Speaker 1: You're listening to the Sportsman's Nation podcast network, brought to
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Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nucoleman. I'm the host of the
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into
Speaker 1: the world of hunting the icon of North American wilderness.
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 chasing.
Speaker 1: This last week, I had the opportunity to be on
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty cool platform for the outdoor industry. Ye,
Speaker 1: I've got Colby Colby moorehead the Bear Attack here with me.
Speaker 1: We're gonna give kind of a little preamble to the podcast.
Speaker 1: But last week, well it was actually we recorded it
Speaker 1: back in July. Yeah, we've been waiting on this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it just came out this week, which August I
Speaker 1: think is when it came out. But but I was
Speaker 1: on the Meat Eater podcast with Steve Ranella, which it
Speaker 1: was cool. I really follow everything that Steve does, follow
Speaker 1: his Netflix series Meat Eater, follow the podcast, follow what
Speaker 1: they're doing on social media. So this this was a
Speaker 1: big deal personal personally, a big deal for me to
Speaker 1: be on the podcast. It was really a fun experience.
Speaker 1: Um so you can check out that the podcast asked
Speaker 1: tell them what the podcast is called, kolbe all for
Speaker 1: a Flashy Mule, All for a Flashy Mutle. I think
Speaker 1: it was the episode A hundred and eighty three. And uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know if a lot of people would know this.
Speaker 1: I didn't know it until I kind of did some research.
Speaker 1: But on iTunes, the Medior podcast that's this at the
Speaker 1: time I looked was the sixties seven most listened to
Speaker 1: podcasts in the world on iTunes. I mean, that's for
Speaker 1: for a hunting podcast to be that popular, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean everybody in the outdoor industry should I think,
Speaker 1: key in on something like that to say, what, what's
Speaker 1: happening here that's making these people, you know, draw into
Speaker 1: this and you know it's just interesting. So you can
Speaker 1: check out some of his stuff. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: need to do a infommercial for Steve Ornella, but uh,
Speaker 1: but it but it is interesting stuff, some of it. Um.
Speaker 1: But this podcast, the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast my boys
Speaker 1: last night I told him. I told him about Ronella's
Speaker 1: podcast being at the top one hundred and they said
Speaker 1: that is yours in the top two hundred And I
Speaker 1: said no, and they said, isn't in the top five
Speaker 1: hundred in the world. I mean they were just certain
Speaker 1: and I was like no, and they were like, no, Dad,
Speaker 1: your podcast has got to be in the top five
Speaker 1: hundred in the world. I mean they were just like
Speaker 1: floored that and I said, no, boys, it's not. But
Speaker 1: but the Shepherd was like, but it's getting there. It
Speaker 1: was like really loyal to the call to the cause here.
Speaker 1: But but what I wanted to what we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about on this podcast. I think the conversation that we
Speaker 1: had about the actual fundamental aspects of baiting bears, like
Speaker 1: how to we nerd out coolbe about baiting bears with
Speaker 1: two of the two of well two of the best
Speaker 1: guys that I know in Arkansas. Um, not to say
Speaker 1: there's not more, but these two guys I had on here,
Speaker 1: Jason Lyles and and my longtime friend Ryan greb Um
Speaker 1: Good Good Bear Hunters, been bait and bears serious for
Speaker 1: a lot of years. They both have a lot of
Speaker 1: good insight, and so this podcast probably has as much
Speaker 1: tactical information about what debate with, when, debate with baiting, sequence,
Speaker 1: where to set up a bait site. Yeah, we covered
Speaker 1: a ton of stuff. But why I'm doing this preamble
Speaker 1: like this, which is a little bit longer form than
Speaker 1: we usually do because we didn't get into at all,
Speaker 1: you know, like the foundational aspects that I think we've
Speaker 1: all got to have on the tip of our tongue
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. As we're trying to we're trying to prolog,
Speaker 1: you know, we're trying to not defend. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be on the defensive, but we're we're trying to
Speaker 1: educate ourselves on why we do what we do. I mean,
Speaker 1: this hunting lifestyle that we live, it has to be
Speaker 1: fueled by an understanding that we can articulate of why
Speaker 1: we do what we do. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of guys would would perceive baiting bears simply as just
Speaker 1: an effective way to hunt. It's like, this is an
Speaker 1: easy way to hunt. And obviously with baiting bears, there's
Speaker 1: a ton of misperceptions, uh, you know, charismatic megafun of
Speaker 1: putting out food and bait for charismatic megafuna. People would
Speaker 1: could look down upon that. But what I want to
Speaker 1: say is that and this is what I said to Ronella.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason that's connected to this is
Speaker 1: we talked a lot about baiting bears and using hounds
Speaker 1: on the Mediator podcast. And so the foundational aspect of
Speaker 1: baiting bears is that anywhere it's legal debate bears, that
Speaker 1: is a core management tool for the game agencies that
Speaker 1: have the data, that have the science, that know the habitat,
Speaker 1: that know how many bears there are, that know how
Speaker 1: much their bear population is growing every year, and they
Speaker 1: know how many bears need to be taken out every year.
Speaker 1: They have this data, and where baiting is legal, it
Speaker 1: is a management tool used for these organizations to achieve
Speaker 1: their management goals for the betterment of that bear population. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, I mean that's a fundamental aspect. So it's
Speaker 1: not just like, well they have lenient game laws in
Speaker 1: that state and so they allow baiting. No, that's stupid.
Speaker 1: It's not the case in the East particularly and uh
Speaker 1: in in Canada and in in in the places where
Speaker 1: you can bait bears, it is other methods don't work.
Speaker 1: The prime example is Arkansas. Our bear season was reinstated
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty after like a seventy year uh gap
Speaker 1: or well from nineteen seven and nineteen eighty and for
Speaker 1: twenty one years from nineteen eighty to two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: all you could do in Arkansas was basically spot in
Speaker 1: stock hunting bears, and every year they probably they killed
Speaker 1: less than fifty bears in two thousand one. Finally, the science,
Speaker 1: the data, the expansion of the bears, they were like,
Speaker 1: we got to have we got to take more bears
Speaker 1: out of the population. They said, we're gonna do that
Speaker 1: with baiting private land baiting is highly selective. Perhaps hound
Speaker 1: hunting and hunting over bait would be the most selective
Speaker 1: way to hunt bears. Like you're you're you're getting pictures
Speaker 1: of this animal and we're just talking about baiting on
Speaker 1: this podcast. So let's you're getting pictures of these animals,
Speaker 1: you know what your target animals are. Bear comes in
Speaker 1: close range, he's standing there for a long period of time.
Speaker 1: You're able to evaluate that bears, age, the bears, sex,
Speaker 1: the bears, size, all this stuff. You're able to evaluate
Speaker 1: whether it's a salve that has cubs because you're you're watching,
Speaker 1: you're looking, you're evaluating her. And so it's a highly
Speaker 1: selective way to hunt. And so and that's the way
Speaker 1: people have to view it. Number one management tool. I'm
Speaker 1: pounding it into the ground here. Number two is that
Speaker 1: hunting over bait is one of the hardest way is
Speaker 1: that I hunt, I spend more time and energy baiting
Speaker 1: bears did almost I do anything. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: ton of work. So this idea that hunting over bait
Speaker 1: is easy is rediculous, absolutely ridiculous. It should be expelled
Speaker 1: from people's minds. That hunting over bait is just the
Speaker 1: easy man's or the lazy man's way to hunt, just
Speaker 1: not true. Anybody that says that has never done it.
Speaker 1: I challenge now. Now, granted people may have gone on
Speaker 1: outfitted hunts over bait and come back and go well,
Speaker 1: that was easy. Well, it was easy. It was an
Speaker 1: outfitted hunt. Somebody that has killed bear over bait, that
Speaker 1: has done it themselves will never say that it was easy.
Speaker 1: Now the hunting, I mean, yeah, you might have a
Speaker 1: bear come in the first day and you may kill it,
Speaker 1: but there was a host of work behind that. So
Speaker 1: those are the things that I want to say as
Speaker 1: we come into this, because we're gonna nerd out for
Speaker 1: an hour and fifteen minutes about the tactics that we're
Speaker 1: using for bait and bears. Super good stuff. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you think I like it? Am I pounding
Speaker 1: too hard into the choir? I don't think so. I
Speaker 1: don't think so. I mean even when I went on
Speaker 1: my outfitted hunt, I killed early and so I so
Speaker 1: I went out with the the outfitter just to see
Speaker 1: what it was like and it was a lot of work.
Speaker 1: I came back drenched in sweat. Yeah, and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not easy, even in my limited you know, exposure
Speaker 1: to it. Yeah. Well, hey, you're gonna enjoy this podcast
Speaker 1: with Ryan Grab, Jason Lyles, and myself and that's it.
Speaker 1: That's it. Before we get into the podcast, I want
Speaker 1: to bring your attention to our friends at Northwood's Bear Products.
Speaker 1: In this podcast, you're gonna hear us talk about the
Speaker 1: way that we use commercial sense, and you're gonna hear
Speaker 1: these guys talk about their preferences and what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Do us a favor. Go to Northwood Bear Products Instagram page,
Speaker 1: give them a like and a look on Instagram. All right,
Speaker 1: it's it is time for bear hunting. There's still time
Speaker 1: to get commercial sense if you're if you are, if
Speaker 1: you're baiting bears, it's legal in your state. Like we
Speaker 1: said last week, it's some some places you can't bait,
Speaker 1: but you can use sense. So check your check your regulations,
Speaker 1: and uh check out Northwoods. They've got all kinds of
Speaker 1: scent attractants and these are the things that we're using.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, north Woods Bear Products dot Net. It's
Speaker 1: August August and in two days here in Arkansas, we
Speaker 1: can start baiting bears. In Arkansas, we can bait bears
Speaker 1: thirty days before the opening of the bear season. Bear
Speaker 1: season opens on September, fourth Saturday in September. Usually the
Speaker 1: last two years, the fourth Saturday in September has been
Speaker 1: in the early twenties of September, which is way better,
Speaker 1: way better than late September. It's like people that wouldn't
Speaker 1: know bear hunting, or at least around here no bear hunting.
Speaker 1: We know that the difference between September and September is
Speaker 1: pretty massive. Yeah. Absolutely, So let me introduce who we've
Speaker 1: got here. We're at the Global Headquarters and air Conditioner
Speaker 1: Works today, and uh, I've got Ryan flint Faced grib here.
Speaker 1: Ran has been on the podcast several times. Ryan is
Speaker 1: a good friend of mine. We even hunted quite a
Speaker 1: few places together. And Ryan is uh a decorated Arkansas
Speaker 1: bear hunter, been bear hunt in Arkansas since uh, since
Speaker 1: you were two. That's right, Rise Rise really good, real
Speaker 1: good bear hunter. And uh, I've got Jason Lyles. Jason's
Speaker 1: new to the podcast. But uh, but man, I've known you.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've known you for many years, but
Speaker 1: more like internet buddies in the past three years. Probably Yeah,
Speaker 1: probably so. And uh now Jason's hooking me up with
Speaker 1: in the squirrel dog world, No doubt, he's a He's
Speaker 1: a good tree dog man coon dog, squirrel dog. And
Speaker 1: the pup we got is uh, your wily mountain cur
Speaker 1: dog is a grandsire. Is that correct? Yes, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: go the pup goes back to uh, a man named
Speaker 1: Todd Cole's goes back to some of his bloodline. And
Speaker 1: then the uh, the damn to your pup is uh
Speaker 1: out of my mountain curve wildly and another female that
Speaker 1: I used to own. That my buddy, Donny press your
Speaker 1: owns right on. Yeah, So Jason's helping us with with
Speaker 1: the squirrel dog world. In the squirrel dog world, Jason
Speaker 1: is also a decorated Arkansas bear hunter. You know, the
Speaker 1: bearer world in Arkansas really seems to be pretty small.
