Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to
Speaker 1: you by Interstate Batteries. Interstate Batteries has been a proud
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Speaker 1: you need batteries for your truck, batteries for your trail cameras, TV,
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Speaker 1: name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into the
Speaker 1: world of hunting the icon of the North American wilderness. Prepare.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation, but will also bring
Speaker 1: you into some of the wildest country on the planet,
Speaker 1: chasing batters, h boys and girls. Spring bear season is
Speaker 1: upon us and despite despite the best efforts of a
Speaker 1: global pandemic, most places that have bear seasons are still
Speaker 1: having bear seasons. And it's it's go time. It's go time.
Speaker 1: May and June always compared to the months of October
Speaker 1: and November for white tails. So May and June are
Speaker 1: that for bears, and this is when we hunt them
Speaker 1: in the spring. So what we're doing this week is
Speaker 1: we're re releasing an episode called Judging Black Bears for Dummies.
Speaker 1: And I think this is the most comprehensive conversation, for sure,
Speaker 1: that I've ever had, where we talk about all different
Speaker 1: methods of judging bears from sex and bears, aging bears,
Speaker 1: well I'm not really aging bears, but trying to term
Speaker 1: with their mature. But I'm joined by Klobe Moorehead and
Speaker 1: Ryan Greb and we go through the nitty gritty nerd
Speaker 1: out stuff about judging bears, some of the most tough
Speaker 1: animals of all the big game animals to judge. So
Speaker 1: this is a technical you learn the stuff in this podcast,
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna learn something and uh then you
Speaker 1: may be able to add something to this. But hey,
Speaker 1: it's also time for those of you guys and states
Speaker 1: where you can bait bears to start baiting. Check out
Speaker 1: our buddies at Northwood's Bear Products also du Hunting Supply.
Speaker 1: They started a new podcast their hound supply company, but
Speaker 1: you can search for the w W podcast and lastly
Speaker 1: Western Bear Foundation. They're putting out some good content these
Speaker 1: days through social media on judging bears as well, and
Speaker 1: they're a membership driven nonprofit hunting conservation organization standing up
Speaker 1: for bear hunters out west. You're gonna enjoy this podcast
Speaker 1: and hey we're bear hunting. I mean, when you're listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast, I am somewhere in a wild place
Speaker 1: chasing a bear and you'll hear where that is at
Speaker 1: some point and U but that's part of the reason
Speaker 1: we're having to rerelease some stuff, um, just with the
Speaker 1: timing and the COVID stuff. So man, I hope that
Speaker 1: you get into some wild places and find a bear
Speaker 1: hunter bear and man, yeah, be safe, be careful, and
Speaker 1: good hunting. We are going to have another one of
Speaker 1: our technical, nitty gritty nerd out Bear sessions about judging
Speaker 1: bears in the field. Judging bears, trying to tell if
Speaker 1: a bear is a male or female, if it's a
Speaker 1: older man your male, or if it's a juvenile male.
Speaker 1: Basically judging bears just like we would white tails, judging
Speaker 1: what you judge of whitetail by all these different characteristics.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about bears bears are one of the
Speaker 1: hardest animals to judge in the field, for sure. I
Speaker 1: mean I think you could talk to guys all over
Speaker 1: the country that have hunted all over and they would say,
Speaker 1: the hardest animal to judge in North America, it's a
Speaker 1: black bear. I have with me again, Ryan Grab also
Speaker 1: known as flint Face Grab flint Face. Yep, Ryan is Colby.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't know this. Ryan is was notorious for taking
Speaker 1: pictures with animals and just having this like flint face,
Speaker 1: just like just flint face. So I started calling flint Face.
Speaker 1: Now he's now he smiles more on these big trophy photos.
Speaker 1: We've got Ryan Grab here with me. Yeah, now he
Speaker 1: grins like a girl scout. I got so Ryan Grab
Speaker 1: is here rides been on the last couple of podcasts,
Speaker 1: and I've got to say it just in case you
Speaker 1: haven't listened to the podcast before, but Ryan is an
Speaker 1: expert bear hunter. Troubled with me many places in Canada.
Speaker 1: But you've you have done your bear business here in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: And that's how I know you as being a expert
Speaker 1: Arkansas bear hunter. Been hunting. I mean, you've killed a ton,
Speaker 1: you've killed a pile of bears here in Arkansas. And
Speaker 1: as I've said in the last three podcasts, you were
Speaker 1: killing bears. Well, my mama was still wife of my nose.
Speaker 1: Would you agree with us if you say so? All right?
Speaker 1: All right, So that's Ryan Grab. I've got Colby moorehead
Speaker 1: with me. I've introduced Colby to Colby works for Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting magazine. So Kobe is you don't really even have
Speaker 1: a job title, do you know? It's just like Kobe.
Speaker 1: Koby does all kind of stuff for me, Bear Tech,
Speaker 1: bear Tech. Colby is a bear hunting magazine, Bear Tech,
Speaker 1: Mr Ken do Attitude, can do. That's all right. Koby
Speaker 1: is doing a ton of stuff for me, including getting
Speaker 1: Bear Horizon on Amazon. I don't know when this podcast
Speaker 1: is gonna be released, but you can be looking for it.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have our Bear Horizon show on Amazon. That's
Speaker 1: one thing that he's done for me. But anyway, he
Speaker 1: does a whole lot of stuff. But that's neither here
Speaker 1: nor there. Let's talk about Judge and bears. We're gonna
Speaker 1: try to just jump right into this thing. Toughest big
Speaker 1: game animal in North America to judge by many standards, Um,
Speaker 1: bears don't have antlers do they Have you ever killed
Speaker 1: a bear with antlers? No, I've only seen a couple
Speaker 1: on trail Kim, But bears don't have antlers. And this
Speaker 1: is just the truth of it. A hundred pound bear
Speaker 1: has this has a lot of fairly similar to characteristics
Speaker 1: as a four hundred pound bear, and that again, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into the nuances to disprove that. But I mean,
Speaker 1: if you were to see a hundred pound bear on
Speaker 1: a hillside five yards away, you could be deceived into
Speaker 1: thinking that that was a big one because of what
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about scale. But what what we're looking
Speaker 1: at is we're fine, We're we're we're nitpicking the nuanced
Speaker 1: features of a bear to try to understand what makes
Speaker 1: a trophy bear. And we're gonna use that term. Let's
Speaker 1: let's let's let's not use the term trophy. Let's use
Speaker 1: the term mature, mature male. That's what we're after inside
Speaker 1: a bear hunting. The target animal and almost any situation
Speaker 1: is going to be an older class, mature male animal.
Speaker 1: That's what we're after. Okay, traditional methods, what would you say, Ryan?
Speaker 1: Are the traditional statements that people use to describe big males.
Speaker 1: I'd say the most notorious would be small ears yep,
Speaker 1: creased head yep, um, you know, bigger risk pads for sure.
Speaker 1: Probably the small ear myth. Yeah, that's that's what you
Speaker 1: hear people say all the time, Like you could google
Speaker 1: search small eared bear and it would be there being
Speaker 1: articles all over the place. But let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: just jump right into this. Is that I have seen
Speaker 1: you have seen times when that didn't characterize the characterizing
Speaker 1: older mature male at all. Um. Definitely, the classic big
Speaker 1: bore is gonna look like he has small ears that
Speaker 1: are on the side of his head, you know, because
Speaker 1: his skulls so big, head so big that it's like
Speaker 1: those ears as he gets older just kind of moves
Speaker 1: down his head. But I've also killed some whop or
Speaker 1: bears that to me had mickey mouse ears. For instance,
Speaker 1: the bear I killed this year in Oklahoma, I called
Speaker 1: him Batman because of how big his ears were. He
Speaker 1: had these big, curled ears. I have also found that
Speaker 1: bears have different shapes and looks based upon what part
Speaker 1: of the country they're in. I mean, I've never seen
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, correct me if you think I'm wrong. I
Speaker 1: personally have never hunted a really big giant bear in
Speaker 1: Arkansas or Oklahoma that I would have categorized as having
Speaker 1: small ears. Would you have, no, You know, I think
Speaker 1: there's almost to me a difference and the way they
Speaker 1: look in the Washingtaws here and you know, mid Arkansas
Speaker 1: compared to the Yeah, it seems like they've got distinguished
Speaker 1: facial features. Maybe even hide is a little different. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: then there are two separate populations. I mean they really are.
