00:00:00 Speaker 1: Yeah, my name is Clay Nukeleman. This is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the bear Grease Render where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual bear Grease podcast, presented by f HF Gear, American made purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. All right, man, this is uh, this is like groundbreaking stuff. This has never happened before in the in the bear Grease podcast. We're all doing a live podcast. So we're in um just outside of Bentonville, our console at the Black Bear Bonanzas. So for all the people that are here live, we're gonna be, We're gonna be. Yeah, there we go. We got we got a pretty good crowd here, way way more people than we thought we'd had. Yeah, we love you all. Yeah. So we uh this this podcast will go out on the bear Grease platform here in a couple of weeks, assuming that these guys don't just say like ridiculous stuff that makes me just like cancel the whole thing. So maybe you guys just get to hear it all on your own. I don't know. Um, we this has been so much fun. This is This event has been in the making for several years. Yeah, we were, we were just about to pull the trigger on it two years ago. And uh, I know most of you hill Billies don't get out much, but there was a global pandemic. We didn't hear about it much here, but there was a global pandemic that, uh kind of shut the world down. And I think the event was planned for March. Was the end of March? It was, yeah, And where were you then? Yeah? Yeah, So we have this like identical event plan. Myron was gonna come and we were gonna have a live recording of what at that time was the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. So maybe I think it's better. I think we're all probably better than we were two years ago, hopefully. Yeah. Um, I want to introduce my guests, and each one of them are here for very particular reason, and that reason will become clear maybe as we go further. Um. This is James Brandenburg. James is the lead man for the Arkansas chapter of the back Country Hunters and Anglers. Hello, James, He's James. Has been MC and today and H. James was on the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast with me several times, and uh, he always did. I like talking at James, Like I don't. I don't know how much that he says that it's like really profound, but I find them when I'm within arms reach of the guy that like, I like talking at him, So that's a big compliment. I feel like that basically what I am is just there as a wall for you to bounce things off of, and you solve most of your own problems without me, if I'm being honest with you. The first time we said guard the gate in the context of guarding the gate and predator hunting being the gate for the anti hunting community to step into our space as North American hunters was when I was talking to James. And it was only after that that I was like, we gotta guard the gate, guard the gate. And then since that time, you know, we've we've talked more and more on that and and built this idea that I think it's catching on in the country is that we have an incredible, incredible thing in North America that nobody else has with just this this this opportunity to hunt wildlife, to hunt on public lands, and that we have the most successful wildlife management system of anywhere on planet Earth, and the history of planet Earth, and the way that those who are would be against us for whatever reason. The platform that they often target to enter into our beautiful space that works so well is through predator hunting and sometimes through bear hunting. And so I feel like our job is to tell the story of the bear hunter, give context to it. You know, why would somebody want to shoot a bear? We like bears, and you know our messages we love We love bears more than anybody. We want bears to thrive more than anybody does. There's nobody on planet Earth that wants there to be more bears in Arkansas than me and Myron Means and a bunch of you guys. And that's the truth and when and it's a it's a difficult sell. It's a multi steps cell to convin someone with no history, no connection to hunting, to say killing a bear is actually a good thing for the big picture. I mean, that's a multi step cell. It's like, well, yeah, we are taking one individual out, but you know, for the habitat that we have, that animal needs to be taken out. And there's selective measures and the gaming fish is monitoring, you know, multi steps cell. It's a very easy sell for someone with no even emotional connection to hunting, like most of us here would have historical connection to go man killing bear equals bad done deal. So here in Arkansas, thank goodness, we do not have that problem. And we're here today because we plan on never having that problem here. But we live in such a world that is so interconnected. UM. In my work with Bear Hunting Magazine, I was introduced to a world I was absolutely unfamiliar with, which is a world that is well just that the hunting community is is under attack and other places. Twenty years ago, growing up in Arkansas, if you told me that, I would have said, man, you're just crying wolf. I mean, who's coming to Arkansas telling us we can't hunt? And you guys know what the world is changing quickly, And what we can do now is build a foundation of understanding the context knowledge base. And we're not mad at anybody. The people that might be against us, we're not against them. We're not trying to be ugly and stomp our feet. We're trying to be the smart wise guys. By wise guy, Brent's kind of a wise guy in the negative way. UM. Now, we're the guy with the most knowledge, the guy with the most wisdom, the guy with the most understanding of the big picture, I think wins inside of this. And so that's what we're trying to do, is just educate people and why we're doing we're doing so James Brandenburg, when we talked about that make it, did you see how that went up? Quiet? He wouldn't welcome I will, I will not go in sequential order. Here to my left, this is Myron means. Myron means is I've known Myron since uh two thousand eight or nine or somewhere somewhere. The Myron is the large carnivore lead large carnival biologist for the state of Arkansas. Is that the way you say that? The only one in them? He leads yourself. I have a small to medium sized personnel staff of me myself and I. Yeah. So Myron has worked with the game fish his whole career out of out of college five years agency this year, yeah, twenty seven years working with black bears in Arkansas. So Myron is is the the resource for knowledge about Arkansas bears. And uh, I'm gonna get Myron a little bit to give us, give us the story of Arkansas all bears, because if you're here today, no matter if you're from Oklahoma or Missouri, you need to know the story of how bears got here. Um, this is my wife, Misty newcom Misty is a is a classic on the barg Reas Render. Um because she keeps us in line and I get I get more comments, she keeps me in line. I get more comments about Misty being on the render, and so I just keep bringing her on, not because the comments, but because I like her. But I hear there is confusion today that someone tried to sell themselves as me. Yeah, is that that someone trying to steal my identity today? As how you tell us a far Britt and I we often get mistaken for one another. I don't ever mistaken for one another. Um, Brent Reeves. Everybody would know Brent Reeves from the Beargrease Render. And uh, Brent and I have been friends for a long time, and uh we've been hunted a lot together in different places. And uh, Brent is here for the Southern wit and charm. So if you have a little meter and you're taking the only reason I keep him around. Brent says stuff to me every single time I'm around him that I say, did you just make that up? And did somebody tell you that? What I have noticed is the stories are often inconsistent, though, because sometimes he's like, my dad told me that, and the next time I'll be like, my uncle told me that, And the next time I'd be like, I made that up. So I don't know. It's hard to know the truth. I keep it around a great friend of mine. And then final, and definitely not least on the end, here is my friend Mo Shephard and Mo is here for a various specific reasons. I've got a story I want him to tell you, uh later. But mo is Mo is like a mountain man. If I think about Arkansas guys that are just woodsman, just real deal woodsman. Uh. Mo was one of the most accomplished big woods mountain hunters that I know, and he and I have corresponded a lot with bear hunting when I was really trying to learn how to bear hunt in national forest without the use of bait, which we can talk about a little bit today. Me and Mo. I mean, Mo was a resource for me because he spent his whole life in the mountains and killed bears on purpose in national forest, you know, not an incidental deer kill. Some of them were incident. I think he got lucky on you know, probably a third of them, but not your opinion. Uh