Speaker 1: It's it's growing. When I say small, like in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: we're killing less than five hundred bears a year. So
Speaker 1: so the northern zone in Arkansas there's a there's a
Speaker 1: I believe now it's a three hundred bear quota. I
Speaker 1: can't remember. They raised it fifty bears again, they raised
Speaker 1: it this this year, that's my understanding. And then the
Speaker 1: other zone there's no quota, but typically they're killing less
Speaker 1: than a hundred fifty bears either, so really not a
Speaker 1: lot of animals. And so we've been baiting bears in
Speaker 1: Arkansas since two thousand one. Okay, I've made this claim
Speaker 1: on the podcast, but I've never made it in front
Speaker 1: of two decorated Arkansas bear hunters. I claim to be
Speaker 1: the first Arkansas bow hunter to legally legally kill a
Speaker 1: bear over bait as soon as it was legal in
Speaker 1: Arkansas in two thousand one, because at the crack of dawn,
Speaker 1: I mean at a crack of dawn on October the first,
Speaker 1: two thousand one. My dad was wearing his white T
Speaker 1: shirt because he still didn't put on his camo. He
Speaker 1: had just climbed up the tree he was gonna video
Speaker 1: for me. I was in the tree. He was like
Speaker 1: eight feet off the ground, like, for whatever reason, closer
Speaker 1: to the barrel than me. I don't know why we
Speaker 1: decided that he was gonna film this bear hunt. And uh,
Speaker 1: he's just like glowing like a light in this tree.
Speaker 1: And I see this bear coming up the ridge and
Speaker 1: it was the first bear I had ever seen in
Speaker 1: a hunting situation, you know, I'd seen bears like a
Speaker 1: cross the road and stuff, and h man, it it
Speaker 1: it was a fascinating scene to me to look off
Speaker 1: down this ridge and it it was still twilight enough
Speaker 1: that he really couldn't see the bear's legs move it
Speaker 1: just looked like it was just floating, you know, like
Speaker 1: this black blob just floating. And I mean it just
Speaker 1: came right in. I didn't have my release on. Put
Speaker 1: my release on. The bear walks right in, Dad. I
Speaker 1: think it's the cameras still on the ground, like on
Speaker 1: a rope, you know, and shoot this bear at twenty yards.
Speaker 1: Bear runs off and gives the most dramatic death moan
Speaker 1: that a bear has ever made in all of history.
Speaker 1: I'm quite certain I was. And me and my dad
Speaker 1: our jaws dropped. I mean we were just like, holy yeah,
Speaker 1: we didn't we didn't even know the death moaned. But
Speaker 1: you know that story. I have told it several times.
Speaker 1: I walked up to that animal. I was twenty one
Speaker 1: years old and two thousand one. I walked up to
Speaker 1: that animal and I knew nothing about it. That was
Speaker 1: the that was the dominant feature of the hunt for
Speaker 1: me was I was fascinated by this incredible, beautiful, magnificent
Speaker 1: animal and I knew nothing about it. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of what set me into the bear the bear world.
Speaker 1: But to go back to my claim, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: can can either of you dispute this, did you kill
Speaker 1: a bear before then. What you didn't know is I
Speaker 1: was just down the ridge and I had passed that
Speaker 1: bear too before I got But then you were hunting
Speaker 1: on national forest and that was illegal. Maybe so maybe so?
Speaker 1: Now so did you did uh? Now did you kill
Speaker 1: a bear in two thousand one? No, I did not
Speaker 1: hunt over bait rookie, Mr Rookie. Two thousand two though,
Speaker 1: two thousand two, Now, when did you first start hun
Speaker 1: two thousand three? It was the first year that I
Speaker 1: tried baiting bears and it was late. I started like
Speaker 1: October and uh oh, you didn't get started until season
Speaker 1: got going right. It was muzzled season. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm gonna give us try didn't didn't work
Speaker 1: out it all that year. Two thousand four was the
Speaker 1: first year I actually put some effort into it. Started
Speaker 1: baiting thirty days before season and uh, opening morning, got him,
Speaker 1: got him, got him, got us big one. So my
Speaker 1: claim still stands. My claim, you wink. Now. What I
Speaker 1: want to talk about on this podcast, though, is I
Speaker 1: want to go from zero two informed for people that
Speaker 1: were listening about how to bait bears, because it it
Speaker 1: would seem that it would just be easy people that
Speaker 1: have never baited bears, even hunters would think baiting bears
Speaker 1: would be relatively easy. But what we've found and what
Speaker 1: I've learned, and I've learned a ton from Ryan Grabb,
Speaker 1: I really have. What I've learned is that there's you
Speaker 1: gotta do a whole lot of stuff right in order
Speaker 1: to be successful year and in year out on older
Speaker 1: mature males, big bears. A lot of people can go
Speaker 1: out and have a crack pretty good opportunity at a
Speaker 1: subordinate bear, but no season hunters us guys wanting to
Speaker 1: chase the more mature bear, whole different animal, you gotta
Speaker 1: do a ton of the way I just say it
Speaker 1: is you gotta do a ton of stuff right, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of It's not just one thing, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of things. And uh so, hopefully in our
Speaker 1: conversation today we can just cover I want to hear
Speaker 1: from both of you guys about kind of just your
Speaker 1: sequence of baiting. And let me tell you the questions
Speaker 1: that we're gonna answer. And these are the questions that
Speaker 1: I get all the time, is what do you bait with?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go through the questions and well, you'll can
Speaker 1: help me. Remember what the questions are, what do you
Speaker 1: bait with? What's the best bear bait? That's a question.
Speaker 1: The other question is how much do you feed? The
Speaker 1: other question is when do you feed? Because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of options. I mean, there's some places where you
Speaker 1: can bait bears year round. There's some places where you
Speaker 1: can bait bears just a week before the season starts.
Speaker 1: We're working with a thirty daytime period, which is actually
Speaker 1: pretty good. Um, there's some places, I'm pretty sure there's
Speaker 1: some places where you can't start baiting until the season
Speaker 1: actually opens. I mean, so you put out bait and
Speaker 1: then you can't even start before the season opens. Um.
Speaker 1: And so what debate with? How much? Debate with? When
Speaker 1: debate with? And the question that most people don't ask
Speaker 1: that they should be asking is where do you bate
Speaker 1: like because in the landscape you're just looking at the
Speaker 1: landscape of Arkansas or landscape of any place, they're gonna
Speaker 1: be locations, even on a micro scale to a macro
Speaker 1: scale that are gonna be way better for attracting bears
Speaker 1: in the daylight, because that's the thing. You could put
Speaker 1: a bear bait out in the middle of an open
Speaker 1: pasture and bears would probably go there during the night
Speaker 1: and not have any trouble. But you're not gonna You're
Speaker 1: not You're probably not gonna kill a good bear out
Speaker 1: in the middle of a pasture on over. I mean,
Speaker 1: he wants those bears want to be in secluded places.
Speaker 1: They want to be in places away from human contact
Speaker 1: and activity. They want to be the places that are shaded,
Speaker 1: places where they feel secure, and you want to you
Speaker 1: So even the way I say is even on a
Speaker 1: forty acre property, that maybe is all would it like
Speaker 1: you would think, well, all this is the same, there's
Speaker 1: one place on that property that's the best I mean
Speaker 1: for killing bears, whether it would be higher honor. So
Speaker 1: I don't want to get too deep into it. But
Speaker 1: those are the four questions we're gonna answer. So let me, Jason,
Speaker 1: what do you like to bate with? What I usually
Speaker 1: use is I'll do a lot of doughnuts, pastries, bacon,
Speaker 1: just pretty much the basic type stuff that you mean bacon, grease,
Speaker 1: no like bacon ends do you actually okay? Not cooked,
Speaker 1: not cooked bacon, raw bacon, cooke, bacon doesn't matter. I
Speaker 1: really like anything. Fatty pork, beef, you know, stuff like
Speaker 1: that mostly going to be pastries pop popcorn, which is
Speaker 1: a little bit of work doing that, but they really
Speaker 1: they really eat that popcorn and it, you know, it's
Speaker 1: small pieces and it really really have to work to
Speaker 1: bait and stay there to eat all that um corn
Speaker 1: do a lot of corn, deer corn, straight up deer corn.
Speaker 1: But I've I've kind of come up with a secret
Speaker 1: to that is I make these barrels. I've got these barrels.
Speaker 1: They're smaller about gallon barrels and they're tethered out with
Speaker 1: a chain or a cable and they're usually a snaptop
Speaker 1: lid so you can get them open easy. I drill
Speaker 1: three holes in one side that are about an inch max.
Speaker 1: And I fill that barrel with the corn, and I
Speaker 1: use maple syrup and I stir that in it turned
Speaker 1: and just they roll that thing and just roll that
Speaker 1: corn out and they just take hours to get that out.
Speaker 1: And the thing about that I really like doing that
Speaker 1: is because when they empty that big barrel, they've got
Speaker 1: something else to sit there and work that bait and
Speaker 1: stay there. They just keep coming for another thing I'll use.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's always here a lot of people using dog
Speaker 1: food and such. I've not had much luck with dog food.
Speaker 1: The dog food, I do have luck with something that's
Speaker 1: more corn based. Like a lot of times you go
Speaker 1: down to the co op and you get there's some
Speaker 1: discard bags of dog food. I've seen where the bears
Speaker 1: will roll that barrel and roll that dog food out
Speaker 1: just to get the other stuff and leave that dog food.
Speaker 1: But there's certain brands of dog food even just that
Speaker 1: are more basic, less meat based, probably more just stuff
Speaker 1: the dirt. Cheap, Like if you go to have you
Speaker 1: had that express food. The cheaper stuff is better for bears.
Speaker 1: The stuff that has mostly corn for filler. Those bears
Speaker 1: like that better. You mix that with syrup and it's
Speaker 1: just like they're just crazy over it. Yeah, just go nuts.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you a couple of questions. You
Speaker 1: said something there that somebody might not understand in terms
Speaker 1: of the philosophy behind what you're doing. Like the first
Speaker 1: thing that the bear is gonna go to, Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, a bear will love anything that will make
Speaker 1: a human fat. That's the way I like to set
Speaker 1: I mean whether it's donuts, pastries, bread, sweets, sugary stuff, candy.