Speaker 1: In Arkansas, we've got basically to what they call ala
Speaker 1: Patrick populations of bears, which means they're kind of independent
Speaker 1: of one another based upon some geographic and man made
Speaker 1: barriers of the Arkansas River which is not man made
Speaker 1: to Kolbe, but the Interstate forty which runs by the
Speaker 1: Arkansas River is man made, so that it separates these
Speaker 1: two populations. And very few bear bears are crossing over
Speaker 1: to breed into these different places, and so there's even
Speaker 1: slight differences in between ninety miles. You know. Um, there's
Speaker 1: some generalizations like for instance, um, well these aren't generalizations,
Speaker 1: these are true. Uh. Newfoundland is known for having big
Speaker 1: skulled bears. Uh. Prince of Wales Island is known for
Speaker 1: having large sculled bears. There's other places that are known
Speaker 1: for not having big skulld bears. But you still might
Speaker 1: have a big bear that is huge body wise, but
Speaker 1: his skull would be smaller. Um. There are definitely different
Speaker 1: characteristics of bears, just like white tails. I mean, you
Speaker 1: have some places where white tails are gonna have express
Speaker 1: this big, massive, heavy horn deer, like Canada, and they
Speaker 1: have other places where they're not as much. UM. That
Speaker 1: being said, bears are not affected by the um is
Speaker 1: it Bergman's law that states that the further you get
Speaker 1: away from the equator, the larger body sized mammals are
Speaker 1: to retain heat. That's why Canadian white tails are bigger
Speaker 1: than white tails. In the Florida Keys bears are exempt
Speaker 1: from that law that because they hibernate during the winter,
Speaker 1: they technically don't hibernate, they go into state of torpor,
Speaker 1: but they they are exempt from that law because they
Speaker 1: are not enduring the cold temperatures, just taking it right
Speaker 1: in the face like all these other animals. So bears
Speaker 1: in Florida, bears in Arkansas, bears in Oklahoma, bears in
Speaker 1: North Carolina could be as big or even bigger than
Speaker 1: Canadian bears. Okay, let's just separate that out. There's just
Speaker 1: some bared knowledge, bare nerd technoledge. I wish we had
Speaker 1: the buddy size of the Carolina bears. That's amazing, no doubt.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got big bears, but they've got some monsters.
Speaker 1: They do they do. Some of the biggest bears in
Speaker 1: the world are on the Eastern Coast. Some of the
Speaker 1: biggest skull bears in the world, though, are also in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Some of the top five bears skulls in the world
Speaker 1: have come come out of Pennsylvania. And part of that
Speaker 1: probably has to do with their age structure, because they've
Speaker 1: got a lot of older bears because they don't hunt
Speaker 1: over bait or with hounds. They're just spotting stock or
Speaker 1: drive hunting these bears, so they're really not taken out
Speaker 1: a big percentage of their bears every year. But so, okay,
Speaker 1: we've established that there are bears in different places are
Speaker 1: going to be different, They're gonna look different. Um, we've
Speaker 1: established that ears and a crease on the head are
Speaker 1: sometimes that's what somebody might say small ears and a
Speaker 1: crease on the head. That's the only bear you shoot well,
Speaker 1: if that had been the way that I judged bears
Speaker 1: my whole life, i'd have very few bears. A lot
Speaker 1: of the big bears that I've killed. As a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, the only Boone and Crockett bear that I
Speaker 1: have ever killed, Ryan, I would say, didn't have either.
Speaker 1: One of those didn't have a crease on his head,
Speaker 1: and I would say he had big ears. Um and well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to get into body weight yet, but
Speaker 1: let's just talk about those two things. Um. My good
Speaker 1: buddy Heath Martin, expert bear hunter here in Arkansas, has
Speaker 1: a story of going to Canada and shooting a color
Speaker 1: face bear that had, I mean just a ripple crease
Speaker 1: down its forehead. They were hunting the big color phase mail.
Speaker 1: This color phase bear comes in. They think it's the
Speaker 1: big male, has a big crease. He shoots it and
Speaker 1: it's a sal Sal with a crease. And I've been
Speaker 1: noticing that more and more. The more I see bears,
Speaker 1: the more I'm like, man, sALS will have a crease
Speaker 1: on their head too. Have you have you seen that before? Ryan?
Speaker 1: Not so much here in Arkansas probably no. Uh, I've
Speaker 1: seen some big sales. I think a lot of The
Speaker 1: determining factor on the sales is it seems like they're
Speaker 1: muzzle wants to blend in even where they have the
Speaker 1: blonde brows. Have you noticed that? And probably the total
Speaker 1: length of the bear. The boars will always have lankier,
Speaker 1: longer bodies versus a sale. They're more compact. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I've heard people describe it that a sal is pear
Speaker 1: shaped like a narrow front end, big back end. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: let's see where do I want to go? There's so
Speaker 1: many different places we could go here. Let's go Let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and just describe the characteristics of older mature
Speaker 1: mail as we would just say it now. We're not
Speaker 1: saying that ears increase are not indicators of an older
Speaker 1: mature mail. For instance, one of the first years I
Speaker 1: spring bear hunted, we went to Alberta. We killed six
Speaker 1: poping young bears in five days in our camp. One
Speaker 1: of those bears I would have considered as a traditional
Speaker 1: style big older male who's straight up had small ears,
Speaker 1: straight up had ears on the side of his head,
Speaker 1: straight up had a crease. One of of six. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I said we killed six bears. The bears
Speaker 1: that the two bears that I killed which were nineteen
Speaker 1: inch but nineteen inch plus bears, which are that's a
Speaker 1: big bear, well above the pope and young minimum Um
Speaker 1: probably weighed in the three hundred three fifty pound range
Speaker 1: in the spring, which is a big bear. These are
Speaker 1: big bears. They all had what I would describe as
Speaker 1: mickey mouse ears, and they were tall and looked like
Speaker 1: race horses. Okay, um, they but the the defining features
Speaker 1: of them that made me know that they were older
Speaker 1: mature males was that they were tall, they were very tall,
Speaker 1: and that they were long, and that they had their
Speaker 1: front legs the front leg of a boar. A big boar,
Speaker 1: he's gonna have like stove pipe, lay eggs like a bulldog,
Speaker 1: Like a bulldog, big ankles, and big pads, as in
Speaker 1: contrast to a sow, which is gonna have thinner legs,
Speaker 1: thinner ankles, smaller pads. To me, almost every big bear
Speaker 1: I've ever killed ryan I have noticed his feet. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: if you were to show and I'd almost go to
Speaker 1: that more than the head. Like I see some pictures
Speaker 1: of sALS and get trail camera pictures of sALS, and
Speaker 1: I was like, if you just showed me the head
Speaker 1: of that bear, I couldn't tell you. I mean, I
Speaker 1: would assume it would just be a big boar, But
Speaker 1: to be a sal I would almost rather look at
Speaker 1: the bear's feet than anything. It seems like the back
Speaker 1: feet also want to sail as not as long as
Speaker 1: a boar's you know, in length, the pads just don't.
Speaker 1: A sal's a lot shorter. Yeah. So when I when
Speaker 1: I'm looking at a boar or they're looking to determine
Speaker 1: if a boar as trophy size, looking at his feet,
Speaker 1: looking at his front shoulders, looking at his height, that's
Speaker 1: that is a massive factor. And when you're hitting over bait,
Speaker 1: typically you've got a fifty five gallon drum. This this
Speaker 1: rule could be applied anywhere on the earth where there's
Speaker 1: black bears, which early in North America. But a bear
Speaker 1: that is as tall as a thirty six inch tall drum,
Speaker 1: if his shoulders, not his hairline, but his actual shoulders
Speaker 1: come up to the top of that barrel, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a big bear, is it not? Run? Yeah? Usually shooter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you just don't see an immature bear or
Speaker 1: even a a salve that's gonna be as tall as
Speaker 1: a barrel. Do you every once in a while, like
Speaker 1: the say, the sal I had trouble with in Canada,
Speaker 1: was it two years ago? You know, my first glance
Speaker 1: of that, I thought, boy, there's a shooter. And she
Speaker 1: was probably three hundred maybe bear, but big head, she
Speaker 1: just short. Yeah, I mean that would have been a
Speaker 1: tough one. Yeah. Yeah, she had a cup with her
Speaker 1: though she did. That's probably the only reason you knew
Speaker 1: it wasn't a born Yeah. I mean you might have
Speaker 1: figured it out after a while. Yeah, it takes you know,
Speaker 1: if you studied it for a minute or two, you
Speaker 1: could probably do you think she was truly as tall
Speaker 1: as a barrel like her shoulder, I don't know barrel.