no, But I just have a lot of respect for mo as a as a woodsman. But uh hey, okay, I got a little ahead of myself here, which I tend to do sometimes. Do you know what the bear Grease render is? We got a lot of not in head. So the bear Grease podcast is our documentary style podcast that is not like this. It's where we have you know, we have specific topics if you hadn't heard it, specific topics, and we really dive in deep and it's a well put together, like polished um podcast. This, I'll tell you the truth. A lot of it is because we couldn't do that every single week. It was just too much work. We had to figure out a way to do something else. So we put together in the colectic group every week on the off weeks typically talk about what the podcast topic was about the week before, so you'll understand the format. That's what We're not going to do that this week because this is a special one. We're gonna we're gonna talk about bears, Marian, why don't you give us a rundown of just bears in Arkansas and kind of just a historical look. You know how much time we have left. You know that's good. I know you can talk this real abbreviated, real quick. I'm sure most of you know that Arkansas at one time we used to unofficially be known as the bear State. Bring it back, yeah, bring back before we were the natural state or the land of Opportunity. At the time of settlement, we were called the bear State. And uh, it was thought at the time of settlement in Arkansas that we may have had as many as fifty thousand black bears in the state. And of course, the landscape was completely different than it is now. I mean, we had vast expanses of bottom land hardwood, mature forest upland hardwood pine mix, and it's just a different different ecosystem than it is today. Uh. At the time of settlement, very briefly, bears had one very sought after commodity that was plentiful in Arkansas. And that's that right there. He's holding up a jar bear grease, bar oil, and we all know kind of what happened with the uh demise of the whales. You know, the whales were sought and hunted for their blubber to rent are down the fat for oils. Well, the same thing happened with bear of their oil or their fat was highly coveted a market hunting wise, So what better place to get oil bear fat than in the bear state, right, And so at the time of settlement, through settlement into Arkansas, it became a you know, a really sought after commodity. Bears were market hunted, uh, you know, unceasingly or without any regulation or anything, and so uh they were almost extirpated from the state completely. In fact, by nineteen fifty one, a man named trust and Holder did a land survey of the state of Arkansas, and uh found that the only remaining population that he had evidence of was in the lower White River drainage scrub Grass Bayou. And it was thought that we may have had as many as fifty bears left in the entire state. Now, if you're a big Clay Newcomb podcast fan, and if you've listened to this podcast with Dori Province, UH, some of those really old timers that lived in the Washtalls of the Ozarks. They'll tell you, Hey, when I was a kid back in the thirties or forties, we saw a bear. So is it likely that there were some remnants of the mountain bear population still out there? Sure? Uh. But nineteen Game and Fish embarked what is still to this day a historical reintroduction effort. In over a ten year period, they reintroduced two hundred and fifty four bears from Minnesota and Manitoba, Canada into the Ozarks and wash tolls of the state and the forest were grown back up at that time, and it was really perfect bear habitat, and there wasn't a season on at that time. Interject something. I think this is a compelling part of the story that gives a little more context. Is that you know, from from the time of white European settlement of this part of the world world, which would have been you know, in the early eighteen hundreds, the first people were getting here pretty much and starting to settle by the turn of the century. By nineteen hundred, in in and on a little bit further, almost all of Arkansas would have been cut for timber to build the Eastern US. I mean, they were sending timber from here and in marketing back, especially after the railroads, they would have done that. But basically, by the nineteen fifties and sixties, well go back the national forest. Um, the what am I looking for? The the federal government protection of national forest started with Teddy Roosevelt, I want to say in the teens, uh when was before Teddy Roosevelt set up the Forest Service. And so they started protecting these big blocks of what became public land. And so for sixty years the timber was able to regrow. So in the fifties and sixties, for the first time a bunch of our habitat all of a sudden had this big timber and was good for bear habitats. So it was like the right time. Habitat was right. Everything was right, and so that's why it was a success. That's that's exactly right. And you know, the force were coming back, bears were protected, so it was I mean, it was just excellent bear habitat. And you know, bears have proven one thing, not only here in Arkansas but about anywhere else, but giving the opportunity and the right kind of habitat and circumstances, their populations will flourish. And so the population flourished, and actually flourished to the point that by night gaming fish reopened bear season in the state. And uh we've had a bear season this last year mark the forty one modern day bear season. If you look at our bear harvest since nineteen eighty, it's just been a steady increase all the way up. We think we probably have around six thousand bears in the state now, you know, give or take a few hundred or maybe even a thousand, But I mean, the probably one of the most unique things about bears in Arkansas is we seem to be looping through these twenty years cycles. You know, the bears are reintroduced back around nineteen sixty, give or take a few years. By nineteen eighty, twenty years later, we're able to reopen bear season in the state. And from nineteen eighty to two thousand, you know, our bear population had increased in such a way that we were we're not harvesting the number of bears we needed. Incidentally, so what do we do in two thousand one to increase harvest rates? We had abating to the regime harvest strategy or to our regulation strategies, and then uh so here we are twenty years later in the same bear population in what are we talking about now? Reintroducing a bare season to the Gulf coastal plaine of Arkansas. That's a big deal deal and so I mean it's uh, it's just a good testament to great uh conservation efforts by game and fish. Uh and you know, land use patterns change, uh, everything changes, you know, over time. But uh, it's something that I've certainly feel privileged to be a part of, to be in a state that has done this so successfully, reintroduced bear so successfully. You may have said it, but in the biological community, the reintroduction, which a reintroduction is different than a uh that that's specific terminology to describe taking adult wild animals and relocating them in turn and loose. But that is it's considered the most successful reintroduction of large carnivores in the world. That still stands. That's right, it still stands. I mean, no other natural resource agency anywhere in the world has done what Arkansas has done so successfully with a large carnivore. That's something to be proud of, it really is. And to put it into context too, when you look at a you top in your phone and for a for like a heat map of the of North America for where our bear populations are, and you'll see a bunch of red in the eastern United States, I mean, one of the strongholds of the black bear is in the east, you know, the southern Appalachians, all the way up in the UH, up in the main into Canada, all the way down to Florida. I mean, the eastern US has some incredible bear populations more than US. I mean, you go into West Virginia, North Carolina, Uh Virginia, Man, they have some incredible bear populations. Okay, So imagine all these bears here, and then all of Canada is just Canada is bear central, I mean, Canada is The wilderness that they actually have in Canada is just remarkable in terms of actual definition of wilderness being places where people in civilization and roads are not. So Canada still has very much a strong bearer population. And then it loops into the Rocky Mountain West. And remember I'm painting a picture of a heat map. The Rocky Mountain West all the way down to Old Mexico has black bears, and all the Western states, a lot of them have pretty good bear populations, very good bear populations in the northwest, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana. So there's a big hole in our map though in the central US, from about middle Kentucky over to the Rocky Mountains and the Great Lakes have bears too. So from like Michigan down the whole mid South and South, no bears except for this one little red