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Speaker 1: Outrageously Dependable. My name is Clay Nucleman. I'm the host
Speaker 1: of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your
Speaker 1: host into the world of hunting the icon of the
Speaker 1: North American wilderness. Better. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation,
Speaker 1: who will also bring you into some of the wildest
Speaker 1: country on the planet chasing the battery. If I'm not
Speaker 1: back in ten minutes, I want you to get in
Speaker 1: the driver's cy to this truck and I want you
Speaker 1: to drive to this truck runs out of gas, and
Speaker 1: when the police come and pick you up, you tell
Speaker 1: that your father and his mule are dead your mother.
Speaker 1: On March fifteen, I had the opportunity to speak at
Speaker 1: a back Country Hunters and Anglers storytelling event in Springfield, Missouri.
Speaker 1: This podcast is gonna be the stories that I told
Speaker 1: that that event. The stories lasted about forty five minutes.
Speaker 1: I think that you're gonna enjoy this podcast. You'll also
Speaker 1: be able to watch the actual live event on the
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel. You'll be able to go
Speaker 1: to our channel and we're gonna split the stories up
Speaker 1: in four different videos in the next ten days or
Speaker 1: so that are gonna come out and they'll be titled
Speaker 1: as different stories, so you'll actually be able to watch
Speaker 1: this on the Bear Hunting Magazine YouTube channel. There's something
Speaker 1: really special about oral traditions where we get to tell stories.
Speaker 1: It's it's different than any other medium, and it's obviously
Speaker 1: the oldest medium for human to relay a story. So
Speaker 1: much information is inside of the spoken word, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna enjoy this, so check it out. Also, guys, we
Speaker 1: want to let you know that we now have all
Speaker 1: of our podcast, the Bear Hunting Magazine podcasts on our
Speaker 1: website bear hyphen hunting dot com. That's bare dash Hunting
Speaker 1: dot com. So you can now go to our website
Speaker 1: and you'll see a description of all the podcasts, you'll
Speaker 1: see photographs from the podcast, and you can actually listen
Speaker 1: to the podcast from our website. While you're there, you
Speaker 1: might as well pick up one of our awesome custom
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine t shirts. There we go, give this
Speaker 1: guy one? Yes, all right, great, So I'm from Arkansas.
Speaker 1: How many? How many people are from Arkansas? All right?
Speaker 1: Where are you guys from Benville? Okay? All right, all right,
Speaker 1: Well it's great to be here in Missouri. I am.
Speaker 1: I am a seventh generation ar Kansen. So it's it's
Speaker 1: it's cool to come to Missouri and hear you guys
Speaker 1: talking about like I sent some like Missouri pride, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's good because I know we do have that.
Speaker 1: We do have some pride down in Arkansas. To um
Speaker 1: So tonight, what I want to do is I want
Speaker 1: to tell you four stories, four short stories that all
Speaker 1: revolve around basically the same piece of public land. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna time myself. This is my second sprite of
Speaker 1: the night. Um So, who knows what's gonna happen here?
Speaker 1: But uh, before I tell you these stories about public
Speaker 1: land in Arkansas, let me tell you we've got We've
Speaker 1: got two point two million acres of national forest and Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and that doesn't even count all the w Mays and
Speaker 1: all the different other places that we can hunt. We
Speaker 1: have two point two million acres of national for us,
Speaker 1: We've got eleven wilderness areas in Arkansas, and Uh, I
Speaker 1: grew up in a town any direction that I could
Speaker 1: drive within ten minutes, I was in massive national forest
Speaker 1: and that truly did impact my life in a major way.
Speaker 1: I mean, uh, a little Leopold said that wilderness in
Speaker 1: the areas that we live actually forge our civilization and culture.
Speaker 1: And it's true wilderness and the in the geographic landscapes
Speaker 1: in which we live inform inform our culture in a
Speaker 1: significant way. And what's awesome about being a hunter and
Speaker 1: being a contosseur of wild places in twenty nineteen is
Speaker 1: that the world is becoming increasingly urbanized and increasingly concrete ized,
Speaker 1: and increasingly distant from the lie style that all of
Speaker 1: us represent. And I think it's our mission to represent
Speaker 1: that lifestyle with deep levels of integrity, honor, and passion.
Speaker 1: And to me, what I even have wanted to do
Speaker 1: since I was a kid, was I saw these I
Speaker 1: saw this culture that I grew up in, and I
Speaker 1: was powerfully impacted by these men that I deeply respected
Speaker 1: that there were these mountain hunters that that weren't trying
Speaker 1: to put Instagram posts up, they were hunting to put
Speaker 1: food on the table. They were hunting for they were
Speaker 1: they were hunting for horns too, but they were they
Speaker 1: they were just these people I respected and I wanted
Speaker 1: my life, and part part of what I do inside
Speaker 1: of media, I feel like it's bring dignity to that lifestyle.
Speaker 1: And I think that's really probably at the heart I
Speaker 1: hope of most of you guys, is to bring dig
Speaker 1: dignity to the lifestyle that we represent. So now for
Speaker 1: the fun stuff. I'm gonna tell you four stories. Two
Speaker 1: of them are funny, I'm gonna need you to laugh, Okay,
Speaker 1: one of them is terrifying. One of them is an
Speaker 1: epic hunting story that will end with So the first First,
Speaker 1: all these stories come in different so there's different chronological order. Okay.
Speaker 1: So they they happened in the same place, but they
Speaker 1: didn't have So the chronology of it is, uh, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be We're gonna skip around here. So the first
Speaker 1: one is in is when I started hunting off my
Speaker 1: own mules in backcountry in Arkansas. And I will tell you, jeez,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things you gotta talk about. I
Speaker 1: gotta talk to you about hunting ethics first, Okay, My
Speaker 1: dad taught me this and live this his whole life. Okay.
Speaker 1: It's when another man shares his stuff with you where
Speaker 1: he hunts on public land, you were therefore obligated for
Speaker 1: the rest of your life to never set foot there.