Speaker 1: There was a barrel there, but it was laying down,
Speaker 1: you know, it was chained a tree. But it was
Speaker 1: a tall bear. Yeah, it was so. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: tricky one because inside the barre world there's different variants
Speaker 1: of height and well there's different there's all these different
Speaker 1: shapes like you could here in Arkansas have a sal
Speaker 1: bear that way hundred and eighty five pounds and she
Speaker 1: might be eighteen years old and be fully mature, and
Speaker 1: maybe she weighs a hundred pounds. Heath Martin four or
Speaker 1: five years ago shot a bear here in Arkansas. Turned
Speaker 1: out it was a soal weighed three hundred and forty
Speaker 1: pounds on scale in the fall, And there's just all
Speaker 1: this variation, just like in humans that ere a bit. Nope,
Speaker 1: she didn't. She was a big dry sow and uh,
Speaker 1: she didn't have a cub with her. I mean, they've
Speaker 1: been getting pictures of this bear and uh, and she
Speaker 1: was a prime animal to take out older female and
Speaker 1: but it was just a big bear and uh, and
Speaker 1: he kind of thought maybe it was a sal but
Speaker 1: it was just you know, he took her. Um weighed
Speaker 1: three pounds on a scale. That being said, there's all
Speaker 1: this variation, So you can't just always say that a
Speaker 1: sow is just gonna be a whole lot smaller, because
Speaker 1: you could very well have a older age class male
Speaker 1: board that weighed three and forty pounds. And I'd take
Speaker 1: that bear anywhere in the world. I really would. If
Speaker 1: I went to Canada. I mean, most most of the time,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot that animal. Um so the boars, but
Speaker 1: the one place, and and your deal would be an exception,
Speaker 1: I would say, I would say the one place that
Speaker 1: you could almost always tell a boar is his height
Speaker 1: and lengthy. I mean, you're just never gonna have a
Speaker 1: sou bear that is just this freight train long, tall,
Speaker 1: big animal. You're just not gonna see it. And the
Speaker 1: first time bear hunter might not distinguish that. You know, yes,
Speaker 1: the more time you've spent bear hunting and get to
Speaker 1: see tens upon hundreds of bears, it'll be easier for
Speaker 1: a guy. And so that goes to the second thing
Speaker 1: here we want to talk about is determining the sex
Speaker 1: of a bear. When I was in Saskatchewan last year,
Speaker 1: we watched bears for eight hours a day for five days.
Speaker 1: We were just watching bears like crazy, and I realized
Speaker 1: that these older seals were sometimes hard to distinguish from boars.
Speaker 1: The first thing I looked at, though, was ankle size
Speaker 1: and pad size. Second, it was the first thing. The
Speaker 1: second thing once they came in is some And the
Speaker 1: reason I'm saying this is these seals were really mature,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, you totally would have said that these
Speaker 1: cells had small ears down the side of their head.
Speaker 1: I mean really they were like like if you had
Speaker 1: just taken a picture, I think you could have almost
Speaker 1: convinced anyone that it was a mature male. So this
Speaker 1: animals coming in, there's not really anything to scale the
Speaker 1: bear by trying to determine is this is this a
Speaker 1: nice male? Because in the spring, the males are smaller
Speaker 1: I mean not physical, not the bone structure obviously, but
Speaker 1: I mean they're they're less weight. They've been a then
Speaker 1: for six months, they're thinner, So in the spring a
Speaker 1: male and a female might be harder to distinguish. And
Speaker 1: the second thing I look for was a penal sheath. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, a boar is gonna have these these
Speaker 1: sheath hairs that hang down and they're four or five
Speaker 1: inches long, sometimes hanging down right in the middle of
Speaker 1: the belly. You can't see there. You can't see the sheath. Really,
Speaker 1: it's not like something big hanging down, you know, but
Speaker 1: you can see those sheath hairs hanging down. And when
Speaker 1: you see that, all of a sudden, part of your
Speaker 1: equation is solved. This is a male. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the first thing that I do anytime i'm bear hunt anywhere,
Speaker 1: is that a boar or sow and that that sal's
Speaker 1: gonna be pear shaped, she's gonna be smaller. She's gonna
Speaker 1: be shorter, she's gonna have thinner ankles, she's gonna have
Speaker 1: smaller pads, she's gonna have a more feminine face. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of a hard thing to describe, but just
Speaker 1: like in a dog, like a big old male, right
Speaker 1: while there's gonna have this boxy, beefy nose and head
Speaker 1: and a female, a sow bear kind of has a
Speaker 1: more feminine feel to the face and head most of
Speaker 1: the time. Agree with that, Ryan, I agree. You agree
Speaker 1: with that, Kolbe. From what I've seen, I think you're
Speaker 1: older bears too, And you know this works with sales.
Speaker 1: Also is the scruff the beard under the chin. As
Speaker 1: a bear gets older, it seems to have that little guiltee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you see that with Arkansas bears sometimes, Yeah, kind of
Speaker 1: that do lap like kind of yeah, like you got
Speaker 1: going on? Yeah, yeah, kind of like me now that
Speaker 1: it is their behavior change, like the way they come
Speaker 1: in on a date, the salve versus the boar. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a good one. Yes, I mean I have seen.
Speaker 1: I wrote an article and this last issue Bear Any
Speaker 1: Magazine that was called five thoughts on judging Black Bear.
Speaker 1: One thing that I have noticed is that the mature
Speaker 1: boar that's coming into a bait site, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about a bait site here, you can't always predict what
Speaker 1: he's gonna do. You can't just say, well, the mature
Speaker 1: board is gonna just barrel in and run everything off
Speaker 1: the barrel, or you can't say, the mature boar is
Speaker 1: gonna be the one that's hanging back, and it's really cautious.
Speaker 1: You don't know what they're gonna do. But one thing
Speaker 1: I have noticed is that they almost always act different
Speaker 1: than every animal at debate site. That's not gonna play
Speaker 1: true in every situation. But either he's gonna be like
Speaker 1: the bull of the woods and it's just gonna roll
Speaker 1: in there, and you're just gonna be like that animal
Speaker 1: is the king. I would use my example of when
Speaker 1: I shot that color face bear in Canada that came
Speaker 1: in and touched into my earraw. He was the boss
Speaker 1: of those woods and he just barreled in there and
Speaker 1: was the king. The next well, in the same in
Speaker 1: the same hunt, a bear that was actually bigger than
Speaker 1: him was the most timid bear. You remember the one
Speaker 1: I missed, right, man, He just tiptoed around, and he
Speaker 1: was a monster bear. So those two mature animals, they
Speaker 1: acted different than every other, and all the other ones
Speaker 1: just kind of came in, I mean, like a sal
Speaker 1: And this is why I don't understand even a mature
Speaker 1: salve that's been around the planet and knows the system,
Speaker 1: she might just walk in and just go right over
Speaker 1: to the bait and just start eating. You know, She's
Speaker 1: So they're just gonna act different. So you can't say
Speaker 1: that they're always gonna be dominant. You can't say that
Speaker 1: they're always gonna be super skittish. It could be either one.
Speaker 1: But when I see a bear that is acting different
Speaker 1: than all the other bears that I'm saying, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm like, he's special. I mean like he's he's probably
Speaker 1: a target animal. Would you agree with that? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems like you know, they're the ones that's gonna sit
Speaker 1: out there on their button sixty yards from the bait
Speaker 1: and check the wind. That's these Arkansas bears for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or he could be the one that you know, you
Speaker 1: could have other bears on the bat and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they wolf and take off running and you
Speaker 1: see one coming, you know that's going to be more
Speaker 1: mature bear, right. I mean, there's no way that that
Speaker 1: bear I got last year in Minute Toba didn't smell us.