Speaker 1: I mean, they don't really like hard candy, but like
Speaker 1: gummy candies, you know, anything that's really sugary, uh, really fatty,
Speaker 1: lots of carbohydrates. They're gonna eat that. So let's say
Speaker 1: you've got a barrel and you've got donuts, you've got
Speaker 1: white bread, you've got some wheat bread. I found that
Speaker 1: bears just eat any kind of bread. I'll get this
Speaker 1: bread from a thrift store and shuck it. We call
Speaker 1: it shucking bread. But you know, take it out of
Speaker 1: the package, and man, they'll eat it like crazy. I
Speaker 1: pour a lot of grease on there. But so they'll
Speaker 1: they'll eat that down maybe. And if if you have
Speaker 1: multiple bears coming in, they'll eat that quick fast. So
Speaker 1: your your corn roller barrel gives them something else eat
Speaker 1: that's harder to access, that takes longer to eat. Keep
Speaker 1: them coming in. It's andrategic heats of equipment, basically at
Speaker 1: my bait sides. Yeah yeah, yeah, Um tell me about
Speaker 1: making your popcorn with uh you told me you sprinkle
Speaker 1: in some other stuff. Yeah. So what I'll do is, uh,
Speaker 1: you just take a regular propane cooker and just like
Speaker 1: a fish fryer, and I'll have a steel pot and uh,
Speaker 1: you know as a bare bater. You always gathering like
Speaker 1: old frier oil stuff like that, and you can use
Speaker 1: new cooking oils. Well, it doesn't matter. But I'll I'll
Speaker 1: set aside five gallons of fried oil just for popping
Speaker 1: the popcorn, and I usually get that. You know, you
Speaker 1: gotta have that flame pretty hot for popping popcorn. I'll
Speaker 1: fill the bottom of that pan with probably half inch oil,
Speaker 1: and I'll mix in sugar in that oil, and then
Speaker 1: I'll fill it in with a couple of cups of popcorn.
Speaker 1: So you and just as long as that popcorn seed
Speaker 1: is covered that oil, but lit on and just uh
Speaker 1: pop that. You know you don't want to burn it.
Speaker 1: But I'll just keep popping those kettles of popcorn and
Speaker 1: dumping them into a fifty five gallon drum. Well, as
Speaker 1: I get the next one going, I'll sprinkle like some
Speaker 1: cherry koolated powder or little you get the bags of
Speaker 1: the small marshmallows, sprinkle some in the there and stir
Speaker 1: that up, and that just melts together. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: a big gummy ball, but it's it's kind of sticky.
Speaker 1: While the popcorn's hot, right, it'll melt that the marshmallas down.
Speaker 1: You've just said, you said a couple of things that
Speaker 1: are important. Number one was fried grease, which I know
Speaker 1: all three of us. Friar grease is a major component
Speaker 1: of what we're doing calling luard to your bait, I
Speaker 1: think or grease. Used fried grease, which is accessible once
Speaker 1: you find a source, can be tough to get. It
Speaker 1: can be tough to get, but every restaurant has gobs
Speaker 1: of used nasty friar grease, and they some people are
Speaker 1: selling it for people making using it for bole field
Speaker 1: cyclon and stuff. But most of the time you can
Speaker 1: get it if you just go in and like hey,
Speaker 1: and offered to pay for it. That's the way I've
Speaker 1: had luck, because pay you ten bucks if you let
Speaker 1: me get some fryar oil or something and U that's
Speaker 1: essential to any bait, I feel like, because it's it's
Speaker 1: it gets on their paths, they're making trails. It's not
Speaker 1: water soluble, it won't evaporate. I mean, you can sometimes
Speaker 1: go back to these bait sites a year later and
Speaker 1: like not maybe not smell it, but still have the
Speaker 1: soaked dark earth there where the oil has been or
Speaker 1: the trees. You know, if you have a long standing
Speaker 1: bait site. All those trees are just dark black rush
Speaker 1: additive import. Yeah. Yeah, well we can't talk about what
Speaker 1: tell them what you use royn as in the additive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the specific gold rush. Yeah, north Woods gold
Speaker 1: Rush absolutely, and it's uh, now have you used that,
Speaker 1: just really Northwood's gold Rush. Yeah, it's killer. Describe it
Speaker 1: just a concentrated better scotch and uh, just it takes
Speaker 1: maybe an ounce two ounces per you know, five gallon bucket,
Speaker 1: and it smells like pure candy and you know, so
Speaker 1: it takes it takes this uh, it takes your frier grease,
Speaker 1: which fire grease has an odor, but it's not like
Speaker 1: a super strong odor, and it makes your frier grease
Speaker 1: have a super strong and they carry it with them
Speaker 1: everywhere they go and use it in liberal mounts, sling
Speaker 1: it like safe border on your baits. Let the bears
Speaker 1: roll in it, step in it, just sling it way
Speaker 1: up in tree trunks and the foliage. And so the
Speaker 1: most of these fried grease additives, and there's multiple companies
Speaker 1: that make them, but we're using the gold Rush and
Speaker 1: it comes in eight ounce bottle. It's like thirty six bucks.
Speaker 1: But that eight once bottle, will I think it will
Speaker 1: treat forty gallons of grease. Now, I like to mix
Speaker 1: it hot. I like to make hotter than what they say,
Speaker 1: so you know, I'll probably get twenty gallons of grease.
Speaker 1: But still that's quite a bit of that's a lot
Speaker 1: of grease. So yeah, friar grease. The other thing that
Speaker 1: you said was the powder sugary additives. That's good stuff.
Speaker 1: Good stuff because those kool Aid powder bags do produce
Speaker 1: a lot of scent and you can mix those in
Speaker 1: and just anything that is going to cause more scent
Speaker 1: to be there. But we can talk about commercial sense
Speaker 1: to later, because I use a lot of I mean,
Speaker 1: aside from gold rushers, lots of other just spray products
Speaker 1: and products, some of these you know Mama Pop stores
Speaker 1: that sell like the out a date stuff, the big
Speaker 1: bulk bags of gatorade, you know, in different flavors. I
Speaker 1: found that's worked. The powder. The powder just makes it
Speaker 1: like you would to kool Aid. Yeah, you know, baiting
Speaker 1: here in Arkansas, you've gotta be kind of resourceful. It's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of people doing it, but
Speaker 1: there's enough people doing it can make a lot of
Speaker 1: competition for getting your bait. And and so last year,
Speaker 1: you know, I came across a lot of good bait.
Speaker 1: You probably remember seeing those pallets of stuff I got
Speaker 1: on the trailer. There was a there was a palette
Speaker 1: of raspberry jelly buckets, bulk on that and that worked
Speaker 1: really well. You know, anything berries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. They
Speaker 1: love that, you know. So you said, uh, cheap dog food, corn, pastries, bread,
Speaker 1: popcorn with marsh, marshmallows and kool aid. Let's just leave
Speaker 1: that right there, right, pretend like he hadn't even talked,
Speaker 1: and being serious, like I want to hear from zero.
Speaker 1: You're baiting strategy. My hook up has been and it
Speaker 1: has been for a long time. Just uh, there's been
Speaker 1: a bakery that makes lots and lots of pastries and
Speaker 1: has lots of excess every day. So for me, is
Speaker 1: that a good business model for them? I don't know.
Speaker 1: As he gets tons and tons of doughnuts, and I'm
Speaker 1: always like, man, they should make lass if they want
Speaker 1: to make more money. You know, before it's baked, there's
Speaker 1: actually not that much material there. I see, I see
Speaker 1: you got a point, but no, you know, I usually
Speaker 1: I can get two d three hundred pounds of pastries
Speaker 1: every day. Are you're gonna share some of that this year?
Speaker 1: I've got people knocking my door down. Well you're gonna
Speaker 1: share it with me though, right, because I'm your friend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I brought you one doughnut. He took a bite out
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, but that's uh, you know, usually my mainstay.
Speaker 1: But you know, like you other guys, we you know,
Speaker 1: whold corn. I usually grease it down, is what I
Speaker 1: do with the you know, the gold rush in it.
Speaker 1: And like how much Let's say you got a fifty
Speaker 1: five gallon drum full of corn, will will hold three
Speaker 1: hundred pounds of shell corn? Yeah, so give somebody an
Speaker 1: example of how much grease you would pour on that.
Speaker 1: I've never filled one hole. I've got some roller barrels,
Speaker 1: you know, and may put you know, half of five
Speaker 1: gallon bucket two and a half gallons on it, really
Speaker 1: soak it down good. Um. I've got a metal pipe
Speaker 1: feeder that's been there practically growed into the tree where
Speaker 1: I changed it fifteen years ago, and fill it up, um,
Speaker 1: you know, And every once in a while I try
Speaker 1: to stay away from the meat products. And now used
Speaker 1: to you know, I do a lot of beaver trapping
Speaker 1: and I used to do it for the county down there,
Speaker 1: but I'd say beaver carcasses. But you have to have
Speaker 1: a hot bait. Lots of bears coming in. It seems
Speaker 1: like the bears in this area you want fresh fresh meat.
Speaker 1: If it starts to get at least what rancid, and
Speaker 1: you've got a mess on your hands. And see that
Speaker 1: would be different than Canada. Yeah, Canada and some of
Speaker 1: these northern places that nastier the beaver, the better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's strange. I don't know if it's just cause
Speaker 1: maybe it's a little more cooler afair, not as humid
Speaker 1: or something. But down here, I think it's just resource availability.
Speaker 1: I mean in the far North they are there is
Speaker 1: less stuff for them to eat up there. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I mean they're just taking advantage of any protein they
Speaker 1: can get down here. These bears have a lot of options. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's just that just this year, you know,
Speaker 1: every strain of oak tree is loaded. Uh, there's walking sticks.
Speaker 1: Katie did tons of poke berries, you know, for Semme
Speaker 1: trees are loaded. Blueberries did good. Blackberries did good, lots
Speaker 1: of blackberries. So you know they've got more of a
Speaker 1: smorious board down here. Uh maybe compared to the in timeframe,
Speaker 1: these bears down here are staying awake for ten months
Speaker 1: a year, nine to ten months a year. Northern bears
Speaker 1: are staying awake maybe six to seven months a year.
Speaker 1: But the you know, back to what I say, and
Speaker 1: my main core of my boots is pastries. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: any other little tidbit secret things you do that you've
Speaker 1: never told me about, not really, you know, Uh, you've
Speaker 1: been holding out on me. I can see it in
Speaker 1: your eyes. No, I try to keep as much there
Speaker 1: as possible. You know. I don't know if that's something
Speaker 1: Elays wanted to touch on right now, but you know
Speaker 1: I have. That would be the next thing is how much?
Speaker 1: But now, you did use some Asian food that you
Speaker 1: were getting there for a while, didn't You didn't work?
Speaker 1: Uh friends who actually worked for a guy that has
Speaker 1: a Chinese restaurant down there in the town where I'm from.
Speaker 1: And boy, every night when they'd empty buffet, there'll be
Speaker 1: five gallon bucket or more of Chinese food. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: that bears ought to tear that up? Yeah, I poured
Speaker 1: it out and you come back. It has not been
Speaker 1: touched that where I'm at, they will not touch anything spicy, right,
Speaker 1: It's strange. So I actually had to shovel it up
Speaker 1: back in some I forgot this story. I was thinking
Speaker 1: that it was that it worked. Oh no, no, it
Speaker 1: didn't work, Jason. Have you ever put out something that
Speaker 1: did not work? Oh? Absolutely? One year I gotta. They
Speaker 1: use it to as filler for cattle feed. They'll take
Speaker 1: serial and you think bears all they love lucky charms
Speaker 1: and you know Captain crunch and stuff. But they pulverize
Speaker 1: that cereal into like a powder, almost like rice brand.