Speaker 1: I hunt public land in Arkansas, and so I mean,
Speaker 1: I know, all you Godfair and Missourian's probably are gonna
Speaker 1: be jealous, but you can never go there now because
Speaker 1: I've told you. Now, these guys from Arkansas, you know
Speaker 1: you you can hunt your lands just as you did before. Okay,
Speaker 1: but uh so, y'all y'all stay up here. It sounds
Speaker 1: like y'all got lots of public land up here. But
Speaker 1: you know, b h A. People are really funny. It's
Speaker 1: like we're like public lands. Public lands were like hashtag
Speaker 1: and public lands. And as soon as somebody says where
Speaker 1: do you hunt, You're like, man, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: know where I hunt. It's true, it's true. I'm the
Speaker 1: same way, like, go enjoy your public lands, not mine.
Speaker 1: It's true. So four stories, they all came from the
Speaker 1: same place. First of one, excuse me. We started We
Speaker 1: started hunting with our own mules. I took my at
Speaker 1: the time ten year old son. His name is Bear
Speaker 1: Baron Newcomb. Took Baron Newcomb and we took our mule,
Speaker 1: packed it back into this wilderness, and we had it
Speaker 1: was the first time we'd used this mule in this context.
Speaker 1: And we we hiked to the top of this mountain
Speaker 1: with a mule, tethered the mule to a treat we
Speaker 1: went off hunting. We hunted for six hours. I marked
Speaker 1: on my on my GPS where the mule was at.
Speaker 1: I'd come back at dark, and we timed our We
Speaker 1: timed our exit from where we hunted to get back
Speaker 1: to the mule just before dark, and then from the mule,
Speaker 1: we would then traverse down the mountain back to our
Speaker 1: our camp where we were hunting, which was way off
Speaker 1: the road too. We get to where the mule was
Speaker 1: supposed to be, The mule was not there, mule was gone.
Speaker 1: The lead rope was still tied to the tree, and
Speaker 1: the lead rope was broken half and and and I
Speaker 1: picked up the lead rope and looked at it, and
Speaker 1: it it actually had it actually had been chewed by
Speaker 1: the mule. So this was news to me that a
Speaker 1: mule would chew a lead rope. So we're up on
Speaker 1: the side of the mountain. We're in a we're in
Speaker 1: a wilderness sary of federal wilderness sary, you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: I tell my son Bear, I say, hopefully the mule
Speaker 1: went back down to our camp where we'd stayed the
Speaker 1: night before. So I pick up this like fifty pounds
Speaker 1: saddle because I unsaddled the mule all the saddle back.
Speaker 1: Pick up this fifty pounds saddle, have our hunting gear,
Speaker 1: and we walk off down the mountain. We get to
Speaker 1: the body, We get to our camp and no mule
Speaker 1: at the camp. We had parked our truck on a
Speaker 1: two lane Arkansas highway. I envisioned, so my truck and
Speaker 1: trailer was on this highway and we came in from there.
Speaker 1: There's no trails or anything. We just went in from there.
Speaker 1: So I envisioned the mule being back at my truck, like,
Speaker 1: you know, that's the next place. Maybe the mule has gone.
Speaker 1: And then it's dark and it's night. We're wanting to
Speaker 1: hunt the next day. We don't want to go back
Speaker 1: out to the truck. But I envisioned the mule, uh,
Speaker 1: on the side of the highway by my trailer with
Speaker 1: a broken lead rope, and I envisioned someone calling the sheriff,
Speaker 1: the sheriff running the tags on my trailer and then
Speaker 1: calling my wife is right here. This is missing Newcomb.
Speaker 1: I've so much for having got This is my Lafe's message. Also,
Speaker 1: this is my friend Brett Reeves. Is his birthday? Uh
Speaker 1: it was Brett reis oudaya So so I envisioned the
Speaker 1: sheriff running tags on my truck and calling my wife
Speaker 1: and saying, your husband is dead. So I couldn't let
Speaker 1: that happen. There was no cell coverage or anything. And
Speaker 1: so we come off the mountain. To me in Bear,
Speaker 1: come off the mountain, as it was the closest civilization
Speaker 1: to where we were was a small, small county line bar. Okay,
Speaker 1: in this bar. This was the closest civilization any direction.
Speaker 1: There's no reason for this bar to be there except
Speaker 1: for it was a county line separating a dry county.
Speaker 1: You guys know that kind of bar. I don't know
Speaker 1: that kind of bar. I I don't go to those places.
Speaker 1: Ironic that I'm even here. Uh but uh so the
Speaker 1: closest place was this bar. I go, So, I say, Bear,
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to go to this bar. I wanted
Speaker 1: to leave them my phone number so that when somebody
Speaker 1: was driving down the road saw a mule with a
Speaker 1: broken lead rope, they'd probably stop the next place and
Speaker 1: maybe say, hey, there's a mule out here on the road,
Speaker 1: you know. So I pull up to this bar. It's
Speaker 1: a Saturday night County Line bar, and uh. I pull
Speaker 1: up and I've got my ten year old son with me,
Speaker 1: and I turned my son and I say, son, I'm
Speaker 1: about to go into this bar. If I'm not back
Speaker 1: in ten minutes, I want you to get in the
Speaker 1: driver's seat of this truck and I want you to
Speaker 1: drive to this truck runs out of gas, and when
Speaker 1: the police come and pick you up, you tell him
Speaker 1: that your father and his mule are dead. I know
Speaker 1: your mother is. This is a rough place. This is
Speaker 1: a rough bar, Saturday night, Saturday night. I'm decked out
Speaker 1: in full first light first light fusion camo. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is not standard real tree stuff like this is like
Speaker 1: unaccepted in most places in Arkansas. I've got my like
Speaker 1: skinny suspenders on, got my dark framed glass has, got
Speaker 1: my five panel hat on. I'm really not hampster at all.
Speaker 1: I'm really just the redneck, but in their mind they
Speaker 1: might have perceived that way. So I walk into the bar,
Speaker 1: and if it had been like a spaghetti Western, it
Speaker 1: would have been like, you know, the girl at the
Speaker 1: piano playing and like the bad guy from out of
Speaker 1: town that no one knows walks through the swinging doors
Speaker 1: and like everybody's just like and I get stopped. So
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened. I walk into the bar and
Speaker 1: there's like it's a it's small. I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: it's like a thirty by thirty room, you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: everybody turns and looks at me, and uh. And I've
Speaker 1: also just come off the mountain carrying all these packs.