Speaker 1: He just didn't care, That's right. He came right under
Speaker 1: our stand and just ran everything off, and he he
Speaker 1: didn't care. It's a different ball game, I think, and
Speaker 1: Canadian provinces where they don't get pressured as like we do.
Speaker 1: You know down here, I think Saskatch, Like when we're
Speaker 1: at Saskatchewan. I mean, then bears don't know you from
Speaker 1: any other animal. They don't have any fear. Then they're
Speaker 1: not trying to be dangerous. They're curious. But down here
Speaker 1: the bear usually don't do that unless it's them like
Speaker 1: white tails down here. Yeah, yeah, there's there's spooky. They're skittish.
Speaker 1: I think Canada they're typically less skinniesh There's an inverse
Speaker 1: relationship between the amount of exposure to humans and there
Speaker 1: fear of humans. So in places where they never encounter humans,
Speaker 1: there's less fear. In places where they encounter humans all
Speaker 1: the time, there's more fear. It seems like I would
Speaker 1: be the opposite. You'd think they just get used to
Speaker 1: you down here, and so they would be different, but
Speaker 1: it's it's inverse. Yeah, So that's something that's confusing to
Speaker 1: people because most people don't have the view of bears
Speaker 1: like somebody would have that has hunted down here, but
Speaker 1: it's also hunted a lot up there. So a lot
Speaker 1: of guys, you know, you write an article about using
Speaker 1: sent control for bears, and the guys in Canada are
Speaker 1: like you, guys, don't know what you're talking about. Sin
Speaker 1: control doesn't mean a thing. And I'll be honest with you.
Speaker 1: In Canada, I believe sent control basically means nothing. Now,
Speaker 1: if I had the choice of being clean and having
Speaker 1: the wind in my favor, for sure, you're better off
Speaker 1: if they don't know you're there. But every big bear
Speaker 1: I've ever killed Canada knew I was there and didn't care.
Speaker 1: But in Arkansas, and Ryan, you're an expert here in
Speaker 1: Arkansas at pulling these big bears out of the out
Speaker 1: of the haystack. You gotta do a lot of things
Speaker 1: right down here to kill big bear. I think I've
Speaker 1: been fortunate though, with locations being you know, I've been
Speaker 1: lucky to have places where bears already living, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: they don't have to travel far to get to me.
Speaker 1: I'm actually in places that have water, have shade, they're
Speaker 1: thick and don't have any human disturbance. So that's probably
Speaker 1: been my key, you know, to harvesting being picky on
Speaker 1: you're also you're I mean, most of these big bears
Speaker 1: that you've killed, if they would have straight up smelled you,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't come in during daylight. I wouldn't think so
Speaker 1: very few that's spend. What I've seen here in Arkansas
Speaker 1: is that if you were hunting, let's say eight years
Speaker 1: hunting big bears, maybe one maybe two of those eight years,
Speaker 1: you would get lucky and if a bear knew you
Speaker 1: were there, he would come in anyway. I keep going
Speaker 1: back to my friend Heath Martin, who's a great bear
Speaker 1: hunter in Arkansas. He killed a big bear, one of
Speaker 1: his biggest bears ever, Boot and Crock a bear, uh
Speaker 1: several years ago, and that bear knew they were there.
Speaker 1: It had just set out there for a long time
Speaker 1: winding them, and it just kind of about dark. It
Speaker 1: just it's like, well, I'm just gonna ease in there,
Speaker 1: and that bear just eased in. I would look up
Speaker 1: at him and he kills a bear that's an exception.
Speaker 1: Most of the time you're not gonna kill that animal.
Speaker 1: But again two and eight or two and ten, you're
Speaker 1: gonna if a bear knows you're there. Now, what you've
Speaker 1: been able to do is you know these locations, well,
Speaker 1: you're hunting, these stands, you're getting up and so these
Speaker 1: bears you're killing just don't know you're there. Got good setups,
Speaker 1: You're in places where the bears want to be. I
Speaker 1: don't mess around in the woods either. You know, when
Speaker 1: I go in and bait, I'm not walking across the fence.
Speaker 1: I'm not walking out bear trails. You know. I'll go in,
Speaker 1: bait quick, get out, you know. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people too, are hanging their stands or two
Speaker 1: days before season. I do that in summer. You know,
Speaker 1: some of these older bears will come in and before
Speaker 1: they get to the bait, they want to send check
Speaker 1: that tree that has stand in it to see if
Speaker 1: you've climbed it. So and over the years it's kind
Speaker 1: of crazy. I've piled dead brush around the actual tree.
Speaker 1: I have a stand in kind of as as a barrier.
Speaker 1: I mean, a bear could go through it, and but
Speaker 1: it looks like a rat's nest around the base of
Speaker 1: this tree. They can't get to that tree and really
Speaker 1: sent check whether I've climbed up not. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I'm a little crazy. But just man, you've got every
Speaker 1: right to be crazy because, like I said, and a
Speaker 1: couple of other podcasts, I think you've killed You've killed
Speaker 1: a ton of big bears in Arkansas seem to keep
Speaker 1: pulling them out. What would you say if you were
Speaker 1: judging bears in Arkansas? What are you looking for? We're
Speaker 1: hunting bar bears in the fall, which we've We've also
Speaker 1: said there's a difference between judging spring bears up north
Speaker 1: or in Montana versus hunting a fall bear here in Arkansas.
Speaker 1: And I mean, and we're when we're hunting around here,
Speaker 1: we're really after an older age classman. What would what
Speaker 1: were the defining characteristics? You know, they don't have thick
Speaker 1: fur up in that time of the year, you know,
Speaker 1: late summer, but you know frame length. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, you want to look at their pads,
Speaker 1: the risks characteristics as how they respond a lot of
Speaker 1: times to the bait. But I think you'll you'll know,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially if if a person is running trail cams,
Speaker 1: which you know, I guess everybody does. Uh. You'll give
Speaker 1: you a general idea on what to look for distinct markings,
Speaker 1: maybe a crest on the chest or a notched deer,
Speaker 1: you know, something that you have a target bear that
Speaker 1: you've evaluated on trail camera and then you just got
Speaker 1: to make sure that's the bear you're shooting and he's
Speaker 1: coming in. Yeah. Yeah. Well, for these big, big fall
Speaker 1: bears that we're hunting here in Arkansas, a lot of
Speaker 1: times what we're looking for is weight, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what you're looking for in these big bears here
Speaker 1: are gonna have not always but sometimes sagging bellies, sometimes
Speaker 1: flat bellies, but they're gonna not have a lot of
Speaker 1: air in between the ground and their belly. They're gonna
Speaker 1: be tall. They're gonna look like an angus bull. I mean,
Speaker 1: but even even in big bears, right, if you have
Speaker 1: two five pound bears, they look different. Like you could
Speaker 1: have a short, fat bear that was a little bit
Speaker 1: shorter squatti or fatter, or you could have a huge
Speaker 1: frame bear like Batman who squared eight foot and was
Speaker 1: seven ft something from nose to tail, I mean, he
Speaker 1: was he had a frame man um, but you could
Speaker 1: also have a five hundred pound bear like rock slide
Speaker 1: the spear that they've gotten out in the office. He
Speaker 1: was only six ft six from nose to tail really,
Speaker 1: so I mean he was six inches shorter from those
Speaker 1: to tail. But I believe that he would have weighed
Speaker 1: in the same class as that other killed him late
Speaker 1: in the year or two, probably when he had been
Speaker 1: feeding on masts, so he was blown up from way
Speaker 1: I think on a baited hunt. Also, you could say
Speaker 1: if you've been baiting for a month and you've got
Speaker 1: a mature bear that's been eating doughnuts taken in thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of calories for a month, versus a bear
Speaker 1: that just showed up four days before season, which is
Speaker 1: gonna be lank here may have a big head, be
Speaker 1: a boone and crocking, but he won't have the belly sake,
Speaker 1: you know, as the one that's been camped out there
Speaker 1: for a month. Well, the largest skull bear that I've
Speaker 1: ever taken was a boar bear that only weigh three
Speaker 1: or sixty pounds. Yeah, the bear that I killed this
Speaker 1: year wade five dred and fifty pounds and had a
Speaker 1: smaller skull than a three and or sixty pound bear.