dot about that big which is the Arkansas bear population. So I mean think about that. I mean, when you're looking at this as a as a as a continental resource, it's pretty wild that we've got bears here and now. And what Myron could tell you better than me is that from the reintroduction of those two and fifty four bears now Missouri, these bears are moving into Missouri such that Missouri has had their first bear season. And we're gonna talk I believe Laura Connley will be here later right here now, Um, they're going into Missouri. They they've moved over into Oklahoma just this week. Did you hear about the legislation where in Louisiana they're proposing the bear season in northern Louisiana. I kind of got wind of that a few months ago talking to Louisiana's bear ball just but she thought it might be coming so well, they put it out as an official composal. But I mean, that's massive conservation success in two when we live in such an urbanized world and whatever is this is what I always say, whatever is happening ecologically in North America for some wild reason has been beneficial to black bears, I mean, And so to me, it's kind of it's kind of poetic in a sense that the you know, the American frontier truly was fueled by bear meat and bear grease. That that is not that is not hyperbolic. I mean people used to not eat dear meat, just keep their hides, and they killed bears for their meat and for their hide. Well they use their hides too, but for their oil. I mean, so this bear was so important. And then there was a time when the bears were extrapated, just like you know, Arkansas is a great a small microcosm of what happened in bigger places too. The bears were gone. People forgot, I mean literally in Arkansas, people forgot. I mean it's like bears weren't here basically in a functional way for seventy years, sixty years, and then all of a sudden in the eighties it was like, holy cow, we got bears. And then while Myron walked through from us having a bear season in nineteen eighty until two thousand one. And I'm about to make a claim here that if somebody can dispute me, they will, uh, I'll give them jar beargers. So during that period of time, Arkansas was probably killing less than a hundred fifty bears a year. Maybe there was no baiting, so from around and there, I think it was harvest was yeah, it was. It was just pretty amnemic. I mean, because most people had to do it. It was most of the harvest at that time was incidental to deer honting. Deer season and bear seasons ranking current, and so you know, most people didn't actively hunt bears. They were out deer hunting. I see a bears, shoot a bear. Uh so bear seasons open. So really, up until two thousand one, I would say the majority of the bear harvest was incident. And that's that's exactly my point is that guys, there were some, but there weren't a lot of people really targeting bears. Two thousand one, they decide I'm building to a point here that I want everybody to hear is that in two thousand one, they said, we have so many bears in Arkansas. We need an effective way to manage these bears because to take out typically in bear management, to take out ten percent of the bear population per year is gonna equate to that population remaining stable for the most part. And Myron could tell us a spot about that in general, that would be a true statement. And so they said, we cannot harvest the number of bears that we need for the habitat that we have using incidental deer harvest to kill these bears. Did you ever kill a bear in the nineties? Yeah, nine ninety I killed my first bears nine? Did it on purpose or was this there weren't many for real? Um? I thought you'd kill them st that. Did you hunt the first first year in that eight Yeah? And I hunted each year up till nine ninety and I killed my first bear in that team ninety. So I'm curious to see how many here did hunt bear prior to two thousand in Arkansas. Yeah, that's why you're up here. Well, okay, so what they had to do, and it was a management decision that the game and fish did as they said, we're going to manage our bears with bow hunters. And I'm putting words kind of in the I mean, this is what I've heard. We're gonna manage bears with bow hunters on private land over bait. And that that was an extremely critical and I think brilliant move for the state because all of a sudden it opened up a real possibility for people to tap into this resource. I mean, it kind of opened the floodgates for hunters to really be able to kill one. It really did allowed people to kind of get bear, so to speak. And after that point, you know, once people learned how to bait bears and how to go about it, you know, there was a learning curve associated with it. But after a few years when the culture became not acceptable, but when people started learning how to do it, that's when you saw our harvest in the state really take. This is a principle too inside of wildlife. And I saw this as a kid growing up in a part of Arkansas that was a really good bear area. Is that because it was really difficult to target bears, they held little value. I would say, I mean for real like cultural value, like my dad would tell you. I mean, it was kind of like, man, you don't want to bear anywhere around where you're hunting. They'll tear up your deer stands, they'll tear up your deer feeders. Their trouble. And I saw people killing bears and just kind of like, yeah, I just I mean, almost like a trash animal, that kind of a vermin mentality, and that that is not a blanket statement. There were people that were killing them and loving them like mo. But in general, I stand by that that there wasn't a great incentive for someone to be a bear hunter because it was so difficult. And when they liberalized that season, all of a sudden, we started hunting and we were like, holy cow, we can actually go kill a bear. And we learned how to bear hunt, we learned about bear meat, we learned how to you know, we're still learning just kind of this this how unique this wildlife commodity is. But I I refused to let anybody tell me that bait and bears is a negative thing, and you shouldn't either. Bear It's a management tool for game agencies to harvest the number of bears that they need to. And I'm on the national platform a little bit. So people sometimes give me a hard time, and I absolutely will run someone into the ground if they say that hunting a bear over bait isn't hard, isn't fair chase, or as a lazy man's way to hunt. And I'm preaching to all y'all hunting bears over bait is good, and don't ever let anybody come in this state and say that it's not and that and that's what they're doing. I mean, it sounds like I'm preaching to acquire. That's like we already know we're in the church. But a man in Maine, the Humane Society United States, comes in and says, man, baiting bears is you know, they come up with all the reasons why that you shouldn't do it, and it's so there there, it's there is a time when we may have to be like, well, if we built it strong enough, they won't ever you know, won't ever happen here. But my point is from the day at the first bear ever killed over bait, I was like, this is a real deal. This is cool, and you don't have to have access to private land and huntover bait to kill a bear in Arkansas and we've proved that, and guys like James has proved that. So they're definitely somebody that has private land in Arkansas and some of the key bear areas. Yeah, you got a leg up on us. And I mean I'm one of those guys. I just you know, there's some guys that were born in Stuck Guard and have access to the world's best duck hunting. There's some guys that were born in Iowa and have the world's best white tail deer hunting. And then you know so because I do hear that sometimes like guys are like, well, private land guys get all the bears, and it's like, man, it's just either to find fine private land that you can hunt, which you can do, or learn to hunt him a national forest, which you're hearing me preach about hunting bears over bait and how much I absolutely love it because you can be selective and we can preach that because we are selective. I hadn't killed the bear over bait in Arkansas since two thousand six. Last year, I killed the first bear overbait since two thousand and six in Arkansas, just because I'm waiting on a five pound bear in a big male. That's the truth. And if we're if we use the system right and as bear hunters, we actually use baiting as a method to be selective. And Mayer and I have talked about this a lot. Letting the juveniles and females go and actually being selective, we can we can do a whole lot more than if we have a harvest with a bunch of Souths. But I said all that to say, um, hunting a bear in the national forest on purpose, hunting them like deer is by far the hardest hunt that I do in North America. Really, I love it. And uh, and that's what Mo is so good at and has done over the years. I've taught him a lot of what he knows. But wait a minute, the story is story change since earlier? Yeah, I