Speaker 1: I'm sweaty, and what I come to the bar of
Speaker 1: music's loud. Everybody's looking at me. I waved to the
Speaker 1: bartender and I say, my name's Clay Nukem, and I
Speaker 1: lost my mule on the mountain, and I want to
Speaker 1: leave my phone number here with you in case somebody
Speaker 1: drives by, so they can, you know, call me. And
Speaker 1: and so I'm yelling because the music is loud, okay,
Speaker 1: and everybody in the bar looks down at me. The
Speaker 1: bartender can't hear me, he said what and so I
Speaker 1: yell it again. My name's Clay Nukem. And I lost
Speaker 1: my mule on the mountain. And by this time, everybody
Speaker 1: in the bar is really intent on what I'm you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're key, don't what I'm doing. So I hear
Speaker 1: somebody from down here say, has you have you ever
Speaker 1: been up there before that mule? And I go, now,
Speaker 1: it's our first time with the mule. Now I knew
Speaker 1: the mountain very well. And he in in the bar
Speaker 1: rubs into laughter. You never get that mule back, that's
Speaker 1: what they said, so and I agreed with him. Um,
Speaker 1: I didn't know then. I'm sitting at the bar. They're
Speaker 1: not sitting. I'm just standing there and a and a
Speaker 1: man stands up from down at the end of the bar,
Speaker 1: and you can tell he is glassy eyed, little wobbly,
Speaker 1: and he said, what's your name? And I turned to
Speaker 1: him and I say, Clay and Nucm. And he says,
Speaker 1: is your mother Judy Knogan? And I stood there and
Speaker 1: I wondered why this man knew my mother's name. And
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you a little bits for her about
Speaker 1: my mother. My mother Juju as we call her. She
Speaker 1: is the most God fearing value, just a woman of valor,
Speaker 1: woman of character, a woman of integrity, built the foundations
Speaker 1: of my life. And as this man called out her name,
Speaker 1: which was odd to me, my life stood before me
Speaker 1: like a house of cards. And I thought, what is
Speaker 1: this man going to say? Why does he know my mother?
Speaker 1: Lots of questions Rather th my mind, I envisioned many
Speaker 1: words that he might say. You know, I won't say
Speaker 1: what I thought he might say. And I say, I say, yeah,
Speaker 1: Judy Nugam is my mother. I didn't know if I
Speaker 1: was about to get in a fist fight. I mean,
Speaker 1: like it was hard to say what was about to happen.
Speaker 1: And then kind of a kind of a wobble like this,
Speaker 1: he goes, she's my teacher. That's exactly what he said.
Speaker 1: He said she's my teacher. He didn't say she was
Speaker 1: my teacher. He said she's my teacher. And my mother
Speaker 1: has been a school teacher at the public schools down
Speaker 1: in that part of Arkansas for like forty years. And
Speaker 1: this man had been taught by my mother when he
Speaker 1: was a first grader, and he was just like enamored
Speaker 1: with with Ms Newcom and he was just like so
Speaker 1: tickled to meet her son in a bar on a
Speaker 1: Saturday night. So we we I left in my number.
Speaker 1: I walked back out Barris. Fine, he's in the truck
Speaker 1: because all took place in under ten minutes. So he
Speaker 1: was still there. And uh, we walk out of there.
Speaker 1: And we come back the next day and I took
Speaker 1: my do my other daughter with me, and we actually
Speaker 1: went up there and the mule was at our camp.
Speaker 1: We saved our mule. End of story. Okay, that's story.
Speaker 1: One Switzer bar and uh they knew my mother, my
Speaker 1: sweet mother. Okay. Second story, exact same ridge and finger
Speaker 1: of the exact same mountain. The year was two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. It was the first time that my father
Speaker 1: and I had we we had actually had a guy
Speaker 1: pakistan with horses. It was before I had my own stock.
Speaker 1: And uh, we'd had a guy pack us back into
Speaker 1: this wilderness on horses. The very first day of our hunt. Uh,
Speaker 1: my dad was were bow hunting and my dad walked
Speaker 1: out from our camp. We had just separated. I mean
Speaker 1: the way we got there we set up camp. I
Speaker 1: went one way, he went another, and he was carrying
Speaker 1: his compound bow. He went and he he was not
Speaker 1: three yards our camp. He set his bow down on
Speaker 1: the ground to uh, go check a scrape. He walks
Speaker 1: over to a scrape, big, wide open woods. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like he was in a thicket, wide open woods, sets
Speaker 1: his bow down and when he turns back around, there's
Speaker 1: a bear sniff in his boat. Bear sniff in his boat.
Speaker 1: To this day, he swears that it crawled out of
Speaker 1: the ground and uh, he thinks the but the bear
Speaker 1: is gonna eat the strings off, you know, break the
Speaker 1: strings of the boat. And so he get out of
Speaker 1: here bear. You know, he's kind of freaked out a
Speaker 1: little bit. The bear runs off like twenty yards and
Speaker 1: stands there. He picked runs over and grabs his boat
Speaker 1: and in classic nucom fashion, draws his boat, shoots the bear,
Speaker 1: kills the bear dead. Yeah, so we've got a bear.
Speaker 1: On day one. When I come back, Dad's I killed
Speaker 1: the bear, and uh and in Arkansas we can hunt bear.
Speaker 1: And that's a whole another story that I can tell
Speaker 1: you about the retroduction Arkansas black Bear. But he killed
Speaker 1: a bear, and so Dad was like on this rant.
Speaker 1: So but on this camp, we still had five or
Speaker 1: six days of hunting left and Dad was all worked
Speaker 1: up about a bear getting in our camp while we
Speaker 1: were gone hunting. Okay, so all week, I mean we
Speaker 1: were like tying our our food up in trees and
Speaker 1: doing all this stuff. So it's the fifth day of
Speaker 1: the hunt. We've seen no more a sign of bear,
Speaker 1: and uh, fifth day of the hunt. It's the middle
Speaker 1: of the night, and it's one of these nights where
Speaker 1: you can just hear everything. It's something I coon hunt
Speaker 1: a lot, and there's some nights that are just so
Speaker 1: dead still, like you could hear a dog like a
Speaker 1: mile away, and another night's you just can't. This was
Speaker 1: the night where you could just hear everything. We had
Speaker 1: two tents set up. Dad was in one tent. I
Speaker 1: was in another tent. Or sometime early in the morning,
Speaker 1: a couple of hours before daylight, I hear I'm awoken
Speaker 1: by what what sounds like large footsteps, you know, but
Speaker 1: they're not continuous. I mean, anybody that's hunted much knows
Speaker 1: that big game the wait until it's different from a
Speaker 1: big game animal and a squirrel is that a big
Speaker 1: game animal just keeps walking. I mean a squirrel will
Speaker 1: make three hops and he'll sound like a squirrel, a
Speaker 1: big game animal. You know. Usually after about the fifth
Speaker 1: or sixth step, you're like, that is something that's not
Speaker 1: a squirrel. I knew it wasn't a squirrel as night,
Speaker 1: but I hear these steps and they're loud, they're familiar,
Speaker 1: and and they're way up on the mountain, and you know,
Speaker 1: you'd hear like three steps, and then you'd you'd be like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess it's nothing that you started to fall asleep,
Speaker 1: and then you'd hear him again, and they were coming.