Speaker 1: And I used that and mix it in my roller
Speaker 1: barrels with corn and syrup and stuff, and I had
Speaker 1: to dump it out. They did corn. They would not
Speaker 1: touch that barrel with that. It immediately went from that
Speaker 1: roller barrel being destroyed to the point where they had
Speaker 1: it caved in on the side. They were rolling it
Speaker 1: so hard. To the week I put that out, just
Speaker 1: quit quit it, quit that particular Carol, and just kept
Speaker 1: emptying rum non stuff. Okay, here's my story. One time,
Speaker 1: I thought, well, bears leave our baits to go to
Speaker 1: mass crop, right nuts, So I brought home, like two
Speaker 1: hundred pounds of almonds, and they were they were seasoned
Speaker 1: that and that was probably the mistake salted and uh
Speaker 1: and uh, you know I never ate one, so it
Speaker 1: may have even had some of that smoked, like the
Speaker 1: smoked almond, the liquid smoke artificial. Man. I put those
Speaker 1: out and I was like, bears are gonna love this stuff.
Speaker 1: They never they would. I mean they would walk circles
Speaker 1: around it, you know, to get debate. I mean they
Speaker 1: didn't want anything to do with it. So you find
Speaker 1: stuff like that when you're baiting bears, and I think
Speaker 1: regionally that's gonna be the case. It is, says you
Speaker 1: know me and uh, Carney got them big old pallets
Speaker 1: of skittles. Last I dumped out here four or five
Speaker 1: gallon buckets of skittles. Did not touch a single one.
Speaker 1: Carney dumps him out up here where he's from. I
Speaker 1: can't find a single one left. Same thing here your
Speaker 1: skittles last year. Remember, I tried to give you a
Speaker 1: few cases them. They were a pain to unpack because
Speaker 1: they're in a little yes. Uh, the bears at my
Speaker 1: bait did like them. A few miles up the road
Speaker 1: at my buddy's bait and wouldn't touch him. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure some of the same bears were probably visiting both
Speaker 1: those bait sides. But yeah, so I think the point
Speaker 1: is is that you before you commit your life to
Speaker 1: one's single bait, you better make sure that it works. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I think bears get conditioned to stuff over the years. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I think that like maybe you could go back and
Speaker 1: put out skittles this year, or maybe if you'd have
Speaker 1: it is just theory, but sprinkled them in a little
Speaker 1: bit here and there rather than all at once, like
Speaker 1: maybe they would grab actually move towards I know. It's
Speaker 1: it's like that when guys feed rice brand with deer.
Speaker 1: You know, we can bait deer here in Arkansas, some
Speaker 1: people put out rice brand. Sometimes the deer wanna eat
Speaker 1: rice brand for weeks and then finally then finally one
Speaker 1: of them starts eating it and they're like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is basically corn, you know. Um. But so before you
Speaker 1: just commit to anything, you gotta know that they'll eat it.
Speaker 1: But the one thing that they will not turn down
Speaker 1: is bread and pastry stuff. I mean, I think that
Speaker 1: would be like the core of probably most of what
Speaker 1: we're doing. And popcorn related stuff. You know, I've seen
Speaker 1: them be finicky with popcorn at times, but most of
Speaker 1: the time they're gonna hammer the popcorn absolutely. Um. You know.
Speaker 1: Let me talk about what I do with my baits,
Speaker 1: bread and donuts. Number one, I'm gonna have one full barrel,
Speaker 1: like packed like I'll jump in the barrel stomping it
Speaker 1: down of bread, donuts, pastries of any kind that I
Speaker 1: can get. As I'm putting it in, I'm putting in
Speaker 1: oil on top of it layers. You know. I'll put
Speaker 1: in like ten inches of bread poor oil, ten more
Speaker 1: inches of bread poor or you know, just kind of
Speaker 1: make sure he gets evenly distributed. I'll have a roller barrel.
Speaker 1: Just last year I started using a roller barrel, just
Speaker 1: like and Ryan does that and uh that that was major.
Speaker 1: And I'll put a full three pounds of corn in there.
Speaker 1: And I've got about six probably two inch holes at
Speaker 1: the bottom of my roller barrel with a with a
Speaker 1: uh fifty five gallon just around the rim of the bottom, yep,
Speaker 1: just at the very bottom low as I can get
Speaker 1: those holes. That's what I did. And I put an
Speaker 1: eyebolt in the barrel and put about an eighteen inch
Speaker 1: chain on a tree. So I mean they pretty much
Speaker 1: they really can't. It may be a two ft chain,
Speaker 1: but I mean they really can't just like roll it
Speaker 1: all around, but they can knock it around and they
Speaker 1: do um. And then the last several years I've gotten
Speaker 1: bear bait from commercial bear bait distributors up north Lucky
Speaker 1: seven as where we got our stuff last year that
Speaker 1: he ate some of you, Like he had my backpack
Speaker 1: some into what he called a walk in bait one time,
Speaker 1: and I probably twenty pounds of liquorice. Yes, that's why
Speaker 1: you didn't have near the load when we got back
Speaker 1: in there, Like where's all this bait? Where did it go?
Speaker 1: I thought you were loaded up more. Some of that
Speaker 1: stuff is good now. And so what I've used when
Speaker 1: I've done that and I'm not doing it this year
Speaker 1: is uh is we would have pop tarts. We would
Speaker 1: have like like the tops of Oreo cookies. So I
Speaker 1: just envision or you guys would do it. But I'm
Speaker 1: describing this to people that wouldn't you know, envision Oreo
Speaker 1: cookies without the filling, just a little chocolates or or
Speaker 1: vanilla ones. And then some years we've had ice cream
Speaker 1: cones just crunched up in a big, huge tote that
Speaker 1: probably weighs eight hundred pounds, like pop tarts, cookies, Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: sugar ice cream, sugar cones will have big buckets of
Speaker 1: frosting which work great. Um, they have a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, well, last year, I got boxes of gummies,
Speaker 1: sour gummies. I thought they would have a hard time
Speaker 1: with the sour gummies, and I think they did at first.
Speaker 1: The first time I bade it, I just poured out
Speaker 1: a whole like forty pound box of sour gummies on
Speaker 1: top of the barrel, and they didn't hardly mess with it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, dog on, They're not gonna eat
Speaker 1: these things, and I'm gonna have all this bait. But
Speaker 1: soon enough they started eating it and they ate it
Speaker 1: all um. And then uh man, We've had a lot
Speaker 1: of different stuff, but the frostings, frostings and those uh well, uh,
Speaker 1: kettle corn. You know a lot of these commercial baits, Troopers.
Speaker 1: You can buy kettle corn, which is popcorn that's got
Speaker 1: sugar and toffee and stuff mixed in with it, kind
Speaker 1: of like what you're doing. Um. And then the last
Speaker 1: thing I used was trail mix, which that's what a
Speaker 1: lot of the Canadian guys and stuff up north uses
Speaker 1: trail mix, which that would be like pretzels, uh eminem's
Speaker 1: and nuts, varieties of nuts, and and the bears ate
Speaker 1: it good. They ate it good. Um. So typically I
Speaker 1: would have two full bears on a really good bait
Speaker 1: that I knew a lot of bears were coming into,
Speaker 1: two full barrels of you know, ice cream, cones or
Speaker 1: whatever you kind of like my carbohydrate barrels into the
Speaker 1: corn barrel, and then I would spray the heck out
Speaker 1: of it with a scent product just whatever people go
Speaker 1: nuts over, like the different types of scent, you know,
Speaker 1: like what's the best scent to track the bear. I
Speaker 1: don't think there is one. I think they it's just
Speaker 1: it's just a it's just a potent loud you know,
Speaker 1: Ryan uses the word it's loud, you know, just a
Speaker 1: loud scent. But okay, that's that's good for that discussion.
Speaker 1: We'll just leave that there. Uh. Second thing, how much
Speaker 1: do you bake? So ready to go? Typically, what I
Speaker 1: do is I'll have the roller barrel. It's about thirty
Speaker 1: gallon barrel. I'll put all a couple bags of corn
Speaker 1: and that probably or I might mix it with a
Speaker 1: bag of corn and a bag of dog food. And
Speaker 1: you know, like the way I make that roller bear,
Speaker 1: I make it those whole small enough they really have
Speaker 1: to work to get that amount of feed out, but
Speaker 1: always at five gallon drum as full as I can
Speaker 1: get it. Sometimes last year I did to drums and
Speaker 1: a roller and and this is an established baits side
Speaker 1: to very established so established baits side, you're bait. You've
Speaker 1: been baiting the same place for fifteen years. That particular
Speaker 1: bait is old, faithful in fifteen years. And the amount
Speaker 1: of bears and the amount of big bears that come
Speaker 1: to that bait is staggering to the point where I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, you know, I used to think, well,
Speaker 1: I want to keep them as ungry as possible, So
Speaker 1: I just put one full barrel out in the empty
Speaker 1: out and then when I get back, the more feed
Speaker 1: you can keep there, the more they will come to
Speaker 1: that bait. They will stay. The best Canadian outfitters say that,
Speaker 1: and I I'm a fund believer. As much as possible,
Speaker 1: I don't want bears out roaming looking further from yes,
Speaker 1: I have a lot of reason to stay Yeah, I
Speaker 1: still talk to guys that are baiting small amounts of bait,
Speaker 1: and to be honest with you, a lot of times
Speaker 1: it's because they don't have access to a lot of bait.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of limiting factors in baiting,
Speaker 1: Like some guys don't have access to the bait that
Speaker 1: we do just because they don't. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know why they don't, but maybe they just don't have
Speaker 1: the time to look for it. It does can cost
Speaker 1: some money, um, But we're talking about best case scenario,
Speaker 1: like best practice, so we're not factoring in that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is gonna be a massive hustle that's gonna take
Speaker 1: a ton of time and a ton of work, like
Speaker 1: that's guaranteed. Um, But best case scenario, you feed them
Speaker 1: as much as possible much as possible. You know, in
Speaker 1: my particular area, I've gotten to where I have lots
Speaker 1: of competition from other hunters in my area, and uh,
Speaker 1: the more good quality bait and then more of it
Speaker 1: I can keep there. To keep those bears coming to
Speaker 1: my bait is key. I think it's key for having success.
Speaker 1: And because it's tough and mentally, it probably keeps you
Speaker 1: a little less stressed. Absolutely, Hey, even though I've got competition,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm doing something right here. I go
Speaker 1: above and beyond. It's a lot of work to do this,
Speaker 1: you guys know, Okay, tell them, tell me why it's why? Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll be the devil's advocate here. I want my bears
Speaker 1: to feel like there's competition at the bait, so my
Speaker 1: bears will eat all the food that I put out
Speaker 1: for him. I'm just gonna put out like ten gallons
Speaker 1: every time I go in every two days. Why is
Speaker 1: that bad? Say, if you've got ten bears hitting this bait,
Speaker 1: it could potentially be wiped out in one evening. And
Speaker 1: then you've got, say, if you're only doing it once
Speaker 1: a week, there's six days of then going somewhere else.