Speaker 1: That's a good segue into the different ways different people
Speaker 1: in the country gauge the size of a bear. There's
Speaker 1: three ways pretty much. The people gauge bear skull size, weight,
Speaker 1: and square all very very different. You it's hard to
Speaker 1: determine skull size by any characteristic. I mean, like, I
Speaker 1: keep going back to this bear. Five fifty pound bear
Speaker 1: that killed this year in Oklahoma is going to score
Speaker 1: on the high nineteens. Yeah, he's not gonna make twenty.
Speaker 1: The biggest bear I've killed was over five hundred and
Speaker 1: it was only nineteen. The biggest weight bear, the bigges bear,
Speaker 1: weighed over five hundred pounds and had under a twenty
Speaker 1: skull that I killed a four four or forty bear
Speaker 1: that actually made booner twenty five eighths sixteens excuse me six.
Speaker 1: So that's a great example I want people to hear
Speaker 1: that is that body weight has very little to do
Speaker 1: with skull size. The biggest skulled bear that I've ever
Speaker 1: taken was a six year old bear. My big bear
Speaker 1: was six years older. The no name six years old. Um.
Speaker 1: The this bear right here, this rock slide bear that
Speaker 1: I believe Wade five hundred pounds um he was nine
Speaker 1: years old. Now in in Batman, the five fifty pound
Speaker 1: bear this year, that's not gonna score twenty inches, that's
Speaker 1: right there, Ryan, We hadn't tooth aged him, but I
Speaker 1: would be shocked if that bear wasn't over ten years old.
Speaker 1: What did he score? Well, I've green scored him under
Speaker 1: twenty I mean like nineteen and fourteen, sixteens, I mean
Speaker 1: just right there. You know, he green scored right at twenty,
Speaker 1: I mean twenty and zero sixteen. Well, he had the
Speaker 1: body to make up for it. Yeah. And and see
Speaker 1: that's the thing. And as we're talking about trophy side,
Speaker 1: you know, judging the sparits, I could care less with
Speaker 1: that bear scored twenty. It would have been cool if
Speaker 1: he'd scored one. I mean I would have been thrilled.
Speaker 1: But in my mind, and for the way we're hunting
Speaker 1: down here, Ryan, we're just after we're after a big, older,
Speaker 1: heavy bear. On top of that, you had history with
Speaker 1: him for what three four years? Yeah, about five years?
Speaker 1: We had it probably for five years, and he was
Speaker 1: one of the first bears that was over there. You know,
Speaker 1: he had been tagged at some time in his life,
Speaker 1: but was missing the tags. You know, he had holes
Speaker 1: in his ears and that's been really found. That, didn't you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that had been interesting to little no no more about
Speaker 1: his story. Yeah, he had a hole in his ear, Kobe,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have never known it. Ron was just looking
Speaker 1: at the bear and he's, okay, this thing has been tagged.
Speaker 1: There was just a perfect hole. Rutting Zeer Tagger pulled
Speaker 1: out the game of fish, asked me if he had
Speaker 1: a lip tattoo. And I could not discern a lip tattoo. No,
Speaker 1: I look myself, didn't didn't see anything. Yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: another another bear that's out there that Oh go ahead,
Speaker 1: go ahead, it's in the video. Man, I'm busted now,
Speaker 1: go ahead. Yeah. The other bear has two tags, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: Yet we got the same history with the yellow Tag
Speaker 1: and Brian without my influence, was yellow Tag bigger than Batman?
Speaker 1: I think so. I'd say at least pounds probably, yeah,
Speaker 1: at least forty pounds yeah, probably six pound bear for real.
Speaker 1: I mean, when I saw Batman coming in, I recognized
Speaker 1: that it was Batman. My heart kind of went, oh, man,
Speaker 1: it's not Yellow Tag, which is ridiculous. Because this is
Speaker 1: a but that just shows you how big the other
Speaker 1: bear was. He he was visibly fatter and heavier, how
Speaker 1: much how much he made you think he was a
Speaker 1: hundred pounds more. And that's the thing that really we're
Speaker 1: not I don't think we're even qualified to yes, because
Speaker 1: if you just looked at like body volume and mass,
Speaker 1: me and Dad believed that he weighed a hundred more pounds.
Speaker 1: But it could be scale though, because maybe Batman had
Speaker 1: a frame like a bull elk, and maybe Yellow Tag
Speaker 1: was just a little bit more compact, so he just
Speaker 1: looked fatter, So maybe he was the same weight, but
Speaker 1: just kind of like a heavy guy that a short,
Speaker 1: fat guy that weighs a hundred ninety pounds versus a tall,
Speaker 1: skinny guy that weighs a hundred pounds, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Um, So, I don't know, but what we're
Speaker 1: looking for in Arkansas is these big, heavy bears. That's
Speaker 1: what we're after. Um, but let's let's go to a
Speaker 1: spotting stock hunt out west Man. You're not gonna kill
Speaker 1: a five pound spring black bear in Montana. You're probably
Speaker 1: not gonna kill a five pound bear in Montana. Ever. Uh,
Speaker 1: those bears out western arid regions with less nutrients, they're
Speaker 1: just not as big. That being said, you can still
Speaker 1: kill a boone and crocket bear. You could still kill
Speaker 1: a bear with a great big frame. But what I
Speaker 1: have this goes back to on a spot stock hunt,
Speaker 1: when you're judging a bear from a long distance. You're
Speaker 1: not getting to watch this bear from traill camera. You
Speaker 1: have no experience with this bear. You're looking for. You're
Speaker 1: looking for all these characteristics, you know, big front shoulders,
Speaker 1: stove pipe legs, big pads, um, flat belly. Typically a
Speaker 1: big spring bear is gonna have a flat barrel belly,
Speaker 1: where a sow is gonna have more of a pear
Speaker 1: shaped like an angled belly that drops down from a
Speaker 1: smaller chest down into a bigger butt. Okay, a boar
Speaker 1: is often gonna look like a big bull. You know.
Speaker 1: A good way, a good practice test for somebody that's
Speaker 1: trying to understand how to judge bears. I would say,
Speaker 1: when you're driving past cattle fields. Now we're in a
Speaker 1: part of the world we have a lot of cattle.
Speaker 1: Your eyes scan a whole pasture of cattle, and you
Speaker 1: can immediately pick out the bull based upon his length
Speaker 1: and just his square, boxy shape. It's almost like that
Speaker 1: with bears. Would you agree he's a good analogy. But
Speaker 1: you could tell. I mean, like you could teach your
Speaker 1: five year old son what the bull is not just
Speaker 1: by looking at his gear. It's rigging, as James Lawrence says,
Speaker 1: uh but uh, but you're just his body shape, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean you can teach your kids to do that.
Speaker 1: It's almost like the same thing. And it's much easier
Speaker 1: to determine the trophy class of a bear if it's older.
Speaker 1: Like when you get a juvenile male and a juvenile female,
Speaker 1: that's a hard one to determine, Am I right? I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's like splitting hairs sometimes, Like if you
Speaker 1: got a hundred and eighty pound bear out there on
Speaker 1: the side of the mountain, You're like, is that a
Speaker 1: male or female? Boy? Would be hard to tell. When
Speaker 1: you really can tell the difference is is just when
Speaker 1: you get a big, guerrilla like black bear. Like when
Speaker 1: we were in Montana two years ago, we did see
Speaker 1: two big boards that like a thousand yards and they
Speaker 1: were trailing a sow, And I mean almost with your
Speaker 1: naked eye, you could tell that the animal behind that
Speaker 1: was trailing this animal. It was either a cub that
Speaker 1: was leading in a big fat south following a cub,
Speaker 1: or it was a sow with a big, heavy boar fall.
Speaker 1: And so it's like when you put the scope up
Speaker 1: and you're like, that's not a cub, that's a board.