Speaker 1: They were moving our direction, just ever so slowly. And
Speaker 1: then the footsteps began to be accompanied by a noise
Speaker 1: that at the time I was not familiar with. And
Speaker 1: it sounded just like this, it was like, and they'd wait.
Speaker 1: It kind of sounded like, uh, if you see crocodile
Speaker 1: dundee when he takes that that that boomerang and puts
Speaker 1: us on a rope, and he's like, who, that's probably
Speaker 1: more what it's like. I thought it was a bird
Speaker 1: at the time. I was like, that is a crazy bird.
Speaker 1: I don't know why that bird is here, but I've
Speaker 1: never heard it before. The footsteps continue, the noise continues,
Speaker 1: and finally my dad he calls me, Clay Baby. He said,
Speaker 1: Clay Baby, it's like, you know, we're supposed to be
Speaker 1: like death sleep. He goes, Clay Baby, do you hear that?
Speaker 1: You know this us I'm laying on my back in
Speaker 1: the tent. He's in the tent over there, and I go, yeah,
Speaker 1: I said, I've been listening to it for the last hour,
Speaker 1: and he goes, it was like when he confirmed that
Speaker 1: he had heard it, and when when I confirmed him
Speaker 1: that I had heard it, it was like a light
Speaker 1: switch went off in our heads. And Dad goes, Dad said,
Speaker 1: he said, just like this. He said, Clay Baby, we're
Speaker 1: being stalked. He didn't he didn't say it. He didn't
Speaker 1: say like we're being stops and he said like a
Speaker 1: Pentecostal preacher, he was like, we're being stalked. And he
Speaker 1: I mean, immediately, a massive rush of activity just happens
Speaker 1: in all of our tents, like I'm scrambling for a
Speaker 1: flashlight and Dad has well. The next scene, we get
Speaker 1: out of the tent about the same time, and I
Speaker 1: see my father is whitey Tidy's a white T shirt
Speaker 1: and he has a three fifty seven stainless steel Smith
Speaker 1: and Wesson five and a half inch barrel magnum in
Speaker 1: his hand. And I'm the light man, and I shined
Speaker 1: the light up into the woods, and what do we
Speaker 1: see but the fiery, devilish eyes of a Arkansas black bear.
Speaker 1: And this bear, if you've ever shined your lights on
Speaker 1: the bear at night, you can see nothing except eyes.
Speaker 1: That's all you see. His eyes. And this bear is
Speaker 1: like just out of our camp and he's been stalking us,
Speaker 1: you know. And my dad is all worked up and
Speaker 1: he and he I see him. I mean he's taking
Speaker 1: a bead, but he and he's like, I'm gonna kill
Speaker 1: that sucker. I mean, he was as mad as the bear,
Speaker 1: and and he is waving this gun. And I even
Speaker 1: at the young young man I was then, and I
Speaker 1: knew that my father had so much integrity that if
Speaker 1: he killed this bear, that we would spend the next
Speaker 1: two days, first of all getting the bear off the mountain,
Speaker 1: and then going to the game and fish and reporting ourselves.
Speaker 1: And they would put us in separate rooms and they
Speaker 1: would say what happened, and Dad would say that bear
Speaker 1: was trying to kill us, And then I could not
Speaker 1: tell a lie, and I would be like, man, it
Speaker 1: was probably just curious and so and so I begin
Speaker 1: a I feel like now, looking back, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: there's those moments in your life, like like like like
Speaker 1: he talked about, when you just realized like you're on
Speaker 1: a whole another level. I was like an FBI hostage negotiator,
Speaker 1: and I think I was fully closed. I don't really remember,
Speaker 1: but and I was just like, Dad, don't do it.
Speaker 1: Don't do it. Put the gun down. Dad put the
Speaker 1: gun down. And I'm like, I don't want to touch him,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. You never touch somebody that's
Speaker 1: in a state like this, But I was, I was.
Speaker 1: I feel like I was craps with a hand out
Speaker 1: like to swap the gun off it like swung my way.
Speaker 1: And I'm just like, Dad, don't do it. It's not
Speaker 1: worth it, man, And and he's he's just he's just
Speaker 1: wanting to squeeze that trigger. And finally, after what seemed
Speaker 1: like an hour stand off, I see the gun go down,
Speaker 1: and I see you can take a few steps back,
Speaker 1: and what does the bear do? The bear just disappears
Speaker 1: into the Arkansas night and we go back to sleep.
Speaker 1: So that's the story on the same piece of public
Speaker 1: ground that we lost our mule tonight. I had to
Speaker 1: talk my dad down. It almost killed the bear. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's that story. Okay, third story. We gotta keep
Speaker 1: moving here, I know. So the third story, This is
Speaker 1: a terrifying story. Those are the two funny stories. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a terrifying story. So on this same mountain,
Speaker 1: same mountains, same place. Public lands have influenced my life
Speaker 1: in massive ways. We bear hunted just this last year
Speaker 1: on top of this said mountain, there was a piece
Speaker 1: of private ground that was land locked by National Forest
Speaker 1: on four sides. No roads to it. Uh nothing, No.