mean I was just a kid. I was in diapers, know so, And I know there would be a mixed group of people here. Some people to have access would be really interested in baiting bears, and then another group that might be interested in hunting bears and in in big national forests. But Marn, do you have anything to add to that. I kind of want to talk to me about hunting bears and no, just that. I mean, you know, in the in the in the world of natural resource agencies, you know, I mean, if you're a araftsman or tradesman or something, you just have a bag of tools and you have you know, baiting. It's just a it's a management tool, you know, for us to get the objectives that we want out of our bear harvest. You know, if if something happened by the wayside, I mean, we would have to have a on baiting, we'd hey, we'd certainly have to have another tool in the bag that we could use to offer up the same type of harvest numbers that we have today. So it's it's a tool. Yeah, it's a tool. I can add to that what you said earlier about the bears in the eighties, through the early seasons and even into the nineties, until they started baiting. I don't know how many people, friends, families, people that I didn't even really know would come to me when they knew I was bear hunting, you know, just after bears. Of course I love the deer hunt too, but I would take specific days I just bear hunt during the season. They said, why are you wasting time after them bears? The same thing Gary new But I heard that from a lot of different people, in different styles of people and everything. You know, why are you wasting time hunting bear when you could be deer hunting? I said, because I'm intrigued by it, you know, And a lot of those people when I got my first and nineteen ninety, I rubbed it in on them. I mean, there's there's no doubt in my mind that baiting has spawned a quote bear hunting culture in Arkansas, no doubt about it. And we do have a bear hunting culture in the state and its thriving. Yeah, I want I want Moe to tell us a story of you know, as a bear hunter. People that don't know a lot about bear hunting and they hear you bear hunt, they're like, have you ever been attacked by a bear? Have you ever been in a sticky situation? And the truth of it is, many minute times we're talking about bears, Brent, they rely in Arkansas are bears. I mean it would be if you said, Claire, I'll give you fifty thou dollars if you can go out in the next ten days and have a bear attack you. I don't think I could do it. I mean, like you. You have to Our bears typically are not aggressive, and very few incidentss of human bear direct conflict and my right, Myron, I mean it happens occasionally, But this story is one of the closest that I've heard from around these parts. But MO, tell us tell us your story of getting kind of just scared version of it. So whatever version you got to make a long story short. I left my house one day. At the time, I was living out in in the middle of national forest land, so I could just hunt from my house. Uh. It was early both season, and I just took off late morning. I didn't even get up early to go that day. I was just going to do scouting, mainly for deer bear. It was early and I grabbed one of my recurve bows and I took off from the house. And I are so into my slip hunt, slipping around looking for sign. I come up on a little bench there where there's a lot of pop all bushes. People from marks don't know what they are and what they look like. They they're there real thick, they're not very big and you can't see very far and when they got green leaves on them. Anyway, I've seen some deer deer scat there, and I thought, well, this might be a good place to come back and bring a stand in deer hunt, you know. And where was that? Uh, that's kind of a secret I don't like. Hey, y'all, remember Mo was on my secret podcast? Did did y'all hear that he keeps secrets? Anyway? I don't, you don't need to know. Anyway, I was going through and I thought this might be a good place to come back and bow hunt, you know, and bring a stand. And then about the time some movement caught my eyes, got very far from me, and I kind of looked in front of me of the Papa bushes, and I saw a small bear cup. I thought, there's a little bear cup. That's pretty cool. Mama. The cub was just had been born that during the winter that year. It was probably twenty pounds or something other, maybe twenty five and not very big, but a small dog. And I thought where man probably handled that cub before, handled about every cub, and especially in that secret spot up. I know he's been up there. But anyway, I thought, well, Mama was round here somewhere. I need to find where she's at because I need to if she shows up, I need to let her know where I'm here and just ease my way out of here, because I'd run across thousand cups of numerous times over the years, and I I was smoking for her. And about that time, I've seen movement where this and come from this small bear and there's another cup. I thought, well, that's cool, there's two cup. But I still haven't seen Mama yet. Yeah, the bear factory was generating right there, and anyway, I thought, well, I'll just let him pass on by it. I'll just keep it out for her. And they keep going around the hill, but you know they won't be no problem or nothing. Well, about that time, the two little peckerwood bears here, they come right towards me to start mos and playing and pushing on each other. And they come towards me, get closer. They get with probably ten fifteen yards. I mean, that ain't good. They're gonna get way too close. And I still haven't found Mama yet, so I don't care if I talked to him or motion myself, but I got their attention, and they both just stopped and looked, and I think I'm even kind of waved my bow at him. Or something other maybe said something real light. They just jumped into the bushes out of sight. I thought, well, that's good, but I thought I still haven't seen Mom yet, So I went to just back up and get out there, but I kept looking because I didn't know if she might be behind me or where she was at. And about that time I see movement. Here comes MoMA out right where the cubs did out there, about twenty five yards, and she had her nose down to sniffing the like mama's dooce. He was following her cubs around, just staying where there is at And I thought, well, I need to let her know I'm here or to see what happens. So I think I just sat there for a few seconds, and then she turned sniffing and started coming the same way they did towards me. I thought, this ain't good, This is not good. How big would you say she was? She was your average salth bear out in the mountains. I would say she was a hundred and fifty hundred senty pounds. This is honest, man. You think you can buy that, can't you? And looked like she was not that old bear. I figured that might even been her first cubs she'd ever had, you know. But oh, now we're speculating. I'm speculating like you do all the time. So anyway, anyway, she started that same direction, I thought, I gotta do something, so I think I just in a soft voice, said hey bear, hey bear, hey bear, And she looked at me and raise her head up and looked at me on all fours. I thought, I gotta get out here. So I knew where she was at then, so I'm gonna start backing up. Well, I'll start backing up and just talking to her, and she just stand there looking at me. And then I don't know exactly what happened. I remember all of a sudden, one of those cubs made a little balls and I looked at my left and he climbed a pop off bush right beside me. Right, No, I mean like for me to you just right there, and I'm like, this is not good. And when he done that, you could see her demean your chains. Her hair bristled up, she puffed up, you know. I just I don't know. I know you've probably seen him do that. And when she'd done that, I thought, well, I gotta do something, so I went to back up and before I even knew what happened, she made it kind of a dust them like that, and she was on me before I could even move. I mean, just bam right on my face, snapping her teeth, and I stuck my bowl up in her face like that between me and her, and just started holler at her, backing up. She was biting, snapping at my bow. And once I remember she swatted at me, but I think she was trying to scare me by swatting leaves off the ground or whatever. And uh, but then she made a big lunge at me, and I don't even know if I was at he or what caused, but she loaned to me like she was gonna try to knock me down or bite me or something other. And I just remember raising up and I kicked her out in the face with my boot and it just stoner. She just froze like that, and I really got loud in I won't repeat some of the things I was probably saying, but I just kept backing up and hollering at her and hollering at her, and I guess I got far enough that that she didn't I think there was any danger, and I don't remember if the cub made another ball sound or what. But then she acted to gress again. She started