Speaker 1: Like it was easy to tell that board kind of
Speaker 1: had a sway walk. I hear a lot of people
Speaker 1: talk about the way they walk, which that's a That
Speaker 1: is one of the factors. Before I forget it, though,
Speaker 1: let me say this, which is probably the most important
Speaker 1: factor in UH judging bears, is that you've got to
Speaker 1: use multiple factors to determine this bearer. You if you
Speaker 1: use one thing, you'll mess up. And that was the
Speaker 1: whole point of this article that I wrote in the
Speaker 1: March April issue Barony magazine, is that if you just
Speaker 1: use ear size, you're gonna let a whole lot of
Speaker 1: big bears walk off that we're probably shoot your bears
Speaker 1: if you just use um sagging belly. Like if you
Speaker 1: just say I'm not shooting a bear unless there's only
Speaker 1: eight inches of daylight between the ground and the bottom
Speaker 1: is belly, you might end up shooting a sow because
Speaker 1: you know, some of these sALS have pot bellies and
Speaker 1: are short, and if you don't understand scale, you might
Speaker 1: shoot her. So you gotta do multiple things. Look at
Speaker 1: his pads, look at his box, he head, look at
Speaker 1: his length, look at his height. And when you get
Speaker 1: three two to three things that are pointing your two
Speaker 1: towards older mature mail, that's when I can say, Yep,
Speaker 1: that's an animal that I want to take. I think
Speaker 1: that's the best piece of advice that's ever been said
Speaker 1: about black bears. The pads on that bear you killed
Speaker 1: in Ontario, you remember them front pads, was that it
Speaker 1: was like it was like he was made to like
Speaker 1: swim like huge pads and some polar bear whatever or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do. I don't think I kill the bear with
Speaker 1: pads that big sense, I don't think so. I think,
Speaker 1: y'allow tech, it's probably God, you know what, the these
Speaker 1: these bears around here, I just don't see him. Even
Speaker 1: the big ones have feet like that. Though. It was
Speaker 1: like it was just yeah, it really was. It's almost
Speaker 1: like a grizzly bear. And that would be just like
Speaker 1: a human. Somebody might have big hands, somebody might have
Speaker 1: average sized hands. Okay, so we've talked about Uh wait, square,
Speaker 1: let's talk about square real quick. Square is the most
Speaker 1: to me, like inaccurate way to judge bears between people,
Speaker 1: because everybody kind of does it different. You hear outfitters
Speaker 1: all the time talking about seven foot bears, and in
Speaker 1: my Canadian hunting career, which is not I've not been
Speaker 1: doing this for twenty years. Don't get me wrong, but
Speaker 1: I've been in quite a few bear camps the last
Speaker 1: six years. I have yet to see a seven foot
Speaker 1: square bear come out of Canada in a camp that
Speaker 1: I have been in. And I have been in some
Speaker 1: camps with some fantastic bears that were killed. Um dog
Speaker 1: on it. I'm gonna have to recount what I just said. No, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: My big bear that weighed four and thirty five pounds
Speaker 1: from Ontario. Uh, I squared him after he was skin
Speaker 1: though in tan and he only squared six ft eight
Speaker 1: but green, I have a feeling he would have been
Speaker 1: pushing seven. Yeah, he would have had another four inches.
Speaker 1: I think you would. I think you would. That's my
Speaker 1: point is is that everybody always says that, I mean,
Speaker 1: you'll hear outfitters and not to knock my my good outfitters.
Speaker 1: And I'm not knocking my good ones because the good
Speaker 1: ones are doing it right. But like everybody's like seven
Speaker 1: foot bear, seven footbear man, seven foot bears are hard
Speaker 1: to come by, and that's not the standard of what
Speaker 1: is in my book a trophy quality animal. I mean,
Speaker 1: in my book, if I if I've learned this, if
Speaker 1: I see a bear that is six and a half
Speaker 1: foot square, and I'm not determining this in my mind
Speaker 1: before I shoot it, I've just learned when Clay Newcom
Speaker 1: sees a bear and shoots it a lot of times
Speaker 1: it's about six ft six, you know, I mean that's
Speaker 1: a big bear. Uh In. A six ft six bear
Speaker 1: might have a ton of weight on him. He might
Speaker 1: be boot and crock an animal. Um, But anyway, square
Speaker 1: size is the distance between the base of the tail
Speaker 1: to the tip of the nose on a green hide,
Speaker 1: combined with the distance between claw to claw measurement. Then
Speaker 1: the average of those two numbers. Okay, Um, Lots of
Speaker 1: the Canadian bears I've killed have been in that six
Speaker 1: and a half to six ft eight range, And that's
Speaker 1: a monster bear, monster bear. A lot of guys say
Speaker 1: a six ft bear is a shooter bear. I mean
Speaker 1: that's kind of a number that's stunning around as a
Speaker 1: nice six ftbear, you know. Um, you get into the
Speaker 1: five foot bears and you're you're you're you're looking at
Speaker 1: a smaller animal. Um, but so square weight, skull size
Speaker 1: spring bears are typically going to be lean lean. I mean,
Speaker 1: you might kill a whopper spring bear that weighs three pounds. Man.
Speaker 1: I hear it all the time on the phone. Rund
Speaker 1: guys call and they're asking me about spring bear hunting
Speaker 1: and they're like, you know what I mean, Like they
Speaker 1: kind of build up like they're they're willing to take
Speaker 1: any you know. It's like I'd just like to kill
Speaker 1: a decent bear. You know, I'd probably even shoot a
Speaker 1: three hundred pound bear if I went up there. And
Speaker 1: when they say that, I realized they don't really know
Speaker 1: what they're talking about, because like they're like the minimum
Speaker 1: I would shoot would be about a three hundred pound bear,
Speaker 1: as if that were a small bear. But what I
Speaker 1: want to say to him is, man, three hund pounds
Speaker 1: spring bear is a pretty big bear. He may look
Speaker 1: three hundred pounds when he's got four or five inches
Speaker 1: the hair, you know, winter coat on him. But once
Speaker 1: you get that hide off of him, there's not gonna
Speaker 1: be much fat, not in the spring. Yeah. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: and all these things do that Is it relevant to
Speaker 1: the region you're hunting? For sure? Yeah? For sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: but spring bears all, let's just say, all over Canada.
Speaker 1: I mean, no doubt every year there are outliers. There's
Speaker 1: always outliers and anything. So you could kill a ring
Speaker 1: brothers five pounds. I never have done it. I've never
Speaker 1: seen it done in the camp that I've been in.
Speaker 1: The Biggest spring bears I've ever seen killed were probably
Speaker 1: something that you've killed Ryan, that weighed in the three
Speaker 1: to three fifty range. Biggest spring bears I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've never seen one any bigger than probably
Speaker 1: uh well, I'm I'm thinking of that bear you killed
Speaker 1: in Saskatchewan two years ago. I mean, they just don't
Speaker 1: get that much bigger Jared Summers killed was Okay, that
Speaker 1: was a big one. That was Yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: nice bear, very nice bear. What would you say that
Speaker 1: having a way, man, I don't know. Probably in the threes,
Speaker 1: so you know, I think I remember you saying between
Speaker 1: three fifty and three seventy five or something, And I
Speaker 1: mean that's a whopper spring bear. So point being, don't
Speaker 1: go to don't go into the spring really with weight
Speaker 1: as your way to qualify whether bears and shooter, You'll
Speaker 1: be disappointed. Um I would go into a spring hunt
Speaker 1: just looking for an older, mature male, you know. And
Speaker 1: so three things skull size, wade, square scus. Talk about
Speaker 1: skull size just a minute. We we've already touched on it.
Speaker 1: You can't determine skull size by almost anything. Five hundred
Speaker 1: fifty pound bear that doesn't make Boone and Crockett, and
Speaker 1: the three hundred and sixty pound bear that does. Um,
Speaker 1: eighteen inches is the minimum for Pope and Young. So
Speaker 1: once I made a graph and put it in Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting magazine that did like a comparative scale between using
Speaker 1: Pope Young minimums for white tail, which people are really
Speaker 1: familiar with. Like if you say hundred white tail, people
Speaker 1: are like, okay, I know what kind of deal that is.