Speaker 1: The only way to get to it was by folds
Speaker 1: to it. No way to get to it, but we
Speaker 1: had access to bait bears on it. So the only
Speaker 1: way to get bait back into this place. You couldn't
Speaker 1: take a four wheeler, couldn't use a hand glidder. If
Speaker 1: it's news to me, you can't use hand glidders. And
Speaker 1: Wildern series actually says that on the signs. Uh did
Speaker 1: anybody know that? Yeah? Yeah, put that on Instagram. Hey
Speaker 1: can with these handglaiders in the Wildern series. Um, So
Speaker 1: we we decided that this was gonna be an epic
Speaker 1: place to hunt bear, and so I decided I was
Speaker 1: gonna use my mules to pack in bear bait back
Speaker 1: on this mountain. It was an all day event to
Speaker 1: bait that site one time. Took me a full hard
Speaker 1: day of driving, two and a half hours, loading the
Speaker 1: mules up, loading the bait up, and we walked up
Speaker 1: the mountain. We led the mules up the mountain hour
Speaker 1: from the bottom of the mountain up to the top,
Speaker 1: off back down load the mules. Big deal. My daughter, River,
Speaker 1: it's tougher. I want to tell you this. She's fifteen
Speaker 1: years old and she's tougher, probably than every man in
Speaker 1: here except for Brent Reid's. And uh you're supposed to
Speaker 1: laugh at that. I mean, guy saying his daughters stuff.
Speaker 1: River is really a hunter. She's not. She's not like
Speaker 1: the girl that I just recruit because it's cute to
Speaker 1: have your daughter hunt like River Newcomb is a hunter.
Speaker 1: And uh I wanted to her to kill a bear
Speaker 1: on top of this mountain. And uh, so I was like,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna kill a bear, you're gonna do the
Speaker 1: work with me. And so we're gonna we're gonna start
Speaker 1: baiting these bears. We take the mules up the top
Speaker 1: of the mountain. Remember this is my terrifying story. We
Speaker 1: bait the bears um that day. Yeah, that was the
Speaker 1: first thing that the first day we went up there. Okay,
Speaker 1: the second time I went up there, there was another
Speaker 1: thing that happened. We're coming, so we we baked bears.
Speaker 1: We set up our cameras and everything. Again we're on
Speaker 1: private land. We're coming off the mountain now on public land.
Speaker 1: And I told River that she could ride my mule
Speaker 1: named Izzy, Uh, And I had rained Izzy, and she's
Speaker 1: a young mule, but she's really good, always been really
Speaker 1: safe with me. Um. And I put River on Izzy,
Speaker 1: and I said, why don't you ride down? Because we
Speaker 1: had one riding saddle and one sawbuck like pack saddle,
Speaker 1: and so I couldn't ride. Only one person ride. I'll
Speaker 1: let the river ride. Why don't you ride easy down
Speaker 1: the mountain. So we take off down the mountain and
Speaker 1: Iszy it's kind of just hot to trot literally no
Speaker 1: pun intended. And she she starts kind of trotting fast,
Speaker 1: and I see River kind of trying to get her
Speaker 1: to stop, and is he will stop and throw up
Speaker 1: her head, and I mean just kind of typical like
Speaker 1: young mule stuff. I don't think much about it. We
Speaker 1: keep going down the mountain, going down the mountain, and
Speaker 1: I mean this this mountain in many places, I mean
Speaker 1: it's like steep like a cow's face. It's just a
Speaker 1: rock pile. I mean it's not it's not like a
Speaker 1: rolling hill. This is like a rock pile. Anyway. At
Speaker 1: at some point, mule is he in the river and
Speaker 1: Izzy are like probably ten feet in front of and
Speaker 1: I see River. I see the mule start to trot
Speaker 1: and and as she's trotting, there's a limb about that
Speaker 1: big around that's looks like it's gonna hit River, just
Speaker 1: like right in the chest. And the mule is now running.
Speaker 1: And I see River lean off the mule like this
Speaker 1: to try to not get clotheslined by the by the
Speaker 1: by the by the limb. And as she does this,
Speaker 1: you know, the queue for that animal to move is
Speaker 1: is to squeeze, squeeze underneath it, not to kick, really,
Speaker 1: but just to squeeze. River squeezes, so she hangs on
Speaker 1: and the mule. That's a queue for the mule to go.
Speaker 1: And so the mule just goes, I mean just like
Speaker 1: turns into just like a straight gallop going down. I mean,
Speaker 1: it looked like man from snowy river stuff, you know.
Speaker 1: And they're going downhill and the river is now off
Speaker 1: the side of the mule and she's lost the rains
Speaker 1: and all I hear is my daughter, who's very tough,
Speaker 1: also very sweet, and my daughter. I hear her screaming
Speaker 1: in terror, and I see her totally out of control,
Speaker 1: just blowing down the mountain on this mule, as out
Speaker 1: of control, like a train wreck. I dropped the lead
Speaker 1: rope on my mule and just run after, just as
Speaker 1: fast as I can run. And they keep going until
Speaker 1: I can't see them, and they're totally out of sight.
Speaker 1: Now I'm just running, running, running river river whatever, you know.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to tell her what to do, and anyway,
Speaker 1: I break over kind of this just the my line
Speaker 1: of sight, and I see the mule standing down there,
Speaker 1: turning back looking at me, with no river on her.
Speaker 1: And I come over the top and I see my
Speaker 1: daughter sprawled out with her feet going up the mountain,
Speaker 1: her head down the mountain, and she's she's just laid out,
Speaker 1: and I this is my terrifying story. I really thought
Speaker 1: she could have been dead truly did. And in that moment,
Speaker 1: I also realized that it it was one of the stupidest
Speaker 1: things I've done as a as a father, my father
Speaker 1: took a lot of risks with us boys that paid
Speaker 1: off because we all lived. And I think those risks,
Speaker 1: those risks helped make us into the men that we are.
Speaker 1: But there were calculated risks and and this was just
Speaker 1: a mistake. I shouldn't have let her on that young
Speaker 1: mule going down the mountain. Going up would have been
Speaker 1: a different story. But I run to her and I
Speaker 1: jump on the ground beside her, and she's conscious, and
Speaker 1: I just begin to feel all over her body, you know,
Speaker 1: just like just like touching her, and I just think
Speaker 1: if she's busted or hurt, there would be a place
Speaker 1: where she's you know, where she shows pain. And I
Speaker 1: feel all over her body, feel and finally reached back
Speaker 1: around her neck, and that's really where I'm worried the most,
Speaker 1: you know, reached back to her neck, and uh, and
Speaker 1: she seems to be okay. I run my hand back
Speaker 1: around the back of her head and I pulled my
Speaker 1: hand out. In my hand is bloody, just covered in blood,
Speaker 1: and uh, And basically she busted her skull. And she
Speaker 1: didn't bust her skull, she busted she had how many
Speaker 1: stitches in her head? Fourteen stitches? You could her skull
Speaker 1: in the cut that was on the top of her head,
Speaker 1: and had a concussion, no broken bones, no broken neck,
Speaker 1: and you know, no cell coverage back where we're at.