towards me again, and I got real loud that time, and I even poked at her with my bow. She stopped again. I just kept backing up, hollering real loud, I mean really loud, and I finally got knock plumb out of side of her. But she finally just stood there and froze when she did. While I was backing up, she turned and went over into the bushes where the cubs were, and she kind of I don't remember she ballard at him or whether she swat him. Anyway, she got that one off the tree and it was still the ground, and I seen him move off into the pop up bushes. So I just kept backing up fast and got quite a ways from him, and I caught my earth and then I think there was actually a log, and I sat down on just the rest. I was probably two yards where the bears was that thinking about what had just happened, and then I realized the I carry a quiver on my side, and I had an arrow with a broad head in my hand, and I never remembered getting it out of my quiver. I don't know if I was thinking in my mind that she was gonna get me down to what. I don't know, but I had it in my hand and I thought, I don't even remember doing this, and then I got up and went home and and that was a story for sure. That's that's amazing. What what year about? What year would that have been? That was probably two thousands six, two thousand seven, So yeah, yeah, not old like I am, so wow, you know, I I've only heard I've only heard one other story that kind of rivals that, and I can only tell it second hand, and I'll do it real quickly. And it's an Arkansas based story. Now, you can go a lot of different places and get bear stories, and and you know, grizzly bears out west is a whole different ball game. Like you know, our black bears are just not that aggressive. Typically grizzly bears are for real, they'll eat you and hurt you. You know. So if you're in the in the greater Yellowstone region where there are grizzly bears in the lower forty A, it's a different story. But for here, that story right there is pretty pretty wild coming from you know, coming from somebody that's that that is reputable. Like Mr mo Um, I had a I had a friend, and I'm telling his story second hand. He was he was bow hunting and used a climber tree stand in the wash dolls and setting up in a big pine tree, way up a pine tree. And he had walked in that morning in the dark, well just after daylight, whatever time. He sees a bear and he has no interest in shooting a bear. He could have his bow season. And this bear has his nose on the ground like a hound and it's trailing him, just walking right there. He walked and he was just like, huh, that's kind of odd and uh. And the bear just comes right up under his tree stand, sniffs up the tree and just look straight up at him. And he, as I remember the story being told, you know, he talked to the bear just like hey, eat at here, you know, and the bear started copping its teeth at him and kind of getting bristly. And the bear walked off and kind of did it they when they get aggressive, they kind of bristle up and kind of kind of strut almost like a turkey. But he walked out there and then he he whether he ran back, but basically a cycle of three or four times that bear would run to the base of his tree and it would run up like two or two or three jumps, and then he was like, hey, you know he his intensity went up and it came up like halfway up the tree. It went down and before you know it, that bear, he said, was coming over the top of his his his tree stand, and he had a bow and he was trying to shoot it when it was coming up the tree. But every time he leaned out, his arab came off the rest. If you're a bow hunter, you know what I'm talking about. You're trying to shoot straight down. And he could not shoot that bear until he was able to be about like this, and he shot that bear right in the throat when it was even with him. Yep. And uh. Anyway, that that that story was told to me boy, and I know the guy that happened to and um anyway, why that's a wild story too. It was well, he never recovered the bear. The bear dropped out of the tree, ran off and never found it. He believed it to be a juvenile male, which makes sense, doesn't it really? Do you do you know any wild stories? My man in the tree today. He never came down. He texted me that battery ran out. I mean, uh, Moses, probably about the craziest one that I've heard. But I mean I can working with bears as many years as I have, I can absolutely see what happened to you as being, yeah, a legitimate deal. And you know, I mean doing all the den work that I've done over the years and everything else, having females with cubs and all that, I mean, sure they can be protective every you know, the adage mama bear, I mean, you know that's saying came about because of a reason, because mama bears can be so protective of their cubs. But you know, outside of that particular scenario, I mean, black bears just inherently aren't known to exhibit predatory behavior like a grizzly bearriers or something like that. They have had black bear attacks in British Columbia is some places up north, you know, predatory black bear attacks, but we probably have a standard. Yeah, a predatory attack would be a bear seeking you, actually stalking, walking you down and sizing you up. And it's a very distinct behavior pattern. And uh so it's uh, I mean, you know bears or bears. Yeah, yeah, nun we ever had any tough bearon counts usually make you talk. Well. I was just thinking your story kind of reminded me and your story of last week. My son was playing basketball and someone fold them and I kind of felt some of those same urges of that mama stabbing my teeth, you know. But I thought what Maron was talking about, the how the old timers in Arkansas will talk about how they saw bears in the thirties and forties, and Clay knows this story. But my great grandpa was uh kind of a legendary man in our little tiny town of four hundred my brothers here, and he could he could attest to if when people found out that that was our great grandpa, they'd be like, oh, lose Joplin. Strongest man I ever knew. At one time he killed a bear with his bear hands, and that was like an actual thing. We heard he killed a bear with his bear hands. When when when we do that? Well, well I was going to tell him is that? And so when I started dating Clay, um, I told him like he's he was interested in grandall with his hands and we would hear stories about him like that he caught logs. You know, you kind of just don't believe stories like that, like I saw a truck, a whole truck of logs. He caught him with his own back. We kind of, you know, try to get him to talk about it. He was a pretty humble guy, and sometimes he would be like, oh yeah, and he would just real mildly be like, basically, no, no arrogance whatsoever. Tell us, yeah, I did catch an entire the thing of log So we you hear these stories enough. And I told play when we started dating. I don't know if it's true, but everyone in town tells me he killed the bell. I do he researched it. I went and asked him. He was eighty nine at the time, so this would We've been married for years, so it would have been Yeah, it was while we were dating, so it would have been, you know, right at the end of his life. And uh. And I asked him, I said, did you kill a bear with your bare hands? And he said, he said no, but I killed one with a rock. And what happened when he was it was I think we figured it to be. In the nineteen thirties in in Polk County. So this is a real deal. He he lived right around Hatfield, Arkansas, on Polk County, and he said he was walking home from school. One maybe not school, I don't know. He was just under twenty. You know, he was a kid. So do the math when it would have been. It probably it may have even been in the twenties. I think it was in the twenties, and I think he was It's been a long time, so we've done the math um. But he said that he was walking home and he saw a bear cub a cross the road in front of him and run up a sapling and he just picked up I mean, just what would a kid do back in those days. He picks up a rock and starts chunking rocks at this bear. And you know at that time, I mean, you can't amen, I mean, this is a vermin. I mean, these people were trying to make a living off the land. And what I thought he was scared? Yeah, he anyway, and he he knocked it out of that tree and killed it. And uh. But why that story is unique, and what we've talked about is that I have to go back and do the actual math of how old he was when he died and when it all happened, But it would have been probably in the nineteen twenties, which we're not supposed to be bears in western Arkansas during exactly. I mean, there's no doubt in my mind there was rainnant bears running around, you know. Yeah. Yeah, Paball believed there shouldn't be anything. Yeah, if I see a bear, I'm like killing Yeah, yeah he did. That's what happened to the dinosaurs. Yeah. Um, hey, we're we're gonna I want to transition to talking a little bit about like how to kill a bear. And you know, there's