Speaker 1: And then when you say hundred seventy inch white til,
Speaker 1: they go, oh, that's a big one. Um. So if
Speaker 1: eighteen inches was equivalent to a hundred twenty five inch
Speaker 1: white tail and twenty one inches was equivalent to a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy inch white tail. A nineteen in bear
Speaker 1: would be equivalent to a hundred and forty two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty inch whitetail. So if you think of it
Speaker 1: like that, I mean a hundred not many people are
Speaker 1: gonna be passing a hundred forty hundred fifty inch white tails.
Speaker 1: Drop that down into bears and you see that a
Speaker 1: nineteen inch bear is a nice animal. Um. I mean,
Speaker 1: like you said, you've killed five hundred pound bears that
Speaker 1: scored in the nineteens, as have I. Uh, Kobe, what
Speaker 1: did your bear score in the fall in Manitoba? We
Speaker 1: refted out of eighteen and something. I think. Okay, So
Speaker 1: Colby killed a bear that was in the three or
Speaker 1: fifty pound range in the fall. In the spring, that
Speaker 1: bear would have weighed under three and pounds most likely, so,
Speaker 1: I mean, but by August and put on some weight
Speaker 1: was probably the three fifty pound ran three and fifty
Speaker 1: pound range. Um. I actually thought the bear would probably
Speaker 1: have scored more. To me, it looked like it would be.
Speaker 1: I I probably would have said, man, that's got to
Speaker 1: be a nineteen inch square. But it scored just over
Speaker 1: the pope young minimum. Yeah. I think Corey said that
Speaker 1: his bears don't typically have a larger skull in that
Speaker 1: in that area. I mean like they have good schools,
Speaker 1: but compared to their body weight, like that ratio is big.
Speaker 1: They do, and they do have some big body bears
Speaker 1: up there in the fall. I mean they're killing some
Speaker 1: four pound bears Saskatchewan with it two years ago. Head
Speaker 1: looked big, but once we got the hide off of it,
Speaker 1: he didn't have a occipital protruded back. It's like it
Speaker 1: was just gone. Man, I'll never forget that one, because
Speaker 1: that taught me a lot. Ryan, when I recovered that bear,
Speaker 1: I was with you when you we recovered the bear.
Speaker 1: The bear had canines that were war I mean, it
Speaker 1: had every indication of it being an older male. I
Speaker 1: mean an old warrior, big head, big feet, big body,
Speaker 1: I mean, square head. And I told Ryan, I said,
Speaker 1: I'll bet you my tri uck that that bear scores
Speaker 1: over twenty Do you remember me saying that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was like that bear is going to score over
Speaker 1: twenty inches. And when we got back and I brought
Speaker 1: my calipers and we scored your bear and my bear Ryan,
Speaker 1: my color bear was a much It was a lesser bear,
Speaker 1: I mean big time, body, size, length, everything, but that
Speaker 1: color bear had a bigger skull than yours. And and
Speaker 1: it was because you know, you measure bear skull based
Speaker 1: on the length and the width of the dried skull.
Speaker 1: And uh, the occipital bone is this wing bone that
Speaker 1: sticks off the back of the skull. In Ryan's bear,
Speaker 1: it was just like flat back there. And most of
Speaker 1: these bears that score good have this big wing that
Speaker 1: flows off the back like a pterodactyl head or you
Speaker 1: know how many tarodactyls if you killed and I mean
Speaker 1: you scared to score those, Yeah, that's a good way.
Speaker 1: I mean it's yeah, it's it's just like point off
Speaker 1: the back of the head. So that's a good example.
Speaker 1: So bear skulls are all over the place. A lot
Speaker 1: of it all has to do with genetics. I've asked
Speaker 1: some of the best bear biologists in the country their
Speaker 1: thoughts on whether a bear skull actually grows over time,
Speaker 1: and the best answer there, to my knowledge, there's been
Speaker 1: no real scientific studies because does a ten year old
Speaker 1: bear like batman, would he have kept growing? Let's just
Speaker 1: say he's ten years old. If I had killed him
Speaker 1: when he was twenty years old, would he have scored more?
Speaker 1: Here's my philosophy, maybe a little bit. I think these
Speaker 1: older bears add some bone mass to to to the skull.
Speaker 1: But I do not believe that he would have ever
Speaker 1: been a twenty one in bear. I just don't think
Speaker 1: he was gonna add an inch. It seems like they
Speaker 1: get them little calcified growths. You know a lot of
Speaker 1: these little ridges. And have you noticed that an older
Speaker 1: air is gonna have a lot of calcification on the
Speaker 1: skull where where a young bear is just smooth like butter,
Speaker 1: just smooth all over the skull, old bear is gonna
Speaker 1: have ridges and fissures and little bumps. And that's where
Speaker 1: I think that they might add some bone mass that
Speaker 1: may account for some growth. But I keep going back
Speaker 1: to my the one Boone and crocketbear I've ever killed
Speaker 1: that had a he was six years old and had
Speaker 1: a twenty and eight sixteenth centch skull like he he
Speaker 1: He may have been Boone and Crockett when he was
Speaker 1: four years old, but he had a smooth skull. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe he would have grown a litit over time. But
Speaker 1: it's genetics, just like, is a seventeen year old boy
Speaker 1: all right, let's say eighteen nineteen year old boy, he's
Speaker 1: got the frame that he's gonna carry his whole life.
Speaker 1: He's not growing still, you know. So I've never really
Speaker 1: been able to find a real concrete scientific answer about
Speaker 1: that because they've just never is not something that they're studying, Uh,
Speaker 1: that I found yet. Maybe somebody's got a better answer.
Speaker 1: But I'd like to find a bear that had a
Speaker 1: a skull like Brent Reeves has Scott's Man. Brent Reeves, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree, Brent would be like, uh, he would be
Speaker 1: like one of those like big wristed, big hand meaty
Speaker 1: kind of squatty bears. Yeah. He's even got the small
Speaker 1: ears too. He's got small ears. Yeah. Oh, Brent Reeves.
Speaker 1: I'm glad he's not here right now. Me too. Brent
Speaker 1: Reeves never listens to the Bear Honey Magazine podcast. That joker, Brent.
Speaker 1: When you hear this text me, Oh okay, guys, difference
Speaker 1: between spring and spring and fall scale. Let's hit one
Speaker 1: more thing. Scale is everything. Guys make this mistake all
Speaker 1: the time, is that they see a bear, they shoot it.
Speaker 1: They go up to it. They think it's a big bear,
Speaker 1: but it's a small bear. Scale So if you're spotting
Speaker 1: style hunting out out in Montana, you need to have
Speaker 1: a general understanding of the plants around that. And I
Speaker 1: mean like, when I was in Montana, I knew that
Speaker 1: there were these certain bushes they were about thirty inches tall.
Speaker 1: And if I was looking at the bear a thousand
Speaker 1: yards away and those bushes were everywhere, you know, and
Speaker 1: he was walking through that, I was like, dang, his
Speaker 1: shoulders are way up above those bushes, or if they
Speaker 1: were below it. And man, if that bear was just
Speaker 1: out on a barren hillside, it would have been almost
Speaker 1: impossible quickly to determine. But so you gotta have scale.
Speaker 1: So if you're hunting over a bait site, you've got
Speaker 1: to understand what size barrels there are. I've got a
Speaker 1: story when I was in Saskatchewan the first year, I
Speaker 1: had in my mind that you could you would shoot
Speaker 1: a bear if his if he was as tall as
Speaker 1: the barrel. That was the one factor that I was
Speaker 1: looking for. Well, a bear came in the first day
Speaker 1: that was as tall as a barrel. I shot him
Speaker 1: and it was a lesser bear, and it was because
Speaker 1: the barrel had been dug into the ground by the
Speaker 1: bears digging grease out from underneath it. So the barrel
Speaker 1: was sitting in a six inch hole, and so this
Speaker 1: average bear looked like a bear that was big. And
Speaker 1: that goes back to you gotta have more than one factor,
Speaker 1: but you gotta understand scale. So whether it's trees, whether
Speaker 1: it's bushes, whether it's a bait barrel, whether it's a
Speaker 1: mark on a tree that indicates you know, a thirty
Speaker 1: six inch tall bear, you gotta have scale because a
Speaker 1: hundred pound bear walking through the woods can look real
Speaker 1: similar to a two fifty pound bear. It's all about scale.