Speaker 1: And uh, and so we immediately I'll tell exactly what
Speaker 1: I did, is I prayed, I thank God that she
Speaker 1: was still alive. And uh, and we gathered ourselves up
Speaker 1: and she hiked off the mountain. And uh, it was
Speaker 1: a It was a pivotal moment in her life though,
Speaker 1: because it was I always knew and if you know,
Speaker 1: I won't go into the details of rivers development process
Speaker 1: as a human, but she in some ways is too fearless,
Speaker 1: you know. And so as this event played out before me,
Speaker 1: I had been thinking that at some point in her life,
Speaker 1: she's gonna really be scared of something, because up at
Speaker 1: this point she hadn't been. And uh, I think this thing, Uh,
Speaker 1: this event did really put the fear of God in her.
Speaker 1: And uh it ended up being a moment that neither
Speaker 1: one of us will ever forget. We hiked off a
Speaker 1: mountain and went to the e r and you know,
Speaker 1: spent the whole day and it was a big deal
Speaker 1: and we're still paying for it. Um, but it was
Speaker 1: a significant moment. And and here's here's what I think though,
Speaker 1: is that that that day there were probably a lot
Speaker 1: of fifteen year old girls like playing on their phones
Speaker 1: or watching TV or I don't know what they were doing.
Speaker 1: But my daughter and I were on public land in
Speaker 1: a wild place in Arkansas having real life experiences that
Speaker 1: had some real some real, uh real potential consequences later.
Speaker 1: The sad, sad part of that story is later River
Speaker 1: went back in there and hunted. Ten days later, she
Speaker 1: was on the mountain hunting and uh and we let
Speaker 1: a giant uh color phase Arkansas black bear get away
Speaker 1: from us. That's another story. So that's my third terrifying story.
Speaker 1: Do you all have time for one more? That't tipe
Speaker 1: of one more? Okay? So the fourth story goes back
Speaker 1: to same exact mountain, same exact finger, the bare eighty
Speaker 1: and actually took place like three miles away, but on
Speaker 1: the same mountain. Um. This story takes place on the
Speaker 1: same finger that we lost the mule, the same finger
Speaker 1: that my dad, you know, I had to talk him
Speaker 1: down from the bear. Um it was and I had
Speaker 1: just acquired Bear Hunting Magazine. So what I do for
Speaker 1: a living is I published Bear Hunting magazine. Barny Magazine
Speaker 1: has been in print for twenty years. I've had the
Speaker 1: business for the last six years. Okay, Um. It was
Speaker 1: a major thing for me to acquire this business. It
Speaker 1: was not without massive risk. It was not what I mean.
Speaker 1: It was like jumping into a you know, jumping into
Speaker 1: a fire just to see if you can survive it,
Speaker 1: you know, and if it worked and you're in good shape.
Speaker 1: It was. I acquired the magazine and July I felt
Speaker 1: like that I got into it, I realized that I
Speaker 1: really didn't have enough money to do A small business
Speaker 1: takes a lot of money, even if you're passionate about something.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like I calculated I needed this much
Speaker 1: to get this thing running. It took more I was.
Speaker 1: I was frustrated. I didn't know if it was gonna work,
Speaker 1: and actually felt like what it felt like to me
Speaker 1: was that I had taken the handoff and I was
Speaker 1: just about to fumble the ball I had. So that
Speaker 1: was what was going on inside of me as a
Speaker 1: as a business owner, which is a big part of
Speaker 1: my life. Prior to this, I had made a goal
Speaker 1: that I wanted to kill a black bearry in the
Speaker 1: national forest without bait. I love hunting over bait and
Speaker 1: always will. But to me, like the sheep hunt of
Speaker 1: the South, is to kill bear in national forests, just
Speaker 1: just kill one, just one on one, hunting them like deer.
Speaker 1: And so I've made that my goal, and I can
Speaker 1: tell you there are very few people in Arkansas that
Speaker 1: consistently do that. Um and I had only met just
Speaker 1: I mean like one or two guys, and to this day,
Speaker 1: there's very few that consistently do that. It's just a
Speaker 1: difficult hunt. You have to be in a different state
Speaker 1: of mind. We are validated hunter sometimes. I think sometimes
Speaker 1: when game populations are so strong, like they are right
Speaker 1: now in North America, that it actually produces some softness
Speaker 1: inside of us, because we're validated by constantly seeing game
Speaker 1: every time we go and hunt. And if you're gonna
Speaker 1: hunt black bears in national forest in Arkansas, you cannot
Speaker 1: be validated by game sightings. I mean you hunt years
Speaker 1: and not see a bear. And that's true. Um and
Speaker 1: I had actually hunted a couple of years, and I've
Speaker 1: not even seen a bear in some of the best
Speaker 1: bear country in Arkansas. Their densities are just less than
Speaker 1: white tail. High whitetail densities forty five sixty year per
Speaker 1: square acre or per square mile, excuse me. High bear
Speaker 1: population in Arkansas is probably around one bear per square mile,
Speaker 1: so this is a low density animal. So I had
Speaker 1: set out to kill a bear on National Forest. I've
Speaker 1: been logging every time that I hunted, and uh, and
Speaker 1: up until that point, I had walked thirty two miles
Speaker 1: in National Forest in Arkansas before I was using mules
Speaker 1: and uh. It was the the last day of the
Speaker 1: Arkansas season, which the Arkansas season ran until November, last
Speaker 1: day of Arkansas season, and it was like the Saturday
Speaker 1: after Thanksgiving, and I had I had decided that I
Speaker 1: was gonna give one last hurrah, an all day hunt
Speaker 1: and National Forest hunting for bear. I decided to go
Speaker 1: back to this particular spot, which at the time I
Speaker 1: hadn't been to in several years. Now I had this
Speaker 1: you know, long standing history of hunting here, but it
Speaker 1: had actually been a couple of years since I've been
Speaker 1: up in this particular spot. But that the night before,
Speaker 1: I was just like, man, I'm gonna go back up there.