Speaker 1: That's right. Absolutely, you'd be amazed that you guys wouldn't.
Speaker 1: But people would be amazed at how many people have
Speaker 1: bought into this idea that lack of food creates competition.
Speaker 1: I have yet to find anybody that's been able to
Speaker 1: convince me that that's true because all these outfitters and
Speaker 1: nothing against outfitters, but I'll tell you the best outfitters
Speaker 1: I've ever hunted with gave them as much as they
Speaker 1: could they could eat, or legally, some places you legally
Speaker 1: can't bait. There's limits on how much you can bait.
Speaker 1: Some places here it's not we can put as much
Speaker 1: as you want. But there's this idea that if you
Speaker 1: put out less, there's competition because a bear is incentivized
Speaker 1: to come there earlier. And I always say, a bear
Speaker 1: can't reason. A bear doesn't know that. A bear just
Speaker 1: shows up after dark and there's no bait there, and
Speaker 1: he goes, well, guess what, I'm not coming here again
Speaker 1: because there's no food here. He's got to fill his
Speaker 1: belly up. So if you can just pound them, and
Speaker 1: I've had lots of people say, just yesterday, I talked
Speaker 1: to a guy that said, uh, that said, oh man,
Speaker 1: you feed him too much much, they'll get they'll get where,
Speaker 1: they won't come in anymore. He thinks you can over
Speaker 1: feed them. Yeah, I don't. I don't. I don't agree
Speaker 1: with that at all. I've found the opposite completely. I
Speaker 1: feel like, if, like I said, if if they go
Speaker 1: there and there's not feed there, they're going to someone
Speaker 1: else's bait. They're going down the ridge gonna eat acorns.
Speaker 1: They're gonna bears rome a long way. It's a lot
Speaker 1: farther in a night and days time, and people realize,
Speaker 1: you know, and the more you can give them the better.
Speaker 1: Plus logistically, not everybody has time to run out in
Speaker 1: bait throw ten pounds of bait out every day. It's
Speaker 1: so if you put out five hundred pounds of bait
Speaker 1: at one time, maybe you can go. I mean, depending
Speaker 1: up on how many bears are coming there. I have
Speaker 1: a lot of people that are like, well, tell me
Speaker 1: how often should I go and how much should have
Speaker 1: put out? And I'm like, well, it matters how many
Speaker 1: bears you're feeding. If you're feeding two bears, then maybe
Speaker 1: you don't have to go that much, and maybe you
Speaker 1: don't need to put out that much because you don't
Speaker 1: want your bait to spoil. You don't want your bait
Speaker 1: to get reined on and get more oldie and they're
Speaker 1: not gonna eat it. So you have to regulate. If
Speaker 1: you're feeding eight bears and two of them are five pounders,
Speaker 1: you better put out three full barrels and you better
Speaker 1: come back after about three days. I mean absolutely, Okay,
Speaker 1: talk to me Ryan about like you're starting sequence. So
Speaker 1: we can start thirty days before season. You'll put out
Speaker 1: bait when and how often and just like walk me
Speaker 1: right to opening day. Well for me, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's different scenarios for different people. Say, if you're
Speaker 1: got an established bait, says Jason or yourself, that there's
Speaker 1: already bears living in the area, you know there's bears
Speaker 1: visiting it before you even get there, So you could
Speaker 1: probably go in the first time and not bait it
Speaker 1: super heavy. I mean, but if you know you're there,
Speaker 1: why not. But somebody that's finally going out for the
Speaker 1: first time and gonna try it and say, I want
Speaker 1: to sit for something here, don't load that barrel, don't
Speaker 1: put out because more than likely it's gonna ruin or
Speaker 1: go steale or get rain on it and just go sloppy.
Speaker 1: But for me, say my main bait down uh South,
Speaker 1: you know, I will feel three barrels pump full and
Speaker 1: uh a big pipe feeder probably hold fifty sixty pounds
Speaker 1: of corn, but you know, and sling the grease with
Speaker 1: the additive to open up the bait. So you do that,
Speaker 1: and then when do you come back, Well, that's something else.
Speaker 1: Now you've got the seal cameras. It will let you
Speaker 1: know when that bait is empty. You know. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can tell by looking at the bait barrels in the
Speaker 1: pictures if they're empty or what's left on the ground.
Speaker 1: So that is a good tool versus having to go
Speaker 1: back and pull cards and see. So you know, say,
Speaker 1: if you know I have run my own company, work
Speaker 1: for myself. If I say I baited on a Saturday
Speaker 1: and I see it's empty by Tuesday, I will take
Speaker 1: the time away from work to go down Tuesday to
Speaker 1: put bait in that. Some guys can't do that. They're
Speaker 1: punching the clock, so I may just have to do
Speaker 1: it on a Saturday and go to the next Saturday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh break it down even simpler. Well, let me
Speaker 1: let me let me say. What I typically tell people
Speaker 1: is that put out bait thirty days before season, come
Speaker 1: back in five days and check it, Assess how much
Speaker 1: they ate. And I'm just trying to break it down
Speaker 1: real simple. Come back five days later, assess what they ate.
Speaker 1: If they ate it to the ground and there's nothing
Speaker 1: left there, then put out more bait than you did
Speaker 1: and come back in three days and more than there's
Speaker 1: gonna be new bears picking up all the time, all
Speaker 1: the time, all the time. And basically usually what I
Speaker 1: do is the closer I get to season, the more
Speaker 1: I come back, and I get to where I'm coming
Speaker 1: back about every three days, but I'm putting out a
Speaker 1: lot of bait. You gotta put out a lot of
Speaker 1: bait if you're feeding ten bears for three days, and
Speaker 1: the closer I get to opening day, I might get
Speaker 1: to where I'm coming in every two days. Uh, it
Speaker 1: means that how how would you do it? Jason? The
Speaker 1: same way what I typically do is I go in
Speaker 1: there and I'll fill the bait as full as I
Speaker 1: can get it. On the established bait it was a
Speaker 1: brand new bait, I just I might do half of
Speaker 1: the roller barrel and fill the main barrel up. And
Speaker 1: you know, because typically bait that's not established, it's gonna
Speaker 1: take till about midway through the month of baiting to
Speaker 1: really get a good number of bears on there. But
Speaker 1: the established bait, I fill it up max capacity. The
Speaker 1: way I run my baits is I'll start on a Saturday,
Speaker 1: the closest Saturday to the first day that I can bait,
Speaker 1: and then I will fill it up completely full, and
Speaker 1: I'll go back every Wednesday and every Saturday, white clockwork
Speaker 1: until seasons. Yeah, that's how I do it, And that's
Speaker 1: just logistically wise. That gives me the most even type
Speaker 1: days I can get in a seven week period or
Speaker 1: a seven day period, and uh, you know, fill the
Speaker 1: bait up as full as possible. One thing I did
Speaker 1: want to touch on. I don't know if you guys
Speaker 1: have tried this is uh used to on the fryar oil.
Speaker 1: I would throw it out everywhere, throw it up in
Speaker 1: trees and stuff. Well, sometimes you know, it can get
Speaker 1: hard to get ahold of firewall. And what I started
Speaker 1: doing this last year is I've I've got a pump
Speaker 1: sprayer now, and the clear the cleanest oil, or I
Speaker 1: can saint it out and screen it out and I'll
Speaker 1: pump spray and I can make a gallon or two
Speaker 1: gallon pump sprayer last several baitings and it will miss
Speaker 1: such a fine mist and coat. Everything is so good.
Speaker 1: It really is efficient. So I've started doing that too.
Speaker 1: I'll open that bait with full barrels of everything. I'll
Speaker 1: miss the gold rush friar oil all over everything. I
Speaker 1: can even if as high as it'll spray, because that's
Speaker 1: you're calling you know, so cool, that's that's a good tip. Mix.
Speaker 1: Then have you've done that before? Okay somebody I've heard that,
Speaker 1: but well maybe it was you that told me. Yeah, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that you just need to keep
Speaker 1: that bait full depending on how many bears are coming
Speaker 1: in a lot of guys are traveling. A lot of
Speaker 1: guys like here are coming from the delta. They're coming
Speaker 1: from some place two or three hours away. So they're
Speaker 1: really trying to They're like trying to pry information, like, well,
Speaker 1: how often do you have to go? And so I
Speaker 1: try to break it down and you know, just kind
Speaker 1: of give him a system and uh what I okay.
Speaker 1: So if somebody has questions, maybe they could, uh they
Speaker 1: could just message us somehow if we've missed something. My
Speaker 1: third question was what was my third question? What do
Speaker 1: you bait with? When do you bait um? Location? Location?
Speaker 1: Let's talk about location. To me, location is probably the
Speaker 1: most important part of the equation because not all bear
Speaker 1: sites are located. Are are are are created equal, I
Speaker 1: mean massively. You could be in a great Bear county
Speaker 1: and have a location that was not very good you could, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, people ask these kind of questions about you know, well,
Speaker 1: I'm in such and such county. That's a good Bear county.
Speaker 1: That means I got a good spot, right, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: well it may, I mean, it's a good start, but
Speaker 1: it but there's there are different locations that are that
Speaker 1: are going to be better. Describe to me not where
Speaker 1: it's at, but just kind of like the features of
Speaker 1: some of your better bait. It's like, like what's around them?
Speaker 1: What what what makes it good or why do you
Speaker 1: think it's good. Well, I'm gonna tell a little story
Speaker 1: of how I've got my first the really good bait
Speaker 1: that I ran for fifteen years back in two thousand three.
Speaker 1: When I started making shoot a guy to get it.
Speaker 1: It was very close. It came very close to possibly
Speaker 1: because that's where Al Ryan got his good bait. I'll
Speaker 1: have to hear this. I'm just kidding, you know. You know,
Speaker 1: it could be hard to find locations to get permission
Speaker 1: on if you don't own property or no something. We
Speaker 1: can only bait on private land and right correct, it's
Speaker 1: so uh, I just happened to be I was just
Speaker 1: out looking for places I can bait. And I saw
Speaker 1: an old guy sitting on a porch out in the mountains,
Speaker 1: and uh, stop and talk to him, and he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I saw a bear the other day. He's like,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's very many bears here, but you're
Speaker 1: welcome to try to bait. And he has a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty three acres. It's a small place. It's split
Speaker 1: by a county dirt road. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: and at the time, I wasn't really thinking about strategic location,
Speaker 1: but this property taught me the what to look for
Speaker 1: because of the amount of bears and big bears I
Speaker 1: have routinely. It just it just gave me the knowledge
Speaker 1: of no one where to put it. So anyway, start
Speaker 1: baiting that year and I mean he's like, he's just like, well,
Speaker 1: there's probably not many bears here. The first year I
Speaker 1: had several large bears and so I started bringing in
Speaker 1: photos and he's, man, I can't believe all these bears
Speaker 1: that are here, and you know, you never see them.
Speaker 1: Their secretive animals. So the way what it is is
Speaker 1: you've got this big valley with the road run the
Speaker 1: center and then it runs up to two large ridges
Speaker 1: and they're running north and south. Both those ridges are
Speaker 1: and uh, it had been logged probably twenty years earlier.
Speaker 1: And so it is the thickest, steepest, brieriest stuff BlackBerry brambles.