a thousand different things we could talk about. But James a couple of years ago killed a bear and National for Us on purpose, non incidental kill, like very much so on purpose. And uh, I think sometimes that's the most accessible way for somebody to haunts, just go out in national forest. That being said, I think you should go somewhere else. You shouldn't hunt here. Um they're not laughing. Um, now, it's no no stretch to say that killing a bear National Forest in Arkansas or Oklahoma or Missouri is a very difficult hunt, but a doable hunt. And uh, James did it. The first year he tried, which don't be encouraged by that, and you probably can't. Um I tried it for the Daniel Boone when Daniel Boone went into Kentucky, crossed the Cumberland Gap and came back after just like my life. Okay, we'll be talking about something like you know that reminds me of Daniel Boone. I like to talk it misty to talk at James, James, you're talking, Listen to talk. Yeah, I mean, I guess so so Daniel bo when he went into Kentucky and for two years went on the Big trap Line, and I mean there was nobody there except you know, some few bands and Native Americans, and he was torn his whole life of telling people about it because by him telling him about it, he ruined it. And so I think that's the story of us. And it's in a way because but like we want to share what we know and it doesn't do any good to hold stuff back. But I will say Georgia in Tennessee, West Virginia are way better bear hunting. It's actually not a joke. You can take more bears in Georgia, that's for sure. They have they have bigger bear populations. Yeah, so there's other options you have. Yeah, definitely if you if you think you want to get into the game and fish, say that that's me because I hunt out. So I hunted last year and the year before that is the only time that I've ever bear hunted. Um, I've seen two bears. One of them is dead and the other one ran across the road in front of me before the season was open. So, uh, it's hard, and if you haven't done it before, it's a lot of fun. You just kind of have to set your mind to what you're gonna encounter, how how you want to go about it, and you measure your success more by I think how long you can stay out there and keep after it. You know. Uh, I scouted a couple of days before the season open. I scouted before that, but went in earnest a couple of days before the season and hunted, uh to three days into the season. Uh during archery season, you know, so put five to seven days into it, and um, that was about all I needed, I mean because I was done, Like I didn't want to do it anymore. Bears are a low density animal, so if you think about it like a high population whitetail deer might be forty deer per square mile in good bear habitat. How many bears per square mile would we have, myron? Huh, fifteen to twenty bears maybe per hundred square kilometers? Conversion Maric, Come on, what's a kilometer someone converted for me? Real quick? Give me an anecdote, like a bear per square mile? Two bears? Oh gosh, okay, I'll land base. I'll convert it for you. Land base sto square miles square miles sixty two. So twenty five bears per sixty two square miles. Man, that's some really about half a bear about point six bears per square miles. So there's our number. So you know, forty deer per square mile point six bears. Those are the size bears. These guys kill point six. No, that's that's good info. Yeah, And so I mean that's like prime bear density. So to say, to qualify what James was saying, you can't be validated by seeing game. I mean we're used to deer hunting and like the golden era of white tail deer hunting in North America, and we go out and we don't see deer. We're like what's wrong man? When you bear hunt. That's why I love about it. You can't be validated by seeing game. I mean, I'll go seasons without seeing a bear in Arkansas, and I mean we're doing stuff very much so on purpose and don't see a bear the whole season doing what we So what you're saying is I'm as good of a bear hunter as you guys are. Apparently even a blind South Wilkins over there Jonathan Race. Jonathan did the same thing James did. Jonathan set out several years ago and he didn't even live over here, but traveled into the mountains in western Arkansas, hunted a couple of years all on his own, and kill the bear last year, didn't you, Jonathan? Yeah, So I mean this is this is a this is a doable thing. Yeah, but you shouldn't. You probably shouldn't treat You should try to do it in Georgia or in Georgia somewhere else. More bears over there, and definitely not at that place that Myron mentioned. I don't either one of them. Yeah, you know, I give bear hunting seminars around the state usually before better season comes about it, before you can bait. And I really tell people. I mean there's you know, there's two different avenues to bear hunt. You can bear hunt on private land or you can bear hunt on public land. And of course private land. You know, there's certain techniques that can benefit you and establishing a bait station. And I tell people all the time, you know, I kind of go through the processes of finding natural bait stations on public land, and uh, I can I can attest to you everyone here that a natural bait site can be every bit as effective as you know a man made bait site even better better. You'll find a natural food source. You find that one particular white oak on a bench that's throwing acorn acorns like crazy, right you almost boat. Or you find that one particular black gum tree that's throwing you know, berries like crazy right at the front of the season. So I mean I tell everybody, or hickory nuts if picker nuts as we call them mostly in Arkansas, Yeah, picker nuts. So I mean, you know, I really kind of harp on that point to people. If you don't have access to private land and to do all that, a natural bait site can be every bit as effective. Let's just run through that, just a little bit like in the eastern deciduous forest. Really, that's what apply and Georgia and any anywhere you can hunt bears over here in the fall. We don't have spring bear seasons in the South, very few spring bear seasons in the lower forty eight. Um Maine has some bear spring bear seasons on some tribal lands, and Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Washington has a limited anyway we hunt bears in the fall, and um hard masks is gonna be probably the main thing you're gonna key in on. That's what the bears are keying in on. And that would be acrens, whether it be red oakacres, white oakacerings, whatever kind of acren there is. They it would be possible bear food. But just like white tailed deer, they're gonna be selective. They're gonna high grade their food, just like you or I would. If there was a buffet out here, we'd go through. We'd say I want that, I don't want that, I do want that. But if there was a limited amount of food and there was only one or two options and we had to eat, we'd eat a lesser desirable food, the number one desirable food. I mean, we can just almost say without question, is is gonna be white oak acorns during the time we're hunting. It's just a small window of time that that really that we're keen on these bears. Other times of the year they're eating berries, they're eating soft mask. We're not as heat in on them during that time. Mayron mentioned black gum um. That's something that you don't hear a lot about, but I have a couple of years ago I found a black gum tree. It was about eighteen inches in diameter at the base and it looked like it looked like a telephone pole that they had been climbing for years. Just I mean claw marks, branches all over the ground, and there were eight piles of bears scout under that single tree. Bears were just climbing. It's probably one or two bears. They were climbing that tree, breaking the branches out of that black gum. And black gum has a little soft berry about that looks like a raisin. And uh, boy, at the right time, when they hit, they're loaded with hit. Yeah, and you know, so acorns, uh you know black gum. You might find a persymmetry that the bears are hitting per simmons are pretty there's just little windows when they're when they're using those hickory nuts, beech nuts. Parts of Arkansas are gonna have some beach timber, you know, few parts of Arkansas. But when beech nuts make they're gonna eat They're gonna eat those hard and heavy. Um, that's primarily what they're eating in the fall. You guys agree, Yeah, I'd say acorns and then black gun berries and then the hickory nuts. Is what I found myself. But if you're intellect she said, and where the beech nuts are, those are half protein content mass. When they do hit, they just don't hit very often. They will sure go to them then. And what always, what I've found is that bears will use natural food very similar to the use of bait site. I mean just that's what Myron's point was, is that a bear is extremely habitual. If you can find where he's been, he's probably gonna come back. And this is like the dream