Speaker 1: So that morning, I've started off at the truck at daylight,
Speaker 1: and I like to do what I just called slip hunt,
Speaker 1: which is just get the wind right and just move.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you're hunting bear, you just you just
Speaker 1: gotta cover a ton of ground until you find one.
Speaker 1: Then once you find one, then you hunt him like
Speaker 1: a deer basically. And so I had walked thirty two
Speaker 1: miles cumulatively over the course of the last say two weeks,
Speaker 1: and had not seen well, I had seen one. I
Speaker 1: saw a sound of cub like three days before at
Speaker 1: a different spot, which was a massive wind. I get
Speaker 1: out of the truck across the creek, starts to get daylight,
Speaker 1: walk up the hill. I start seeing white oak akrings.
Speaker 1: So I've seen a lot of white oakacrings, which is
Speaker 1: not something that I had seen before on my and
Speaker 1: and all my journey, and and so I was like,
Speaker 1: this is a good sign. I immediately uh bumped the
Speaker 1: flock of gobblers. I see, you know, I hear look
Speaker 1: up and there's turkeys, Like, okay, cool turkeys. I see
Speaker 1: these turkeys go up the ridge. I kind of move in.
Speaker 1: I'm going the direction they're going. So I kind of
Speaker 1: go up by and I bumped a deer, I bumped
Speaker 1: a fawn in the dough, and they run right across
Speaker 1: in front of me, and I'm like, man, this is
Speaker 1: pretty good. There's some game on this finger. And that's
Speaker 1: another key that I found this in the in the
Speaker 1: late winter, especially in the big hardwoods of Arkansas, the
Speaker 1: game is pretty concentrated, whether it's food source. And so
Speaker 1: I was like, man, deer in turkey, that's cool, I'm
Speaker 1: after a bear. I didn't take another step after seeing
Speaker 1: that deer run out across from me, and man, you
Speaker 1: just don't see deer in the big woods of the
Speaker 1: Washington National Forest that much. Uh, you just don't see
Speaker 1: him that much. So I hadn't walked very far and
Speaker 1: I saw a big fresh pile of bear scat, I
Speaker 1: mean fresh, and I was like, bam, there is a
Speaker 1: bear on this ridge. There's game on this ridge. And
Speaker 1: I didn't plan to go back to the truck until dark,
Speaker 1: so I just said no, I was gonna walk, though,
Speaker 1: plan to walk all day. So I dressed real light.
Speaker 1: It was cold November thirty, but I dressed light didn't
Speaker 1: plan to hunt, didn't plan to sit still. So I
Speaker 1: walk on. Well, I knew there was a little saddle
Speaker 1: right up above where the bear scat was, and it's
Speaker 1: final day of the season. I couldn't come back tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And I just said, man, I'm gonna sit in that
Speaker 1: saddle all day long, just gonna sit there. And so
Speaker 1: I get up in this saddle and I sit there
Speaker 1: and the wind is swirling, the wind is hitting me
Speaker 1: in every direction, and I'm thinking, man, that bear has
Speaker 1: probably already smelled me, and he's probably already in the
Speaker 1: other county. Um. And I sit there for two hours,
Speaker 1: and I just get bone chilling cold because I didn't
Speaker 1: dress for sitting. And uh, about the time I got
Speaker 1: so cold i couldn't stand it, the wind shifted solid
Speaker 1: from the west, and I just I mean, as a
Speaker 1: when you're hunting like that, you're just constantly in tune
Speaker 1: with the wind constantly. And I noticed for about fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes the wind was hit me right in the side
Speaker 1: of the face. And so I thought, ma'am, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna get up and just walk into the wind right
Speaker 1: off the side of this ridge, just basically just see
Speaker 1: what I can see I was it was firearms season, okay,
Speaker 1: but I was actually carrying a muzzleloader. At the time.
Speaker 1: I didn't even have a I didn't even have a
Speaker 1: deer rifle. We grew up bow hunting and little muzzload hunting.
Speaker 1: So I had a muzzleloader. And uh, I walk off
Speaker 1: the side of this ridge and I get into a
Speaker 1: cluster of what in the wash tools they call um
Speaker 1: they call him um uh rock glaciers is what it is.
Speaker 1: It's remnants of when the Washtall mountains and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: down in the washtalls. It's remnis of when the Washing
Speaker 1: Tall mountains were as big as the Rockies and had
Speaker 1: huge rock slides that would come down from like avalanche shoots.
Speaker 1: And you still see these vast You'll you'll be in
Speaker 1: like big timber and then you'll walk into like a
Speaker 1: like a field, like a two acre field, and nothing
Speaker 1: but boulders as big as your car. It's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: You don't sit in the wash tool those arts. Those
Speaker 1: arts are limestone and totally different than the washtalls. You
Speaker 1: see that. I walked into this, this this uh rock
Speaker 1: glacier just kind of to see what it looked like
Speaker 1: and I was standing on top of a rock and
Speaker 1: I looked off down through the woods. The woods were
Speaker 1: no leaves on the trees, and I see what I
Speaker 1: think is the head of a bear. Hunters know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. You just see a flash of movement,
Speaker 1: and uh, you're just kind of what was that. I
Speaker 1: see what looked like two big ears stand up like
Speaker 1: this and then go back down. And I was like, man,
Speaker 1: that is a bear. And I turned and put the
Speaker 1: scope over where I saw this like dark blob, and
Speaker 1: I zoom the scope in, and man, there is a
Speaker 1: bear laying on a rock about sixty yards from me.
Speaker 1: As soon as I get the scope on him, I
Speaker 1: see him roll over. He's laying on his side and
Speaker 1: I see him roll over. I see his feet go
Speaker 1: up in there like this and turn over. The wind
Speaker 1: still hit me right in the face. It's too far
Speaker 1: for a shot. There's twigs and limbs and everything. So
Speaker 1: I start to just walk towards this bear. And I'm
Speaker 1: in a boulder field. There's some trees growing up in
Speaker 1: this one, and this one wasn't a real big one,
Speaker 1: and I just start taking steps, walking like walking on rocks,
Speaker 1: I mean, just in the wide open, pure sight. I
Speaker 1: mean this clear sight of this bear. But he's asleep. Uh,
Speaker 1: or he's at least he's laying down. And uh. Every
Speaker 1: time I take a step, I put the scope up
Speaker 1: and like, you know, kind of to have a shot,
Speaker 1: to have a shot. Can I see the vitals of
Speaker 1: this animal? Can I tell what it is? And anyway,
Speaker 1: I just keep creeping, keep creeping, keep creeping. Every time
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, man, I don't want to get any closer,
Speaker 1: because all this bear would have to do was just
Speaker 1: throw his head up and look see me, and he'd
Speaker 1: be gone and be a running shot or bad deal.