Speaker 1: I mean you can you're crawling on hands and knees
Speaker 1: to get through it if you're walking, and uh, if
Speaker 1: you're trying to get off the hillsides, and it's steep
Speaker 1: and rough, and it runs down to a lot of
Speaker 1: creek bottoms with locusts, thorns and a lot of saplings.
Speaker 1: Just the thickest, darkest, nastiest stuff you can be in.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's where those bears live. They like thick
Speaker 1: cover where they can be secretive and hide. That has
Speaker 1: lots of food. There's lots of hickories and acorns on
Speaker 1: this It was all blackberries. So those bears live there.
Speaker 1: They were just there. It's close to national forest. It's
Speaker 1: very it's surrounded by national forests, so it's you know,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of pressure just directly around it.
Speaker 1: And so but these bears are living basically in this
Speaker 1: big bowl that is just plum full of nasty briars
Speaker 1: and blackberries, and its steep and nasty getting down to it.
Speaker 1: And uh so I try to set up my bait
Speaker 1: when I'm looking. I want to know, I want to
Speaker 1: be able to place that bait where the prevailing wind
Speaker 1: will carry the lure and the scent to where the
Speaker 1: bears are. And generally there's probably bears all around that
Speaker 1: particular bait, but the majority of them almost always come
Speaker 1: from the northwest to that bait, and that's down in
Speaker 1: that nasty bottom. That's where they live. And so I
Speaker 1: try to set it up and it can be really
Speaker 1: I have a lot of trouble with the wind, the
Speaker 1: swirling winds. It's really really difficult there. But you get
Speaker 1: a red neck blind. I hunted out ridden at Gilly
Speaker 1: Blind last year and it helped quite a bit, it did.
Speaker 1: And now that it's a real one, I know, I
Speaker 1: don't kill everybody in the woods. It's it's on the
Speaker 1: it's on the agenda. But yeah, the prevailing winds is,
Speaker 1: you know, predominantly here. We have what south southwest winds,
Speaker 1: you know. And what's tough the last few years is
Speaker 1: we've been getting a lot of easterly winds about the
Speaker 1: time it's been bumping. It's like the fall is coming
Speaker 1: a little sooner now according to win our our hunt
Speaker 1: actually begins. But that's a good description of where it's at.
Speaker 1: And I think the key thing, at least for here
Speaker 1: is close to National Forest and that in other parts
Speaker 1: of the world that may translate just into it's it's
Speaker 1: in bear territory and these bears want to be and
Speaker 1: unfragmented wilderness is a phrase that we use a lot,
Speaker 1: which technically wouldn't be a human intrusion. You know, wheeler trails,
Speaker 1: and see, our bears aren't in agg country, but there's
Speaker 1: parts of the world or the continent where they are
Speaker 1: that you know, bears are feeding in places where there's
Speaker 1: our human activity, but here we're not. But and so
Speaker 1: we're trying to get into the most remote places that
Speaker 1: we can. And then like on a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: acre farm, like you're trying to find a bait site
Speaker 1: that you can drive a truck to, I would imagine,
Speaker 1: but you're also trying to get as far I bet
Speaker 1: you're trying to get as far away from the county
Speaker 1: road as you can, am I right, yeah, because that
Speaker 1: bear is not gonna want to come up within seventy
Speaker 1: five yards main County road with people coming up and
Speaker 1: down on over the season. I mean you're probably trying
Speaker 1: to get as far away from it as a quarter
Speaker 1: a mile minimum, if possible. You know, I like to
Speaker 1: be in there, and that's straight up the mountain, on
Speaker 1: the very top of the ridge, because and then you
Speaker 1: can carry that scent and you'd rather be up higher
Speaker 1: than lower. I prefer to be as high as possible,
Speaker 1: just for more stable winds. You know that. That's that's
Speaker 1: the key, I think, I mean down low unless you've
Speaker 1: got a red neck blind. We can have a and
Speaker 1: and red neck blind didn't pay me a dime, they
Speaker 1: should And uh, good scent containment. Absolutely you can put it.
Speaker 1: You could put a bear bad wherever you wanted. But
Speaker 1: because you said the bears are living down low, but
Speaker 1: you're hunting up high, and there comes key, because yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I've watched him. Just I put my stand as close
Speaker 1: to the break of the hill as I can because
Speaker 1: it drops off so steep. That keeps my scent traveling
Speaker 1: way up above, up high. And I don't I mean
Speaker 1: most to every bear that has come to that bait
Speaker 1: or that I've taken it, that they have come up
Speaker 1: from that bottom. I think a high bait too, is
Speaker 1: better for scent distribution of of because see you're not
Speaker 1: hunting there twenty four hours a day. Because if you
Speaker 1: think about scent distribution, it's also distributing your human scent.
Speaker 1: But think about the thermals coming and going off the
Speaker 1: top of a mountain. You know, in the evening time
Speaker 1: at night, that scent is going down in that valley,
Speaker 1: and then in the morning time it's going up and
Speaker 1: the winds are carrying it to who knows where, a
Speaker 1: long ways away. One thing that Jason said that I'll
Speaker 1: bring up is that it's best to place a bait
Speaker 1: in a place where the prevailing winds are gonna be
Speaker 1: blowing the wind towards where bears are. That statement works
Speaker 1: in some places. In the example that I had was
Speaker 1: one time I had a piece of private land that
Speaker 1: was like on the border of big National forest and
Speaker 1: so on. You know, to the let's just say, to
Speaker 1: the north of this property was all civilization. I mean
Speaker 1: it was cattle of farms and roads, and behind it
Speaker 1: was big National forest. But there was a ton of
Speaker 1: bear in the Big National Forest. But the prevailing wind
Speaker 1: was blowing My bait sent into civilization and I could
Speaker 1: hardly ever get bears to come in there, even though
Speaker 1: it was right on the lip of this huge nasty
Speaker 1: canyon that I would look down in, and I mean
Speaker 1: there was like big national forest, and I was like,
Speaker 1: there are bears within a half mile here that I
Speaker 1: don't even know this baits here because you know, and
Speaker 1: I was waiting for a north wind which never came.
Speaker 1: You know, I baited that spot for five years and
Speaker 1: never could draw bears there. And I should have been
Speaker 1: able to. And if that bait had been on the
Speaker 1: other side of that National forest, where the a southerly
Speaker 1: wind or southwestern wind would have been blowing into that,
Speaker 1: I think I'd have drawn every bear out of there.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. So describe your good bait, Ryan, or
Speaker 1: where what you look for in a good bait. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I just looked into the place I'm at.
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, it's been early two thousand's and it just happened.
Speaker 1: It's pretty much landlocked in the middle a national forest,
Speaker 1: but it has a valley on the back end. It's
Speaker 1: just got old beaver slews. It's thick, you know, briars,
Speaker 1: per simmons, you know, all kinds of brambles, but just
Speaker 1: a dark, dank area where bears love to live bed,
Speaker 1: you know, especially during the summer, late summer. But anyway,
Speaker 1: there's just bears there year round. So I actually didn't
Speaker 1: realize how good of a hot spot it was right
Speaker 1: off the bat and after the first year or two,
Speaker 1: and you know, I had somebodies that baited on the
Speaker 1: other side of that, and they were killing monster bears too.
Speaker 1: But it just you know, I call it the Valley
Speaker 1: of the Kings, you know, because yeah, it's just it.
Speaker 1: It's got monster bears in it. You know. Uh beastons
Speaker 1: have killed three or four plus pounds, yeah out of there,
Speaker 1: and I've taken you know, five hundred and I don't
Speaker 1: know how many fours out of it. So but you know,
Speaker 1: it ain't nothing on a good year to have you know,
Speaker 1: a dozen to eighteen bears on this one day. But
Speaker 1: you know, I just try to get as close as
Speaker 1: I can to the National Forest. Just happened to find
Speaker 1: a location that was suitable for a stand and where
Speaker 1: I felt like the bears, you know, I would want
Speaker 1: to travel, not have to think twice, you know, feel
Speaker 1: comfortable coming into it. But you know, it's just like
Speaker 1: Jason said, you know, it's the seasons are changing. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have south winds, north winds. It's it's just but
Speaker 1: you know, more or less on a west wind for
Speaker 1: me is going to take that scent into where the
Speaker 1: bears are living. But I've also got food plots on
Speaker 1: this property up on the top that I plant lots
Speaker 1: and lots of buck for joats. So all these acres
Speaker 1: of oats go to seed, and all summer long, these
Speaker 1: bears are living there eating seed tops off this So
Speaker 1: usually when I go into bait that you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're just pretty lickety split. Yeah, but you know it's
Speaker 1: it's got no human intrusion. Uh no roads close. But
Speaker 1: you know it's hard for the average joe to find,
Speaker 1: you know, a piece of ground like that. We all
Speaker 1: know that. So you know, guy might find a delta
Speaker 1: glease that's eighty or hundred acres that's pure pine timber.
Speaker 1: And you know how hard it is for bears to
Speaker 1: stay in pine timber a lot of the time. But
Speaker 1: you know it has to have you know, some big hardwoods,
Speaker 1: close water crevices, shade, you know, just nasty tangles. You
Speaker 1: hear a lot of people talk about water like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna have a good bait, water's got to
Speaker 1: be close. Um, that's true. If bears are eating that
Speaker 1: much food, they've got to be drinking a ton of water.
Speaker 1: But I don't find water to be the This is
Speaker 1: the one thing I don't understand about that argument, because
Speaker 1: any bear baiting article you're ever gonna read, they're gonna
Speaker 1: say water is a must. And I mean they make
Speaker 1: it sound like there's gotta be water within a hundred
Speaker 1: yards of your bait. I mean, it's great if there's
Speaker 1: water within a hundred yards of your bait. But I
Speaker 1: don't find that to be necessarily true because water is
Speaker 1: not the limiting factor. Well, most people think, well, it's
Speaker 1: got a pond on it, Well that'll work. Well, bears
Speaker 1: really don't utilize ponds that much. It's got to be
Speaker 1: a seep, you know, see yeah, and you might not
Speaker 1: know it's there, you know. And and animals will use that.
Speaker 1: Around here there's water and a whole lot more places
Speaker 1: than you would realize now what you're saying that, I mean,
Speaker 1: bears do. They will use a pond as a water
Speaker 1: source hunter per cent. And now I had the last podcast,
Speaker 1: James Brandenburg was on here and he asked me what
Speaker 1: kind of water sources spars were looking for, and I
Speaker 1: told him, I said, I don't think a bear cares
Speaker 1: whether he's drinking out of a mud hole. Remember one
Speaker 1: time when I was hunting with my grandpa, bird hunting
Speaker 1: quail dogs, and I watched a bird dog run up
Speaker 1: to a water hole and drink just some muddiest, nastiest water.