scenario that I would have only found. I mean, I talked about scenarios like this, and you're like, well, heck, he must find a spot like that every year. Not true. I mean I probably found this three or four times in my life. But this is what you're after, so like to talk about what you're after. What you're after is to walk onto a bench or on the top of a ridge or wherever the acrons would be, and find a significant amount of your food source and then a significant amount of bear scat. I mean, I've been in places where you walk up there and it looks like hogs have been in there and there's bear. You know, find ten or twelve piles of bear scout in a hundred square yard area, some of it very fresh, some of it old acrons on the ground. I mean, it's just if you can find that you're in the chips, and then you just hunt it smart like you would hunt a deer. You know, you gotta watch the smarter smarter there there. So when you find that, you treat it just like a deer spot. You know, you gotta get the wind right. But what I found, and what I didn't I didn't know until I did it, is that you can kill a bear on the ground. I can't believe I'm telling people this stuff. Gunning you can kill. You can stalk a bear and dry leaves on the ground when he's got his face eating akrons, and that's what I was unsure of. And ten years ago when I was kind of just like trying to kill one in National forest, I'd be out and the leaves would be dry, and I'm sitting here with a traditional bow, and I'm like, how the heck am I gonna get within eighteen yards of a bear? And what I found? And I have the I have a video on Bear Honey Magazine YouTube channel of a bear that I first spotted about sixty yards away and I filmed them for eighteen minutes. I know it because it was on the camera. I filmed them for eighteen minutes, just circling the white oak tree, just circling. Never looked up one time, Maron and I just started walking towards him in the broad there was nothing to hide behind, and I walked to where I could hear him crunching acrons, and then I was like, this is close enough, and I just kind of crouched down in the wide open, and that bear, you know, eventually just kind of made his way my direction and I killed him at fourteen yards. But the leaves were crunchy. Dry. Point is you can stalk them if they're eating. Now, if they're moving. If you're like going through the mountains and you see one that coming across the ridge, he'll be as I mean, I'm not gonna say as spooky as a deer, but that bear is going to be alert. If you can catch them, feed them feeding. You could about walk up to him and slap them in the rear, as long as they don't smell yep, I mean yeah, absolutely common to them. The dominator in that is the wind was at your face. Bears do not see. They're kind of nearsighted, don't see probably well as most people. They don't have a little small fuzzy ears, not bi great our ears like a deer, so they don't really hear that well. But the bear has the strongest snows of any land animal, and they use it. They live or die by it. So if you want to be a successful bear hunter, that is probably the most important factor that you can never ever leave out his wind how third normals play, how down drafts, play, what your wind is doing, because you will never ever stalk a bear with the wind nod in your favor. That's right. They noticed he didn't say use sent control products. He said play the wind like a real man, that's a whole other Yeah, kidding yet how much time? Uh we're walking? It all kind of inside jokes for Beargary surrender yeah, um yeah, so um. I wanted to touch on that. And that's all the secrets I've got. I mean, like people talk to me about how do you kill a bear? And National Forest, I've told you everything I know right there. Really it's literally get out and pound the dirt, looking for places and hunt. And now James and Jonathan they have taken my advice and gone out and done it, so it'd be interesting to see it. Yeah, hunt too. No, I will say that the why I got into it is because it was an adventure and a challenge. Is something new to do, something you could do here in Arkansas happened to be. I was planning to do it anyway, and then we had COVID so we weren't gonna travel anywhere. Um, but I wanted to become a better woodsman. I wanted to just get out and see more of the state. And and if you choose to do this in the National Forest, you're gonna see parts of the state that you didn't know existed. We live in a beautiful, beautiful place. As pretty as Georgia, not as pretty as Georgia, tex Place. Um, and uh, you will. You will challenge yourself in many many ways to go out and do that. But that's what I wanted out of that particular adventure, and I thought there was a lot of value in that for me as a just on my journey as a hunter. And I'm kind of thoughtful about that kind of stuff. Not everybody is. I mean, I'm glad I brought a bear home and and had all the stuff from it too. But it was a very fun adventure to go on. And and that's what I would sell anybody. If you're looking for an adventure, take up bear hunting. Yeah, on national you know, national forest, on public land, because it's tough, it's real tough. Yeah. I want to talk real quickly about baiting bears. Just kind of give the high points of baiting bearers. I'm trying to just get a swath of what people might be interested in. Does that sound fair to all? Yepnom Is that fair? Yes, it's very fair question to say about baiting barriers. Well, I'll say two things. There's bear bait around here. I can smell it. Well, what you smell is uh yeah, Northwoods. It smells like bear bait. Yo. She didn't know I brought this. This is uh yeah, this is some stuff I like to use this north Woods bear products. I'm going to give some of the away that smells like fall. And then in the we also Clay always fine, you know, places to go get just junk foods, stuff that we wouldn't let our kids eat, and fills the back of his trunk. And when our kids were little, one of them came toddling new and expired honey bun in their hands just now and down. I was like, what do you eat? Yeah? And my kids, Mike, whenever we see certain items in the grocery store, they're like, oh, look there's some bear baits that. So when you're when you're baiting bear, always tell people it's all about location, location, location. Most people they say, well, I got property in this county, We saw a bear there once or twice. You know, is it gonna be good for baiting bears? And what I've seen is that even on a micro scale, like if you took like half of a county, there are gonna be even inside like even let's say it's the best bear county around, and you took even just a quarter of that best bear county around, there's gonna be fringe bear habitat, and that there's place, there's property in that best county that you probably couldn't kill a bear on. Bears are very selective about where they're gonna go and where they want to be in the daytime. And so the short version is when you're baiting bears, you want to be in you want to be where the bears want to be in the fall. So it's possible that somebody's got bears, and Miron can tell you this, got bears on their place during the summer, but they're like, but when we put out bear bait in the fall, we don't get bears up. Bears have big ranges. They're moving around, they do. They typically have a summer range and a fall range, and that fall range, you know, maybe two miles away. But in the home range of a bear, they will have seasonal ranges within that whole home range, and they definitely, I mean some bears have their summer forage area in very close proximity to maybe where their fall range would be. But in other bears, you know, they may be three or four miles apart, and you're not as a hunter, You're not like trying to map out home ranges of different bears. But if you can, if you can, if you have access to private land that you have permission to hunt in very secluded, remote areas that are typically connected to big blocks of national forests. In our state, the bears, the bears are on national forest. I mean, that's just the truth of it there there. But the bears want big, unfragmented not true wilderness like Capital w federal wilderness, but they want to be in big, unfragmented blocks. That's not exclusive. Bears can adapt and can be living, you know, in your backyard in general, though the bigger blocks, a big public land, rugged, rough, nasty stuff, that's where bears are gonna want to be. And you'll learn over time. Like there was a time years ago where I was baiting like eleven different spots in a good county in Arkansas, and of those eleven spots, by the time season came around, we would usually have three spots that you could kill a decent bear at that whole time we baited it. Though in September we'd have had bears at every one of those spots, and as the as the as the calendar turns in September, coming to October, the white oak acrens, all the acrens start getting ripe, falling bears start to transition. You know, during that time, Um, there's