what Clay needed.
Speaker 1: And uh, my chair was thrown out where the bait was.
Speaker 1: We couldn't, as far as we could see, couldn't find
Speaker 1: Clay's chair. So he stacked two rocks and sat on them.
Speaker 1: They carried You guys were intruder, Yeah, so they were.
Speaker 1: They trust me, they were in there. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: bear scat in the blond when I got there. You've
Speaker 1: got pictures of those bears just climbing over it, I
Speaker 1: mean top of it. Hey, what a great guy man,
Speaker 1: He's got some stuff. You know. I still say that
Speaker 1: if you ever get forward take some toys at there
Speaker 1: in time to a tree, a little plastic rings and stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've had stuff happen with bears that just
Speaker 1: tell me they're looking for a party. What was it?
Speaker 1: What was the difference from yesterday and the day before? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just think this bear just came in and he
Speaker 1: didn't come in yesterday. The first time we'd seen that bear,
Speaker 1: like with our own eyes, I'd seen him on camera
Speaker 1: because he had to yellow tags and his ears. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you mean? Within thirty minutes of
Speaker 1: us leaving on the first night, there was like what
Speaker 1: three or four bears that came in to Yeah. That
Speaker 1: was like almost like they were sitting just out of range,
Speaker 1: just waiting and you guys, waiting for us to leave.
Speaker 1: By the time we got back to the truck and
Speaker 1: got they were there. But you didn't say any of
Speaker 1: that day, did you? I saw one? Didn't we see bear? Like?
Speaker 1: How many did you say yesterday? Today? Probably four? I
Speaker 1: think we saw four bears yesterday. What was the difference
Speaker 1: in the two days to under? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: think it might have been the fact that I mean
Speaker 1: that first sit um, you know, like we said, our
Speaker 1: wind was iffy. You just don't know what it's doing.
Speaker 1: You know, when you're in a tree, you can kind
Speaker 1: of have some kind of a determination on like what
Speaker 1: your wind might be doing. And there you we thought
Speaker 1: maybe it was being held, maybe it was circulating inside.
Speaker 1: But the way you know, we were, these bears were
Speaker 1: reacting at different times. It could have been peeling over
Speaker 1: the top and the thermals you know, come into play too,
Speaker 1: but we just didn't know. So I think we had
Speaker 1: that full day of sitting in there. The first day
Speaker 1: had the young bear come in, but then we had
Speaker 1: bears come in during the night, and then we had
Speaker 1: bears there, three or four bears there yesterday morning around
Speaker 1: before we got we were talking to you, So I
Speaker 1: think it was probably some uh, them acclimating to our scent,
Speaker 1: because because they wanted to come in there, but like
Speaker 1: the they're not being any sent in there on the
Speaker 1: first day and us just sitting there wafting, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever direction that was going. Probably they just weren't interested,
Speaker 1: but they knew like everything was good. For at least
Speaker 1: at twenty four hour period. I think that they got
Speaker 1: a little bit more accustomed to it. That blind was
Speaker 1: really interesting because I would take my puffer and puff
Speaker 1: in that blind, and the wind and the puff would
Speaker 1: just kind of stay in there. Sometimes it would drift
Speaker 1: a certain direction, but you would step out of the
Speaker 1: blind and put your head up out of the out
Speaker 1: of the pit, and the wind would just be really
Speaker 1: you go back in and just be quiet. I feel
Speaker 1: like it really would have helped for sent control if
Speaker 1: you were trying to get bears within twenty yards of you.
Speaker 1: The problem was, and this is why I didn't know,
Speaker 1: is that the bear trails. The bears want to come
Speaker 1: from the high. Usually they want to come from high
Speaker 1: to low. You'll rarely see a bear come to a
Speaker 1: bear bait from the bottom up like they almost always
Speaker 1: come from up high. Well, the bear bait was below
Speaker 1: the bear the pit, So the bears were coming from
Speaker 1: behind the pit and they were walking within five ft
Speaker 1: of us to get to the bait, and that's where
Speaker 1: the bears would spook. We saw a couple of bears
Speaker 1: come in that we never saw again. We'd see him
Speaker 1: past the golf ball hole and then and so basically
Speaker 1: the blind did not conceal our scent when there was
Speaker 1: a bear within five ft of it, But that bear
Speaker 1: made it to within five ft, So if you'd have
Speaker 1: been in a tree, you'd have killed him way back there.
Speaker 1: Do you see what I'm saying? Like he they were
Speaker 1: coming in to a radius easily of twenty thirty yards
Speaker 1: with no problem. That's you think that's true? Right? So
Speaker 1: to some degree the bear pit did help contain our scent,
Speaker 1: but not a yeah, you know, so unique experience. And
Speaker 1: uh and again I did it so that I could
Speaker 1: get close, be on the ground and be concealed movement.
Speaker 1: It was neat because I mean we're in there, moving
Speaker 1: around and talking and you know it just they weren't
Speaker 1: gonna see you. But well, guys, hey, thank you Gerald.
Speaker 1: It's been great to have you. Thanks for letting stay
Speaker 1: at your camp. Any closing thoughts, I'm just glad to
Speaker 1: be here. Yeah, I appreciate you invite. I mean and this, Yes, James,
Speaker 1: good to see you, good to have you. Good to
Speaker 1: be here, yep, look forward to it every year. Yep.
Speaker 1: Justin better get home to your wife for your anniversary.
Speaker 1: Moral of this story, of these two stories, it's good
Speaker 1: to have a camera guy with you. Those camera guys
Speaker 1: saw all those moose. You're right, you saw the bear.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have been ready. If you hadn't seen that,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have been ready either. Yeah, we just got lucky,
Speaker 1: all right, Thanks for listening to guys. Very good, Oh
Speaker 1: Justin al hoot, I gotta hear your ol hoot Justin
Speaker 1: as one of the best out has ever heard it.
Speaker 1: Stand up and do it. You gotta stand up because
Speaker 1: you can't. Al who sitting down. Whoo whoo, whoo hoo.
Speaker 1: That's good. That's good, that's good. Good tone,