Speaker 1: And uh, I said, does that dog not mine drinking
Speaker 1: muddy water? And he said he could care less, he's
Speaker 1: just thirsty. I mean, now, they but I think they
Speaker 1: probably find themselves utilizing more of the smaller water sources
Speaker 1: and more secluded places. But point being, water is good,
Speaker 1: but there's at least around here, water is not a
Speaker 1: limiting resource most of the time. Um, okay, as we're
Speaker 1: closing down here, what would you say to somebody that
Speaker 1: was and and and even take it out of Arkansas
Speaker 1: because around here, you know the limiting factors. Find the
Speaker 1: private land that you can hunt, and we ain't giving
Speaker 1: nobody any tips about how to do that. That's a joke,
Speaker 1: It's sort of no. It's just the same way you'd
Speaker 1: find private land for deer hunting. I mean, get out
Speaker 1: and knock on doors, use your apps. I mean, these
Speaker 1: new apps are almost cheating for finding landowners. And if
Speaker 1: you want to find a place to bathe barry, you
Speaker 1: can find it. It's hard, I mean, they're all I mean,
Speaker 1: like there's we've been doing this now in this part
Speaker 1: of the world for almost twenty years, and so I
Speaker 1: mean like a lot of the good spots are taken,
Speaker 1: but there's good spots still out there that just are
Speaker 1: waiting for the right relationship to be built. And uh,
Speaker 1: and there's leases and different things that people can get on.
Speaker 1: So I'm joking about that about not telling people how
Speaker 1: to find private land. But let's say they're in Idaho
Speaker 1: and you can bat on public land there. Um, Like,
Speaker 1: give me like a one minute, like what would you
Speaker 1: what would you do to start a brand new bait?
Speaker 1: One minute, Jason, And I'm gonna ask you the same
Speaker 1: thing I would look for, not not necessarily location, Like okay,
Speaker 1: like just say, if I just want to slam a
Speaker 1: bait in real quick, just like what would you put out?
Speaker 1: You know, you'd say, I'd say I'd take a fifty
Speaker 1: five gallon drum and seasons open, I can hunt as
Speaker 1: soon as Yeah, what would you do pastries, bacon ends,
Speaker 1: dog food in maple syrup and fryar will and you
Speaker 1: put it in a fifty gallon drum trail camera. I
Speaker 1: put up trail camera to put up your tree stamp
Speaker 1: before a bear got there. Absolutely, I'd go ahead and
Speaker 1: just make that bait site hunt ready. Maybe how far
Speaker 1: would you put your stand from the bait? Twenty yards max?
Speaker 1: Probably for yards okay, okay, or as close as I
Speaker 1: could get to that particular bait and still have a
Speaker 1: good wind. For what I thought, Yeah, okay, what would
Speaker 1: you do Ryan, same scenario? I mean, like you say
Speaker 1: you want to open it up some food, you know, pastries,
Speaker 1: dog food, corn, but definitely the friar grease additive something
Speaker 1: to get the baits started. Use the air to your
Speaker 1: advantage to do that. But like say, go ahead and
Speaker 1: put that stand up and have that location turn key
Speaker 1: for not have to tinker around anymore. You know, this
Speaker 1: is kind of going backwards, But let's talk real quick
Speaker 1: about starting a bait, because that's a critical component is
Speaker 1: getting barrassed your bait. And I'll give one think of
Speaker 1: a tip for for starting a bait, you get one tip, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'll give mine. First tip for starting a bait is
Speaker 1: to do a drag. I once had a bait that
Speaker 1: I put out that was in a good spot and
Speaker 1: that actually baited it before and had a couple of
Speaker 1: bears coming there the year before put out a bait,
Speaker 1: expected bears to be right on it, but they didn't
Speaker 1: show up. A week later, I went back and nothing
Speaker 1: had touched it. And if this bait was down low,
Speaker 1: it's the only place I could hunt on. This place
Speaker 1: was down low, which I didn't want to be down
Speaker 1: low because the low is bad for scent distribution. And
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I found. Bait was low, no bears.
Speaker 1: And so I came to the bait and I wasn't
Speaker 1: prepared for this, but I had oil, and I cut
Speaker 1: the back of my shirt off about a fourteen inch
Speaker 1: strip about four inches tall, and had a piece of
Speaker 1: rope and I dipped that dip that piece of the
Speaker 1: shirt into my Northwoods, my my gold rush oil. Took
Speaker 1: a bottle of the gold rush, you know, I like
Speaker 1: poured the oil into like a twenty pepsi bottle or something,
Speaker 1: you know, and I just took off down the creek,
Speaker 1: walking walking, walking, just dragging that scent drag down the creek,
Speaker 1: and I drug it all the way until this valley
Speaker 1: opened up and where two other valleys met, and I
Speaker 1: made a big loop and I probably went half a
Speaker 1: mile one direction, but I got the scent out of
Speaker 1: that valley, right. I poured the scent out, you know,
Speaker 1: poor slung the oil around and then I came back.
Speaker 1: So I left to spig drag within a day. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So there's my tip. Uh for starting a bait is Greece,
Speaker 1: but you could do a drag tip. I mean you
Speaker 1: basically covering point. Hey, I mean it's all about sent
Speaker 1: dispersal that has to happen. So I mean, like you say, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I had a buddy a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: said hey, I'm in a prime spot over here in Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: and I've had it for two weeks and nothing. I said,
Speaker 1: get you some gold rush and just walk out all
Speaker 1: the private parts that you can, just like you said,
Speaker 1: with the rag or sling it here and there. And
Speaker 1: within three days he had multiple bears on the bait.
Speaker 1: So get out away from your bait. Yeah. Yeah, Sometimes
Speaker 1: I think sent a bait site can kind of depend
Speaker 1: up on where it's at, and you may be limited
Speaker 1: on where you can put it, so you may not
Speaker 1: build put it on top of a mountain. You may
Speaker 1: have to put it down the lower or something. And
Speaker 1: it kind of kind of holds in until there's a
Speaker 1: weather change. Sometimes a weather change we'll bring in bears.
Speaker 1: Remember a real good bear hunter down where I'm from.
Speaker 1: He he always said, Man, I'm waiting for a north wind.
Speaker 1: He said, as soon as I get a north wind,
Speaker 1: half of my baits will just turn on. I mean,
Speaker 1: but it's about scent distribution. But you can cheat that.
Speaker 1: You can cheat that with a drag because you can
Speaker 1: take your scent to another place. I want to come
Speaker 1: back and say another we'll do it. Go ahead, now
Speaker 1: you're gonna take Yeah, if you're gonna open up new
Speaker 1: place and you do have bears coming in, don't go
Speaker 1: in and put together a ladder stand. You know, not
Speaker 1: there now. I mean, if you feel like that there's
Speaker 1: a good chance there's gonna be bears there, go ahead
Speaker 1: and have your set up ready, and don't come back
Speaker 1: in there and tinker around setting up staying and scrinned
Speaker 1: tree steps, doing this, this and this, that's the most
Speaker 1: unnatural thing you could do, right, low pressure? Low pressure. Ye,
Speaker 1: well we're gonna talk. I want to talk about that.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about one one more thing after this,
Speaker 1: and that'll be hunting strategy. But what's your tip for
Speaker 1: starting a bait? You don't want to preach the choir,
Speaker 1: same thing, the scent, the fryer oil is key. I
Speaker 1: think I don't think you can have a successful bait
Speaker 1: period if you don't have the call leuer there. Have
Speaker 1: you ever done a burn? I have done, like a
Speaker 1: bacon burn, honey burn, stuff like that. You think it
Speaker 1: did much? You know it probably did, but it's just
Speaker 1: a lot of hassle. It's something I don't like to
Speaker 1: hassle with. It's just like he was talking about what
Speaker 1: the rhyme was talking about with the stands. I don't
Speaker 1: want to go in there ten days before season, after
Speaker 1: bear has been coming, and spend two hours there assemble
Speaker 1: and stand trying to figure out what tree you put in.
Speaker 1: I want it all figured out. Here's a tip when
Speaker 1: you put your bait out, when you're picking a location,
Speaker 1: make sure that you can get everything done initially that
Speaker 1: you want done to be ready to hunt. All you
Speaker 1: gotta do is go back in there in bait. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I know that there's times where like last year,
Speaker 1: last minute, I had to throw the red Nick Gilly
Speaker 1: blind in there because the wind was it was terrible
Speaker 1: east wind, and uh, I had to do something to
Speaker 1: build hunks. My stand wouldn't work. I was out of
Speaker 1: options at the point. So it worked. It worked. You
Speaker 1: kill the good bear last year and it worked. Yep,
Speaker 1: my Candice did. Actually you know, uh, we had that
Speaker 1: bad cold front coming and all that rain. It just
Speaker 1: kind of shut the bait down. But yes, she took
Speaker 1: a nice twounds. You took a pretty good one the
Speaker 1: year before though, Oh yeah, very yeah yeah. Color Chocolate
Speaker 1: Bear nineteen and four sixteen. Yeah, um, real quick, let's
Speaker 1: talk about let's talk about hunt strategy and tell I'll
Speaker 1: tell mine first. The way that I handle a bait
Speaker 1: is I want that bait to be a safe placed
Speaker 1: for that bear, and I want to be predictable. If
Speaker 1: you are predictable, the bears will be predictable. I will. Now,
Speaker 1: this is best case scenario and and you guys may
Speaker 1: do different stuff than this, but I don't ever go
Speaker 1: into a bait in the evening time, like during peak
Speaker 1: feeding hours, like I will rather. I would rather let
Speaker 1: a bait go dry then drive into a bait at
Speaker 1: seven o'clock at night and bump bears off of it.
Speaker 1: That's just the way I do it, um. And so
Speaker 1: I want to if if I'm predictable, the bears are predictable.
Speaker 1: If the bears are always thinking, is that guy you're not?
Speaker 1: The bears know that there's a human coming in here.
Speaker 1: We drive our trucks trap to the bait, We leave
Speaker 1: our scent like they know, even big bears. You know,
Speaker 1: last year I kill a five pound bear in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: He absolutely knew I was there. He was out there
Speaker 1: listening to me, you know, when I was unloading my truck.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think he was eighty yards out there,
Speaker 1: but I mean he was probably across the valley over
Speaker 1: on the ridge where he knew what was going on
Speaker 1: very much so. And he I wanted him to trust
Speaker 1: me like clockwork, And if I broke that trust, then
Speaker 1: his trust breaks, and all of a sudden he is wary.
Speaker 1: So I want him to feel totally comfortable coming in
Speaker 1: there in the evening, in the daytime and not be
Speaker 1: afraid that I'm gonna drive in, or I'm gonna sneak in,
Speaker 1: or I'm gonna slip in. What what I like to do.
Speaker 1: And I think this has been key for my success
Speaker 1: over bait has been because a lot of people ask
Speaker 1: what do you do on the day you hunt? Because
Speaker 1: a lot of guys bait on the day they hunt,
Speaker 1: like drive into the bait and then leave a hunter
Speaker 1: and then leap go out keep it. That's not a
Speaker 1: bad thing. I wouldn't say it's best practice though, to me,
Speaker 1: best practice what I've seen is I've also well two things.
Speaker 1: I find that the day after you bait is when
Speaker 1: a lot of those big bears come in in the daytime.
Speaker 1: If I'm in there at one o'clock in the afternoon
Speaker 1: putting out bait, they show up after dark. A lot
Speaker 1: of times the big ones show up after dark. Now
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about two pound bears. He may be
Speaker 1: licking the barrel while you're still in sight driving away.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the big ones. I find that the
Speaker 1: day after you bait is when they are happiest can
Speaker 1: be because there's a ton of good bait, a lot
Speaker 1: of variety, and you've been gone for a long time.