just a big transition in the natural world from summer to fall, and bears start to move around, and you can basically you can hold bears early, it's hard to hold them late. Everybody's beaded bears. You know. We'll say, Man, I had bears, but they left by the time season came. You know, what can I do to keep them? And I told the guy earlier today, I said, the best thing you can do to keep a bear and be able to kill him on opening day is have a spot that you can kill bears and keep them until opening day. It works brilliant. So what I finally did, after after after what teach that Mo and his backwoods wisdom taught me that, what what I finally did, after bating eleven spots, as I said, why I'm even baiting those other eight, I'm just gonna bait the three. And so that's what I did. I mean pretty much just narrowed it down. I was like, I cannot kill a good bear at this spot, so we're just chunking it. You know, we we tried it for several years. You can't give up on a spot after one year. I bait it three years before. I was like, ah um. But you know, but a lot of you may not have access to that many properties, so you may it may be a deal where you bait for five years and finally you get a straggler that comes in and that's that's okay too, But point being secluded land moment. Yeah. And then and the later in the season it gets later in the fall, it gets the harder it is to get a bear to come to bait, Like later muzzloader hunt or the gun hunt. It's a lot harder to get them to come to those areas. You gotta try to get closer to where they want to be in that fall during the mass they'll come to bait once they hit the mass hard, you know from opening a from the acrons first fall, they'll hit it hard. But then as the acrons dispersed and get less of them, and they're more apt to come back to a bait side. But you need to be closer to where they're hanging out hitting that mass crop too. So Mo Mo and I kind of work together on a bait side one year and he killed the bear on November the fifth, over bait, which is the latest I've ever It's pretty late what he's trying to say. And I have people that are like, Hey, I'm gonna come bear hunt. What if what if I came mid October talking about hunting over bait and I would just be like, stay home. That's one of the worst times to try to the bear season over bait, I said I. I kind of had this revelation last year. Is sitting over a bear bait in Arkansas? Is that it is? It is a an ephemeral window. I mean, it's like a short window that comes and goes where those big bears are using the bait site during the daytime. Very short window, and it's always gonna be the as early as the season is open. I mean, so like when we bear hunt, I mean we pretty much bear hunt over bait the first three days of season and then our baits just die. It's like they just turned the switch. We've done it for twenty years. It's not anecdotal, it's everybody. I mean, it's It's like sometimes you hear people say stuff and you're like, you haven't done that very much. Or if you come to the wrong conclusion, man, that bears leave baits. They're hard to hold most years, and you better, you better, you better hunt them quick, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, that that year, you remember the reason we talked about it, because I told you killed the bear with about every means there was other than my pistol. And the only way I could do that was during the opening of the gun fire bear season. And that year it was when it opened just a few days, like five days prior to gun deer season. Pretty and and so we we baited and and and got got a bear coming in, a good material bear. And I was lucky. The first evening I sat there. I sat there all day, but the first evening I sat there about noon and then had to eat. But I'm hungry, you can tell. But you look at yeah the bear. The bear came in, you know, thirty minutes before dark. And I took it with my pistol and called Clay and said, cut it up here. I've got a bear down and you're gonna have to help me. So we got a lot of fat off of that bear too. That bear had a beautiful coat. Five you know, the longer you wait in the season there, Yeah, I've got made it had a rug made out of it. It's a beautiful rug. I mean it's thick, lot of a lot of fat holding a big filet of fat. That was just like you know, like that big yeah. But um yeah. And then as far as what debate with, you know, there's there's basically anything. I mean, there's regulations looking looking the red books for what you can bait. They have had to kind of get specific, but in general, uh, just about anything that will make a human fat, well, a bear will eat. That's what I say. We use a lot of a lot of bread, pastries, dog food, corn. I didn't know dog food made people fat. That's a good touche. I've never tried to have this trip both fat. You know, do you eat dog food? Um? Every opportunity. Now, we use a lot of we use a lot of used cooking oil. I would say that's a key component. Um. And this is not a sales pitch. I got nothing tied to these guys, but these these friar grease additives, this is this is Northwood's gold rush. It really is incredible that you pour this in with your friar grease, put it on corn, dog food, bread, whatever, and it really attracts. I can smell it right now, misty nose. That's the smell of September at our Yeah, we open this up. Hey, could you put that in the candle? Could you put that in one of those bear grease candles? Oh? Yeah, I don't know where you north Woods Barger. It smells up here right now. Wow, it really does. There's a lot of resources. I tell you what, if you want to learn how to bear hunt Yata, you ought to subscribe to Bear Hunting Magazine. Colby Colby, Moorehead and Joe Line run Bear Hunting Magazine. It's the only bear hunting magazine in the world. Way about of coy big. I mean, people ask me all the time. People message me and asked me some real specific question about bears, which I don't mind. But I'm like, man, I've spent the last ten years writing about that and every issue of Bear Hunting magazine, and so the first thing I say is you should subscribe to Barretti magazine. And uh, but it's not a sales pitch. Just I'm just telling you the truth. If you want to learn how to bear hunt and see bear hunting on a big national scale, it's it's it's handy because I can only talk so much. You've got a lot of stories, a lot of different kinds of adventures in different ways to do it, and bear hunting is pretty diverse. And as a new bear hunter, you know, I'm still learning all the different ways to do it in different places, and and I like getting the magazine to see those different things in different perspectives and just add different ideas to what I might do. So it's a good resource. Yeah. Yeah, Um, Brent, we didn't talked to you yet. Using what you want to talk about, I don't know. Closing thoughts, Well, I'm for bear hunting, okay, I'm for baiting bears. I'm for doing anything. I really appreciate the where the game and fish has gone as far as the Gulf Coastal area because that's where I'm from. It's a big deal. Yeah, it is a big deal. And the ground down there is flat. What yes, sir, you don't have to it. See like I tell you about count, you don't have to con ut in the mountains and now maybe we're not gonna have to bear hunt. You don't have to walk up a mountain exactly. Well, I just it's it's just good. And and you know, I've I've got friends that worked at at Felsenthal, the guys that I grew up with, and they just it's just they see more that's down in the southeast part of Arkansas actually goes down into Louisiana, and that they see more and more. It used to be he would call him a man, I saw a bear today. Now now when I talked to him, it's like, you know, once every month or two, how many bears have you seen? He's, oh, gosh, I don't know. I couldn't tell you how many. You know, it's just they absolutely remarkable. At the place that I grew up and there's not many acres down there. I didn't put a track on that you never saw a bear, and now you see them. It's it's not unlike, it's not uncommon anymore. And it's it's an absolute testament. It's a testament to the folks that Myron, that Miron, that that Maron works with, and all these folks around here that put some value on something and see the value in it, and they've been working for a long time to get it to where it's at now, and it's hats off to you. It's a testament to great bear conservation. And it just continues to be, you know, flagship species for the agency. I mean, it really is continues to be a success story. It's good to see that louis Anna is getting a little after the whooping we put on them a couple of days ago. You're welcome for both of those things. Be yeah, now, man, I can't, I can't. I can't reiterate enough how special it is that we have bears here and that we can hunt them like we can so, I mean, I'm like super grateful for that. Um hey, thank you guys so much for being a part of the bear grease surrender

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