Speaker 1: We talked about, Uh, Paul's to me, the biggest thing
Speaker 1: of a of a big boar is height. I can't
Speaker 1: get away from that height and Paul shape. That's the
Speaker 1: way I personally determined. There's gonna be things that different
Speaker 1: people probably pick up on. Uh. We talked about determining
Speaker 1: the sex of bears, which is an important part, and
Speaker 1: we talked about the they're not necessarily myths, but they're
Speaker 1: not the whole truth. So small ears is not a myth.
Speaker 1: A crease on the head is not a myth when
Speaker 1: you're determining a big bear, but it's not the whole story.
Speaker 1: If that's all, you know, you're gonna make a mistake
Speaker 1: a few times out of ten, you know. And uh again.
Speaker 1: As we close down the podcast, I go back to
Speaker 1: this thing about we're not just talking about trophy hunting
Speaker 1: from an aspect of we just want to bring home
Speaker 1: the biggest animal possible. Trophy hunting is pretty cool because
Speaker 1: we're after older mature males. That's the best thing to
Speaker 1: take out of the population. It's the best thing for
Speaker 1: the population to extract older mature males that have already
Speaker 1: contributed to the gene pool. And trophy hunting, my friends,
Speaker 1: is actually what saved North American big game by taking
Speaker 1: the emphasis off the young and the females and putting
Speaker 1: it on the older mature males. So man, I will
Speaker 1: take zero flat from anyone on the planet saying that
Speaker 1: we're trophy hunters because we want to kill big bears
Speaker 1: and not little ones. Who is the conservation hero my brothers,
Speaker 1: the guy that shoots the first juvenile bear to the
Speaker 1: barrel and post a picture on Facebook and brags about
Speaker 1: how he's not a trophy hunter, and he's extracted this
Speaker 1: animal out of the population before it could contribute to
Speaker 1: the gene pool or the brethren like in this room. Wait,
Speaker 1: but the big ones take out the big, older mature male,
Speaker 1: it's already contributed to the gene pool, and we hang
Speaker 1: his high on our walls. We eat his flesh, and
Speaker 1: we revel in the glory that he had while he
Speaker 1: was on the earth for such a long time because
Speaker 1: he was an older butture male. Are you with me? Yeah? Uh?
Speaker 1: Is it not true though? Yeah? I mean guys that
Speaker 1: like sometimes people feel like they there's some honor in
Speaker 1: shooting smaller animals and claiming not to be a trophy
Speaker 1: hunter and get it. Like, like trophy hunting as it's
Speaker 1: understood in the general hunting populace, it's bad. I mean,
Speaker 1: like somebody that would, for just ego purposes, want to
Speaker 1: shoot a big bear. I mean, do I want to
Speaker 1: shoot a big bear? Yes, sir, I do. Why because
Speaker 1: I like big bear bear hides on my wall. I
Speaker 1: like more bear meat rather than less bear meat. But
Speaker 1: I also understand the macro goals of bear hunting, and
Speaker 1: it is better to take out an older mature male
Speaker 1: than it is to take out a juvenile female. You've
Speaker 1: got your weekend warriors though that you know, don't bear
Speaker 1: hunt much, and they're happy just to kill a bear
Speaker 1: and there's nothing wrong with them. And I don't want
Speaker 1: to you. I appreciate you saying that because I don't
Speaker 1: want to trash that guy, which I'm not. But where
Speaker 1: are we going with that? I want to kill the
Speaker 1: next hundred pound bears. There's a fine lote. Let me.
Speaker 1: Like with youth hunters or everybody does have to evaluate
Speaker 1: their opportunity. And I'll be the first to say that
Speaker 1: for the I mean, I have opportunity to hunt bears,
Speaker 1: and so I would hope that I'm select. But you
Speaker 1: may go on one bear hunt in your life and
Speaker 1: on the final day of the hunt of juvenile bear
Speaker 1: comes in shoot it. So I really I appreciate you
Speaker 1: saying that, right, because I don't want to have an
Speaker 1: elitist mentality. But I also don't want to give somebody
Speaker 1: too much credit. Who is dogging somebody that kills a
Speaker 1: bunch of big bears because they don't have that opportunity.
Speaker 1: Is that is that fair? Yeah? Yeah? But well, I
Speaker 1: mean starting out, we killed smaller bears and after so
Speaker 1: many years, you don't want to kill, you know, a
Speaker 1: smaller bear. Just just like deer hunting. I guess here
Speaker 1: guys looking for that next big deer and you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't want to make the standards so high that
Speaker 1: you take the joy and fun out of hunting. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: if you don't have big bears, then there's no sense
Speaker 1: and setting your goals that high. I mean really here
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, I mean there are places where you're just
Speaker 1: not gonna kill a big bear. So if you're trying
Speaker 1: to kill five hundred pound bear, you're just not everyone
Speaker 1: kill one. So I mean, you know, put that standard down. Laura, Man,
Speaker 1: that's cool. You go to Canada on a once in
Speaker 1: a lifetime trip, Uh, you you just want to evaluate
Speaker 1: the situation and not kill a hunter pound bear on
Speaker 1: the first day, when if you'd wait until day three,
Speaker 1: you could have taken a a nicer, older, mature male. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's kind of where I fit inside
Speaker 1: of it. When I take my kids hunting, it's different
Speaker 1: when I take I mean everything, everything is different. But
Speaker 1: I feel like bear hunters need to have the knowledge
Speaker 1: in the ability to articulate even what I just said
Speaker 1: about older mature males and not being picked on by
Speaker 1: people who say you're a trophy hunter because you kill
Speaker 1: big animals. I mean, I won't take it for a second.
Speaker 1: Um so that there's this, But at the same time,
Speaker 1: hunting is about enjoyment. It is about I mean, a
Speaker 1: young bear. It's arguable, Batman, his meat tastes incredible, but
Speaker 1: it's arguable that a young bear might taste better than
Speaker 1: an old bear. Not always the case, but could be. So.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe your goals are different. The main thing is,
Speaker 1: whatever your goal is, just stick to it. The guy
Speaker 1: that I kind of, you know that I feel the
Speaker 1: liberty to rib would be the guy that claims to
Speaker 1: be wanting to wait for an older bear but then
Speaker 1: just shoots one the first day just because he's impatient,
Speaker 1: when he had all this opportunity for another one, you know.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I don't want to I don't want to
Speaker 1: hit on anybody. But these things are true that we say.
Speaker 1: Do you guys agree? Sir? What closing comments flint face Grib?
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, you've kind of covered everything. We've
Speaker 1: covered it. Kobe. Well, I was just thinking about whenever
Speaker 1: I got the bear last year and man, it's old.
Speaker 1: But how we couldn't measure his height because the barrel
Speaker 1: was on the side, And so the thing we used
Speaker 1: was to, uh, it's like, will he fit in the barrel? No,
Speaker 1: he's a good one. You know that's true. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've heard it. Fitter told me that as as he said,
Speaker 1: one thing he used to tell his clients was would
Speaker 1: that bear fit into a gallon drum? I've used that
Speaker 1: analogy myself while bear has been on the site. Yeah, looking, man,
Speaker 1: if I pop the top off that barrel with that
Speaker 1: bear fit in there, yeah, and a and a bear
Speaker 1: over three hundred pounds, it's gonna you're gonna be like, man,
Speaker 1: if you fit, he'd barely fit, right, I mean, if
Speaker 1: if it's just like for sure, yeah, it's probably under
Speaker 1: a three inner pound bear. But now, every part of
Speaker 1: the country is different, everybody has different standards, and and again,
Speaker 1: the hunt is all about the experience and the adventure
Speaker 1: and the goals that you've set for yourself. So but these, hey, guys,
Speaker 1: these principles will help somebody judge bear and uh, hey, awesome,
Speaker 1: this is this has been I think a lot of
Speaker 1: in formation inside of this podcast, and thank you guys
Speaker 1: for being here, and thank you Ryan, appreciate it coming up. Man, Kobe,
Speaker 1: you were here and we'll be here when this podcast
Speaker 1: is over, so you didn't really have to go anywhere,
Speaker 1: but thanks for being here at Kolby. All right, Keep
Speaker 1: the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.