Speaker 1: So I just keep creeping, creeping, creeping, creeping, creeping, and
Speaker 1: every time I can't get a shot. Finally I'm within
Speaker 1: twenty yards of this bear. The wind is hitting me
Speaker 1: straight in the face, and I mean there's not a
Speaker 1: twig between us now. I mean he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: from here to get a little further than the cooler
Speaker 1: there and uh, and I just sit down and uh,
Speaker 1: and I can see this the top of this bear's head.
Speaker 1: He's laying on a big flat rock and he's got
Speaker 1: his head laid over the top of that rock. Are
Speaker 1: you okay with an epic hunting story that has a
Speaker 1: kill in it, and were okay with that. Okay, this
Speaker 1: bear was laying and he had his he had his
Speaker 1: head laid over this rock. And I now I'm twenty
Speaker 1: yards from this bear, and I believe that it is
Speaker 1: a two pound black bear. That that is what I knew,
Speaker 1: that this was a two pound black colored bear. I
Speaker 1: don't know if y'all know this, but we have color
Speaker 1: color face bears in Arkansas. So about they say upwards
Speaker 1: of our bears are not black, but they're cinnamon colored
Speaker 1: and can even be lighter than that chocolate colored. And uh,
Speaker 1: I perceived this to be a tuner pound black bear.
Speaker 1: And I did not care what it was. I was
Speaker 1: after the sheep of the Washtaw Mountains, which was a
Speaker 1: spot and stalk black bear, and I didn't care really
Speaker 1: how big it was. It was just a legal animal.
Speaker 1: And so I crouched down and I'm waiting, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: should I whistle at this bear? And this is where
Speaker 1: most hunters mess up stuff is that you know you
Speaker 1: you either you either take a chance and move too
Speaker 1: quick or you're not patient enough, and we all make mistakes.
Speaker 1: But so I didn't know if I should whistle at
Speaker 1: this bear and get him to stand up, or if
Speaker 1: I should just wait for him to stand up on
Speaker 1: his own, or what I should do. But I knew
Speaker 1: the wind wasn't gonna stay steady forever, but it had
Speaker 1: stayed steady this entire time. Hit me right in the
Speaker 1: face anyway. I finally look at this bear's head and
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, I can drive tax with this muzzleloader.
Speaker 1: And basically I just put the cross hairs right on
Speaker 1: the top of his head, squeezed the trigger, and the
Speaker 1: bear never flinched. I walked over to the bear, so
Speaker 1: I shot the bear. Okay, we're cool with that. Okay,
Speaker 1: got bear bear down. Shot the bear, shot the bear.
Speaker 1: Walked up to the bear, and I believe it's a
Speaker 1: two hundred pound black bear. I get up to it
Speaker 1: and it is a what we estimated to be a
Speaker 1: five hundred pound color phase Arkansas male black bear. It
Speaker 1: was a giant. It was. It was absolute giant. I
Speaker 1: had killed a bear in Canada a month before that
Speaker 1: weighed four d thirty five pounds on a scale, and
Speaker 1: when I walked up to that bear, my initial response
Speaker 1: was that bear weighs a hundred more pounds than the
Speaker 1: bear I killed last month that I weighed, and I
Speaker 1: mean it was a giant. It was a giant, and
Speaker 1: I was absolutely I mean I just couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: And the fact that was color phase, the spectacular animal.
Speaker 1: We ended up having at tooth age. And it was
Speaker 1: an eight year old bear, which that's what we want
Speaker 1: to take out as older mature males, that's what we're after.
Speaker 1: And it was it was incredible. We we I went
Speaker 1: off down the mountain, got my dad and five or
Speaker 1: six guys. We couldn't drive to the bear. We quartered
Speaker 1: it up and we hauled him off the mountain. And uh,
Speaker 1: here's the here's the whole point of this story is
Speaker 1: that when I walked up to that bear, and remember that,
Speaker 1: I was like in turmoil, young man who had just
Speaker 1: acquired a business, and I had no backup plan. I
Speaker 1: mean it's not like I had. I mean I really didn't.
Speaker 1: We put everything we had into this. There was no
Speaker 1: plan B. There was no one to bail us out.
Speaker 1: There was no trust fund from daddy. Uh. We this
Speaker 1: was what we put all our eggs in, and I
Speaker 1: was I felt like it was about to fumble when
Speaker 1: I walked up to that bear, I was not at
Speaker 1: the time. Uh well, let me preface a us, and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a deep man of faith. I believe that
Speaker 1: God is very active inside of our lives and wants
Speaker 1: to be And when I walked up to that bear,
Speaker 1: I just the deepest sensation of knowing that I've ever
Speaker 1: had in my life. I said out loud, I said,
Speaker 1: God is gonna help me. That's what I said. And
Speaker 1: I knew that that. It's like it encompassed like my
Speaker 1: whole life. It's like I saw my family, my business,
Speaker 1: because it's like I didn't deserve this. I hadn't worked,
Speaker 1: This wasn't a result of a calculated plan, even though
Speaker 1: I put in work. I had worked really hard. But
Speaker 1: I mean, this was supposed to be a tuner pound
Speaker 1: black bear, and it was a five plus pound color
Speaker 1: phase bear, and just the significance of it was very real.
Speaker 1: And from that moment on, I went back into my
Speaker 1: business and I'm literally Bear Honey Magazine has been on
Speaker 1: an upward trajectory. We're not we're not we're not Jay curving.
Speaker 1: We've just been on an upward trajectory of influence and
Speaker 1: and and God has helped us. That happened to me
Speaker 1: on public land. All those stories happened in the same
Speaker 1: place in public land. Public Land is is more than
Speaker 1: more than just valuable to me. It truly has shaped
Speaker 1: my life. And so that's why you know, I'm part
Speaker 1: of this organization and I believe that it's significant. Hey,
Speaker 1: thank you guys. I appreciate thanks for laughing at my jokes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that's all I got. Thanks a lot, Dach