Speaker 1: So I baited the day before season. In the day
Speaker 1: of season, I slip in like a ninja, and I
Speaker 1: don't want him to think I'm there. That's exactly how
Speaker 1: I do it. You know. Uh, some of these guys
Speaker 1: want to get in on the bait before daylight. It's
Speaker 1: it's tough. Yeah, I don't. You don't want to go
Speaker 1: on evenings. That's the probably the biggest thing that people
Speaker 1: And well, I want you to finish your To go
Speaker 1: walking in with a flashlight knowing there's bears in the areas,
Speaker 1: one of the most unnatural things you could do. If
Speaker 1: you're gonna the mornings, why not wait until daylight, ease
Speaker 1: down to it. And if there was a shooter bear
Speaker 1: on the bait, I mean you could put you can
Speaker 1: potentially get a shot, or you could just back off,
Speaker 1: but you know and slip in the stand quiet. But
Speaker 1: you know, and you hunt the evening or the afternoon.
Speaker 1: You know, according to what your cameras are telling you.
Speaker 1: When I get out of the tree, I shimmy down quiet.
Speaker 1: I do not turn on a tough flashlight till I'm
Speaker 1: a long ways from the bait. People say, well, it's unnerving,
Speaker 1: maybe a little bit. But you know, if you've done
Speaker 1: it for a while, you know how it is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know so that I knew you felt that way.
Speaker 1: Now what you just said. I talked a guy this week,
Speaker 1: Lee Walt. He I'm gonna have lead listening to this.
Speaker 1: He'll do it. He got a he got a spot
Speaker 1: up here that he can bait. And he was just like,
Speaker 1: what do I do? And uh? And I gave him
Speaker 1: a speed old about what to do. And he said,
Speaker 1: should we hunt mornings? And because he's hunting with me
Speaker 1: before and we only hunted eat, well, now we hunted mornings.
Speaker 1: He knows I don't like hunting mornings. And I said,
Speaker 1: it all matters what your goals are. I said, if
Speaker 1: you've got a five pound bear coming in there every evening,
Speaker 1: don't hunt the morning because you're gonna bump him. Because
Speaker 1: if if the thing about this trust thing is that
Speaker 1: if you're slip, if there's a human slipping in there
Speaker 1: on the opening day at an unnatural time and you
Speaker 1: inadvertently bumped that five hundred pound bear, you've broke that
Speaker 1: trust big time, even worse than driving in on him.
Speaker 1: And more than likely it's not a mature bears first rodeo,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, in these parts because they visit lots
Speaker 1: of different baits up. So I told him, I said,
Speaker 1: if you just want to kill a bear, you could
Speaker 1: probably kill one in the morning, to slip in after
Speaker 1: daylight with a good wind if you can, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, call, call and trying probably kill one. But
Speaker 1: I said, if you had a five pounder coming in there,
Speaker 1: don't just don't even hunt. Just sleep in and get
Speaker 1: in there at two o'clock in the afternoon when no
Speaker 1: bears are there for sure, and you can get in clean.
Speaker 1: So what do you think, Jason, You know I've got
Speaker 1: mixed for that, and that's good. Tell me how you've
Speaker 1: got Is my experience on the old faithful bait is
Speaker 1: I drive right to the bait, and I'm only able
Speaker 1: to bait Saturdays and Wednesdays. Well, on Wednesdays, I'm driving
Speaker 1: long ways from work. So I roll in there probably
Speaker 1: ten o'clock on Saturday's midday and I'll put out a
Speaker 1: lot of bait. And uh. And like you guys said that,
Speaker 1: the day after a baiting is usually the hot day.
Speaker 1: That's usually when most of the bears are gonna pound
Speaker 1: the baits. There's fresh bait there. A lot of times
Speaker 1: they've been out for a day and they're coming to
Speaker 1: check and they've fresh sitting there, but in the evening,
Speaker 1: I'm not getting there until six or six thirty afternoon.
Speaker 1: That I'm glad you said that, because I don't want
Speaker 1: to create a doctrine. I know there's other ways to
Speaker 1: do it than the way, and Ryan and I have
Speaker 1: talked so much, like and I've learned a ton from Ryan.
Speaker 1: We kind of have this ideal doctrine of baiting bears.
Speaker 1: That's part of the reason I wanted you to come,
Speaker 1: because I knew. I mean, like you're you're you're having
Speaker 1: to work and then go bait after work, so you're
Speaker 1: getting in there at six o'clock. I'm driving up there
Speaker 1: at six o'clock bumping a giant bear off the bait
Speaker 1: and leaving, and on the camera forty five minutes later,
Speaker 1: there's either that bear back or another giant. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just it's and so it's working for you, it
Speaker 1: works for me. I would prefer I'm the same way
Speaker 1: as use guys before the day of the opening of
Speaker 1: the season. I want to have it bait it up
Speaker 1: the day before though, I mean that's what I prefer.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go in there and bait it
Speaker 1: that day and then go hunt it. I want to
Speaker 1: be in there. If it opens on a Saturday, I'm
Speaker 1: going Friday. I'm loading the heck out of it Friday evening.
Speaker 1: Some of those bears will come at night, but the
Speaker 1: majority of them are gonna come during the day or
Speaker 1: that next day because that's when it's prime and all
Speaker 1: the fresh scents gotten out there. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I used to hunt mornings quite a bit, and I
Speaker 1: kill two of my biggest bears in the morning, did
Speaker 1: you really My very first bear right after daylight, drove
Speaker 1: the truck up there, we got out, got in the stands,
Speaker 1: my buddy drove it down and at daylight I killed
Speaker 1: a nineteen and a half inch four pounder, first bear
Speaker 1: I ever killed. Yeah, giant. And uh, but I will
Speaker 1: tell another story, is I had a friend dropped me
Speaker 1: off at that bait at five forty five in the morning,
Speaker 1: cause I want to get in there early because a
Speaker 1: lot of times there are a lot of my bears
Speaker 1: are hitting my bait in the morning time, and you know,
Speaker 1: just like seven o'clock, eight thirty to ten, right in there.
Speaker 1: I get a lot of all day action, but it
Speaker 1: could have to do with where your baits at right
Speaker 1: if somebody else may not be getting that right. It's
Speaker 1: a good location and they're there and they're just visiting
Speaker 1: it all day and there's multiple bears there. I had
Speaker 1: a friend dropped me off at five forty five in
Speaker 1: the morning. I had my little led headlight on my
Speaker 1: head and as he's driving the a t V off,
Speaker 1: I'm in the stand and I can still see his
Speaker 1: headlights going off the hill and I turned my light
Speaker 1: hits that bait site and there is a giant standing
Speaker 1: in the bait. Wow, literally ten minutes after he dropped
Speaker 1: me off, and I had to sit there with that
Speaker 1: bear in the bait until it got daylight. And he
Speaker 1: left before it was shooting light. So but that and
Speaker 1: at that point I was like, you know, I feel
Speaker 1: like after that because see he he came right in
Speaker 1: stood there for a few minutes. Well, I mean like,
Speaker 1: did were you able to kill that bear? No? No,
Speaker 1: he he left. I was down to uh there there
Speaker 1: was a hill, There's a big hill to my east
Speaker 1: and the sun was coming up in the stage really
Speaker 1: dark even on top of the mount. I guess my
Speaker 1: question is more what did he do after that? Like
Speaker 1: in terms of what did he keep coming in the daytime?
Speaker 1: Because I mean what you just described is what we're saying.
Speaker 1: Don't do you know, I don't know because they end
Speaker 1: up killing a nice chocolate bear that evening. Okay, Well
Speaker 1: that's a good answer. Yeah, So you don't know. You
Speaker 1: don't know if he if he if you're returned and
Speaker 1: that evening, okay. You know, everybody has their trial and
Speaker 1: there in their certain ways to to do, you know,
Speaker 1: but you know his baits side, the bears are gonna
Speaker 1: act different than mine. You know what I baited up
Speaker 1: in this area. You know, these bears were totally different
Speaker 1: the way they acted down in the South. So it
Speaker 1: was strange. But a guy's just gotta a guy's gotta
Speaker 1: find a way to have success and just stick with
Speaker 1: a plan. And I think that's what we've all done,
Speaker 1: is you just gotta stick with a plan, and you
Speaker 1: gotta work hard, and you gotta think it through and
Speaker 1: you gotta you just gotta think about these things. If
Speaker 1: nothing else, this is gonna get people thinking and everybody's
Speaker 1: working with a different scenario like you're working with a
Speaker 1: deal where you don't you know, Ryan and I work
Speaker 1: for ourselves, so we can do kind of what we want,
Speaker 1: and that's a big factor. Um. But most people are
Speaker 1: having to you know, might have to go in the
Speaker 1: evening time. Well if you go in the evening time
Speaker 1: to be consistent, you know, um. And anyway, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of variables. And ultimately, I think what I'd like
Speaker 1: to say is that it's harder than most people think
Speaker 1: to kill a bear over bait, especially a big one.
Speaker 1: I mean, you gotta do a lot of things right
Speaker 1: to kill a big bear overbait. Um. And you've you know,
Speaker 1: like here in Arkansas. I've actually never killed a big
Speaker 1: bear overbait in Arkansas. It's really tough and and and
Speaker 1: part of that's not that's kind of cheat and not
Speaker 1: totally fair. Didn't tell the whole story. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: baited all these years, and I've helped a lot of
Speaker 1: people kill bears a lot of times. My kids are
Speaker 1: the priority of what I'm trying to do. Um. And
Speaker 1: then I've focused my other attention and now in Oklahoma
Speaker 1: I have and it's a different story. It's just a
Speaker 1: different story. I got better places over there. Than I
Speaker 1: do here. Um, And anyway, I say that to say,
Speaker 1: it's not easy. We're talking and like it's just it's
Speaker 1: just easy. My my places in Arkansas have gotten worse
Speaker 1: actually over the last five years. Yeah. We just five
Speaker 1: years ago when there was a time when I was
Speaker 1: I wasn't guiding, but we were auctioning a hunt off
Speaker 1: for the association. We put people on big bears for
Speaker 1: several years in a row that they should have killed
Speaker 1: big ones on open day and they didn't. Um. But
Speaker 1: I just say it's hard, That's what I say. I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of some people don't understand. And I
Speaker 1: think I'll do a preamble intro to this here. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna talk about the fair chase aspects of baiting hunting
Speaker 1: over bait, because it's a it's a ton of work.
Speaker 1: It's you know, the dream is free, the hustle is
Speaker 1: sold separately. As they say, well, um, closing thoughts going once,
Speaker 1: If you're gonna have hunt bear mature bears, it's it's
Speaker 1: like a marriage. You've gotta have desire and effort, you know,
Speaker 1: and that combined you'll be more successful. Also, a lot
Speaker 1: of sweat equity involved with baiting Bears hardcore. Absolutely don't
Speaker 1: get out there and get good locations, get good basic
Speaker 1: and absolutely put the work in. You want good results,
Speaker 1: you gotta put in the work. Otherwise, you know, you
Speaker 1: can't just take shortcuts. Full effort, full effort, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: keep the wild places wild, because that's where the bears
Speaker 1: will